A Graduate Student's Quest for Good Food

Lemon Risotto

2012-02-10T17:47:00.000-05:00

After a very lengthy hiatus, I've decided I need to get back into food blogging. I've made plenty of new things, I just haven't been posting. So I'll start with this amazing lemon risotto I recently made. I served it with salmon and broccoli, and the risotto was DEFINITELY my favorite part. It also went perfectly. I cut the recipe in half, which I sort of regretted, but risotto is usually not good for very long. The recipe is from Bon Appetite and can be found here.

3 cups canned low-salt veggue broth

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large shallot, chopped

1 cups arborio rice or medium-grain white rice

1/8 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 3 ounces)

1 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (I used basil and was very pleased with the outcome)

1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

Bring broth to simmer in large saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat to low; cover to keep warm. Melt 1 1/2 tablespoons butter with oil in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and sauté until tender, about 6 minutes. Add rice; stir 1 minute. Add wine and stir until evaporated, about 30 seconds. Add 1 1/2 cups hot broth; simmer until absorbed, stirring frequently. Add remaining broth 1/2 cup at a time, allowing broth to be absorbed before adding more and stirring frequently until rice is creamy and tender, about 35 minutes. Stir in cheese and remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Stir in parsley, lemon juice, and lemon peel. Season risotto with salt and pepper. Transfer to bowl and serve.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com:80/recipes/food/views/Lemon-Risotto-106451#ixzz1m1PoEtar

Stereotypical American food, conference edition

2011-05-22T22:18:00.000-04:00

So Americans have some kind of gross eating habits. When I was at my conference in early May, I went to a restaurant that I shall not name in Columbus with a bunch of Europeans. They immediately noticed the most disgusting (and stereotypically American) item on the menu: deep fried hamburger. Several of them ordered it. I took a picture. I think the worst part was most of them ate the whole thing.

Baguettes

2011-05-22T21:09:00.001-04:00

So for those of you who don't know the reason why this is the first time I'm posting in all of May, it's because I was traveling for the first 17 days. First I was in Columbus, OH for a conference (and I am leaving tomorrow for a related conference). Then I went to Europe. I stayed with a friend in southern Germany and visited several German and French cities as well as Luxembourg. We finished off the trip with a Paris visit. The whole trip was a lot of fun, but unfortunately, I don't have a camera so the only pictures are those she took in Paris. The unfortunate part about returning to the States is that the bread there was so amazing, I don't think I'll ever be able to eat store bought bread in the U.S. again, even from the bakery. This isn't a huge problem since I bake about 80% of the bread that I eat, it's just cutting out that remaining 20%. It does mean that I need to expand my repertoire, however. Since I've been working from home, and will continue to at least 4 days a week (this is of course, including weekends), I have the opportunity to do things like attempt baguettes, which require longer proofing time than other breads. I started with a fairly simple recipe and liked the outcome except the crust did not brown as much as in their pictures. I left it in the oven for about 45-50 minutes, which was definitely too much, the crust was thicker and the inside drier than the baguette should have been, but I was waiting for it to turn "dark golden brown." In retrospect, I should have baked them at a higher temperature. My oven claims to go up to 500F. That being said, I made the baguettes on Thursday morning and they were gone by Saturday afternoon... and I didn't share with anyone.

Baba Ganoush

2011-05-22T16:51:00.000-04:00

Hey all, sorry for not posting for several months. Boy do I have a backlog of stuff I've made. I'll start with the most recent since I remember it. I'm certain I'll forget a few things, but prepare for a barrage of posts!

As of lately I've had more hummus cravings that I ever remember. And I've figured out what it is that I've been craving about hummus: the tahini. Tahini is basically sesame seed butter and I am a pretty big fan of sesame seeds to begin with. But hummus is old news (I've been making it almost weekly and I am sorry for not posting, it never turns out exactly how I want it to). The other similar dip that I know with large quantities of tahini: baba ganoush. Instead of pureeing chickpeas, one roasts and purees eggplant. It sounds scary, but honestly, you probably can't tell that it's eggplant. Even before I liked eggplant, I liked baba ganoush because it basically tastes like tahini and garlic, just like hummus (or at least my hummus). Plus, I busted out the liquid smoke flavor, since I don't have a smoker or even a gas burner. And this made my baba ganoush delicious. What's even better is that it purees much better than chickpeas in my magic bullet. I think i may not add enough olive oil to hummus, but baba ganoush needs a lot less. I served it with both carrots and, when I ran out of those, toasted pita.

Baba Ganoush
1 eggplant
2 Tbsp tahini
2 small cloves garlic
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp olive oil
dash of chili powder (to taste)
dash of liquid smoke (optional)

Broil eggplant until soft, turning every 10 minutes or so. This took about 30-40 minutes. Allow to cool, until you can handle it. You can speed this along by peeling the skin off. Once it's cool enough, scoop out the pulp and put it in a Magic Bullet (or food processor or blender) with all the other ingredients and blend until smooth. Serve with pita or veggies.

Apricot Walnut Bread

2011-04-03T13:45:00.001-04:00

Hello all,

Whoops, I didn't get a picture before some of it disappeared

I didn't post in March! I haven't really been making much food due to the fact that I have free food Tuesday and Wednesday (and sometimes more) nights and I've been out of town or finding more free food, so I've just kind of been throwing together things I've already made. Even for Pi Day, I made Caramelized Pear Tart. I've neglected Daring Bakers and Daring Cooks (I haven't been around on weekends).

But one thing I've still been trying to make is bread. And I made a few different kinds, none worth mentioning. But this one was quite good. I found the recipe on Serious Eats. It's not sweet (it's the first bread I've ever made without adding sugar or honey), but it's soft and tasty. The crumb is much nicer than other kinds of bread I've made.

Walnut-Apricot Bread

Ingredients

1 cup lukewarm water
2 1/2 teaspoons (1 package) yeast
2 1/2 cups bread flour, divided
1 cup raw walnuts
14 dried pitted apricots (I used Turkish)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

Procedure

1. In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the water, yeast, and one cup of the bread flour.
2. Put the walnuts, apricots and olive oil into your food processor, blender, or other capable device, and process it until it is a mostly smooth homogeneous mixture. This should make about a cup, but a little more or less is fine.
3. By the time the walnut mixture is smooth, the flour mixture should be bubbly. Add the rest of the bread flour and the salt to the flour mixture, and knead with the dough hook until it begins to come together.
4. Add the walnut mixture to the dough, including all the liquid that may be separating from the walnuts. Knead until the mixture has incorporated fully into the dough and it starts becoming smooth.
5. Stop the mixer and let the dough rest for 10-15 minutes before continuing.
6. After the rest, continue kneading with the dough hook until the dough is smooth, shiny and elastic.
7. Remove the bowl from the mixer, form the dough into a ball. It shouldn't be sticky at all at this point. Put the dough ball back into he mixer bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it rest until doubled in size, about an hour and a half.
8. Sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
9. Take the dough out of the bowl, knead it briefly, and form into a tight ball. Place it, seam-side down, on the baking sheet. Cover the dough loosely with plastic wrap and set it aside to rise until doubled, about 30 to 45 minutes.
10. When the dough has doubled, slash the top. Be decorative if you want, or just slash an "X" in the top or make parallel lines or a square - whatever you prefer. To recreate the slashes I made, first make the large X in the top of the bread going almost to the base of the dough, then make short slashes in-between the long ones. Use small, sharp scissors to make tiny snips around the short slashes.
11. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes. If it seems to be browning too fast, turn the oven temperature down to 325°F.

Broccoli Crunch Salad/Tasty Veggie Sauce

2011-02-20T15:12:00.001-05:00

I made this for the Superbowl, that weekend that I cooked like 5 different things (and I've barely made anything since), along with the chickpea cupcakes. The salad was typical, but the dressing... the dressing is amazing. I just whipped up a little more and bought broccoli slaw at the grocery store (it was a buck for 4 servings, what beats that?) and covered the broccoli slaw with the dressing and it makes a tasty snack or side dish. And I could practically drink the dressing, and quite honestly, it wouldn't be the worst thing for me.

I found the recipe at 101 Cookbooks. I'll save you a post about the salad, but I'll include the dressing recipe. I'm sure a similar dressing would be good with cashews.

Lemon Almond Veggie Sauce
1 garlic clove, smashed and chopped
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1/4 cup almond butter (I just blended 1/2 cup blanched almonds until they formed a nut butter consistency because I am not about to spend $8 for a jar of almond butter when I can get a pound of almonds for half that)
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon honey (I used a tasty orange blossom honey, which I am in love with)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (I just used a splash)
2 tablespoons hot water

Make the dressing by sprinkling the salt over the clove of garlic. Smash the clove and chop, smash and chop - turning it into a paste. In a small bowl whisk the salty garlic paste with the almond butter, lemon juice, honey and olive oil. Add the hot water and whisk until light and creamy. Taste, make any adjustments and set aside.

Mole Chili

2011-02-06T13:12:00.001-05:00

It's Superbowl Sunday! And the Packers are playing! But nothing feels more like the Superbowl than chili. Or maybe that's wings. But I've always had a thing for eating things out of bowls during the various bowls. And for the Superbowl, it should be something, well, super. And it's chili time of year. I was looking for things to bring to for a party, and I bookmarked this recipe a while ago. It's not a lot different than what I usually make, but cooking the veggies with spices before adding the beans and tomatoes adds depth of the flavor. I'm found the recipe on Mozzarella and Merlot at some point, and thought it sounded good. And it is, though I didn't have much chance to savor it since I was trying desperately to find a granola recipe online and then trying to finish before my roommate started the dishwasher so I could put my bowl in. Usually I think that chili is one of those things you should just wing, but I'm including the recipe since the technique of simmering the flavors first is a worthwhile change.

It was a hearty chili, full of veggies, so it's very healthy, but like I said, just a little more complex than what I usually make, but not that different (except for the extra veggies). I guess saying "hearty" is a given when we are talking about chili though. It was good, but probably not ideal with the sourdough I bought yesterday.

To make this more "mole" like, you should probably cook all the spices together for even longer, like a few hours, before adding everything else.

Mole Chili

Adapted (liberally) from Gourmet, when it was still a magazine

1 large dried chili, chopped (you could also you red pepper flakes here)

2 fresh hot peppers (jalapenos, Thai chilis, whatever you got), chopped

1 1/2 tsp cumin

1 tsp dried oregano

Pinch of cinnamon (I used my good, complex, sharp Vietnamese cinnamon)

2 medium onions, chopped

3 tbsp olive oil

5 garlic cloves, minced

2 zucchini or yellow squash, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

3/4 lb chopped spinach (frozen is fine)

1 tsp grated orange zest

Pinch of sugar

3 tbsp unsweetened baking chocolate (finely chopped) or cocoa powder

1 15-oz can of diced tomatoes

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp chili powder

1 cup water

2 15-oz cans of beans (I used 1/2 cup dry beans that I cooked yesterday, about a half cup each of red beans, kidney beans, and black beans, since that's what I had on hand)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Cilantro/sour cream/chopped chives for garnish

In a large, heavy saucepan/soup pot, heat the oil and butter over medium-high heat. Add onions and cook until they are softened and begin to brown. Add garlic, and cook for about one minute. Add chili peppers, cumin, paprika, chili powder, oregano and cinnamon. Cook for another minute, then add bell pepper, zucchini/squash, and spinach. Cover the pot and let it cook for 5-10 minutes, or until the vegetables softened. Add zest, sugar, chocolate, water and tomatoes (with their juice). Break the tomatoes up with a wooden spoon so that there are chunks in the chili, but notwhole tomatoes. Cover again and cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add beans and cook until beans are heated through. Season with salt and pepper.

Chili Flavored Chocolate Chickpea Cupcakes

2011-02-05T21:46:00.001-05:00

Some of my readers may know that I'm currently not eating dairy, but that has made me crave chocolate (particularly in the form of brownies and the like) more than usual. The good news is dark chocolate (at least true dark chocolate) by definition does not contain dairy. The bad news is most good brownies use butter. However in my obsession with looking at pictures of baked goods, I discovered a pretty cool concept: putting chickpeas into baked goods, sometimes instead of sometimes in addition to, flour. This was a chocolate chickpea cake, which is gluten free and dairy free (as long as you grease the pan with oil rather than butter). It's like a flourless chocolate cake, only the chickpeas serve as a flour like substance.

I once read a blog about an obsession with cumin that even beats mine and the author said she puts cumin with chocolate. This intrigued me and I've been meaning to try it since, but haven't had a good opportunity (actually, I was thinking about making cumin truffles this year, but ended up making lavender instead). I think that the chickpeas kind of encourage play with savory flavors, but I could see where some people might find these extremely weird. They are kind of reminiscent of a chocolaty chili, more than a chocolate cake, especially since I used my magic bullet to "puree" the chickpeas and it missed a few. But I made these to bring to a Superbowl party (go Pack go!) tomorrow and had to try one to make sure they were acceptable and not super weird to serve to other people. I ended up eating 2. Whoops! I adapted a recipe from Serious Eats. I'll let you know how they go over at the party tomorrow, they might not be as good cold. However, I think they do a good job of incorporating Superbowl-y flavors, that is, chili, in a chocolate cake. I had a picture that I deleted right after I sent it to my computer, but it apparently did not make it to my computer. Maybe I'll add one tomorrow. Maybe i should frost it with avocado buttercream (and maybe something gold?), but i think that may go to far.

5 oz chopped bittersweet chocolate or chocolate chips
1 (19-ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
4 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin
dash cayenne pepper

PROCEDURES1

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 12 muffin tins in your preferred method. The recipe suggests butter and cocoa, I just used baking spray.
1
2
In a large microwave-safe bowl, melt chocolate by microwaving in 15-second intervals, stirring with a rubber spatula each time until melted. Alternatively, heat, stirring constantly, over double boiler until melted.
3
Puree beans, eggs and vanilla in a food processor (or using an immersion blender) until smooth, about 1 minute. Add sugar, baking powder, cumin, cayenne, and salt and blend to combine, about 20 seconds.
4
Add melted chocolate and blend to combine, scraping down sides of bowl well as necessary. Batter will have a thick, pudding-like consistency. Transfer batter into prepared pan and bake until knife inserted in center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.
5
Allow cake to cool for 15 minutes on wire cooling rack before inverting onto serving platter. Cool completely. Dust with confectioner's sugar just before serving.

Tofu with Brussels Sprouts and Apples

2011-02-05T18:15:00.003-05:00

So this is a dish that contains two ingredients that most people avoid, but that's a shame. This is one of the first times where I actually enjoyed the tofu I cooked. And the bitterness of brussels plays nicely with the maple syrup. However, I thought the dish as a whole was a little bland, so I would probably add more garlic next time. For the record, I halved the amount of brussels and apples to make it for one, since it doesn't work well for leftovers (but 4oz of tofu is roughly a serving, I may have used slightly less than that). However, I set aside the other half for a quick already prepped dinner on Monday after my run.

But it's a healthy, quick and tasty (vegan) dinner. I found it as a one pan recipe on 101 cookbooks. I did prep everything a little ahead so that I could cut up the tofu and let it dry on a cloth for a little while and then it came together quickly when I decided I was hungry. I just ate it with some sourdough bread that was on sale. I was planning on having chili tonight, but decided that was probably too similar too my lunch and dessert, which I'll post about in a little bit. But my point is that sourdough bread is not the ideal accompaniment. I'll make chili tomorrow.

1 large, crisp apple, cut into bite-sized wedges
1 lemon, juice only
4 ounces extra-firm tofu cut into tiny-inch cubes (see photo)
a couple pinches of fine-grain sea salt
a couple splashes of olive oil
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
a scant tablespoon of maple syrup
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted and chopped (I used walnuts because I already had them toasted and they are cheaper, but I didn't chop them)
12 ounces (3/4 pound). brussels sprouts, washed and cut into 1/8-inch wide ribbons

Soak the apples in a bowl filled with water and the juice of one lemon.

Cook the tofu in large hot skillet with a bit of salt and a splash of oil. Saute until golden, about 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic, wait a few seconds, now stir in the maple syrup, and cook another 30 seconds or so. Drain the apples, and add them to the skillet, cooking for another minute. Scrape the apple and tofu mixture out onto a plate and set aside while you cook the brussels sprouts.

In the same pan (no need to wash), add a touch more oil, another pinch of salt, and dial the heat up to medium-high. When the pan is nice and hot stir in the shredded brussels sprouts. Cook for 2 - 3 minutes, stirring a couple times (but not too often) until you get some golden bits, and the rest of the sprouts are bright and delicious.
Stir the apple mixture back into the skillet alongside the brussels sprouts 1/2 of the pine nuts - gently stir to combine. Remove from heat and enjoy immediately sprinkled with the remaining pine nuts. This isn't a dish you want sitting around, the flavors change dramatically after ten minutes or so, and I think that is part of the reason brussels sprouts get a bad rap. Even I don't like them after they've been sitting around.

Serves 2 - 3 as a main, 4 as a side.

Black Bean Burgers with Guacamole

2011-01-23T22:52:00.002-05:00

I love veggie burgers. I love real burgers too, but I consider veggie burgers to be a different food. My favorite are those that are made with real food, rather than textured soy protein. EVOS has a nice actual vegetable patty. I've had some awesome black bean burgers. I even ate a black bean and (get this, those who know me) mushroom burger once and loved it. I've tried them before (or was that just lentil burgers) and they turned out a little bland. So I decided to follow a recipe. But I changed it. And I thought they would be a little bland, but they really weren't. But they are even better with avocado and tomatoes (and spinach and steamed veggies as in the picture). Or you could top them with barbecue sauce or hot sauce. To be honest, I tried the little pieces that fell off, and thought they lacked spice, which is probably due to the fact that instead of chipotle peppers in adobo (which I do not like, for some reason). However, the final product was quite good. You could add more, or you could leave it as is if you want to eat it with other things and appreciate all the flavors. For the spice, I planned on using jalepeno, couldn't find my jalepeno, so instead used chipotle and chili powders, quite frankly less than I listed below but I didn't measure, and a little water for moisture. I'll copy the recipe and change what I did. But one thing I did do to add more flavor: I used my leftover bread crumbs from the Daring Cooks, which were garlicy and parsley-y. I didn't have quite enough, so I threw a little wheat bran in to dry the batter a little. These are probably a little bland to eat bare, but who eats a burger of any sort bare? They are tasty and a nice canvas that you could dress up, rather than a single entity of goodness. And tomorrow I will serve it with the steamed veggies from last night to make a colorful and healthy lunch. A few of the faculty members in the Geometry-Topology group restarted weekly lunches of the group, and I'm very excited about this endeavor. The first one is tomorrow, and I can show off my healthy and delicious lunch.

1/2 of a medium avocado, seeded and peeled
1 tablespoon lime juice
Salt
Ground black pepper
1/2 cup garlic bread crumbs
extra bread crumbs, wheat bran, or oatmeal, enough to make dough hold together
3 tsp frozen cilantro cubes
2 cloves garlic
1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained (or about 1.5 cups cooked from dry, which is what I did)
1/8 cup water
1/2 tsp chipotle pepper (or really, anything spicy, extra chili powder is fine)
1 tsp chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 egg
1 small plum tomato, chopped

directions

For guacamole, in a small bowl mash avocado. Stir in lime juice; season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover surface with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Place torn bread in a food processor bowl or blender container. Cover and process or blend until bread resembles coarse crumbs. Transfer bread crumbs to a large bowl; set aside.

Place cilantro and garlic in the food processor bowl or blender container. Cover and process or blend until finely chopped. Add the beans, chipotle pepper, adobo sauce, and cumin. Cover and process or blend using on/off pulses until beans are coarsely chopped and mixture begins to pull away from side of bowl or container. Taste and add salt and pepper (or any kind) if needed. Add bean mixture to bread crumbs. Add egg; mix well. Shape into four 1/2-inch-thick patties.

Lightly grease the rack of an saute pan and preheat. Place patties on pan. Grill directly over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes or until patties are heated through, turning once halfway through grilling.

To serve, top the patties with guacamole and tomato.

Dinner: Blackened Tilapia with Avocado and Steamed Vegetables

2011-01-22T19:01:00.000-05:00

I was very excited about this dinner. And it was delicious. It was however, not photogenic. Apparently I did not season my cast iron skillet well enough and my tilapia stuck to it and did not look pretty. And I mushed the avocado with lime juice last night so it turned brown. And my veggies were done about 10 minutes after the tilapia. But I decided to try to eat healthier this year, and this was exactly the kind of meal I had in mind: I want to eat more fish, more olive oil and avocados, and more steamed veggies (and a broader assortment). So I'll just explain what I did, but please excuse me for not posting a picture.

This was my first time cooking fish and my first time using my cast iron skillet, both of which I was excited about. The cooking fish was super easy. I chose tilapia because it's extremely mild and gave me lots of room to play with, and also responsibly raised tilapia was on sale at Whole Foods last week, and I put it right into the freezer. The cast iron skillet part needs a little work, but I'll get there. I'll try seasoning it again.

Blackened Tilapia
One tilapia filet (I actually used half, but had lots of extra marinade)
1 Tbsp canola oil
2 tsp lime juice
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper
pinch of salt
1/4 tsp chili powder (the American kind with cumin)
1/4 tsp paprika
pinch ground thyme

1/2 avocado
1 tsp lime juice

Mix up oil, lime juice and spices in large flat bowl or plastic bag (go for the bowl, it's reusable)
Coat tilapia and leave in for 30-60 minutes
Heat cast iron skillet (or grill or similar cooking thing)
Cook tilapia for 2-3 minutes on each side until it's flaky
Mash together avocado and lime juice. Serve with the fish. Yum!

Steamed Veggies
1.5 red bell peppers (I can never actually cook full peppers, too much of them always ends up in my mouth)
3 small summer squash
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 sprigs thyme
2 Tbsp parsley
Cut veggies into bite sized pieces, whatever you consider those to be. Remove stems from thyme and chop parsley.
Steam veggies until slightly more firm than desired consistency. Then cook in pan for a few minutes with olive oil, thyme and parsley.

Single Coconut Lime Cupcake

2011-01-21T18:17:00.001-05:00

I found this recipe for a single coconut lime cupcake and I thought it was pretty much the greatest idea ever, making a single cupcake that is. This was adapted (that is divided) from a Vegan cupcake book (vegan works well since there are no eggs, which makes it divide better), and I decided to try it and if it worked well, experiment with my own ideas more regularly. I love cupcakes, but I hate that they make so many and they are hard to transport if you frost them before transporting them, but frosting them after transporting them doesn't necessarily work well either. So I thought this was a great thing to try to play with. As for the cupcake, I think I may have added too much lime juice, the batter was a little runny and the cupcake was VERY limey. The texture was different from a regular cupcake, maybe a little sticky/spongier, but definitely not bad. That was probably due to the fact that it was vegan and not the fact that it was a recipe for one. But remember, when you are dealing with such small proportions, you have to be fairly careful with measuring. I wasn't super careful because 1/4 Tbsp is hard to measure, so I just went for a little less than a tsp. The frosting is an avocado buttercream which is great since I gave up dairy and am trying to eat more avocados. Also it's tasty, but I unfortunately cannot eat it by the spoonful since it is WAY to sweet.
The divided recipe is here, and the original is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Single Coconut and Lime Cupcake

1 + 1/4 T soy milk (I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk)
Tiny drop of white vinegar (I used white wine, it is after all, only a drop)
1/2 T sunflower (or any other light-tasting) oil (I used canola)
1 T raw sugar (just use regular)
Drop of vanilla
1 + 3/4 T self-raising flour (scant 1/8 cup)
1/2 t cornstarch
1 t fresh lime juice
1 t shredded unsweetened coconut
pinch lime zest

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. I used the toaster oven.
In a small cup, mix the soy milk and vinegar and allow to curdle.
In a small bowl, whisk the soy and vinegar mixture, sugar, oil and vanilla for about 1 minute or until most of the sugar has dissolved.
Sift in the flour and cornstarch. Mix well to combine.
Stir in lime juice, coconut and optional lime zest.
Pour batter into one cupcake paper/tin and bake for 18-20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted.
Cool on a wire rack completely before icing. Makes one cupcake.

Lime Avocado Buttercream

1/4 of a medium avocado
1/4 t fresh lime juice
110g icing sugar
2 t cornstarch
pinch lime zest (optional)

In a medium-sized bowl, beat the avocado and lime juice until smooth.
In batches, sift in the icing sugar and cornstarch, beating well after each addition.
Stir in the lime zest if using. Makes about 2/3 C frosting.

Fail Cake

2011-01-16T15:00:00.001-05:00

Maybe this is a bad name for this cake, seeing as it is the easiest cake ever and even a slight imperfection still leads to an okay cake. Maybe I can call it fail cake because it wards of failure. Last year I made it for a couple of my friends before their qualifying exams and both passed all parts. However, I failed the first time I made it because I forgot baking soda. I almost did it again today, and I realized why. It was listed between the cinnamon and cayenne/chili powder, though those are two things I kind of lump together and add together and don't read carefully between them. Forgetting the baking soda is kind of a problem because that is the only leavening in this cake (though it might be Kosher for Passover otherwise?), however it still turned out okay. But this is seriously the easiest cake ever. In fact, it is easier than boxed cake mix. So I had the time and energy to make another to share with my qual studying friends, and I brought the first cake into the math department and called it fail cake because, it was the failure and the good one went to my friends.

As for the actual cake, anyone who knows me, knows I love the chocolate, cinnamon, chili combo more than just about anything else. So this is definitely something I'm into. It's also slightly fruity from the balsamic vinegar. It does have a bit of a kick from the cayenne. This time instead of using 1/4 tsp cayenne, I used a 1/2 tsp of chili powder (the American kind with cumin and oregano, as opposed to the Indian kind), which made it a little more mild but a little more complex. Also, this cake is vegan and fat free. This does not, of course, mean that it is healthy, it has no nutritional content, it just means it could be worse. The original had canola oil I guess, but the recipe I got it from said they missed it, made it without and it was great, so I just follow their recipe. There is also a glaze for it, I'll include it, but I never made it.

The one warning is make sure you work quickly after adding the liquids. Baking soda is the only leavening and it only rises once, that is when it reacts with the acid, so your only rise comes pretty much immediately.

Here you go:
Mexican Chocolate Cake (that's it's real name)
From Serious Eats
1 1/2 c flour
1 c sugar
1/2 c cocoa
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt (I use Kosher for baking)
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 cup cold water

Preheat oven to 350 (you might want to even wait a bit if you have a slow oven, as this shouldn't sit around once you've mixed it up and it comes together SUPER quickly)

Grease a 8 inch round pan

Mix the dry ingredients. Don't forget the baking soda; I wrote it in an order so you hopefully won't miss it like I did. Make two wells in the dry ingredients...

Now work quickly. Add the balsamic to one well, the vanilla to the other and pour the cold water on top. Stir until just moistened and still slightly lumpy. Pour into pan, put into oven. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

Daring Cooks: January-Hearty Winter Stew the French Way

2011-01-15T11:24:00.001-05:00

So due to what people are calling the "Snowpacolypse," which it wasn't (4 inches of snow, the big problem was the inches of ice Atlanta does not have the salt to melt), the grocery stores were closed and/or out of produce, so I was a little delayed in completing my daring cooks challenge this month. But I did, and it was good. I give you the required lines and then I'll discuss.

Blog Checking Lines: Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

The requirements were a confit and cassoulet. The most traditional confit I can think of is duck, but I do not have access to duck. So you could have made chicken. But garlic confit sounded so much better to me, so that's what I made. And spending 3 days making a pot of meat for the cassoulet sounded like something I was not interested in, so I made the veggie one, which quite honestly isn't that different from the kind of thing I usually eat in winter. However, the garlic breadcrumbs were an extra thing I wouldn't usually make (and man, grating that baguette took forever and I cut myself), though they were tasty. I was going to say they weren't worth it, but thinking about it, I think they were. I will probably have leftovers though, and I think they would make an awesome glue for bean burgers. And the garlic confit was something totally new and awesome. Yes, you have to peel 65 cloves of garlic, but the result is essentially extra awesome roasted garlic AND garlic and thyme infused olive oil. TOTALLY WORTH IT. But my fingers still smell like garlic and I made this for lunch yesterday, washed my hands dozens of times, showered, etc. We were supposed to "incorporate" the confit in the cassoulet, which I just took to mean "eat with," though I realized after I started cooking the vegetables that I should have cooked them in some of the infused olive oil, so I added a little of it, but I wish I had caught that sooner. I'm going to need to be reminded to use that infused olive oil in my cooking. Maybe I should have tried meat, but I'm still weaning myself back into that (yes, that's right, I'm going to eat more meat this year, I hope, I even bought some tilapia, which I guess isn't meat, to try to have fun with) and I was quite pleased with the result as it was. Oh, and I made challah (see my previous pseudo post) to go with it, which was a pretty awesome (but nonvegan) combination. I'll include the recipes I used. Like I said, I'd recommend making the confit first and using the infused olive oil in the cassoulet and bread crumbs.

Garlic ConfitGarlic Confit from Saveur, Issue #129

Ingredients:

1½ cup (360 ml) Olive Oil
1½ tsp (7½ ml) (4 gm) kosher salt (**Note: if using table salt, use ½ the amount)
10 whole black peppercorns
5 sprigs fresh thyme
65 garlic cloves, peeled (about 1 ½ cups/360 ml)
1 dried bay leaf

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to slow 300°F/150°C/gas mark 2. Put ingredients in a 1 quart (950 ml) pot, making sure all the garlic is submerged in the oil. Cover pot. Bake until garlic is golden brown and tender, about 1 hour. Let cool.
2. Transfer mixture to a glass jar; cover surface of oil with plastic wrap. Cover jar and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks. Makes 2 cups/480 ml.

Bread crumbs out of the oven

Vegetarian/Vegan Cassoulet
Vegetarian Cassoulet by Gourmet Magazine, March 2008

Ingredients:

3 medium leeks (white and pale green parts only)
4 medium carrots, halved lengthwise and cut into 1-inch-wide (25 mm) pieces
3 celery ribs, cut into 1-inch-wide (25 mm) pieces
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 cup (60 ml) olive oil
4 thyme sprigs
2 parsley sprigs
1 Turkish or 1/2 California bay leaf
1/8 teaspoon (2/3 ml) (1 gm) ground cloves
3 (19-oz/540 gm) cans cannellini or Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained (I ideally use dried beans I cook myself, but I only had a cup and a half of dried beans, so I cooked those and used a can. The canned ones were better, I somehow can cook all beans EXCEPT cannellini)
1 qt (4 cups/960 ml) water
4 cups (960 ml) (300 gm) coarse fresh bread crumbs from a baguette (I just used the part of a baguette I could avoid eating, and I had decent will power, so that was most of it)
1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil
1 tablespoon (15 ml) (12 gm) chopped garlic
1/4 cup (60 ml) (80 gm) chopped parsley

Directions:

1. Halve leeks lengthwise and cut crosswise into 1/2-inch (13 mm) pieces, then wash well (see cooks’ note, below) and pat dry.
2. Cook leeks, carrots, celery, and garlic in oil with herb sprigs, bay leaf, cloves, and 1/2 teaspoon (2½ mm) each of salt and pepper in a large heavy pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened and golden, about 15 minutes. Stir in beans, then water, and simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until carrots are tender but not falling apart, about 30 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to moderate 350°F/180°C/gas mark 4 with rack in middle.
4. Toss bread crumbs with oil, garlic, and 1/4 teaspoon (1¼ ml) each of salt and pepper in a bowl until well coated.
5. Spread in a baking pan and toast in oven, stirring once halfway through, until crisp and golden, 12 to 15 minutes.
6. Cool crumbs in pan, then return to bowl and stir in parsley.
7. Discard herb sprigs and bay leaf. Mash some of beans in pot with a potato masher or back of a spoon to thicken broth.
8. Season with salt and pepper. Just before serving, sprinkle with garlic crumbs.

Challah

2011-01-15T10:36:00.001-05:00

I found a challah recipe that doesn't make 2-3 loaves! I am excited. I love challah, but am not a huge fan of freezing and thawing my bread. So I was excited when I found a recipe for 1 challah loaf. And braiding bread is fun! I would have taken a picture, but before I ate it a chunk before I had a chance and it was no longer photogenic. Oh well, I'm sure I'll try again.

Something seemed a little off about it. The texture wasn't quite right. The instructions did confuse me a little. You start out with a stiff blend of dough, then you knead until its soft? The dough was never soft for me. That is probably the problem. Also, the taste was slightly off, but I expect that is because I used half honey that had crystalized (which I don't think was a problem or maybe that's what affected the texture, anyone know?) and half raw wildflower honey, which has a bit of a taste that is different from other honeys.

This might be a pointless entry with no picture and no recommendations and just a link to the recipe. However, I'll try it again and we can compare, and then it will be more of a base of learning post.

However, I will take this opportunity to mention my new favorite website http://www.tastespotting.com/. I'm trying to reduce my pointless time online, and this is actually good for that because 1) it's slightly less pointless than facebook. I did after all get a challah recipe there. 2) It takes less time to look at pretty pictures and bookmark some of my favorites than I will invariably spend on any other site to get the same amount of "break" quality. After all, sometimes I just feel like killing a few minutes online and reading through one page of that website is satisfies that craving sufficiently.

Baked Oatmeal

2011-01-07T09:55:00.000-05:00

I don't think another post about oatmeal should surprise anyone, since it is one of my favorite foods and certainly my most common breakfast.

Last year around this time, my dad and I stopped at his favorite breakfast place and split a baked oatmeal. I thought it was great and so easy, you make it once and you can heat it up the next day and it's just as good. I tried it once and it was too dry and too thin (I think it's better if it's about an inch thick), but I tried again for my family and it was a good thing. And it smells like cinnamon rolls as you mix it, but it's so much healthier and heartier. It's a great start to a cold winter day (and like I said, it keeps very well). However one thing I've found that made it much better the second time: soaking it overnight. Otherwise it's too dry. In fact it was a little dry as it was, so you could get away with more milk. My mom poured a little eggnog (as a substitute for cream) on top of hers.

Ingredients
1 egg
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (I would usually use sea salt, but my mom doesn't have that)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (I grated just a pinch instead)
1 cup milk
3 cup oats
2-3 Tbsp dried cranberries
slightly toasted walnuts to top (optional)

Beat egg, whisk together with butter, baking soda, salt, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and milk. Add oats and stir until moistened. Add cranberries and stir until distributed. Grease a 9x9 pan and pour mixture into the pan. Top with toasted walnuts if desired. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, preheat the oven to 350, then bake for 30-40 minutes until set in the middle.

Cat Cora's Cinnamon Chicken

2010-12-26T07:55:00.000-05:00

So I haven't bought meat to cook for about a year now. The reasoning could be a whole series of posts, so I'll just say it's for environmental/economic reasons; I still eat meat, but I don't when I can avoid it. This is a dish I made once before I stopped cooking meat and it's probably the first thing I will do when I buy chicken again. But even better: my family does eat meat and really prefer not to constantly eat vegetarian food like I do. My mom said we should make a simple chicken dish last week, and I recommended this, since it is one of my favorites. As many people know (and I've probably mentioned more than a few times), I really love cinnamon. So I'm just going to copy the recipe, I didn't make any modifications this time. But my grad student I don't want to deal with chicken way of making it last time was using boneless skinless chicken breasts, I think I used 3 when I did it that way. I think it's awesome served with broccoli, but that's usually my go to green vegetable too. And it's really easy to plate nicely. Then again, my parents' plates make everything look a little nicer than mine. So I'm just going to copy the recipe, I feel bad not giving you any of my own touches, but like I said, it's probably my favorite chicken dish, so I thought it was worthwhile to share. It comes from Cat Cora via the Oprah website. Oh, I guess my one note is that I didn't think 2 1/2 tsp was enough rub, so I made a lot more, mostly by adding extra cinnamon (go figure).

Servings: Serves 4

Ingredients

Greek Cinnamon Stewed Chicken

1 chicken (2 1/2 to 3 pounds), cut into 8 pieces (legs, breast and thighs)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
5 cloves garlic , peeled and minced
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 large yellow onion , peeled and coarsely chopped
2 cups water
1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
1 Tbsp. dried Italian herb seasoning
1 cup orzo , cooked according to package directions
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Preboil water with sea salt.

Pat the chicken dry with paper towels. A wet chicken will cause the oil to splatter while the chicken is sautéing. Mix the cinnamon, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Rub the chicken pieces on all sides with the seasoning.

Heat the olive oil in a large, nonreactive, deep skillet over high heat. A 12-inch skillet with sides about 2 1/2 to 3 inches high will allow you to brown all the chicken at once. If you don't have a skillet large enough, brown them in two batches using 1/2 the oil for each batch. What's important is that the chicken isn't overcrowded, which would cause them to steam rather than brown.

Add the chicken to the oil and brown for about 4 to 5 minutes on each side. Turn the pieces using a metal spatula, as they have a tendency to stick to the pan. Remove the pieces when they are well browned on all sides.

Mince three of the garlic cloves. Lower the heat to medium-high, and add the onions and minced garlic. Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring constantly, until the onions have softened and are a rich golden brown. Add about 1/2 cup of the water and scrape the bottom of the pan with a spatula or spoon to deglaze the pan, loosening any particles stuck on the bottom.

When the water has evaporated, add the remaining 1 1/2 cups of water, tomato paste, Italian seasoning and remaining 2 garlic cloves, minced.

Return the chicken to the pan. The liquid should cover about 3/4 of the chicken pieces. Cover the pot and simmer over medium-high heat for about 30 to 40 minutes, or until the chicken is tender and thoroughly cooked. If the sauce becomes too thick, it can be thinned with a little more water. Season the finished sauce with kosher salt and pepper to taste. Serve over orzo, cooked according to package directions, and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top.

Daring Bakers: December 2010, Stollen!

2010-12-24T10:35:00.001-05:00

Stollen is one of those things that is all over the place in Wisconsin, even the Italian bakeries sell it, but I haven't seen it anywhere else. However, it's also crazy expensive, usually about $10 for a pound loaf. Over Thanksgiving break I saw it at the grocery store for $15 for a pound loaf, and thought "gee, I could definitely make it for less than that, if only I had a good recipe." Then again, I don't usually like Stollen (or anything with candied cherries for that matter), so I thought my parents would appreciate the gesture, but I wouldn't really care. And then low and behold, the Daring Bakers challenge for this month was making stollen. Seriously, many of the challenges since I've started have tapped into what's been on the top of my list to try baking, for instance the ice cream cakes this summer (well, at very least, the ice cream), Crostada, souffle, perogies, apple butter, and now Stollen! And because I made it, I reduced the amount of raisins and added dried apricots and cranberries instead and left out the stupid candied cherries. And low and behold, I liked it! That's because it is basically bread with stuff I approve of: cinnamon, vanilla, orange and lemon zests, orange extract (there was candied peel, but I can deal with a little of that), and of course, dried apricots (and other fruits too). My dad said it was the best Stollen ever, which means I will probably have to make it every year for the rest of my life, but that's okay. It's a new Christmas tradition and it's one I fully support. Now the challenge will be getting my brother to try it.

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

Here's what I did:
Stollen Wreath
Makes one large wreath or two traditional shaped Stollen loaves. Serves 10-12 people
Ingredients
1/2 cup (60ml) lukewarm water (110º F / 43º C)
2 packages (4 1/2 teaspoons) (22 ml) (14 grams) (1/2 oz) active dry yeast
1 cup (240 ml) milk
10 tablespoons (150 ml) (140 grams) unsalted butter (can use salted butter)
6 cups (1320 ml) (27 ozs) (770 grams) all-purpose (plain) flour plus more for flouring
1/2 cup (120 ml) (115 gms) sugar
3/4 teaspoon (3 ••• ml) (4 ••• grams) salt
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (6 grams) cinnamon
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
Grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
2 teaspoons (10 ml) (very good) vanilla extract
1 teaspoon (5 ml) lemon extract or orange extract
3/4 cup (180 ml) (4 ••• ozs) (135 grams) lemon peel
1/3 cup (240 ml) (6 ozs) (170 gms) firmly packed raisins
1/3 cup dried apricots cut into small pieces
1/3 cup mixed golden raisins and cranberries (there may have been a few dried blueberries and cherries in there, but I tried to pick them out)
3 tablespoons (45ml) dark rum
1 cup- a little since my mom used some to decorate cookies (240 ml) (3 ••• ozs) (100 grams) flaked almonds
Melted unsalted butter for coating the wreath
Confectioners’ (icing) (powdered) sugar for dusting wreath
Note: If you don’t want to use alcohol, double the lemon or orange extract or you could use the juice from the zested orange.
Directions:
Soak the raisins
In a small bowl, soak the raisins in the rum (or in the orange juice from the zested orange) and set aside. See Note under raisins. I soaked these for about 8 hours

To make the dough
Pour 1/2 cup (60 ml) warm water into a small bowl, sprinkle with yeast and let stand 5 minutes. Stir to dissolve yeast completely.
In a small saucepan, combine 1 cup (240 ml) milk and 10 tablespoons (150 ml) butter over medium - low heat until butter is melted. Let stand until lukewarm, about 5 minutes.
Lightly beat eggs in a small bowl and add lemon and vanilla extracts.
In a large mixing bowl (4 qt) (4 liters) (or in the bowl of an electric mixer with paddle attachment), stir together the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, orange and lemon zests.
Then stir in (or mix on low speed with the paddle attachment) the yeast/water mixture, eggs and the lukewarm milk/butter mixture. This should take about 2 minutes. It should be a soft, but not sticky ball. When the dough comes together, cover the bowl with either plastic or a tea cloth and let rest for 10 minutes.
Add in the mixed peel, soaked fruit and almonds and mix with your hands or on low speed to incorporate. Here is where you can add the cherries if you would like. Be delicate with the cherries or all your dough will turn red!
Sprinkle flour on the counter, transfer the dough to the counter, and begin kneading (or mixing with the dough hook) to distribute the fruit evenly, adding additional flour if needed. The dough should be soft and satiny, tacky but not sticky. Knead for approximately 8 minutes (6 minutes by machine). I kneaded for a lot more than this, maybe 15 minutes before i was convinced it was the right texture. This may have been longer than what the recipe actually wanted, but i was happy with the texture of the end result. The full six minutes of kneading is needed to distribute the dried fruit and other ingredients and to make the dough have a reasonable bread-dough consistency. You can tell when the dough is kneaded enough – a few raisins will start to fall off the dough onto the counter because at the beginning of the kneading process the dough is very sticky and the raisins will be held into the dough but when the dough is done it is tacky which isn't enough to bind the outside raisins onto the dough ball. Since this is an actual bread, I tried to use the window pane test of pulling a small piece apart and accepting it as done when the piece didn't tear. However all the stuff in the bread made it tear, even after 15 minutes.
Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling around to coat it with the oil. (I just buttered the bowl and called it a day) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.
Put it in the fridge overnight. The dough becomes very firm in the fridge (since the butter goes firm) but it does rise slowly… the raw dough can be kept in the refrigerator up to a week and then baked on the day you want. I kept this in my mom's car in "the big refrigerator" known as out garage.
Shaping the Dough and Baking the Wreath
1. Let the dough rest for 2 hours after taking out of the fridge in order to warm slightly.
2. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
3. Preheat oven to moderate 350°F/180°C/gas mark 4 with the oven rack on the middle shelf.
4. Punch dough down, roll into a rectangle about 16 x 24 inches (40 x 61 cms) and 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick. This is what you are supposed to do. How people roll into rectangles is beyond me. I rolled it into an ellipse and rolled parallel to the major access of the ellipse. it worked fine, though one side of the Stollen was a little smaller than the other. I served that side first and no one noticed.

Starting with a long side, roll up tightly, forming a long, thin cylinder.
Transfer the cylinder roll to the sheet pan. Join the ends together, trying to overlap the layers to make the seam stronger and pinch with your fingers to make it stick, forming a large circle. You can form it around a bowl to keep the shape.
Using a sharp or serrated knife, make cuts along outside of circle, in 2-inch (5 cm) intervals, cutting 2/3 of the way through the dough.
Twist each segment outward, forming a wreath shape. Mist the dough with spray oil and cover loosely with plastic wrap. 6

Proof for approximately 2 hours at room temperature, or until about 1 1/2 times its original size.
Bake the stollen for 20 minutes, then rotate the pan 180 degrees for even baking and continue to bake for 20 to 30 minutes. The bread will bake to a dark mahogany color, should register 190°F/88°C in the center of the loaf, and should sound hollow when thumped on the bottom.
Transfer to a cooling rack and brush the top with melted butter while still hot.
Immediately tap a layer of powdered sugar over the top through a sieve or sifter.
Wait for 1 minute, then tap another layer over the first.
The bread should be coated generously with the powdered sugar.
Let cool at least an hour before serving. Coat the stollen in butter and icing sugar three times, since this many coatings helps keeps the stollen fresh - especially if you intend on sending it in the mail as Christmas presents!
When completely cool, store in a plastic bag. Or leave it out uncovered overnight to dry out slightly, German style.
The stollen tastes even better in a couple of days and it toasts superbly…. so delicious with butter and a cup of tea….mmmmm
Storage
The more rum and the more coatings of butter and sugar you use the longer it will store.
The following is for the recipe as written and uses the 45 mls of rum and two coatings of butter and icing sugar
1. Stollen freezes beautifully about 4 months
2. The baked stollen stores well for 2 weeks covered in foil and plastic wrap on the counter at room temperature and
3. One month in the refrigerator well covered with foil and plastic wrap.

Daring Cooks: November 2010 Souffle

2010-12-21T22:16:00.002-05:00

I'm a couple weeks behind on this post because once I missed the deadline I decided there was no hurry anyway.

When I found our Daring Bakers for October was donuts, I was heartbroken (hyperbole). I did not want to make donuts and I've been meaning for several months to make a souffle. Each month I have one or two things I hope the challenge is, and in October, I definitely wanted it to be souffle.

But then, Daring COOKS challenge was souffles for November. So my friend and I decided to team up since you have to eat souffles right away and it's quite hard to cut it down to serve one. We decided to make one savory and one chocolate. Since after all, you can't make a souffle without making a chocolate one, it just seems wrong.

They really weren't quite as hard as I thought. I mean we were very careful to follow all directions to a tee, but they ended up fine. Except for the two chocolate souffles that exploded. See photo.

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided many of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

Chocolate Souffle

Adapted From BBC Good Food Recipe by Gordon Ramsay

Ingredients

FOR THE DISHES

2 Tbsp (30 ml) 1 oz (30g) unsalted butter, for greasing

Cocoa powder or finely grated chocolate

FOR THE CREME PATISSERIE

2 tbsp (30 ml) (18 gm) (2/3 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour

2 tsp (10 gm) (0.35 oz) caster (superfine) sugar (regular sugar is OK)

½ tsp (4½ gm) (0.15 oz) corn starch (aka cornflour)

1 medium egg yolk (we just used small large eggs)

1 medium whole egg

4 Tbsp (60 ml) milk

5 Tbsp (75 ml) heavy cream (or double cream)

3 oz (90gm) good-quality dark chocolate preferably 70+% cocoa solids, broken in pieces

2 Tbsp (30 ml) (15 gm) (½ oz) unsweetened cocoa powder

Optional: 2 tsp orange zest or 2 tsp minced chipotle chile en adobo or 1 tsp chipotle chile powder. (The chile version is a Monkeyshines favorite!) I clearly added cayenne. Anyone who knows me should guess that.

Optional: powdered sugar for dusting

FOR THE EGG WHITES

6 medium egg whites (we used 5 large egg whites)

6½ Tbsp (95 ml) 3 oz (90g) superfine/caster sugar (if you don’t have it, regular sugar is OK)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to moderate 375 ˚F/190 ˚C/gas mark 5.

2. Take four 1 cup/~240ml soufflé dishes and brush them completely with softened butter. Tip a little cocoa powder or grated chocolate into each dish, roll the dish around tilting it as you do so it is evenly lined all round.

3. For the crème patisserie, mix the flour, sugar and corn starch into a small bowl. Put egg yolk and whole egg into a medium sized bowl, beat lightly, then beat in half of the flour mixture to give a smooth paste. Tip in the rest of the flour mixture and cocoa powder and mix well.

4. To make the ganache, pour the milk and cream into a pan and bring just to the boil. Remove from the heat. Add the chocolate and beat until it is melted and smooth with no lumps.

5. Gradually stir hot chocolate ganache into the paste from step 3, and add the orange zest or chile if using. This is your crème patisserie.

6. Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks with an electric whisk. Sprinkle in the sugar as you are mixing. Keep whisking to give stiff, firm peaks to give volume to the soufflés.

7. Stir about 2 tbsp (30 ml) of the beaten egg whites into the crème

patisserie. Carefully fold in a third of the rest, cutting through the

mixture. Fold in another third (take care not to lose the volume),

then fold in the rest.

8. Spoon the mixture into the dishes. Run a spoon across the top of

each dish so the mixture is completely flat. Take a little time to

wipe any splashes off the outside of each dish, or they will burn

on while cooking.

9. Bake the soufflés for 15-17 minutes.

10. The soufflés should have risen by about two thirds of their original height and jiggle when moved, but be set on top.

We adapted the Watercress Souffle to a spinach and cheese souffle. I'll include our changes in blue.

Watercress Soufflé

A Monkeyshines in the Kitchen recipe

Ingredients

2 Tbsp 1 oz/30g butter plus additional for the soufflé dish

3½ Tbsp (55 ml) 1 oz/30g plain (all purpose) flour

1 cup/8 fluid oz (240ml) milk

½ cup (120 ml) 2 oz/60g parmesan cheese, finely grated plus additional for the soufflé dish (we used white cheddar and parmesan to coat the dish)

1 cup (250ml) 2 oz/60g finely chopped de-stemmed watercress (can substitute spinach) – about 1 large bunch (this measure is the leaves after they’ve been washed, de-stemmed, and chopped) (I think we used about this, a little less SPINACH than this because it's easier to find than watercress, and added about half as much finely diced onion, that we also patted dry)

4 large eggs, separated

½ tsp (2½ ml) (3 gm) (.1 oz) prepared mustard

¼ tsp (1¼ ml) (1½ gm) (0.05 oz) cream of tartar*

Salt and pepper to taste

* If you can’t find cream of tartar, a dash (~ ½ tsp) of lemon juice can be substituted

Directions:

1. Butter the soufflé dish(es) thoroughly, then grate a small amount of cheese in each dish and tap so that the sides are evenly coated with the cheese. Place the dish(es) in the refrigerator until needed (according to some sites, this helps the soufflé climb).

2. Preheat the oven to moderate 350º F / 180º C / gas mark 4

3. Wash and chop the watercress if you haven’t already.

4. Finely grate the parmesan cheese

5. In a medium sized saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, then stir in the flour to make a roux. Cook 1 minute, then add the milk, a little at a time, and stir until just thickened, about 1 minute. Add the cheese and stir until it’s just melted. Remove from heat then add the watercress and salt and pepper.

6. In a larger pan, bring water to a gentle simmer. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl set just over this water until pale and slightly foamy – about 6 minutes. (I held the bowl just above the simmering water to be sure I didn’t cook the eggs)

7. Mix the egg yolks into the watercress sauce.

8. Beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until they form stiff peaks yet are still glossy.

9. Fold the egg whites into the sauce in 3 additions so that it’s evenly mixed, but you don’t lose too much volume.

10. Remove the soufflé dish from the refrigerator and spoon the mix into it. Use a spatula to even the tops of the soufflés and wipe off any spills.

11. Bake 25 minutes for small dishes or 40 minutes if using a large soufflé dish, then serve immediately.

Daring Cooks December 2010: Poached Eggs

2010-12-19T07:13:00.000-05:00

Jenn and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie num num.

I made the following Oeufs en Meurette recipe for my family when I was home over Thanksgiving. Halving it did not serve 4 people very well. However, it was fantastic and great use of a bottle of wine that my family deemed a dud. My dad wanted to throw the wine away but it turned into a great sauce. Even my brother said that the meal was good, which is a very rare occurrence. I served the wine soaked veggies with the meal, since they were tasty and even my brother ate them. I thought it would be a waste not to serve them. i did however have trouble poaching/presenting the eggs. They did not look as pretty as eggs in pictures always do, but they were cooked perfectly. I still need to get better at keeping the whites together. I even swirled the liquid and followed all recommended techniques. And then when we were trying to photograph, the eggs slid out of the whites and made for less pretty pictures. But it was already pretty ugly due to the color of the wine. That's okay, it tasted good and the eggs were perfectly done. It was altogether a good meal.

Oeufs en Meurette

If you wish to halve this recipe, make sure to adjust your large shallow pan size accordingly so that you have enough depth for poaching your eggs. The poached eggs and the meurette sauce can be made up to a day in advance. Just take care store the poached eggs in a bowl of water in the fridge, and the meurette sauce can be easily reheated.

Ingredients
8 eggs (size is your choice)
1 bottle red wine (750ml/25 fl. oz.)
2 cups (400ml/16 fl. oz.) chicken stock*‡
1 onion, sliced
1 carrot, sliced
1 celery stalk, sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
Bouquet garni (thyme, parsley, bay leaf)
½ tsp. (2 ½ ml/3g) black peppercorns
2 Tbl. (30 ml/30g) butter°
¼ lb. (115g) mushrooms, sliced
¼ lb (115g) bacon, diced‡
16 pearl onions, peeled (200g/7oz.)
Vegetable oil for frying
8 slices of baguette, ¼” (6mm) thick
2 Tbl. (30 ml/30g) butter, room temp.°
2 Tbl. (30 ml/20g) flour *
salt and pepper
*for gluten free make sure to use gluten free stock and gluten free flour
‡ for vegetarian use vegetable stock, and omit bacon.
° for dairy free use a dairy free margarine.

Other notes on ingredients:
• You can use salted or unsalted butter, you will just have to adjust your “salt & pepper to taste” accordingly. I use unsalted.
• As this is a Burgundian dish, a full-bodied red wine like a pinot noir is a great wine to use for this dish. Anne Willan recommends a fruity red wine and I personally love the way a bold pinot noir works with this sauce, though you certainly can use whatever you like best. She also notes that you can make ouefs au mersault. Mersault is the famed white wine region of Bourgogne, and is generally made using chardonnay grapes, so it would be ok to choose a white wine if you want (though I have never tried it with white). No matter what wine you choose, make sure it is not too dry nor too sweet.
• To make a bouquet garni, just take the herbs (a few sprigs of each) and tie them together into a little bundle. Since the sauce will reduce for a while, it’s ok if you don’t have the fresh herbs – there will be time for flavor to come out of dried ones (for ex. fresh bay leaf may be hard to find). Alternatively, if you don’t have a way to tie them, you could just add the whole sprigs/bay leaves to the sauce and then just make sure to remove them when the sauce is done reducing.

Directions:

1. Heat wine and stock together in a large pan and poach eggs a couple at a time for 3-4 min. Yolks should be firming but still a little soft. Set them aside.

2. Add the veggies, herbs, and peppercorns to the poaching liquid and let the sauce simmer until reduced to half volume. This will become the meurette sauce.

3. In a separate large skillet, melt 1 tbs. (15ml/15g) of the butter on medium-high heat and sauté the mushrooms until soft and then set aside. Add in another 1 tbs. (15ml/15g) butter and the bacon, frying until browned, then set aside on a paper towel. Turn down the heat to medium, add in the pearl onions and sauté until softened and browned. Then drain off the fat and add the bacon and mushrooms back to the pan and set aside off the heat for the moment.

4. In a medium skillet, heat a few tbs. of oil and then fry the baguette slices until browned on each side. Add more oil as needed. Set the fried bread (croûtes) on a paper towel and then place on a baking sheet in an oven that is set to 200F/95C/gas mark 1/4 or whatever your lowest setting is to keep them warm.

5. Blend 2 Tbl. (30ml/30g) butter and flour together to form a paste of sorts that will be used as the thickener for the sauce. Whisk this into the reduction sauce until the sauce starts to thicken.
Strain the sauce over the skillet of mushrooms, bacon and onions, and return the skillet to heat, bringing to a boil. Season with salt & pepper to taste, then set aside again.

6. Reheat the eggs by placing them in hot water for a quick minute. To serve, plate a poached egg on top of a croûte, and then ladle some of the mushrooms/bacon/onions and sauce on top.

Swedish Cardamom Bread

2010-12-13T12:41:00.001-05:00

I've heard of cardamom as a major spice used around Christmas time for Scandinavian baked goods. And since I acquired Fancy White Cardamom pods this summer, I've been looking forward to making a good authentic Swedish Cardamom bread. I found one online that was passed to a guy by his grandparents and I thought that sounded reasonable. I tried it and somehow it reminds me of Christmas morning even though no on in my family cooks with cardamom or is Swedish. But the cardamom and bread right out of the oven are warming, which is something all Christmas breakfasts aim to be. And Christmas is the time of the sweet spices (probably because they are warming), which is also familiar even if the specific spice isn't. Then again, cardamom is in apple pie spice and that comes up a lot.

So clearly it's a braided bread. This isn't hard though. Just separate the bread into 3 sections and make sure they are thin enough to work with, I think mine were about 1 inch diameter, then braid in the regular way, closing the ends together at the end. Also note, I found it weird that there was only one rise for the bread, and it didn't rise much during it. It did however puff up once it was in the oven.

I would however, recommend cutting back on the cardamom is you use pods and grind them yourself like I did. It had a pretty intense flavor, which somewhat overpowered the bready goodness, which is something I greatly appreciate. I also baked it for significantly longer than the recipe called for, I think around 32 minutes.

Also, since I'm in Atlanta and not, say Sweden, I had to add about half a cup of extra flour to be able to work with the dough. Even in cold weather, there's a lot of moisture in the air.

Here's the recipe. There is no point in me recopying it, the story and my adjustments are what count. But my adjustments are not adjustments everyone should make, just people who grind their own cardamom and live in humid climates. However, the baking extra time is recommended, most likely. Also, I used an oven, not a bread machine, and hence the traditional recipe.

Christmas Cookies

2010-12-10T22:01:00.000-05:00

Although I usually love baking, when Christmas comes around, I'm usually a candy maker. I also do not prefer spice cookies, largely because they are often heavy on the ginger and molasses, ginger which I can take in small doses or in savory foods and molasses which I prefer to avoid. But Tuesday I decided to make cookies. I had some plans, all of which required getting extra ingredients, but it was 23 when I got up, so I decided to try to bake with what I had instead. Which, based on my spice cabinet, is spice cookies. My favorites were probably the tea cookies. I used Samurai Chai Mate from Teavana, though the recipe calls for Lady Grey, I decided to use what I had and I thought Chai sounded good and Christmasy. I could see Jasmine working in spring. The picture (which admittedly is a little fuzzy) is what I had left today, mostly the Chocolate Box cookies. All were pretty easy and I managed to bake all of them start to finish except for dipping all of the Chocolate Box cookies in less than 4 hours, plus a good deal of the cleanup.

Chocolate Box Cookies (makes about 50)
1 1/2 c self rising flour
1/4 c cocoa powder
1 tsp apple pie spice (I used a heaping half teaspoon of cinnamon, slightly more than a 1/8 tsp of allspice, 1/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp ginger and a dash of cardamom)
1/4 c unsalted butter at room temperature
generous 1/2 c caster sugar (I used 1/2 c regular and it was fine), oh and generous means plus 2 Tbsp per cup
1 egg
1 egg yolk (in other news, I need to make meringues because I have 9 egg whites in my freezer)
For decorating:
Milk Chocolate
Dark Chocolate
White chocolate
Cocoa powder, almonds, cinnamon, etc

Preheat oven to 350
Put flour, cocoa powder, spice and butter in a food processor (or use your hands). Process until thorougly blended Add sugar, egg, egg yolk, and mix into smooth dough.
Turn dough to a lightly floured surface and knead gently. Cut the dough in half (I actually used fourths because I misread "lightly" as "well" and pushed the flour to the other side of my cutting board and therefore worked on a smaller surface) and roll each piece in the palms of your hands (misread that too) to form two logs 13 inches long.
Cut into 1/2 slices (this may even be too thick if you really want to make these look like chocolate box pieces, which is the goal). place slices on greased baking sheet. Chill for at least 30 minutes (oops, I missed this part completely).
Bake for 10 minutes until slightly risen. Transfer to wire rack to cool.
Decorate by melting chocolate and dipping, drizzling and otherwise making pretty as you see fit. I really don't think you need instructions for this. Just make them pretty as you want them to look.

Spicy Pepper Cookies (makes about 48)

Quick note: These don't have raw eggs so I tasted the dough and was worried about the amount of pepper I added, but after baking, it became more subtle. Though I would recommend tasting the dough to make sure none of the flavors are too weak.

1 3/4 c flour

1/2 c cornstarch (oops, I missed this, but I'm sure it's for the texture and I liked the texture they ended up)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cardamom

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp allspice

pinch of salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 c butter at room temperature

scant (I just unpacked) 1/3 c brown sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon zest

1/4 c whipping cream

3/4 c finely ground almonds

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and spices.
Cream together butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla and lemon zest.
Add the flour mixture, alternating with the cream (it's hard to alternate when there is only a 1/4 cup, but I added it in 2 additions), starting and ending with the flour mixture. FYI, I know this is terrible form, but to save myself an extra bowl, I measured the flour, added some at a time and 2-3 of the other ingredients at each addition. It worked fine, though not perfect. And I missed the cornstarch.
Stir in the ground almonds.
Shape dough into 3/4 inch balls (I assumed that was radius, based on the picture in the book, and with that assumption, I got 41, which is about right considering I forgot the cornstarch)
Bake on ungreased (my sheet had a little leftover grease from the chocolate box cookies) baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake 15-20 minutes until golden brown underneath.
Leave cookies on the sheets for about a minute to firm up before transferring to a metal rack to cool.

Tea Finger Cookies

10 Tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature

1/2 c light brown sugar

1-2 Tbsp tea leaves (the book says Lady Grey, but use whatever)

1 egg, beaten

1 3/4 c flour

demerara (raw) sugar for sprinkling, though I used turbiando since someone gave it to me, so that's what i had

Beat butter and sugar until light and creamy. Stir in tea leaves until well combined. Beat in egg, then carefully fold in flour.
Using your hands, roll the dough on a lightly floured surface into a cylinder about 9 inches long
Gently press down on the top of the dough cylinder, wrap in plastic wrap and refridgerate for about an hour until dough is thin enough to slice.
Preheat oven to 375
Using a sharp knife (even better, a floured knife), cut dough cylinder into 1/4 inch slices. Place parchment paper on 2-3 baking sheets and lay the slices on the baking sheet, slightly apart.
Sprinkle cookies with a little demerara sugar and bake for 10-15 minutes until lightly browned. Remove from oven and remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

Daring Bakers: November 2010, Crostata!

2010-11-28T00:12:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to make an exciting tart in an exciting pan, but those are one of those hard to make for one and hard to bring to a department to share. You need a reason for them. And then it was the Daring Baker's challenge for November. Well, crostata was, where crostata is a traditional Italian tart. And I'm home for Thanksgiving, so I figured it was perfect. The challenge was figuring out a filling, since it's November and not much is in season. I ended up going with an Anjou pear and pecan filling because it was as seasonal as I could get.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

The recipe is here, and I used version 1. I caramelized some pears as the filling. I thought it was a little heavy on the pecans, but still good.

Caramelized Pear filling

4 Anjou pears, cut into slices (I didn't peel them and we barely noticed)

4 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp brown sugar

splash brandy

2 Tbsp pecans

Cook the pears in the butter until the start to brown, then add sugar, brandy and pecans until they pears are soft to a fork. The whole process took about 20 minutes.

Daring Bakers: October 2010, Donuts!

2010-11-20T12:53:00.000-05:00

I'm a little delayed on this post. In fact, I am over a month behind on this post and I have a bunch of others. I'll do it one at a time.

Donuts were the daring cooks challenge for October. I put it off since I had no one to make them for until the Weirstrass potluck (October 31). And I wasn't looking forward to it. And this was probably my least favorite thing I've done in the kitchen. It was extremely hard to clean up, and I only had one size of round cookie cutters so the were more like beignets, pumpkin shaped beignets. But I made the sour cream, er buttermilk, donuts because that is the only kind of donut I find at all decent.

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Old-Fashioned Buttermilk Cake Doughnuts:

Preparation time:

Hands on prep time - 25 minutes

Cooking time - 12 minutes

Yield: About 15 doughnuts & 15 doughnut holes, depending on size

Ingredients

Sour Cream ••• cup / 60 ml / 60 gm / 2 oz

All Purpose Flour 3 ••• cup / 780 ml / 455 gm / 16 oz + extra for dusting surface

White Granulated Sugar ••• cup / 180 ml / 170 gm / 6 oz

Baking Soda ••• teaspoon / 2.5 ml / 3 gm / .1 oz

Baking Powder 1 teaspoon / 5 ml / 6 gm / .2 oz

Kosher (Flaked) Salt 1 teaspoon / 5 ml / 6 gm / .2 oz (If using table salt, only use ••• teaspoon)

Nutmeg, grated 1.5 teaspoon / 7.5 ml / 9 gm / .3 oz

Active Dry Yeast 1 1/8 teaspoon / 5.6 ml / 3.5 gm / .125 oz

Buttermilk ••• cup + 2 Tablespoon / 210 ml / 225 gm / 7 ••• oz

Egg, Large 1

Egg Yolk, Large 2

Pure Vanilla Extract 1 Tablespoon / 15 ml

Powdered (Icing) Sugar ••• cup / 120 ml / 65 gm / 2.3 oz (Used for decorating and is optional)

Directions:

1. In a small stainless-steel bowl set over a pot of gently simmering water, heat the sour cream until just warm.

2. Heat the oil to 375°F/190°C.

3. Over a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg; make a large well in the center. Place the yeast in the well; pour the sour cream over it. Allow it to soften (if using packed fresh yeast), about 1 minute.

4. Pour the buttermilk, whole egg, egg yolks, and vanilla extract into the well. Using one hand, gradually draw in the dry ingredients. The mixture should be fairly smooth before you draw in more flour. Mix until it is completely incorporated. The dough will be very sticky. Wash and dry your hands and dust them with flour.

5. Sift an even layer of flour onto a work surface. Don’t be afraid to use a lot of flour. You don’t want the doughnuts sticking to your counter. Scrape dough out of bowl onto the surface; sift another layer of flour over dough. Working quickly, pat dough into an even 1/2-inch (12.5 mm) thickness. Dip cutter in flour and, cutting as closely together as possible, cut out the doughnuts and holes. Place holes and doughnuts on a floured surface. Working quickly, gather scraps of dough together, pat into 1/2-inch (12.5 mm) thickness, and cut out remaining doughnuts and holes.

6. Drop three to four doughnuts at a time into the hot oil. Once they turn golden brown, turn them and cook the other side. Cooking times may vary, but with my oil at 375 °F/190°C, I found they only took about 20 to 30 seconds per side.

7. Once cooked, place on a baking sheet covered with paper towels to drain.

Caramelized onion Tartlettes

2010-11-14T19:30:00.000-05:00

So I went to my first baby shower this morning! And it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try making two things I've been meaning to make for a while: puff pastry and caramelized onions. So I looked up how to make puff pastry, and it really isn't as hard as one would think, it's like folding pie crusts on top of itself a few times. And caramelizing onions is certainly easy. The hardest part was figuring out how to work with puff pastry and how homemade puff pastry translates to frozen sheets.

Puff Pastry
1 c butter
2 c flour
2/3 cup ice cold water

Mix 14 Tbsp cold butter with 1/4 cup flour to make a smooth paste. Mold into a 1/2 inch square of butter and put in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Mix the cold water, 2 Tbsp butter, 1 3/4 cup flour. Mix and knead for 1 minute. Refridgerate this.

Once both doughs are chilled, take the water based dough, roll to 3/4 inch thick on a WELL FLOURED surface. Place the smaller butter square inside and fold the water based dough around it like a package. Roll this out to a long rectangle about 3/4 inch thick. Fold in thirds like a business letter. Roll this out, fold into thirds again. Refrigerate again and repeat twice. I put it in the refrigerator over night. This is your puff pastry.

Filling
1 Tbsp butter
1 large onions, thin sliced
2 tsp brown sugar
Thyme
2 oz feta cheese

Melt butter and heat pan. Cook onions and thyme for about 15 minutes over medium low heat. Make sure they don't brown too much. Add brown sugar, cook another 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out puff pastry. Cut with 2 inch round cookie cutter and put the circles on a cookie sheet. Put a little feta and a spoon of onion mixture on each pastry and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden and crispy (make sure oven is fully preheated. I added a little spinach to some because the onions didn't quite go around. I also put a little spinach and feta inside the leftover dough and made little pockets.

These are really cool to watch bake. They steam and bubble. It's fun. They kind of sizzle when they cook too.

New Blog

2010-11-09T22:10:00.001-05:00

No, this one is staying here, but I think I'm actually going to follow through on this math blogging thing now that I have stuff to talk about and wordpress to actually write math successfully online. Most of you probably don't care, but there might be (two) people who do. If you are one of those people, feel free to stop by and see what I'm up to. Unfortunately, blogger is not a fan of LaTeX, so I had to make it in wordpress: http://hungrygrad.wordpress.com/

This blog is staying put though, you can still read about food without updating anything!

Flying Biscuits!

2010-11-08T06:54:00.000-05:00

For anyone who has been to Georgia (or parts of Florida, I believe), there are a few restaurants that you have to go to. Flying biscuit is one of them. Now I have my favorites at the Flying Biscuit, which may not be the same as others' (black bean cakes!), but I think anyone will agree that at the flying biscuit, you must get a biscuit, and more importantly, you must eat it with the cranberry apple butter.

We found the recipe. And it's cranberry/apple season. So of course, we had to recreate the biscuits and apple butter. This was my first time ever making biscuits. It's not something that is worth it for one person, in my opinion, but when there are two and you are making apple butter, it makes a nice apple butter delivery mechanism. Both these biscuits and apple butter are inspired from the flying biscuit, though we 1 1/2ed the apple butter. Also, I forgot to brush them with half and half and sugar, which I thought was just fine because it's mostly for appearances, which I don't care about unless I'm serving them to guests, and besides, I slathered them in apple butter, it's not like I noticed.

In other news, I'm extraordinarily behind in posts (and I've remembered recently a bunch of things I made last winter that I didn't blog about), so I might have some random posts creeping up soon.

The Flying Biscuit’s Famous Flying Biscuits

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour (a soft winter wheat flour, like White Lily, is best)
1 tablespoon plus 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoon plus 1 ½ teaspoon sugar
6 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup half and half plus more for brushing on top of biscuits
1 tablespoon sugar for sprinkling on top of biscuits

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.

Place flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Cut butter into ½ tablespoon-sized-bits and add to the flour. Using your fingertips or a pastry cutter, work the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in all the heavy cream and the half and half.

Stir the dry ingredients into the cream and mix with a wooden spoon until dough just begins to come together into a ball. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead 2 or 3 times to form a cohesive mass. Do not overwork the dough.

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough to a 1-inch thickness. The correct thickness is the key to obtaining a stately biscuit.

Dip a 2 ½ inch biscuit cutter in flour, then cut the dough. Repeat until all the dough has been cut. Scraps can be gathered together and re- rolled one more time.

Place the biscuits on the prepared sheet pan, leaving about ¼ inch between them.

Brush the tops of the biscuits with 1 tablespoon of half and half and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of sugar.

Bake for 20 minutes. Biscuits will be lightly browned on top and flaky in the center when done.

Makes 8 to 12 biscuits, depending on the size of the cutter.

The Flying Biscuit Cranberry Apple Butter

Ingredients:

2 cups of dark brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
2 cups cranberries
10 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced

Place sugar, spices, and orange juice in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Bring to a simmer and add the cranberries. Cook over medium heat until cranberries begin to pop.

Add the apples and cook over low heat, stirring frequently. Cook until apples are tender and falling apart. Puree contents of saucepan in a food processor or mash with a potato masher until smooth and thick. Cool and serve with hot biscuits.

Cranberry Apple Butter will keep for 2 to 3 weeks in the refrigerator.

Fruit and Nut Pilaf

2010-10-24T18:29:00.000-04:00

So I went to Taste of Atlanta yesterday and ate lots of great foods. And also lots of salt. So today I decided to try to avoid salt as much as possible. Which is hard, since I just made vegetable soup which I was planning on eating every day for a while. Also that used all my veggies except lettuce, but I can't eat lettuce without SOMETHING on it and everything I put on lettuce (dressing, cottage cheese, feta, etc) is high in sodium, so that was out for the day. Which meant I had to figure out something else for dinner. I immediate thought broccoli and brown rice, which is my go to plain healthy meal when I'm not actually hungry (somehow the vast amounts of food I ate yesterday are helping me not get too hungry today) but know I need to get some nutrition. But I decided to shake it up a little with this Kashi 7 Grain Pilaf I bought a while ago but haven't used. But I clearly need to flavor the pilaf, and I'm trying to avoid salt, so instead I decided to play it sweet. I followed the basic directions for the pilaf and decided to throw a little dried fruit in too. i like the way dried fruit plays when it's added in the middle of cooking oatmeal, so why not some other grain? Another great thing about this is sometimes I hate cooking 4 portions of everything and having to find room for leftovers. This can be made to feed one, which is perfect. Note I also had broccoli with this, but I cooked that first since I only have one small saucepan.

This is definitely customizable in terms of fruits and nuts based on what is in your pantry. But make sure not to add too much dried fruit, it expands a lot. Also note I added a squirt of lemon juice, but I didn't like it in there.

Fruit and Nut Pilaf
(serves 1)
1/4 c Kashi 7 grain pilaf
3/4 c water (this is more than the directions call for because the fruit absorbs a lot of the water)
2 dried apricots, cut into small pieces (this doesn't sound like much but they expand a lot)
2 tsp dried cranberries.
sprinkle dried basil
pinch of black pepper
pinch (I did a very small pinch) of sea salt
2 tsp toasted almonds (I keep a few tablespoons of these at all times)

Bring the water and pilaf to a boil, then add the fruit (or most of the fruit, it is nice to have a little added at the end for a texture difference) and basil, salt, and pepper. Cook until most of the water is absorbed. Add any remaining fruit and nuts, stirring until all the water is absorbed (about 20 minutes). Check the texture of the pilaf to make sure it is done enough, if not, add a little more water and cook until the water is absorbed.

Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream

2010-10-10T17:51:00.000-04:00

Many of you know of my journey to make ice cream without an ice cream maker. This ice cream was not as smooth and creamy as when we made the swiss rolls, but it did have praline mixed in which affected that. This is a David Lebovitz creation, but don't worry, someday I will make up my own recipes for ice cream. It's really not that hard. Also this took forever to freeze, while stirring it every hour (except when I slept of course, it didn't even freeze over night!). I blame the salt.

The one change I made here was instead of making the salt praline, I used some almond praline that I had lying around and added a little salt to it (the almond praline was maybe 1/3 cup ground almonds and a cup of sugar melted, following the same technique he described minus what I used to coat some cookies that did not come out well. It made this ice cream taste even more like toffee, which it very much does. It's like eating toffee in ice cream form. Here's the recipe link. Genius.

Cinnamon Flavored Black Eyed Peas

2010-10-10T17:39:00.000-04:00

I'm always looking for new ways to eat legumes, which in some cases, means trying new legumes. I've never made black eyed peas, but I figured it was worth a shot, especially after seeing a Serious Eats column about them. Plus, as we all know, I can't resist cinnamon and any opportunity to put it in any meal is a good enough for me. So I decided to try this recipe. It seemed safe, where by safe I mean did not involve any purchases and used flavors I knew I liked (I'd call it "Indian inspired") and not too much work. I did however use yellow onion rather than red and tomato sauce rather than tomato paste, and then added more but added about half the water it called for. I'll just link you the recipe, rather than retyping, since I basically followed it, except for those few changes. Here you go!

As for my opinion: it is a kind of boring dinner, but the cinnamon and spice make it more interesting and worthwhile. If you don't want to make it as spicy, it might not be good, I can't make any promises there. But it does have my favorite things: garlic, cayenne and cinnamon, so I'm a happy camper.

Multigrain Bread

2010-10-01T23:05:00.000-04:00

I attempted multigrain bread for the first time today. It was ugly and kind of bland. Also I thought it needed quinoa. But I looked for a recipe that used a soaker and called for all ingredients I had. And this one was from Peter Reinhart so I trusted it. It was probably my fault. I might not have added enough salt. I usually undermeasure salt a little and it usually works out okay. But the texture was good, just not rolled quite right, so it is hard to cut.

But I got to try. And I got to play with my mortar and pestle for the first time (to crush steel cut oats to make cracked oats). And with apple butter, it was still pretty good.

Daring Cooks September 2010: Food Preservation

2010-10-01T22:44:00.000-04:00

Apple butter on cornbread. Yum.

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

This month for the daring cooks, we were supposed to preserve food. Since my friend who I often do these challenges with had the closest thing a grad student can have to a canning system, we decided to make and can apple butter. The directions are pretty simple. Make apple sauce, add spices, then cook it for another two hours, then can. We cooked about 6 pounds of apples (well, about 6 pounds before we cored and peeled them), cooked them for half an hour or so with a little honey, then added a "tablespoon and a half" of cinnamon, which was probably over 2 Tbsp of cinnamon, which made me nervous at first because it was quite strong, but eventually cooked down. We also added some cloves, not much though. Over the two hours we tested and adjusted, mostly adding more sugar. We also added a little vanilla to balance the flavors a bit. We dipped challah in it and had a grand old time. And then I went out for dinner... bad planning there, i was full from the apple butter and challah.

But the fun of it (and the point of it) was the canning. I'll include the actual directions, since I'll probably leave something out if I try to explain it from memory.

For our challenge, apples are high acid foods. Golden delicious apples have an approximate pH of 3.6. Boiling Water Canning is an appropriate method of preserving apple butter.

Apple Butter processing information:

Headspace when canning apple butter is 1/4 “ (0.64 cm)

Processing Time:

15 minutes for altitude of 0 ft (0 m) to 1,000 ft (305 m)

20 minutes for altitude of 1,001 ft (305.1 m) to 6,000 ft (1828.8 m)

25 minutes altitudes above 6,000 ft (1828.8 m)

For boiling water canning, you need a pot that is high enough to cover the jars with at least 1” (2.5 cm) of water. Also, a rack, to prevent thermal shock, is used to keep the jars off the bottom of the pot. Any type of rack will work – a tea towel, a trivet, tying together unused bands… etc. I improvised a rack by tying metal bands to a bamboo sushi mat. Also, for my pot, I used a large tamale steamer.

Jars are filled using a wide mouth funnel. A plastic bubble remover is run along the sides of the jar, in an up and down motion, to remove air pockets. Headspace is measured to •••" (6.5mm).

The top and side of the jar are wiped down with a damp paper towel.

Lids are placed in a pan of hot water (180ºF or 82ºC) to soften the sealing compound.

The lid is seated, centered on the jar and the band is screwed on.

The purpose of the band is to hold the lid down, but not too tightly. Air from the jar needs to escape into the boiling water.

I generally screw down the bands (using two fingers) until resistance stops the band. After which, I give a slight additional 1/4" (6.5mm) twist.

The jars are lowered into the hot water canner. Water temperature is about 180ºF (82.2ºC).

The water level is checked to ensure there is at least 1” (2.54 cm) of water above the jars.

Next, pot is covered and heat turned to high.

When the water comes to a boil, the timer is started (15 minutes). The heat can be lowered as long as the water remains at a boil.

After the 15 minutes are up, the whole canner is removed off the burner (I have an electric stove) and uncovered. Jars are left in the canner for 5 more minutes.

After 5 minutes, the jars are lifted out level.

The temptation is to tilt the jars to drain the water off the top of the lids. Do NOT do that! You don’t want to contents of the jar to running under the seal.

Jars are placed on a dish towel to minimize thermal shock and allowed to cool for 12 to 24 hours.

While the jars are cooling, you may hear a ping or a pop from the lid as it seals. That ping is a good sound. For these three jars, they all pinged within a minute.

After 24 hours, test the seal. The lid should be bowed down (concave), when you press down the lid should not move or pop up. Also, try lifting the jar by the lid only. The lid should stay on if properly sealed. The final thing is to look at the lid to see if there are any cracks or debris caught between the jar and the lid.

Rosemary Trail Mix

2010-09-14T08:55:00.000-04:00

I've been admittedly not making anything interesting lately (lots of eggs, oatmeal, free food, and restaurants plus leftovers). But one thing I did make was rosemary "Hungry Girl" trail mix. A package of it came in our CSA welcome package when we did that (we've stopped but I'm thinking about doing it next year). It was delicious and I tried to recreate it. It wasn't perfect, but still tasty. And trail mix is definitely one of those things you should make to taste anyway. So much so, it seems like I shouldn't be giving you a recipe for something as simple/personal as trail mix. But this has rosemary! Something I love to put in EVERYTHING (as I explained to my mom recently, I'm actually more comfortable pairing it with fruit than... well, whatever other people put it with), but would never thought to use in trail mix. I guess I did recently make some tasty rosemary citrus pancakes with rosemary pineapple sauce. But that's another post. Anyways, notes about the recipe: I put the cranberries in with the nuts and I have since learned that they should be added later, otherwise they get crunchy. They are still tasty, but the chewy texture of dried cranberries improves the trail mix. Also make sure you use a nice sea salt (Kosher would probably also work), not table salt. I've never liked salt, so it's not something I'm super familiar with (my family hates how I boil pasta in unsalted water), but I do know this: if you are trying to actually feature a salty flavor (like with nuts or salted caramel ice cream) you should use good salt. You can use less and it's just... better somehow.

Rosemary Trail Mix Ingredients
1 Tbsp butter +
1/2 tsp dried rosemary +
1 Tbsp unpacked brown sugar
1/2 c mixed nuts (as the original trail mix did, I used almonds, pecans and walnuts)
Sea salt to taste
2 Tbsp dried cranberries

Melt the butter with the rosemary. Cook until fragrent (like rosemary), if the butter sticks and starts to brown, add more. Add the sugar, once melted, add the nuts and salt and cook until they reach your desired toastedness/infused flavor. I would recommend adding almonds first, if you are using almonds since they absorb the flavor more slowly and also hold up to longer cooking times better than softer nuts like walnuts and pecans. Stir occasionally to prevent burning and make sure everything is evenly coated. I think I cooked the nuts about 15-20 minutes. Add cranberries and check the taste by trying a nut (again, i would recommend trying an almond because they absorb flavor most slowly so if they are done, your other nuts probably are too). You may want to add more salt (this is part of the reason for tasting). Cook a little longer, stirring to ensure your cranberries are coated and flavored.

Enjoy. But don't eat it all at once!

Rosemary Citrus Cream Pasta

2010-08-20T13:14:00.000-04:00

The major downfall of this dish is that it looks really boring, but it's not :)

I did not grow up eating cream sauces. My mom does not like alfredo, so we never ate it. When I started going to restaurants with friends Fettucini Alfredo was the go-to choice for a lot of people. But it's not really something that ever occurs to me to eat. Then combine that with my fear of all the butter and cream in the sauce (butter and cream are perfectly fine in an occasional dessert, they do not, however, have a place in the main component of an entree) means that I don't really eat or cook cream sauces. It wasn't until last year sometime that I really realized how little cream is necessary in a "cream" sauce. You really can get away with only putting cream or butter with come flour, and using the rest of the liquid as fat free milk and it still tastes creamy, thick and wonderful (though admittedly, it probably WOULD be better with whole milk). My point is: cream sauces don't have to be horribly unhealthy. They also aren't that hard, but if you can pull one off, some of the terminology makes you sound pretty skilled.

This dish was inspired by a ravioli I had earlier this year. Unfortunately, it was a special that month, so i can't return to the restaurant to have it again. But I tried to figure out how to make it anyway. However, I don't really have the time to commit to making ravioli right now, so I tried to do it "inside out" ie. make pasta with cream sauce.

Ingredients

Serves 2

1 (small) clove garlic, this is not the place to indulge your garlic infatuation, if you want to do that, leave out the citrus

1 tsp fresh rosemary (add it slowly to taste, as I learned the hard way, i had too much so I had to add extra milk to mellow it a little)

2 Tbsp cream (also known as 1/8 c)

2 Tbsp flour

4 oz shell pasta (penne or anything with an opening of some sort that could sort of hold the sauce inside would work, but I thought shells were a great idea) Also note that I used whole wheat because that's all i buy unless it's for a specific purpose

1-1/12 c milk

1/8-1/4 tsp each lime, lemon and orange zest

salt and pepper to taste

Note that i keep lemon, lime and orange zest in my freezer, zesting citrus whenever i use it. I have the most orange, so I used the most orange.

1. Make a (white) roux (yup, this is where you sound fancy). To do this, heat the cream until it is warm but not boiling. Add the flour and stir. Over low heat, cook this for about 2 minutes, stirring, or until the consistency changes a little. Do not let it brown (that would be the start of brown roux). Remove from heat, add the milk. It will be lumpy and weird.

2. Bring the milk to a boil. While you do that, you should peel and chop your garlic and rosemary (and zest any citrus fruits you may have). Once it reaches a boil, reduce heat to low, you will cook it until it is smooth and thick, but I consider that a separate step. It should be somewhat smoother after it boils, but it will continue to get better. I'd add all your flavorings (garlic, a little rosemary, citrus, salt, pepper) now, or as soon as you are done preparing them, as the longer they sit in the cream, the better. It might be best to add the citrus first, but that's not what I did. I thought the zests could have steeped a little longer.

3. Cook your pasta however you do. Though I would recommend undercooking it just slightly. Apparently the way I cook pasta is not traditional. Maybe we'll talk about that some other time.

4. Continue cooking your sauce until it is smooth, thick, and tastes how you want it to. Taste it. Add some salt and pepper and more citrus or rosemary if you like it stronger. Once it reaches the desired consistency and flavor, remove from heat and set aside until your pasta is done (make sure you drain the pasta).

5. Stir the sauce into the pasta and cook for a few minutes, stirring to evenly distribute the sauce and make sure everything is warm and comes together.

6. Serve warm. Enjoy!

Daring Cooks August 2010: PEROGIES

2010-08-17T09:58:00.000-04:00

As some long term readers may know, I sometimes have played around with recipes from Daring Cooks and Daring Bakers. But now I'm officially one! My first challenge was perogies, which i found infinitely exciting, since it's one of those things that has been on my list of things to make since I realized you can make anything from scratch (or maybe since someone I knew made them and brought them to one of the professors at undergrad and wouldn't share with me). Either way, they are not as readily available in Atlanta as they were in the midwest. Westside market had about 20 varieties! My family ate them for Easter one year. Obviously perogies are close to my heart... or at least they are one of those things that sort of speak to the fact that I truly am a Midwesterner. It turns out perogies really aren't that hard. Who knew? (plenty of people, I'm sure)

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale. I'll spare you the gory details of what I did for the plain ones because i just followed the recipe for the traditional Russian style Perogies here.

Since I've grown up with perogies, I felt compelled to make them "traditional", though the twist I've thrown on them since I've been eating them as quick freezer food, is sauteing them with peppers and onions (growing up we ate them with marinara like ravioli). That's how we ate them when my family came to Cleveland. Then again, truly traditional is with sour cream. But they need some veggies with them, so why not fry them with the veggies?

My first batch did not turn out well. I rolled the dough too thin, and probably didn't add enough flour (I also turned off the air conditioning, oops). They were sticky and hard to fill and didn't hold their shape very well. They were still pretty tasty though.

Clearly, I had to try again. And I was watching food network Saturday night and Michael Symon was talking about his local favorite Cleveland food: perogies of course! The feature mentioned they use sour cream in the dough, so in the second batch I added some leftover sour cream and used a cup of whole wheat flour instead of a cup of the white. I also made very sure to flour everything very well. In fact, I floured each perogi before i stuffed it, and they were much easier to stuff and ended up looking prettier. They still looked ugly after they boiled though (and I didn't do much to help that, maybe someday I'll learn to make things more attractive). But I tasted one and they were MUCH better because they packed the full potato/onion/cheese punch I'm used to.

But I felt compelled to do something a little seasonal/local. The farmer's market has had figs lately, so, having never worked with them before, I thought this would be a good opportunity. I cut up the figs, mixed in some toasted walnuts and orange and lemon zest (lemon juice might have been better, I wanted them just a little tarter, but I didn't have any lemons, just zest), and added just a little sugar and cinnamon. They were delicious dessert perogies. I ate a couple for dessert every night for the rest of the week.

Black Beans and Polenta

2010-08-14T12:36:00.000-04:00

Another less than photogenic recipe. So I really like black beans and they are cheap and pretty low maintenance, which is good right now as I prepare for quals and want easy meals with limited grocery store trips. But I like to try not to bake in summer, so instead of making cornbread, I made polenta. Polenta is basically like grits (in fact that's what the directions on the package of cornmeal said), unless you decided to refrigerate it and then cut and fry it, in which case it's kind of like, well slightly soggy cornbread? But in a good way. I decided to serve Spicy Citrusy Black Beans over Cheesy Jalepeno Polenta. I'm sure I've seen a recipe for this lately, I thought it was on the cornmeal, but it wasn't. So I made it up. Well, I adjusted the recipe for cheesy polenta which used parmesan cheese and italian seasoning. I also cut it in half, standard recipe should not serve 8.

Cheesy Jalepeno Polenta
(serves 4)
1 1/4 c milk
3/4 c water
2 Tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 jalepeno, chopped
Salt to taste
1/4c-1/2 c sharp cheddar cheese.
1/2 c cornmeal.

Bring the milk, water, butter, garlic, jalepeno, salt, and cheese to a boil. Slowly, while stirring, add cornmeal to the mixture and cook 3 minutes or until thickened to the desired consistency. If you eat it then, it's grits (I think). To make it polenta, pour it into a 8x8 pan and refrigerate until not runny, the directions said 8 hours, I think it would be fine in just a couple. Then cut it into pieces and fry it (or don't, I didn't and it was still good, probably because it already had enough flavor). I tried it both ways and thought it was really good both ways. That may just be because the beans were really good.

Restaurant Review: Pittypat's Porch

2010-08-05T20:01:00.000-04:00

So I realized I haven't been doing restaurant reviews, which may be a disservice to people randomly searching on google, but not really to most people who read this blog but are from out of town. But if you ever come to Atlanta and want "Southern" food, I have a recommendation: Pittypan's Porch.

This week is downtown restaurant week. After going over the menus several times, a friend and I decided to go to Pittypat's Porch for dinner, which is good Southern food. I'm often not aware of the fact that I'm in the south except for the accents and people calling me "ma'am" or strangers calling me "honey" or "sweetheart." But we walked into Pittypat's Porch and I knew I was in the south. And it felt like the old south (or all this northern girl's images of the old south), the glasses were pewter, the service was beyond friendly, it was big and welcoming. And the restaurant week entitles us to an appetizer, main course and dessert. Also, the entrees came with the salad bar (and unlimited muffins/biscuits/cornbread). This was a nice start with lots of southern favorites (pickled watermelon rind, my friend identified for me, hoppin' john, pickled okra, etc). There were only two appetizer options: gumbo and black eyed pea cakes. We decided to split both. The gumbo was probably the most disappointing part of the meal, but still okay. It was salty, but spicy. The seafood in it was limited, which I appreciate, but I also only got one piece of sausage, so that was pretty limited too. The black eyed pea cakes, however, were delicious and made me want to go home and try to make them. I haven't yet, but maybe next week, when I'm home studying. They were served in a nice peach and tomato sauce.

Somewhere around this point the server came by with a basket of muffins, cornbread, and biscuits. He encouraged us to take at least one of each. I stuck to one of each, all of which were very good. The cornbread was a little dry but soaked up the gumbo broth well. It's also worth noting that I do not think we were ever without food on the table. The appetizers were there before we got back from the salad bar. As soon as we finished the appetizers and munched on biscuits a little, our entrees arrived. We both ordered ribs, which were steaming and coated in pretty amazing barbecue sauce. They came with some zucchini and squash cut thin which were very bland but kind of mixed into the barbecue sauce. They weren't anything special, but they weren't really designed to be. The ribs also came with mashed sweet potatoes, which tasted good (exceptionally sweet) and had a almost candy like consistency. I couldn't place what gave them that texture, but had to stop eating them after a few very small bites due to their richness. A snuck a bite later and realized they were made with cream cheese, which explained why I just couldn't eat them. But the ribs were so good and satisfying (though at this point I had already had quite a bit of food) that they didn't really need good sides. And of course the cornbread went to good use again, mopping up leftover barbecue sauce. The waiter brought us boxes (one without even asking, but we requested another) and then a little cup of gumbo to take home as well as more bread to take home. Yes, at this point we had consumed a ton of food, and were being given MORE to take home.

Then it was time for dessert. We ordered key lime pie, which was more like key lime cheesecake, so I wasn't a huge fan, and peach cobbler with cinnamon ice cream, which was of course, very good, but nothing earth changing. Then again, we were very full at this point and so nothing tasted quite as good as it would have if we had been hungrier.

Altogether, it was great experience (and a great deal). We consumed tons of food and brought a lot more home. And the service was exceptionally friendly. Definitely verified this concept of "Southern Hospitality" I've heard of but never have really been in a position to experience. Like I said, this is a good place to eat southern food in Atlanta.

More Ice Cream/Daring Bakers

2010-07-28T17:56:00.000-04:00

So some of you know I like to follow the Daring Bakers, but I'm not yet one. I've put in a request though! But one of my friends is one, so we made the July Daring Bakers Challenge: Swiss Cake Roll Ice Cream Cake together. Only we made tiny little swiss roll cakes. In a variety of flavors. She posted here, so I'm not going to bother reposting. Plus she took pictures :). In fact, half the recipes on her blog are things I made with her, so if you want to see what I might be up to, checking with her is one way to do it.

But that's not the point. The point is, I've been playing with ice cream making, and boy did I play with those cakes. And we learned a few things about ice cream making in the process. And that's why I'm posting. That and I just ate half the cinnamon ice cream I made last night.

She has a nice picture of all of the ice cream on her page, so let me go into detail what we did for each of them. I'd say all of the ice creams turned out very well, and all we did was stir them every hour. Of course, these were all very rich ice creams and were eaten immediately. I'm not sure what they were like 48 hours later. But I think the richness helped prevent crystalizations.

For all of these we chilled overnight, then put them in the freezer and stirred them every hour. I probably didn't stir hard enough, but I'm learning. And they all turned out well.

Chocolate: I actually blogged about this one recently. Absolutely delicious, but doesn't hold its form.

Peach and Blueberry: I used David Lebovitz's vanilla ice cream recipe, split it in half and pureed 4 skinned peaches into half and maybe a cup and a half of blueberries into the other half. Both were amazing and I couldn't think of anything I would have done differently.

Lime: This was the only ice cream I didn't see everything that was done for. I think this warmed 1 1/3 cup of milk with lime zest from 2-3 limes, then added it to one (or two) eggs, beaten with a half cup of sugar, slowly, beating vigorously to temper the egg, the added it back to the pan and simmered for a few minutes, then added it to 2/3 cup cream. Then we (well, actually not me) added the juice of 2-3 limes.

Cinnamon and Chili: I made them separately, but I might as well describe them together, since I did the same thing (though the chili would be better if you infused fresh cayenne pepper into the cream, rather than adding cayenne powder). Both froze suprisingly well. After looking up recipes for cinnamon ice cream, I realized that they all sounded to me like make pudding, add cream and freeze. So that's what I did. Since we didn't have cinnamon sticks on hand, I added about a teaspoon of cinnamon to 1 1/3 cups of milk and about 3/8 of a cup of sugar and brought it to a boil and cooked for 2 minutes. I poured this into an egg, beating steadily to temper the egg, then added the egg to the pudding, and cooked another couple minutes. But it was weird and goopy, like the filling in cinnamon rolls, not like cinnamon infused milk. It also had a little bit of egg bits in it, so I strained it into 2/3 cup cream cream and blended really well, to mix the cinnamon goop into cream thouroughly. It wasn't cinnamony enough, I would have started with more (or added extra cinnamon sooner, rather than after mixing it into the cream). I probably added another 2 teaspoons. The recipe I based it off of was a side to apple pie or something, so it was much milder than we wanted. I also added a dash of vanilla to smooth out the flavor. We made the chili identically, only we only started with a half teaspoon of chili in the milk and sugar mixture and seasoned to to taste later. We may have added too much, I think it got more intense as it froze. But it went well with the other ice creams. Also, it wasn't as goopy, so that wasn't an issue.

Last night I tried making cinnamon ice cream with cinnamon sticks rather than cinnamon. I warmed a cup of milk with 3 cinnamon sticks, then took it off heat and let it simmer for about an hour. I should have given it more time, but I was getting impatient. I made the "pudding" like I did last time, but it kind of separated, I'm not quite sure what went wrong. And I added cinnamon after mixing it into the cream, which was a bad idea, since it didn't mix in very well. So in summary: I messed up a lot. And then I froze it and you can't even tell. It's great, it's creamy, no crystalization (at least not immediately after freezing). I think this tells me that the egg is pretty crucial if you make it without an ice cream machine. The extra richness prevents crystilization (and gives it shape as opposed to the chocolate ice soup I made last week).

As I experiment more, I share more tips I discover for making ice cream without a machine. I might start making more interesting flavors at some point too. After all, I think designing ice cream flavors would be the best job ever. But I'll do math instead.

Still accepting flavor recommendations. Once I get my hands on a lychee, I'm thinking about trying a coconut lychee or a lychee lime. Or maybe I'll just do lychee lime.

Ice Cream?

2010-07-20T21:18:00.001-04:00

Least photogenic ice cream EVER.

So I've been playing with making ice cream. And this is almost surely the tastiest ice cream I've ever eaten. But when trying to take a picture of it I realized it doesn't really hold it's shape, so maybe it's not ice cream, more like really cold, cream?

It is addicting and chocolaty. I'd say it is comparable to Nutella in this way. It's also terrible for you. And the flavor is what one of my friends might call a "grown up flavor," which is what he said about homemade toffee the first time he tried it (versus health bar). That's probably from cooking it long enough to caramelize the sugar.

You know what, I just realized the problem. Higher fat content freezes at a lower temperature, possibly lower than that of my freezer, meaning it is left runny. It's okay, it still tastes great. Amazing, really. Better than any other chocolate ice cream out there. And you really don't have to stir it since it doesn't really freeze. The only thing I can think of deserving of such an amazing chocolate ice cream is fresh bing cherries. Yum! Oh, for the record, I darkened this up a little by adding a little extra cocoa and a little less sugar. It originally had a cup of sugar and 3 Tbsp cocoa.

Chocolate Ice Cream
2 cups cream
3/4 c sugar
3 heaping Tbsp cocoa

Combine ingredients in saucepan, whisk together until blended. Cook over low heat until bubbling, then cook until thicker (and to taste on the caramelization).

Cool. Put in a freezer proof container. Chill until cold. Freeze. Enjoy in EXTREME moderation.

Broccoli Pesto

2010-07-19T19:41:00.000-04:00

I promised a post about the most amazing chocolate ice cream ever, but that will wait another day so I can hopefully take pictures of it. Today I accidently ate enough of it while "stirring" so I'm not going to have a scoop. But on with the broccoli pesto.

Who likes broccoli stems? Not me. I know some people do, but... yuck. I usually just by the crowns and feel like less is going to waste if I throw them away. But those big packages were on sale today, and those are you know, mostly stem, so I hate for it to go to waste. It was going to be a simple dinner: broccoli and quinoa with some spices. Then I realized I could make a pretend double broccoli quinoa by making a broccoli pesto, mixing it in to the quinoa and topping it with broccoli. I've posted about that before, but as a separate post for those who don't like quinoa. The point is, it's a good way to get rid of broccoli stems. I guess you could top pasta or couscous with it, but I like it with quinoa, also it pairs well with avocados. In fact, you could probably sub avocados for cream, but I think that is a waste of an avocado (they kind of get lost)

Broccoli pesto
1 head broccoli or leftover stems
2 cloves garlic
1/8 c almonds, sliced or slivered break up faster
1/8 c parmesan cheese
1/4 c cream (I used milk)
extra virgin olive oil to make smooth (1/4 c-1/2 c?)

Steam the broccoli until soft but not squishy. This should take 5-8 minutes?

Blend broccoli, garlic, almonds parmesan cheese, cream until smooth (well, until broccoli is pureed) in food processor (or Magic Bullet). Drizzle oil in and blend until smooth.

As a warning, this is pretty... intense. The broccoli gives it a sharp kick, and the garlic... well, it's like raw garlic.

Ice Cream!

2010-07-16T13:19:00.000-04:00

Another way to generate reader comments is this conversation about ice cream. So I'll start with a question: what's your favorite kind of ice cream? As for me, I may have mentioned this before, but I really can't choose. At an ice cream shop, I usually choose chocolate peanut butter, but what I buy at the store is more dependent on my mood. It almost always involves chocolate, but when I gave up chocolate for a month, I learned to appreciate nonchocolate desserts even more. And I've always had a soft spot for peach ice cream. Peachy and creamy, yum! I also LOVE any ice cream with a swirl of berry, but they are really hard to find! Berry ice creams, no problem, but vanilla or chocolate ice cream with swirls of berry: not so much. Okay, enough about that.

This summer I decided to try to make ice cream. Without an ice cream maker. I first checked with David Lebovitz who says you should make a custard style, rich ice cream at least when you are first learning. Serious Eats seems to agree. But I was not game for separating 5+ eggs for an experiment. So I decided to try it without the eggs, after all if it turned out, that meant that I could make ice cream without eggs and if it didn't, well, then I learned something.

What I did: cooked 1 cup milk with 2 skinned peaches (note: skin peaches by putting them in boiling water for about 30 seconds) and a little salt until it was boiling for a little while. I whisked in 2 cups of cream and 2 tablespoons of arrowroot (I generally followed the instructions from a vegan ice cream book which, in a sense, uses arrowroot rather than egg, most likely as a thickener. One could use cornstarch, but cornstarch likes to boil, so it is best added to foods before they cook). I added a teaspoon* of vanilla, stirred this, chilled it for a couple hours, then froze it, stirring every hour, until I went to bed (roughly 9 hours later, it wasn't sufficiently chilled, apparently) at which time I stirred in two more peaches. Seven hours later, I got up and stirred it and stirred it again about 5 hours later, well I tried to. It was grainy and pretty frozen by this point. It tasted pretty good, but it was grainy. I also thought it tasted too much like cream and wasn't peachy enough to be called peach ice cream (it might have also been to vanilla-y not to be called vanilla).

What I learned: I'm not yet sold that ice cream cannot be made without an ice cream maker and with no eggs, but I think it might take more experimentation. Plus, it probably tastes better with the eggs, I'm just lazy. But what I learned is what one should do is make the cream one night, chill overnight and get up the next morning, stirring every hour. And stir hard! According to Serious Eats, above, adding air helps crystilazation from occuring. Granted, it also makes it a little less thick and creamy, so there's a downside. This is where evaporated milk helps, theoretically.

So what ice cream should I try next? I'm going to need to try some new techniques, but of course, vanilla is just too boring. It kind of makes me angry in fact, by it's boringness.

*my teaspoon of vanilla or cinnamon or a variety of other spices is always more

Citrus and fennel lentil salad

2010-07-08T19:13:00.000-04:00

Some people don't think of lentils as a very summery food. After all, lentil soup is often their main purpose (or if you are Indian and vegetarian, everything is their main purpose, but that's not what I mean). But lentils can make a nice salad when paired with the right vinaigrette. However, you should probably use green because in my experience brown lentils just taste... blah. No matter what you do to them they are just bland. Green lentils tend to absorb flavor a little better, so I like to cook up a cup with garlic, shallots and bay leaf to give them a nice flavor and then use them in a variety of things. Even summer things.

Truthfully, to make this a totally summery salad, one should probably use fresh fennel. I used dried, ground fennel because i figured it would be a great chance to dig into my spice drawer of rarely used spices and I didn't want to buy the fresh stuff. But the fresh stuff would definitely look nicer.

So this salad (and I should have taken a picture, but now it's half gone and no longer pretty) consists of 3-4 parts: lettuce, veggie "salsa", lentils and dressing. You could really use any veggies you have on hand, but I like to use onions, peppers and tomatoes in everything. They are my go to veggies. And being in Georgia, in summer, vidalias are all over the place, but red onion would be great in this too.

As for the dressing, this is where I get to (I think for the second time) remind you how to make a good vinaigrette. The key is emulsifying, usually done by adding an emulsifier: mustard, honey, eggs, I think buttermilk also works as an emulsifier, but that's obviously the opposite of a vinaigrette, but it explains why mustard or buttermilk or something along these lines appears in almost dressing. And then of course, blending. Putting everything in a jar and shaking is not enough to make a good vinagrette. And there is something about adding the oil at the end from a height of like 6 inches or something. I should check that out and get back to you and give you good advice. But my favorite emulsifier is honey. And it's usually the only one I have on hand (well, I have eggs, but I'm scared to put raw eggs in salad dressing, but that's what they all seem to do.

I've been watching Top Chef lately, so please excuse the overly detailed "flavor profile" I'm going to include. Overall, it tastes fresh, like summer. That's the point. The citrus and cilantro hit you up front (and that is in my opinion, unless you are eating burgers or corn on the cob, the quintessential summer taste) and then the aftertaste is refreshing fennel. Mint would also work, I think. The lentils add texture and protein, but don't really affect the taste.

I'm trying a layout that very much works with my cooking process. Make each component at once. So make sure you read the whole thing if you are interested in recreating this. I guess one of the components is as much romaine lettuce as you want to use, that doesn't really require much thought.

Citrus and Fennel Lentil Salad
Serves 2-3
Lentils
1/2 c green lentils
1 c water
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
salt, to taste

Put everything in a saucepan, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until all the water is absorbed, about 30 minutes. Note, I used slightly less water because I like my lentils a little firmer, I'm not a fan of when they turn to mush, and I always worry that if I add too much water they will.

Set aside. I like it best if they are a little warm on top of the salad.

Veggie Salsa
I call this a salsa because if you chopped everything a little finer and added a chili, that's what it would be. Remember, this is where you can use what you have on hand. The size which you chop the veggies doesn't really matter, if you try to keep them consistent
1 medium tomato roughly chopped
1 medium vidalia onion (or red onion), roughly chopped
1 green pepper, roughly chopped
1/4 c cilantro. But remember, I REALLY like cilantro. Feel free to back off
Pinch of orange zest (optional, but very nice)

Fennel dressing
Juice of one lemon (lime would likely work)
1/4 tsp ground fennel (fresh of course would be better and then you could garnish it with that too)
Pinch of marjoram (for some reason I think of marjoram as being a good supporter of fennel)
Freshly ground salt and pepper
1/4-c olive oil, those who like the taste of extra virgin should use that
1/2 tsp-1 tsp honey

Combine lemon juice, fennel, marjoram salt and pepper in a blender. Pour oil while mixing (swirling), add honey and blend until homogeneous.

Serve over romaine lettuce, however much you want. I layered the veggie salsa on the lettuce, then the warm lentils and poured the dressing on top. I ate it with grapes, and thought that went well, very summery.

Chickpeas

2010-06-26T19:20:00.001-04:00

So after the past few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that with a few exceptions (such as fettucini alfredo and a really authentic marinara dish), anything you can do with pasta, you can do with chickpeas. But chickpeas are healthier (less processed, higher protein). Let's face it, pasta, especially white pasta is not that great for you. But it's tasty and a large part of that is due to it's versatility. Enter chickpeas, another bland, and hence versatile starch/protein (whole wheat pasta has a decent amount of protein). The idea struck when a friend and I tried to find a use for pesto that wasn't pasta, so we paired it with chickpeas and cauliflower. That was tasty and satisfying. It wasn't anything worth posting on it's own, and it's something we probably won't make again, but it's a throw together meal that didn't take much time or many ingredients. Food blogs buzz with Greek salads with chickpeas, olives, feta, garlic, onions, spinach, etc, etc. This sounds exactly like a pasta salad, but with chickpeas, am I right? And after thinking about this, I'm not altogether opposed to somehow working out a chickpea type lasagna, though I'll have to think about it more. But last night's creation, assured me that chickpeas and tomato sauce do work together, it just might take a little creativity. I was inspired by a few posts I saw a while back about chickpeas and spinach. One was in a Spanish style and used chorizo and one was from my favorite blog Smitten Kitchen. The recipes called for fresh spinach, but this is the kind of thing that is just as good with frozen and hey, this is a blog about saving money and convenience, right? This might be better doubled, but I was working with what I had.

I loved this creation because it was a one pot meal. A little dicing, and of course, soaking the chickpeas ahead, but it was pretty simple to throw together. And one of the best uses of frozen spinach I have found so far.

Chickpeas with Spinach (serves 2-3)
1 can chickpeas (I think this is roughly 1/2 c dried and cooked, which is what I do)
5 oz frozen spinach
3 (small) cloves of garlic, sliced thin/minced
1/4 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp thyme?
1 4 oz can tomato sauce
cayenne pepper to taste
salt to taste
sausage sliced thin, if desired

Throw everything in a pot, cook until flavors blend 15-20 minutes.

Sounds a little like spaghetti with spinach, right?

Oatmeal

2010-06-25T15:37:00.000-04:00

As most readers of this know, I love oatmeal. And I am on a pretty tight budget these days and oatmeal (even with small amounts of toppings) is cheaper than almost any other breakfast. And it's fun, you can be creative, make it to suit your mood. So I thought I'd share what I'd been putting in my oatmeal lately. I try to do this from time to time. Note that it doesn't usually vary much, I like to stick with staples like cinnamon and walnuts and vary the fruit and (possibly) sweetener. I also prefer using maple syrup, but brown sugar is much cheaper, and it transports well. I like to just throw everything in a container and bring it my office with me sometimes, so I can eat a later breakfast. So my two favorites as of lately:

Blueberry Lemon
1/2 cup oats (whatever your preference is)
2 Tbsp frozen wild blueberries (they are smaller than regular blueberries)
pinch lemon zest
pinch salt
pinch brown sugar
tsp walnuts (optional)

Cook by your preferred method. I like to switch up between stove top cooking and adding boiling water. Adding water makes it less soggy, but also give you less volume, so it's less filling.

Coconut Walnut
1/2 cup oats
1 Tbsp dried, unsweetened coconut (you could use sweetened and add less sugar I suppose)
1 tsp brown sugar
pinch salt
1 tsp toasted walnuts

See above for cooking. I think this is optimal for bring with you and adding water, that's why I started eating it: coconut was the only dried fruit I had sitting around

Things I keep in my freezer

2010-06-14T19:57:00.000-04:00

Because I've realized I keep some useful (and possibly money saving) things in my freezer that maybe not everyone does.

Every time (okay, not every time, but often) I eat/juice a lemon, lime, or orange, I first zest it and freeze the zest. Have you seen the price of citrus zest? I can't imagine anyone paying that when you get it for free with your citrus fruits. Plus those are dried and my guess is not quite as flavorful/fresh. I've accumulated quite a bit of orange zest especially.
Ginger. I've read it's useful to keep it in the freezer and grate it as you need it, but keep the part you are not using frozen, don't let it thaw unless you are using all of it.
Frozen cilantro and basil cubes from Trader Joe's. They also sell garlic. And next time I finish a tray, I'll probably make my own, but I haven't decided what I'll put in it. These are great for eggs or soup.
I always have a leftover meal in the freezer. Right now: veggie chili and also sweet potato and chicken enchiladas.
Ice cream. Enough said.
Frozen spinach. One of the cheapest veggies ever and perfect to throw in eggs/soup/casserole/chickpeas. Did you know spinach has more protein per calorie than beef?
Leftover muffins. I get sick of eating them before I finish a batch, so I freeze maybe 4-6 for a quick on the go breakfast sometime. I think bran muffins freeze especially well. They get a little freezer burnt after a month or two. I don't really care, but other people might.
Edamame. Protein and vegetable ready after boiling water for a few minutes.
Veggie burgers in case I'm feeling extraordinarily lazy/I'm too hungry to think of anything better to make or wait for water to boil (and I don't trust myself to cook anything else to a reasonable point). Some of them go well on a salad (namely the tomato basil mozzeralla).
Frozen fruit. In winter its cheaper than fresh (and sometimes it is even in summer). It's good to be able to throw together a smooth or berry sauce all year round. Plus I almost feel bad cooking anything fresh because I would rather celebrate the raw, fresh, deliciousness.
I often have frozen stoplight peppers because they are cheap, but they are not very good. They're fine for eggs since they are pretty soft once you defrost them, and probably work okay for soups. These are one of the things where Whole Foods is actually a pretty cheap place to get them. I think a pound is under $2 (and keep in mind, this is a mixed pound with no stems, seeds, or placenta, red peppers are usually around $4 a pound fresh here).
Butter. I read recently that unsalted butter should be used within 2 weeks of purchase and since I've drastically cut down on baking, I go through butter exceptionally slowly. The two week rule might apply to fresh, unpasteurized butter, you know the good stuff you SHOULD buy, but I've found I use less when I only have a tablespoon or whatever is leftover from last time I used it in a recipe, which saves more money. Plus I buy ahead when it's on sale.
On the same note, cheese is good after it's sell by date if it's been kept in the freezer, so this means you can buy when it's on sale and keep it good.

And what food have I been dreaming about lately? Ice cream. I've decided this is a luxury I cannot afford after I finish the key lime pie yogurt in my freezer, unless I stumble coupons to get it free (I may have signed up for every birthday list EVER and lied about my birthday on some of them, so I'll have ice cream coupons periodically for a few months). But this is irrelevent because the ice cream I've been dreaming of is from Jeni's, not that I've ever been there, but it comes up every time I talk to one of my friends. Good thing flights to Columbus are cheap and I have a floor to sleep on there. I'm hoping to make it out there some time, just for the ice cream (well, and to see Katie), I might have to figure out how to make ice cream this summer.

Spicy Citrusy Black Beans

2010-06-12T21:49:00.000-04:00

So I'm poor, but that shouldn't stop me from blogging. That's what this blog is after all. So I plan on eating tons of black beans and rice. Or black beans and cornbread. Or red beans formed into burgers (that was a slight failure). But I should share with you what i am actually making. Tonight modeled an idea I had seen before: spicy citrusy black beans. I made them pretty spicy, and they could have been more subtle flavored with less intense spice, but that is another option, they were pretty good as they were. I used a can of black beans because there was little planning, but I usually would use dried black beans. Fortunately, the can I cooked started pretty firm so cooking for a long time was not an issue. Anyways, these definitely have room to play. Also they called for orange juice and I read "lime juice" since I don't have oranges and I really like limes, so there is the option to switch back to orange juice too. But this is roughly what I did:
1 can black beans
juice of one lime
zest of half a lime
1/2 tsp orange zest
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp dried oregano leaves
1/4 tsp ground sage
1/3 c onion, minced
3 large garlic cloves, minced
1 jalepeno, minced

Simmer everything until the onions and garlic are tender (yes, this is how I cook when I'm not following a recipe: throw everything together and cook until done). I cooked it for about half an hour. We served over cornbread.

Chocolate Tomato Soup Cake

2010-06-03T16:23:00.001-04:00

Sounds weird, right? Well, it's not, I promise. The tomato soup adds moisture, like a substitute for buttermilk. This is an extremely moist, soft cake. You can barely taste the tomato if you know it's there and no one could even guess before we told them. We made cupcakes, I don't think it would have held its own as a layer cake, especially with a heavy frosting (like what was recommended).

The first time I saw a recipe for Chocolate Tomato soup cake was recipe from Rose's Heavenly cakes, and I bookmarked it in my reader. But it called for 3.5 sticks of butter. Really? That's an awful lot of butter. It was a layer cake and did have a nice recipe for chocolate ganache, but again, I don't know that would have worked. So we found a different recipe and made the frosting from what we had on hand, and there was no cream, so we made a chocolate buttercream frosting instead. But here is the recipe we used:

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 50 minutes
Bake this cake for the novelty of using tomato soup in a dessert. Tasters won't be able to put their finger on the mysterious "extra" ingredient.
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered cocoa
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 (10 1/4 ounce) can condensed tomato soup
1/4 cup warm tap water
Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9-by-13-inch baking pan. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition, and beat until fluffy. In a small bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda. In a separate bowl or mixing cup, mix together the tomato soup and water. Add the dry and wet ingredients alternately to the butter-sugar mixture, beating just to combine between additions. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.

Chocolate buttercream:
1/4 cup butter
2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanila
2 Tbsp milk
3 Tbsp cocoa

Soften butter, mush in sugar, then add other ingredients and beat until smooth.

Suggestions

2010-05-31T18:36:00.000-04:00

So I have a lot of ideas of things to make, but I've been very apathetic about cooking lately. And I'd like to try to keep the blog moving for the sake of my readers :). So does anyone have any suggestions for things they would like me to tackle? Just note, I don't eat much meat because I can't afford humanly raised meat. So please keep the suggestions baked goods or vegetarian. And don't be too specific, unless you want to. I hope to try to keep this interesting, even (or especially) for the people who suggest things.

I also wouldn't mind an idea of who all reads this :).

Rhubarb Cake

2010-05-12T23:48:00.001-04:00

Seeing as I found out only recently that people besides my parents and grandparents (and a few loyal exceptions) read this, I thought this would actually be relevant.

I've recently had some amazing cakes at dissertation defenses. Granted, they were made by the significant others of the defenders and not the brand new doctors themselves, but it inspired me: by the time I defend, I want to be able to make a beautiful and impressive cake, not just at one of the well received but somewhat ordinary desserts I usually stick to. But you can't make cake for one. I suppose my birthday is coming up, but I will spend that day collecting all the free food I can.

So I decided to give the cake making a first attempt while I was home and the perfect opportunity presented itself when my grandparents came over for lunch. My mom was planning on making rhubarb cobbler (we have lots of rhubarb), but disappeared for a few hours and came home to two layer cakes in the oven. My original vision was a lemon cake with strawberry filling, but I figured with rhubarb filling I should tone back the lemon a little. So I basically made yellow cake with a hint of lemon, rhubarb filling and a whipped cream frosting. The frosting would be better with lemon yogurt or curd beat into it, but it sufficed. So here is the recipe, picture leaves the inside of the cake up to the imagination, but I thought I decorated it well.

For the cake:

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon zest

Directions

For a Yellow Cake: Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in shortening until fine crumbs are formed. Add eggs, milk, vanilla, and lemon zest. Beat at low speed for 1 minute, then high for 2 minutes, scraping the bowl frequently.
Pour batter into two greased and floured (or lined with parchment paper is definitely the easiest way to get a layer cake out evenly) 8" round cake pans. Bake in preheated 350 degree F oven (175 degrees C) for 25 to 30 minutes.
Let the cakes cool for about ten minutes then carefully remove from the pans, this is where you'll wish you used parchment paper because if you didn't they will probably break. I like to use a spatula to cut around the edges immediately after removing them from the oven.

For the filling

1 1/2 cup rhubarb

juice of one lemon

1/2 c+ sugar to taste

cornstarch if needed.

Slice the rhubarb, put in a saucepan with lemon and sugar, cook until soft and rhubarb loses its shape. Taste it and adjust the sugar if necessary. If it's too watery, add some corn starch and cook for two minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

For frosting: I just beat a pint of whipped cream with a teaspoon of lemon zest. It could have used more lemon flavor, I think lemon yogurt or lemon pudding mix would be a good addition. Or even just a lot more zest and maybe a little sugar. I garnished with about 8 strawberries cut in half.

Assemble the cake: spread filling on one layer of cake (the more broken one, if either), place the other cake on top and frost top and sides with frosting. Whipped cream frosting is easy to work with but I recently learned the trick to frosting cakes is to frost in two layers: a crumb layer and the part you see that looks pretty. And let it sit in between. In most layer cakes you are supposed to shave the top of the bottom cake so it is flat across, but this cake raised pretty evenly (and I tried really hard to spread it evenly and even a little thicker on the edges) so it wasn't really necessary.

Note this cake had no chocolate but it was still pretty good. The reason: I couldn't see rhubarb going with chocolate but the point was to use rhubarb. As a chocolate preferer, I'd approve off this cake more fully if the outer frosting was richer.

Balsamic Glazed Chickpeas and Mustard Greens

2010-04-23T20:52:00.001-04:00

So I made this a few weeks ago, but I felt like posting tonight. This is a light vegetarian dinner. The kind that I would eat in summer when my appetite is small or if I ate a big, unhealthy lunch. I had mustard greens (as it turned out they were actually collard greens, but same concept) so I needed something to do with them. I found this recipe on Fat Free Vegan, however I made it not fat free. I think she should be more concerned with the ridiculous amount of sodium in this recipe than adding a little extra fat. She recommended cooking everything in vegetable stock. I used olive oil instead. A little oleic acid and monounsaturated fats never hurt anyone, but stock and soy sauce (plus extra salt) might have. I'll give you my version, not hers, since that's what this blog is, right? In other news I made orzo with chickpeas, tomatoes and fresh herbs and a little feta for dinner tonight. It was good, but I think I tried too hard to have fun with herbs and should have just stuck to one (probably would have gone with the lemon balm, which I had never heard of or how to use, but I tried a piece and it tasted fresh and lemony, so I decided to add it and something else that was too bitter).

But I thought this was a great recipe. I'm a big fan of chickpeas, garlicy greens, and warm balsamic vinegar with my veggies. It was salty, spicy, vinegary, garlicy, basically full of flavor. Yum. Anyway, here we go.

Balsamic Glazed Chickpeas and Mustard Greens

Serves 2

10 oz mustard greens

1/2 large red onion, thinly sliced

1-2 Tbsp olive oil

4 cloves garlic, chopped (this might be what attracted me to the recipe)

1 (large) pinch red pepper flakes (i.e. crushed red pepper)

2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/2 soy sauce (I use the lower sodium kind)

1/4 tsp sugar (I may have forgotten this, also the recipe also suggests agave nectar, honey would probably also work, but isn't vegan)

1 c cooked chickpeas, rinsed and drained

Remove large stems from the greens and discard. Tear leaves into bite-sized pieces.

In deep pot or wok, saute the onion in the oil until mostly faded to pink, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and a little more oil or some water, stirring, for another minute. Add greens, a tablespoon or two of oil, and cook, stirring, until greens are wilted but still bright green, about 3-5 minutes. Remove greens and onions from the pan with a slotted spoon and place in the serving dish, leaving any liquid in the pan.

Add vinegar, soy sauce and sugar to the liquid in the pan (if there is none, add a little water or vegetable stock). Add the chickpeas and cook, stirring, over medium heat until the liquid is reduced by about half. Spoon the chickpeas over the greens and drizzle the sauce all over.

Serve warm with additional balsamic vinegar. A crusty baguette would probably go well (and you could dip it in the vinegar).

Restaurant Review: Evos

2010-04-22T22:13:00.001-04:00

I've been super apathetic when it comes to making meals lately, which is unfortunate with all the fun stuff we get from the CSA. The most notable thing I've made lately is a salad with lentils (wow, that's so cutting edge) and a delicous vinegrette. I did however learn that in order to keep a vinagrette homogeneous you should add some sort of emulsifier: egg yolks (um, not if I'm not cooking it), mayo (does this not defeat the purpose of vinegarette?), mustard, or honey. I don't keep mustard on hand (though maybe I should, it actually comes up a lot), so I used honey. And honey made it delicious too.

But yeah, I've been pretty lame in terms of food. Though I do have tons of things I've made over the past few months that I haven't posted, I just need to remember what they are... did I post the carrot souffle? That was a good one. I'm going to have to put up the balsamic glazed chickpeas and mustard greens. It was delicous.

But today, today I am posting about Evos because it's Earth Day. Evos is a restaurant I've heard about a bit, as they just opened in Midtown Atlanta (it's a chain also appearing in California and Florida). Their concept is healthy fast food: the meat is humanely raised an hormone free (well, the beef is anyway), all the produce is organic. They don't fry their chicken/fries and the milkshakes are low fat and organic. So this is right up my alley right? It took a free Earth Day milkshake to get me through their doors (plus two coupons will keep me going back for the next month). I met up with a friend at the restaurant and although this is one of the few places where I feel great about eating meat (it's the well raised kind), I wasn't in the mood for it, so I ordered the veggie burger, topped with lettuce, tomato, avocado, and light ranch dressing. It was great: one of those veggie burgers where you can see the veggies in it, as opposed to fake textured soy protein compacted to a strange texture. Plus the avocado and ranch made it drippy and moist and bursting with flavor. My friend got the Thai Chicken Wrap, and although I only tried a bite, I'd say it was pretty great too. I got a vanilla milkshake because I'm giving up chocolate for a little while, and it was nothing special, but it was free. And I never think that vanilla milkshakes are special, heck, I never even think chocolate milkshakes are special. With the standards, I'm an oreo girl (Oreo is a standard flavor of milkshake, right?), but I'm more excited about peanut butter, fruit flavors or fruit flavors plus chocolate. Or malts. I love a good malt. Anyway, that was a huge tangent, the milkshake was refreshing and free and went well with the veggie burger. But the major advantage it had was that it was not too big. Often milkshakes come in those big metal cups and are about 3 times what you should drink. This one was the right size. In fact, the burger was the right size, and it seemed that the wrap was the right size. I didn't feel too full, but I was satisfied. Then again, the biggest problem with fast food is the serving size, not necessarily what the food is (though it's of course, not ideal to eat every day), so I thought this encouraged good eating habits. It was however more expensive. A burger without fries or a drink was $5, as opposed to a double cheeseburger at McDonalds or Burger King, which are on the dollar menu. They are also made of corn, essentially, which is subsidized by the government. Oh well.

Evos=good lunch alternative to fast food. Then again, it's not like I ever eat fast food for lunch. But a very friendly place with some nice promotions. They gave me a coupon for a free burger good for the next 4 days (no purchase necessary!) I'll be going back very soon, since it will be free. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: gourmet ketchup. I am not a ketchup eater at all, but I tried the garlic and the cayenne varieties and decided french fries might be worth pursuing just to eat the (garlic) ketchup.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread

2010-04-04T12:28:00.000-04:00

So I know at least one of you readers is allergic to milk and has commented on how all my bread recipes have milk (but let's be honest, most bread recipes have some form of milk whether powdered or liquid or in butter). This one doesn't, then again, I'm not sure how great of a sandwich bread it would make (or it could possibly be an awesome peanut butter and something sandwich bread in its ideal form, I'm not sure). After a few bites from the end (which are certainly not completely indicative of how this bread will taste, seeing as there is less jam at the ends), I'd say the taste is good, but this recipe has a few issues. First, bread does not roll well when you can't seal it together because of jam, which means the middle is pretty loose (which makes it a not very good sandwich bread).

*Also I saw it had to rise for 12 hours and was shocked. Twelve hours? And it uses quick rise yeast? Really. I checked it when I went to bed, which was 3 hours after mixed the dough and it had barely done anything. This morning though, (which for the record was only 10 hours later) it was perfect. So yes, blend this the night before you want it, and it does make a nice morning bread.

**It's extremely sticky which might be exaggerated by the Atlanta humidity, but I really don't think there is enough flour in it, or at very least, when rolling it out, you should make sure EVERYTHING is floured thoroughly. It says to lightly sprinkle flour on the dough before rolling it out, but I was too shy about this and it was a sticky mess that was hard to work with and hence make into a solid loaf. But again, being in Atlanta might be part of the problem.

***Another issue: the baking time. It says about 75 minutes at 450. Seriously? I can't think of anything that should cook that long at 450. Granted, I'm still kind of a newbie. I baked it for about half an hour, turned off the oven and let it sit for another 15 minutes and it came out a little brown in places. So I would say 35-40 minutes is probably sufficient. The 450 means that the crust will be pretty hard even though the bread is soft (right?). So (I think) if you want a less crusty crust you should bake it on a lower temperature (but even then I think 75 minutes is way too long). Someone more experienced than me can correct me if I'm wrong on the statement of making a softer crust. Oh, also if you want a less crusty crust you might want to avoid the egg wash. But it does make it pretty.

Here is the recipe in it's original form, with my comments above starred. If I ever make it again, I'll let you know what modifications I actually make. I think it's likely I will make it again. It's not too hard and requires less time where you have to keep an eye on it (by this I mean during the first rise you can sleep or do something productive which is usually not true of bread) and it tastes good. But like I said, it needs improvements.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread

- One 8-inch loaf; 1 1/3 pounds -
Adapted from My Bread by Jim Lahey.

Ingredients

1 large (about 60 grams) egg, beaten
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (280 grams) bread flour
2 tablespoons (20 grams) whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon (4 grams) table salt
1/4 teaspoon (1 gram) instant or other active dry yeast
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (260 grams) cool (55 to 65 degrees F) water
3 tablespoons (50 grams) unsalted smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup (35 grams) unsalted dry-roasted peanuts, whole
1/4 cup (35 grams) unsalted dry-roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
1/3 cup (100 grams) seedless fruit jam of choice
nonstick cooking spray
additional flour for dusting

Procedure

1. Reserve 1 tablespoon of the beaten egg for glazing the bread. In a medium bowl, stir together the flours, salt, yeast, and the remaining egg. Blend the water and peanut butter in a blender until smooth (some settling will occur if this is left to stand, so blend just before using). Add mixture to the flour mixture and, using a wooden spoon or your hand, mix until you have a wet, sticky dough without any lumps, about 30 seconds. Stir in the whole peanuts until evenly distributed. Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature until the surface is dotted with bubbles and the dough is more than doubled in size, about 12 hours**.
2. When the first rise is complete, sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour*. Use a bowl scraper or rubber spatula to scrape the dough out of the bowl in one piece. Lightly flour your hands and gently pat and pull the dough into a rough rectangle about 8 by 12 inches.
3. Now you're going to make a sort of jelly roll: Position the dough so a long side is in front of you. Spread the jam evenly over the surface of the dough, leaving a 1-inch border on all sides. Lift up the far side of the rectangle and fold one third of it over toward the center, then continue rolling up the remainder into a cylinder. With the seam on the bottom, tuck the ends of the roll under to seal them, so the jam doesn't ooze out during baking.
4. Lightly coat the loaf pan with cooking spray. Sprinkle half of the chopped peanuts into the bottom of the pan. Gently transfer the dough, seam side down, to the loaf pan. Sprinkle the remaining chopped peanuts onto the dough. Cover the dough with a towel and place it in a warm, draft-free spot to rise for 1 hour. The dough is ready when it has doubled. If you gently poke it with your finger, it should hold the impression. If it springs back, let it rise for another 15 minutes.
5. About 15 minutes before the end of the second rise, preheat the oven to 450°F, with a rack in the center.
6. Brush the top of the dough with the reserved beaten egg. Bake until golden, about 1 hour and 15 minutes***. If the peanuts start to darken, loosely cover the loaf with foil. Use pot holders to invert the pan onto a rack, remove the pan, and turn the bread right side up to cool thoroughly. (Don't dawdle--the bread will get soggy if it cools in the pan.)

African Food

2010-03-26T22:16:00.000-04:00

Last weekend we made African food: Corn and Plantain Soup from Cameroon, Yam Balls which are common throughout Africa, and Beef Kofta Curry. We used old onions and green onions in the yam balls and something was moldy... yuck. But the soup and curry were both good. But everything was pretty at least! And none of the dishes were particularly hard, the hardest thing was coordinating all of it.

Plantain and Corn Soup
2 Tbsp butter
1 onion
1 garlic clove
10oz yellow plantains
1 large tomato, peeled and chopped
1 cup corn
1 tsp dried tarragon
3 3/4 cups vegetable (or chicken) stock
1 green chili, seeded and chopped
pinch of nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat, add the onions and garlic and saute for a few minutes
Add plantains, tomato and corn and cook for 5 minutes
Add taragon, vegetable or chicken stock, chili, and salt and pepper and simmer for 10 minutes or until plantain is tender. Stir in the nutmeg and serve.

Yam Balls

1 lb white yam (we used sweet potatoes)

2 Tbsp finely chopped onions

3 Tbsp chopped tomatoes

1/2 tsp chopped fresh thyme (we used dried)

1 green chili, finely chopped

1 Tbsp finely chopped scallion

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 egg, beaten

salt and pepper

Vegetable oil for shallow frying

Seasoned flour for dusting

Peel the yam, cut into pieces and boil in salted water until tender (about 30 minutes). Drain and mash
Add onion, tomatoes, thme, chili, spring onion, garlic, then stir in the egg and season and mix well.
Scoop a little of the mixture to make balls, roll them in seasoned flour until you have formed all the balls.
Heat a little oil in large frying pan and then fry the balls in batches for a few minutes until golden brown. Drain the yam balls on kitchen paper and keep them warm while cooking the rest of the mixture. Serve hot.

Beef Kofta Curry (says it serves 4, we made half and I'd say we got 3-4 meals out of it when served over rice)

For meatballs:

1 lb ground beef

3 Tbsp finely chopped onion

1 Tbsp chopped cilantro

1 Tbsp plain yogurt

4 Tbsp flour

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp garam masala

1 tsp tumeric

1 tsp coriander

1 fresh green chili, seeded and finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1/4 tsp black mustard seeds

1 egg

salt and ground pepper

For the sauce:

2 Tbsp butter

1 onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, vurshed

3 Tbsp curry powder

4 green cardamom pods (we substituted at the exchange rate of 10 pods/tsp ground cardamom)

1 pint cups hot beef stock or water

1 Tbsp tomato paste

2 Tbsp plain yogurt

1 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

Make the meatballs by putting meat in bowl and mixing in all remaining meatball ingredients. Mix well with your hands and roll into small balls or koftas and set aside.
Heat the butter in a pan over medium heat and fry the garlic and onion for about 10 minutes until the onion is soft
Reduce heat then add the curry powder, and cardamom pods and cook for a few minutes stirring well (ground cardamom maybe should be added later, I'm not sure)
Slowly stir in the stock or water and add the tomato paste, yogurt and chopped coriander and stir well.
Simmer gently for 10 minutes, add koftas a few at a time, allow to cook briefly and then add more until all are in the pan. Simmer, uncovered for about 20 minutes until the koftas are cooked through. Avoid stirring, but gently shake the pan occassionally to move the koftas around. The curry should thicken slightly but if it becomes too dry, add a little more water. Serve hot with rice.

Savory Oatmeal

2010-03-25T14:09:00.000-04:00

I've seen a few posts about savory oatmeal recently and given my oatmeal obsession and my "don't knock it until you've tried it" philosophy (at least generally, I do knock some things that sound like they could kill you from unhealthiness in one bite or anything that has mushrooms or cream cheese), I thought I'd give it a try. The problem is I eat oatmeal every morning and am never in the mood for something savory then, but then I wouldn't want to eat oatmeal again for lunch or dinner. But today I escaped with celery and peanut butter for breakfast (I know, I have strange eating habits), so I thought it would be a nice lunch. I've heard people try celery, green onions, eggs, cheese, all sorts of things. But most had soy sauce, which is not something I use a lot of. So I cooked a half cup of old fashioned oats with a little less than a cup of water (I wanted to make sure it was a little chewy, rather than cooked to a pulp, which I don't mind in the morning) and a chopped green onion. I then grated a carrot on top, and added soy sauce, crushed red pepper and a little shredded cheddar. I was in doubt about adding cheese with something with soy sauce, but it actually turned out to be a tasty combination.

It really was a simple lunch, but it might take a little breaking of preconceived notions that oatmeal should be sweet or eaten at breakfast.

And I do have one more breakfast oatmeal recipe up my sleeve that I'll eventually post.

Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce

2010-03-15T19:39:00.000-04:00

I love poached eggs because I love the acidity with the eggs. I also love eggs done in a kind of Tex Mex style with tomatoes or beans or veggies. I've mentioned before but my go to easy meal is eggs with a cube of frozen cilantro from Trader Joe's, red pepper flakes, and slightly sautéed green peppers and onions, topped with cheese and Paul Newman's (or Target's) black bean and corn salsa. This kind of combined the two. Poaching eggs in tomato sauce rather than water? Genius! (I wish it was my idea, but the idea came from either google reader or Smitten Kitchen, go figure)

So my friend came over to cook and bake on Saturday (see previous post for the results of baking). We had high hopes of making something fantastic we couldn't really make for ourselves. But by the time we got together we were both pretty hungry. So these became a form of "throw together what i have lying around eggs" with slightly Tex-Mex influences. I made the sauce, she made home fries with potatoes and peppers, so I can't tell you what that was, but here's what I did. Note that she did not salt the potatoes and I used one can of no salt added tomato sauce, I actually thought they could have used more salt. It's actually kind of growing on me, I still do not salt my pasta water (to my family's dismay) or my eggs, potatoes, or vegetables. But when I am adding lots spices, making beans, in oatmeal, or in tomato based things, I do add salt. I get everything no salt added and add significantly less than the regular stuff though. And I use sea salt (Kosher salt for baking).

16 oz tomato sauce (this might have been a little much for serving, but was a good amount for cooking)
1 clove garlic minced
1 shallot minced
Oil for cooking garlic and shallot
Swig of red wine (optional, I think the Trader Joe's Cabernet Sauvignon was maybe a little too intense for this recipe)
Dash of sugar
Oregano, basil, cumin, cayenne, black pepper, salt and really anything else to taste
Fresh cilantro
Leftover tomato, chopped into chunks
4 eggs

Cook the garlic and shallot in a wide, preferably shallow pan until brown. Add tomato sauce, tomatoes, sugar, and spices, bring to a boil, stirring as needed.

Crack the eggs into the tomato sauce, keeping them as spaced out as possible. The good news about tomato sauce is they won't wander into each other, but you don't want to crack them on top of each other either. Cook for 5 minutes until whites are kind of white. Then cover and remove from heat and allow to finish cooking for about 2-3 more minutes.

Serve over bread or potatoes or any other choice of carbs. Make sure to include lots of the tomato sauce. We put mozzarella cheese on top, any cheese would probably be fine, maybe even a pepper jack or something with a little spice. You might also want to throw some beans in or near the tomato sauce to make it even more Tex-Mex.

Chocolate souffle cupcakes with mint creme

2010-03-14T20:59:00.001-04:00

So there is one way to deal with not wanting to bake for one person or spend the money to bake for one person that is a little harder to work out: cooperative baking. And I usually try to clean while I bake, but that is only possible to a certain extent, depending on the amount of prep work needed in proportion to the bake time and amount of prep supplies. For something like a souffle, there are lots of bowls and lots of beating with little down time to clean (and even less when it is souffle cupcakes, which only bake for 20 minutes). But when you throw another person in the kitchen, as long as you coordinate well, it cuts down the prep time and gives an extra hand for cleaning (someone beats the eggs, someone washes dishes). I have a friend who likes baking exciting things as much as I do and we both loved the look of this recipe and thought it was timely with St. Patrick's day coming up.

The one issue we had was coffee, since neither of us drinks coffee we didn't have instant coffee powder and didn't want to buy it for one recipe, so we tried using one of those single serve coffee makers but apparently that's not instant so the result would be grainy. So she sort of brewed the coffee in a little bit of water and filtered out the grounds, and we added the coffee water. I didn't know how much to add, but however much I added, I think it was a little too much. It was still pretty good though, especially with the mint cream (which I could have added more mint to and we would have been fine). In fact, the contrast of the super sweet cream with the bitter chocolate/coffee flavor was perfect. The recipe comes from my very favorite blog, smittenkitchen.com. For reference, we doubled the creme recipe and were glad we did, and we got 10 cakes but could certainly have gotten away with making them smaller and getting 11 or 12. And 10 is a great number for making them bake evenly by putting all of them on the outsides of the pan.

Chocolate Soufflé Cupcakes
6 ounces (170 grams) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped (I preferred this with bittersweet)
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) (86 grams) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
Heaping 1/4 teaspoon (1 gram) espresso or instant coffee powder
3 large eggs, separated
6 tablespoons (97 grams) sugar, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
White Chocolate Mint Cream
2 ounces (56 grams) white chocolate, finely chopped
3 ounces heavy whipping cream
1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract
Get the white chocolate mint cream ready for later: Place the white chocolate in a small bowl. Bring the cream to a simmer, pour it over the chocolate and let it sit for a minute to melt the chocolate. Whisk well. Add the peppermint extract and whisk again. Lay a piece of plastic wrap on the surface of the cream. Chill until very cold, about two hours.
Make cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 9 standard-size (3-ounce) muffin cups with paper liners. Stir chocolate, butter and espresso powder together in heavy medium saucepan over low heat mostly melted, then remove from the heat and whisk until it is fully melted and smooth. (I like to put the butter underneath the chocolate in the pan, so that it protects the chocolate from the direct heat.) Cool to lukewarm, stirring occasionally.
Using electric mixer (a hand mixer, rather than a stand mixer, actually works best here because the volumes are so small) beat egg yolks and 3 tablespoons sugar in medium bowl until mixture is very thick and pale, about 2 minutes. Briefly beat lukewarm chocolate mixture, then vanilla extract, into yolk mixture. Using clean dry beaters, beat egg whites in another medium bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually add remaining 3 tablespoons sugar and all of the salt, beating until medium-firm peaks form. Fold whites into chocolate mixture in 3 additions. Divide batter among prepared cups, filling each three-fourths of the way. (You might find, as I did, that you had enough leftover for a extra half-cake. That’s your “taste tester”. It’s a, uh, very important part of the process.)
Bake cakes until tops are puffed and dry to the touch (some may crack, embrace it) and a tester inserted into the centers comes out with some moist crumbs attached, about 15 to 20 minutes. Cool in pan on a cooling rack, where the cupcakes will almost immediately start to fall. It will be all the better to put your mint cream on them.
Finish your masterpiece: Beat mint white chocolate cream with electric beaters until soft peaks form. Remove cupcakes from pan, arrange on a platter. Fill each sunken top with a healthy dollop of white chocolate mint cream. Top with shaved dark chocolate, if you’re feeling fancy. I’d say “eat at once” but I suspect that you already have.

Spinach Salad with Goat Cheese, Cherries and Walnuts

2010-03-06T15:40:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's as easy as it sounds, but it's definitely one of those salads that they would serve at cute little bistros or as an appetizer salad at a steak house or another (by grad student standards) fancy restaurant. It's a little piece of elegance you can make at home for a fraction of the cost and you'll wonder why you ever order an appetizer salad when you go out. I recently bought some nice (and huge) plates on clearance at Target and I think they are perfect for this, partly because I have trouble eating salad without accidently pushing the greens off the plate and the larger plate prevents that, and partly because a nice plate goes well with a nice salad. Note that I bought a nice pomegranate infused red wine vinegar for salad dressings (I think that brings me up to six types of vinegar and counting) that I think goes very nicely on this. Balsamic or regular red wine vinegar would also work well.

1 cup spinach rinsed with stems removed
2 Tbsp toasted walnuts (and toasting nuts smells amazing)
2 Tbsp dried tart cherries (cranberries work, but not as well)
2 Tbsp goat cheese crumbles (I found them at Trader Joe's)
Extra virgin olive oil, to taste
Red wine or balsamic vinegar, to taste

I really hope you don't need directions beyond the ingredients :).

Today I ate this salad with a nice toasted vegetarian sandwich I made. I acquired a multigrain baguette from Panera, so I sprinkled it with a little red wine vinegar and ground Italian herbs, put some Muenster cheese (Provolone would be better but Muenster was on sale), tomatoes, and red onion slices on one half of the baguette and stuck it in the toaster oven. I toasted until the cheese was almost melted then topped it with a few avocado* slices, and the other half of the bread, which I spread with roasted garlic**, and toasted it a little more. It was a delicious, deli quality lunch, healthy but low in protein so I made sure to drink a glass of milk with it.

A few notes from this lunch:
*Avocados should be stored at room temperature until ripe. Once ripe you can put them in the fridge for a couple days. Cut avocados should be stored in the fridge and you can brush them with a little lemon juice and wrap them tightly in plastic wrap (with the plastic touching the cut surface) to reduce browning (otherwise you can cut off the brown part).

**To roast garlic: preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the outermost skin from the garlic and rub the whole bulb liberally with olive oil. Wrap in aluminum foil and place in the oven for 30-35 minutes or until the garlic bulb is soft to the touch. Note that what I did (since I don't plan on eating an entire bulb of roasted garlic, mostly I shouldn't eat that much bread seeing as that is pretty much all I ate yesterday) is removed most of the outside cloves, leaving only 4 or five in the middle and followed the directions above, but it only took about 20 minutes until the garlic was soft. So basically it is possible to do smaller batches of roasted garlic if you are only cooking for one :). Also this is a nice use for a toaster oven.

Blueberry Challenge Days 4-5

2010-03-04T21:41:00.000-05:00

This is actually getting hard. I'm out of ideas. Today I got lucky and was thinking about this oatmeal (I've been thinking a lot about oatmeal lately) truck that I read about that puts scone pieces on top of oatmeal and boom! I'm making scones (which didn't turn out particularly well). Yesterday I made blueberry soup. I think i got impatient or didn't add enough sugar or something, it wasn't bad it was just one of those things that tasted like it could be better. The blueberry soup came from my 12 Best Foods cookbook (bonus points if anyone can figure out all 12, note all recipes just need to have one but many have more)

Blueberry Soup (one serving)
1/2 blueberries
1 Tbsp frozen apple juice concentrate
1/2 Tbsp-1 Tbsp maple syrup
dash allspice

Place all ingredients in a pan bring to a boil. When liquid boil, reduce the heat. Simmer until the berries burst and give up their liquid, 15 minutes for fresh blueberries, 12 minutes for frozen. Serve warm, not hot.

Yeah, this is not at all what I did. I might not have let the blueberries cook long enough, I used brown sugar and water rather than maple syrup and apple juice. And I ate it hot out of a mug. It was comforting but not delicious.

Blueberry Scones
(Makes 8, note this recipe, like most of mine, is halved)
2 cups flour
3 Tbsp sugar
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup+1 Tbsp cold butter
1 egg
3/8 c milk +1 Tbsp (divided)
3/4 cup blueberries (if using frozen, do not let them thaw)

Preheat the oven to 350 (something I often skip or delay to save energy, but since these are supposed to be fluffy, it's important here) Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. Cut in cold butter and mix to make coarse crumbs. Whisk egg and 3/8 cups milk, add to dry ingredients until just moistened. Fold in blueberries gently. Spread onto gently onto floured surface, mold into disk, and cut into 8 wedges (or mold gently into balls, but from everything I've read, the less you handle scones, the better). Brush with a tablespoon of milk Bake on baking sheets for 20-25 minutes.

They were super hard to work with because the dough was sticky, I probably added too much milk and the blueberries spread their juice because I let them thaw. They would also be better with my secret ingredient of the week: lemon zest. In fact, I think my mom adds that.

Blueberry Challenge Days 1-3

2010-03-02T00:09:00.000-05:00

So I'm trying to eat half a cup of blueberries every day, and the past two days I've taken the two obvious choices: oatmeal and yogurt (apparently blueberry pancakes are also an obvious choice, who knew?). Okay, so today I might not have made it to 1/2 of BLUEBERRIES, but I did get a good half cup of dark berries. And since blueberries and lemons go so well together, I had a lemon zesting/juicing party this morning. It was fun, kind of. I zested and juiced 5 lemons, by the end I just wanted to be done.

Yesterday, as I mentioned, I made Steel Cut (or Scottish) oats and decided that was the best breakfast in the entire world. I wasn't following a recipe, I just looked up how to cook them, and I guess I accidently ate two servings. However, they kept me going so long and I felt so content from the oatmeal that all I ate for lunch was a banana and an apple and all I ate for dinner was a salad (which i should also discuss because it was a fantastic salad) and that was enough (oh, and the cake I made, which is another post, also). So this is what i did:
2 servings (but it apparently keeps well in the fridge for up to 3 days)
1/2 cup steel cut oats
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup milk
dash salt
1/2 cup frozen wild blueberries
2 Tbsp toasted walnuts
Maple syrup/brown sugar to taste

Toast the oats lightly in a saucepan. I think maybe you were supposed to use butter to do this; I didn't, I just turned the heat on and toasted for a little while while I microwaved water.
Add 1 1/2 cup boiling water (and salt?) to the hot saucepan. Simmer on gently, stirring once or twice until the oats are tender or the water is absorbed. This will be a while, maybe half and hour (good time to putter around doing other things in the kitchen like toast your walnuts)
Add milk and cook until most of the liquid is absorbed.
Add blueberries, walnuts, and maple syrup. Cover and let sit for 2 minutes.

Blueberry Parfait, Day 2
This was another easy choice, and a great post running treat. I ate it out of my measuring cup because it is the only clear glass container that I could see the layers and easily dig a spoon into (our glasses are tall and thin)
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2+ cup frozen berry blend (or blueberries!)
Sprinkle of sugar
2 tiny pinches lemon zest
2 Tbsp toasted walnuts

First defrost your fruit (oops) and sprinkle the sugar and mix in.
Layer the half yogurt and mix a pinch of lemon zest and mix. Sprinkle half the walnuts on top, add the fruit and repeat. Actually, it would probably be best to mix the yogurt and lemon zest separately before layering, but that dirties another dish.

Blueberry Lemon Granola, Day 3
Lately I've been looking through my 12 best foods cookbook (in fact, that might have been part of the inspiration for the challenge), which includes both blueberries and walnuts (and oatmeal, conveniently). Remember, oatmeal helps with the absorption or something of the awesome blueberry properties, so they are a good pairing. And to think I've always stuck to almonds. The secret ingredient: well, I don't think there is just one... And the funny thing is what I had to buy to make this recipe: dried blueberries and lemon, well and I guess the coconut, but I bought that without the intention of making this specific granola. But I had everything else on hand, I buy everything raw and unsalted, I can do that myself and I love the smell of things toasting.

1/2 cup blanched almonds (oops), halved (I used sliced, oops)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups old fashioned oats
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (thanks Kroger)
1/4 raw sunflower seeds
2 Tbsp unhulled sesame seeds (yeah, I just used regular sesame seeds), secret ingredient 1
1/4 blueberry or mesquite honey (I used regular cheapo honey, but I can tell good honey would have made this granola even better. Then again, it's addicting enough as is, I don't think we need any more)
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp ground cardamom, secret ingredient 2
2/3 cup dried blueberries

Preheat oven to 325
Stirring frequently, tast almonds and walnuts in large heavy skillet over medium heat until the just begin to color. Mix in oats and coconut and toast until the the oats color slightly, continuing to stir often. Add sunflower and sesame seeds, stirring constantly until the mixture turns an even beige. Off the heat, mix in the honey, lemon zest, and cardamom until all ingredients are thoroughly coated
Spread mixture on a jelly roll pan, making an even layer. Bake for 5 minutes, stir and respread. Bake for 5 minutes and repeat once more until the granola is golden brown. Mix in blueberries and spread hot granola on a baking sheet to stop the cooking, cool to room temperature. This keeps for 2 weeks in an airtight container.

Or how I did it: add the ingredients you toast in the order specified, but forget to actually turn the stove on. Realize it isn't on, toast everything at once. Remove from heat and pour in a bowl because that's easier to clean honey off of than a big cast iron pan. Go running and come back and the granola will be cool. Then add honey cardamom and lemon zest and mix. Put it in a 9 inch round pan because that's what is there (and easy to clean), so increase to 4 sets of 5 (or a little less) minutes, stirring after each. Remove and then follow the rest of the directions accurately.

Braised lentils with Winter Greens and a Fried Egg

2010-03-01T19:35:00.002-05:00

I'm not Southern, not in the least bit. I do not eat almost anything considered "Southern," I hate being called ma'am, and, well, I'm from Wisconsin. Tonight's dinner is probably as close to Southern as I will ever get, and the only thing that made it "Southern" were the steamed greens. I bought a bag (notice the Wisconsin accent right there) of "steamin' greens" from Trader Joe's to cover this part of it. I might consider this the perfect winter meal: warm and comforting, not too expensive, super healthy, and delicious. Too bad today was a beautiful, almost spring day, the winter comfort wasn't really necessary. However, my schedule is such that I can't cook a real meal on Tuesdays, which means if I want something specific to the weather on Tuesday, I have to cook it Monday, and since this makes 2 servings, I might as well eat it today. Oh well, the point is it's delicious. I'll do my best to compute the cost, I'm sure it's over a dollar, but that's okay this week :).

The recipe jumped out at me on my google reader, it came from Serious Eats; this recipe is copied straight from there. No, I am not genius enough to come up with this myself. Both the lentils and the greens were so flavorful, and the fried egg on top was a great addition, even though I'm (still) terrible at frying eggs. The yoke is never runny enough.

Also, I'm not sure (if anyone could answer this for me, it would be great) why the lentils are considered "braised." It never actually specified when to add them (I added that myself based on context clues), but as far as I (and wikipedia) knows braising is reserved for meat. And this doesn't even mirror the process described there, the only thing special about it is cooking lentils with red wine (best concept EVER).

I do need to start posting my own recipes, otherwise this blog is somewhat useless (except for the fact that I filter a lot of recipes for you, to bring you the delicious grad student friendly meals, and try to throw ethnic twists in it). This one is especially great since it makes food for 2 (though I could definitely see only one person eating it). And of course, it is vegetarian.

Braised Lentils with Winter Greens and a Fried Egg

- serves 2 -
Adapted from Last Night's Dinner.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/2 cup French green lentils
1 bunch winter greens, such as kale, chard, collards, etc.
1 shallot, peeled and minced
1/2 cup red wine
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/8 teaspoon red chili flakes, or to taste
Splash of lemon juice or sherry vinegar
salt and black pepper
2 eggs

Procedure

1. In a medium saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat. Add the shallot and saute until soft, 2-3 minutes. Add 1 cup water and the red wine, bring to a boil, add lentils, and simmer, covered, until the lentils are tender but not mushy, 30 minutes or so (this took me more than 30 minutes, closer to 45, maybe I should have soaked them?). Add more water as necessary. Season to taste with salt.
2. In the meantime, wash the greens and slice the leaves away from the stems and roughly chop the leaves. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil, garlic, and chili flakes in a saucepan or large skillet until fragrant, then add the leaves along with 1/4 cup or so of water and a pinch of salt. Cover, turn the heat to medium-low, and allow the leaves to steam as the water evaporates, tasting for tenderness and adding more water as necessary. Finish with lemon juice or vinegar to taste, and perhaps more olive oil.
3. When the lentils and greens are nearing completion, heat the remaining oil in a small non-stick skillet and fry the eggs sunny-side-up, about 3 minutes over medium-low heat, until the whites are set but the yolk is still runny.
Note: I actually fried the egg, so I added a flip, which overcooked it slightly, but at least I'm sure it won't make me sick.
4. Serve the greens on a bed of lentils, topped with the egg and fresh black pepper.

Oops, the cost: using lentils that were 44 cents a cup, Trader Joe's wine, and pre-bagged mixed greens, I'd estimate it at about $3.50 for two servings. But it's worth it.

Food Stamp Challenge Day 7

2010-02-28T07:57:00.000-05:00

So yesterday the food stamp challenge concluded. It was made easier by the access to free food from volunteering over lunch. It was more difficult because I've been eating apples. I've had 2 (big) apples (I did get them for a dollar a pound though) and an orange, for a total of about $1.40. I had a quarter cup of brown rice with just a few spices (chili powder, cumin, oregano, thyme, I believe), for 30 cents, with about 1/3 of a cup black beans for 20 cents plus a sprinkle of cheese, which made the meal about 55 cents.
Finally breakfast was oatmeal with brown sugar and cinnamon, but I accidently added way too much cinnamon, so to cover it up I sprinkled a few dried cranberries (which I bought by one get on free, so the cost for a bag was about $1.10) and some cocoa powder. Seeing as i only had 20 cents left for this meal, I probably went over by about 5 cents. I don't see this as too big of a problem though.

The big problem of the challenge is my fully stocked spice cabinet, and nearly unlimited supply of beans and oatmeal. I didn't have to buy these things from scratch. Then again, $21 is what you receive if you have a given amount of income and hence an expected amount you are already spending on food.

But, as I said before, I don't think this was worthwhile. Can I do it? Yes, and minus a few corners I cut (like free food and eating a little extra after I ran that I didn't count). But I felt terrible for a few of those days, and I think a big part of it was from lack of fresh fruits and vegetables.

I did however learn some things that I may translate to lifestyle changes. For instances, I've recently prided myself on cutting back almost entirely on processed foods. True, I occasionally eat a Kashi frozen dinner, and I keep pasta on hand like it is going out of style. But the big thing, the thing I eat every day, and which actually consumes a large part of my food budget, despite the fact that I only buy it when it is half off, is dry cereal. A box of dry cereal when half off, is about $2-$2.50. And this is 6-10 (of my) servings. This is 25-40 cents a serving plus milk. Oatmeal is a third of the cost (plus toppings). This adds up quite a bit over the course of a year, or even a month (I really don't want to compute it, but it's a lot). It also means I can quit buying soymilk (yay!) unless I make cornbread. So, I'm going to rely a little more on oatmeal. Also, savory oatmeal is something I've been hearing about for about a while and was apparently on NPR recently. It definitely sounds worthwhile trying, throwing eggs and cheese or even veggies on oatmeal. However, I try to limit my carbs with dinner (because they are the staple of my diet all day). I feel like cottage cheese holds the same duality, but it's a little less portable and more expensive.

So this week I'm really going to try to focus on eating fruits and veggies. In fact (and one of my readers might laugh at this), I'm giving myself a new challenge, but a fun one. I've been keeping up with my google reader a little better lately (this might be a result of giving up facebook and twitter for Lent, after all I still need to do something to relax while I eat my dinner or if i have 5 minutes to kill before class), and the majority of what i read is about: surprise, food! I also read the Psychology Today pretty frequently. They seem to do little series, there was a good one about girls in math, one themed around the Olympics (the one about short track speed skating helped me fully appreciate the sport), and there was an interesting theme of "eating smarter." First they discussed why French people eat loads more fat than we do (cheese, butter, croissants). When you are measuring fat pound for pound you can't say "portion size." However, they don't snack between meals (as opposed to me, who eats what you could call up to 6 small meals a day), but the main point was that they actually ENJOY their food. They don't rush around willy-nilly and grab a quick bite on the way. The actually sit down and savor every bite. The eat slower (which in general means less) and it means more. And the food is better, none of the processed junk we eat.

Anyway, not the point (though maybe it should be). One of my favorite articles was this one http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200805/natures-bounty-the-smartest-food. This week (and other weeks, also) have helped me realize how much influence food has on the way we feel and as a result, the way we think. Wouldn't it be awesome to eat to optimize our ability to learn, problem solve or concentrate? How can we do this? Eat blueberries! (or other berries, but especially blueberries). And eat them with walnuts or avocados. So this week's challenge? Eat a half cup of blueberries every day (thank you Trader Joe's and your cheap frozen fruit!) prepared in 7 different ways. I will therefore chronicle 7 blueberry recipes. Today is easy because I don't have much on hand: toasted steel cut oats (yeah, that's right super cool oatmeal), with a little maple syrup, frozen blueberries and walnuts (because this is definitely cheaper than frozen cereal).

Food Stamp Challenge Days 3-6

2010-02-26T17:53:00.001-05:00

So I've been eating chili and split pea dahl for lunch and dinner. I've also eaten a jar of peanut butter since Sunday, not exaggerating. So I'm going to change the first two days and just subtract the cost of the jar $2.30 from the total. I had another cup of hot chocolate, 2 cups of oatmeal with about 1/3 c of brown sugar and 2 Tbsp of cinnamon, 2 oranges, 1 banana, 1/4 cup of rice and about 15 cents in spices, plus another 40 cents of cheese for the chili. Plus I just ate eggs for dinner (with salsa). I have however cheated slightly and ate a piece of chocolate yesterday that I ate to motivate myself to finish an assignment. I ate a leftover bit of a protein bar also after running. I feel mentally terrible and physically pretty tired though, I think it's all the peanut butter. It looks like I'll probably make it, but I'm realizing that it wasn't really worth it.

This makes for a total of $5.21.

I have $2.15 left. Tomorrow I'll probably be eating black beans with rice. The whole meal (with cheese and spices) will be about 75 cents.

Food Stamp Challenge: Day 2

2010-02-22T22:07:00.002-05:00

Today was probably a failure. For one, remember how I said it was okay to eat free food? Today I acquired 9 steamed Chinese dumplings. Being a grad student (and a grad student who the secretaries know and like) has definite advantages most people don't have. I think I ate a ton of salt today too, well at least a teaspoon of sea salt (which has less salt than regular table sodium, but still). Food from the cupboard I ate: banana 30 cents, apple 40 cents, 2.5 Tbsp peanut butter 20 cents, `1/2 cup oatmeal 8 cents, tsp cinnamon 2 cents, 2 Tbsp sugar 5 cents, 1 Tbsp cocoa (I made hot chocolate, figuring it was probably the cheapest possible dessert I could make assuming I was going to drink a glass of milk anyway) 10 cents (this might be an overestimate, I don't remember what I paid for the cocoa, so I figure it's best to round up), 1 tsp salt 1 cent, 1 cinnamon stick 2 cents. Total= $.88
Total Left $7.36
I can't keep up at this rate if I want to splurge on peach(es) on Wednesday. However, there will be free food involved on Saturday also. Tomorrow I switch to fruit that is covered in what I paid yesterday, which will hopefully make for lower costs.

Food Stamp Challenge: Getting Started

2010-02-21T15:21:00.005-05:00

So I'll admit, I cheated a bit today because I wanted to finish my yogurt and because I ran over 5 miles. Maybe this isn't fair because some people on food stamps may be athletic.

Also, I've decided I'm allowed to eat free food. I'm not allowed to let people BUY me food, but I can eat samples at the grocery stores (I might be hanging out at Whole Foods for that purpose later this week). Also, I'm volunteering at the high school math tournament next weekend and they provide lunch (plus it would be awkward to slip away to heat up soup or something).

I've priced out a lot of meals and have the next 4 days, at least, planned. Split Pea Dahl, for instance, costs 54 cents! That's 3 solid or 4 small servings, put it with rice (I found some organic brown rice for 25 cents a serving) and you've got a filling, healthy and EXTREMELY cheap lunch. Also, chili is slightly more than $1 per meal, but I figure if I can manage lunches and breakfasts for under 50 cents, I'm allowed a dinner that costs $1.10. And maybe I'll get lucky and get an extra serving out of it.

I went to Publix this morning (should I have gone to Kroger? Possibly, I think I peppers were an extra 50 cents a pound and also Kroger has a pound of apples for a dollar, which might make eating apple plausible this week) and spent $8.75 with the novelty of broccoli. I figure I could make a light dinner of brown rice and broccoli, which would total to $1.05, plus whatever spices I add. I think more than anything, this experiment will show where my food priorities lie. My staples seem to be beans and lentils and oatmeal for breakfast, and above that is veggies. Then milk and fruit, and then, as much as I love chocolate, comes treats like ice cream. After ice cream we have more advanced fruits like peaches (which are on sale, if I'm doing well on my budget, I might grab a couple Wednesday afternoon) and things like prepackaged salad (it's always on sale and actually cheaper than heads of lettuce, plus I think it keeps better). Making meals under a dollar per serving doesn't seem that challenging right now, the trouble is going without all the snacks I eat every day. My eating plan most days looks something like this: 7am breakfast=oatmeal or cold cereal, 10am apple or banana with peanut butter, noon=sandwich, 1pm=yogurt, 3pm= some other sort of snack such as carrots with hummus and probably more fruit, 5:30pm dinner, including fruit, 7pm salad, 8pm sweet snack such as cereal or ice cream. Plus there is the chocolate pick me up I inevitably need at least 3 times a week. I get hungry a lot, and eat small amounts frequently, obviously. The other thing I do when I'm hungry is drink tea, which isn't really possible on such a restrictive budget either. But we'll see, today is going well so far.

After having chili for dinner, I really want a nice bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream, but I can't. I think this experiment might teach me discipline in not eating whatever I'm craving.

Breakfast: Malt-O-Meal 13 cents plus a teaspoon of brown sugar 3 cents. Total=16 cents
Snack: Gala apple=40 cents Total=40 cents
(additional snack only because I ran was plain yogurt with honey and toasted almonds)
Lunch: Split pea dahl 13 cents, plus a cup of milk 30 cents Total= 43 cents
Snack: Banana= 30 cents, plus a tablespoon of peanut butter 8 cents Total= 38 cents
Dinner Chili, cost per serving depends on how many servings I can get, but the total for 4-6 servings was about $4.50, exact numbers are in the calculations, based on the grocery bill, plus shredded Colby Jack cheese I bought on sale for 25 cents per serving.
Snack: Carrot salad= shredded carrot with a tsp of red wine vinegar = 3 cents (cost of carrot in the total spent)

Total Spent= $8.75, total from pantry= $4.03
Total Spent= $12.86
Total Left= $8.22 (this might not seem like a lot, but I have lunch and dinner for the next 3-4 days)

Dry Spiced Potatoes with Cauliflower

2010-02-21T08:27:00.000-05:00

Since just about every day for the past week I found out someone new who reads my blog (apparently EVERYONE in Germantown does) I figure I need to step it up. Well, this week is the food stamp challenge so that will be interesting (well, cooking for 1 will be less interesting because I'll probably end up eating about 3 things including some things I've made before). And on a note for that, I think I have to go lunch Sunday-lunch next Sunday because I have some organic yogurt and organic milk leftover that I don't want to go bad but I obviously can't use in the challenge. Or maybe I'll just use it instead of the first cup of regular milk and make sure I have at least some milk left. And the yogurt is such a small amount, I might eat it after running since the food stamp plan does not account for the fact that I'm going to be running 5-6 miles today. Anyway, that's just housekeeping, let's get on to the recipe.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I had people over for Indian food a few weeks ago, and this side dish was probably the favorite dish (besides the cilantro mint dipping sauce for the samosas), mostly because it had the most flavor. I had my friends try to guess what was in it, and since there really isn't much in it, they did a pretty good job and turmeric was a given because it ends up pretty yellow (I really need to replace the battery in my camera). Also, this was a great entertaining recipe because it was so easy: chop and fry; it doesn't get any better than that. This serves 4 as a side dish:
1 lb potatoes
2 Tbsp cumin seeds
1 green chili, finely chopped (I used thai chili and it gave it a little extra kick, which I liked)
1 lb cauliflower, broken into florets
1 tsp coriander
1/4 chili powder (not the chili powder blend you buy at the supermarket, this is dried ground chilis, if you don't have access to an Indian grocery store or store with bulk spices from India, as some grad students might not, you can probably use ground cayenne or some sort of ground "red pepper")
1/2 ground turmeric
1/2 tsp salt
chopped fresh cilantro

Bring pot to a boil in a medium pot. Cut peeled and washed potatoes into 1 inch cubes, then boil for about 10 minutes. Drain the potatoes well and set them aside.
Heat oil in a wok or large pan and fry the cumin seeds for 2 minutes until the begin to sputter. Add the fresh chili pepper and fry further for 1 minute
Add cauliflower florets to the pan and fry, stirring for 5 minutes
Add potatoes and spices and salt and cook for another 7-10 minutes until both vegetables are tender. Garnish with chopped coriander.

Note that I slightly overcooked the potatoes, so I added the spice before the potatoes and cooked the cauliflower with spices for about 5 minutes, then added the potatoes and cooked for another 2. This made the spices slightly unbalanced between the vegetables, but I made it the night before and kept it in the fridge and I think that helped it blend a little bit.

Now I have to make breakfast, probably oatmeal, but I need to figure out how much stuff I am allowed to put in my oatmeal. Lately I've been putting dried cranberries, frozen blueberries, about a tsp of cinnamon and bit of brown sugar in it, but I think I have to cut back on this $21 budget. Malt-o-meal might be even cheaper than oatmeal, I need to price it out, but I'll probably switch between the two for this week.

Chicken in Green Masala Sauce

2010-02-16T20:11:00.001-05:00

So a few weeks ago, I had some people over for (Northern) Indian food. It was good, but I wouldn't say it was spectacular. Oh well it was homemade and from a white girl. But it came from my Curry cookbook, which is probably the single greatest cookbook investment I've made. I think I've already made a half dozen recipes from it. I'll periodically include the good ones. This was good, but I thought a little bland. Maybe the naan was just bad, I'm not sure. It says it serves 4, but I doubled it and made another dish plus samosas and it fed 5 with few leftovers. And I don't think we overindulged. So it might make a good dinner for 2-3 (or one with leftovers). Oh, and this is pretty much the easiest dish Indian dish ever, it was great for company because it went together really easily. I chopped everything but the chicken the night before though.

1 crisp green eating apple, peeled cored and cubed
4 Tbsp cilantro
2 Tbsp fresh mint
2/3 c plain yogurt
3 Tbsp fromage frais or ricotta cheese
2 fresh green chilis (this might not be enough...)
1 bunch spring onions, chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp crushed garlic
1 tsp grated fresh root ginger
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
8 oz chicken breasts skinned and cubed
1 oz sultanas (golden raisins)

Place apple, 2 tbsp cilantro, mint, yogurt, fromage frais/ricotta, chilis, spring onion, salt, sugar, garlic, and ginger in a food processor and process for one minute. Scrape outside of bowl and process for a few more seconds.
Heat oil in wok or large pan and pour yogurt mixture and cook gently for 2 minutes.
Add chicken pieces and stir well to blend everything together. Cook over medium low heat for 12-15 minutes or until chicken is fully cooked. I cooked longer because I thought the sauce was a little runny, so I cooked it until it was the consistency of curries I've had in restaurants. Was this too much? I don't know, but it made it easier to eat with naan.
Sprinkle sultanas and remaining coriander over for serving.

Experimental Brownies Take 2

2010-02-13T13:53:00.000-05:00

So about a year ago, I made experimental brownies with cherry juice instead of sugar. And they turned out well, but had room for improvement. One change I made was trying to make a smaller batch, used a 9x9 pan rather than a 13x9. I also modified a recipe for cocoa brownies from smittenkitchen, which as some of you may know, is my favorite food blog. Their texture was again, not typical of brownies, almost like chewy fudge, but was less weird (maybe because they were thicker brownies?). They were (or are, as there are still 2 left by some miracle) very dark with fruity undertones. I think they are delicious, a nice substitute for a 72% cocoa bar and I would call them a success for dark chocolate lovers out there. Also they are very easy, you really can do them in one bowl, no separate beating eggs or tempering chocolate. Plus if you line the pan with foil as recommended, cleaning up the pan is easy too.

10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks, 5 ounces or 141 grams) unsalted butter
4 cups cherry juice
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (natural or Dutch-process)
1/4 teaspoon salt (or a heaping 1/4 teaspoon flaky salt, as I used)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, cold
3/4-1 cup (66 grams, 2 3/8 ounces) all-purpose flour (enough to help the batter stick together)
2/3 cup dried cherries

Boil cherry juice until it reduced to about 1 cup.

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F. Line the bottom and sides of an 8×8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving an overhang on two opposite sides.
Combine the butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt in a medium heatproof bowl and set the bowl in a wide skillet of barely simmering water. Stir from time to time until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth and hot enough that you want to remove your finger fairly quickly after dipping it in to test. Remove the bowl from the skillet and set aside briefly until the mixture is only warm, not hot.

Stir in the vanilla with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each one. When the batter looks thick, shiny, and well blended, add the 1/2 cup flour and stir until you cannot see it any longer, add enough slowly until the batter is not runny, then beat vigorously for 40 strokes with the wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Stir in the cherries, if using. Spread evenly in the lined pan.

Bake until a toothpick plunged into the center emerges slightly moist with batter, I found this was about half an hour, but you should watch them carefully after 20 minutes. Allow to cool (or don't, I didn't and they seemed fine).
Lift up the ends of the parchment or foil liner, and transfer the brownies to a cutting board. Cut into 16 or 25 squares.

Food Stamp Challenge

2010-02-07T09:46:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but I've decided I need to quit "thinking about doing something" and start actually doing it. The food stamp challenge is living a week off what the average person on food stamps has, on average this is $21 (though from what I've read this misrepresents the program because it is designed to supplement food not be the primary source of food, hence the amount one family receives is on a sliding scale). So February 21-28 I will take the food stamp challenge. And the big point is that I will donate the difference between my usual weekly bill (which I should probably compute, but I'm going to say is $44, on average) to a local food pantry.

What this means (and this is something I should maybe think about doing anyway) is that I have to actually compute the cost per meal of everything I eat. I'm cheating a little by using my what's in my pantry (though I will include the cost of everything of course) because in reality, lower income families must often buy based on what's available and on sale and I've kind of already done that (I know that my box of elbow macaroni only cost $0.80 because I stocked up a few months ago, but that isn't always an option with a limited income). But also, I don't have a car so I can't go to the specialty lower cost supermarkets like Aldi or Mayfield foods (which I've seen ads for on the train).

And if it's not already obvious, I will be eating strictly vegetarian for this week. Part of the reason I'm putting it off for a few weeks is to give me time to come up with a detailed budget, which again, is kind of cheating. I get 2 weeks to plan for this, in reality this doesn't happen, families are consistently living off food stamps, they don't have the option to plan two weeks in advance. But I still have farmer's market food I need to use up and potentially some dinners out or at least weird eating patterns when the Case swim team comes to Atlanta (yay!) so instead of making exceptions, I'll start after I know these things are occurring. Again, this is clearly not realistic, but I don't think it defeats the purpose of the experiment. Pardon the double negative. So thoughts, at least at this point include split pea dahl (the spices are super cheap when bought in bulk as I do), eggs, some sort of cheap lentil soup (bouillon cubes are cheap). I'll have to look into what the least expensive breakfast food is, oatmeal, maybe?

Please leave comments on this post, either suggestions for meals I can make for under a dollar per serving or, I would love this, if you are interested in joining me. I think it would be really cool to make this an actual event to raise money for food banks, but I don't know how other people would feel about that.

Roast Pepper Sauce for Spinach Malfatti

2010-01-24T13:16:00.002-05:00

After two weeks of not cooking and one trip to the farmer's market, I've spent pretty much the entire weekend in the kitchen. I came across the cookbook 400 Sauces on clearance at Borders, and this recipe sounded really good. And it is. It reminds me of the ricotta gnocchi I made with red pepper sauce, only the tomatoes in the sauce definitely made it better. The book says that "malfatti" is Italian for "badly made" since they aren't evenly shaped

Spinach Malfatti
1 1/4 lb baby spinach
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp olive oil
12 oz ricotta cheese
3 eggs
1 scant cup breadcrums
1/2 c flour
2/3 c grated Parmesan cheese
nutmeg, to taste

For roast pepper sauce
2 red peppers, seeded and quartered
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
14 oz can chopped tomatoes (I used no salt added)
salt and ground pepper to taste

Make the sauce. Roast the red pepper in the broiler until they blister and blacken. Cool slightly then peel and chop the flesh. I chopped the onion and stemmed the spinach while the peppers were roasting, though technically, I think you are supposed to do all the prep work at the beginning.
Heat the oil in a large pan and saute the onions and peppers for 5 minutes.
Add tomatoes and 2/3 cup water and season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to boil, then lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
Puree the mixture in a food processor or blender, the put in a clean pan.
Make the malfatti. Trim any thick stalks from the spinach, wash well. Blanch the spinach in boiling water for a minute. Drain, refresh under cold water and drain again. Squeeze spinach dry and chop it finely.
Put finely chopped onion, garlic, olive oil, ricotta, eggs and breadcrumbs in a bowl. Add the spinach and mix well. Stir in flour and a tsp of salt with half the parmesan. Season to taste with pepper and nutmeg.
Roll mixture into 16 small logs and chill slightly (I didn't chill because there was no room in fridge and it was raining outside, but this made it break up a lot more when cooking).
Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Carefully drop in the malfatti in batches and cook them for 5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon.
To serve, reheat the sauce and divide it among four plates. Arrange four malfatti on each and sprinkle the remaining Parmesan. I however, topped it with the sauce. Maybe when I eat leftovers tonight I'll do it the other way. I'd take a picture but my camera's battery is dead.

Spicy Red Lentil Soup

2010-01-23T10:51:00.000-05:00

I made this a couple months ago and haven't written about it yet. This recipe is thanks to the 400 Best Budget Recipes from ctheflute :). I bought split red lentils last time I went to the farmers market and realized that either the recipes with split red lentils were not that good or I didn't like them. But I had about 4 cups that I needed to use. Then I found this recipe. It wasn't the best lentil recipe ever, but it was the best split red lentil recipe I've found and it was cheap and used some ingredients I don't use very often (namely fenugreek and, well split red lentils)

Spicy Red Lentil Soup
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 fresh red chili, seeded and finely chopped*
1 carrot, grated
scant tsp ground fenugreek
2-3 tbsp olive or sunflower oil
1-2 tsp cumin seeds (I would probably recommend ground instead)
1-2 tsp coriander seeds (I used ground)
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 generous cup red split lentils (this means 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp)
7 1/2 cups veggie stock (I'm pretty sure I cut this down to 3 cups veggie stock and 2 cups water)
Salt and pepper to taste

Chopped red onion for serving

Heat oil in heavy pan and stir in onion, garlic, pepper, cumin and coriander seeds. When onion begins to color, toss the carrot and cook 2-3 minutes. Add the fenugreek, sugar and tomato paste. Stir in the lentils
Pour in the stock, stir well and bring to the boil. Lower the heat, partially cover the pan and simmer for 30-40 minutes until lentils have broken up.
Serve straight from the pan or blend for a smooth texture. Sprinkle with red onion.

*Since this will likely be a habenero, you should use gloves to seed and chop it