Corn Salsa

One of my favorite summer treats (which I can eat as an entire meal) is my fresh corn salsa. On hot days I don't have much of an appetite, so it's nice to just eat some cool vegetable packed salsa. I've made it the past few summers when I'm home, and my dad now requests that I make it whenever I visit. Unfortunately, last year I made it right in the midst of the tomato/jalapeno/cilantro contamination and ended up with salmonila, which was awful. But it's still one of my favorite foods, cool and refreshing, yet flavorful and interesting. The recipe I've been making was inspired by random varieties I've found at markets, one a teammate on the swim team made, and a recipe a friend sent me a few years ago. I've been working on perfecting it for some time now. Since it's Cinco de Mayo, we are having a Mexican feast for dinner, so it's only fitting to make salsa today (one of the first things my dad said when I got off the plane was that he wanted fresh salsa), and I made a double batch since I would be home, likely eating it for every meal for the next few days. This time I made it a little different, the onions were way too strong to put in fresh salsa, and it was a little bland without onion, so I added a few shakes of cumin and it was as tasty as always. It's definitely customizable (some use avacadoes, vidialia onions, green onions, garlic, or red bell peppers, plus there's probably other varities I haven't considered, also, as I mentioned you can add cumin, red pepper or chili powder), but this is the blend I like:

One can (or half a bag frozen and defrosted) corn
One can black beans rinsed and drained
One large tomato, diced
One jalapeno, minced
One green bell pepper, diced
1/2 to 1 red onion, diced
Cilantro, to taste (which for me means probably around a quarter of a cup, and I always wish there was more), finely chopped
dash salt
juice of 1/2 lime (make sure it's a nice, heavy juicy one)

Combine first seven ingredients. It's important to make sure you cut everything small enough for it to distribute evenly, this is especially important for the onion, jalapeno, and cilantro, but it's easy to cut the the green pepper too big too. Add lime juice and mix thoroughly. Add salt as needed (I like to just dip a few salty chips in to test it, and usually need very little additional salt).

Also, I should probably tell you to wear gloves when you chop the jalapeno, like all responsible recipe-givers would, but I don't. I've made it enough that I'm pretty much tolerant of the capsaicin in the peppers. The heat of peppers is similar to heat in temperature, as it can physically burn you, which is why when something tastes spicy, we say it tastes hot. It's the same reaction. However, unlike the heat in the temperature sense, we can build tolerance to the heat from spicy foods (capsaicin being chemical that makes things spicy) by gradually building up the spicy food you eat. This doesn't mean that they won't be spicy, and you do have to push to a little bit of a burn (just like exercising) for it to do anything, but it makes it easier to tolerate.

The Winning Bread

So I've been baking bread for some time, and this was certainly one of my favorites. It made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches FANTASTIC. I just wanted to eat them all the time. It was also an easier bread and it turned out really well. I cut it in half because the blog I found it in said she double it. That and I can only handle one loaf at a time and didn't have room for it in the freezer. I found the recipe here. I guess it was from the King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour bag. I ran out of whole wheat flour at about 3 cups, so I substituted a cup of all purpose flour (I guess I could have used bread flour but this was shortly before I moved and it was packed already). This was definitely my favorite and I will make it again. I'll let you know if something bad happens next time.

Daring Bakers Long Overdue

So I found this circle of blogs, called Daring Bakers, where each month they present a baking challenge and all the members blog about it with their own unique twists. I'm not officially enrolled, but I've done a few (and I might do one more when I go home) and haven't posted them. I'm not going to do the most recent because it's cheesecake. Ew. I'll do the "grad student" twist if you didn't gather that from the concept of this blog. The first one I did was the February challenge (which was posted at the end of February, so you could do it in March, yeah, it's a little overdue for me to post) for a friend's birthday. I was looking for a good chocolatey treat without frosting, and stumbled upon this Chocolate Valentino Cake. I didn't make the ice cream like they told you to because, well, there isn't (well, wasn't) any room in our freezer. That was one of my grad student sacrifices. I did make cocoa whipped cream though. So:

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Use your favorite chocolate – the finished cake will taste exactly like the chocolate you use. Be creative with your chocolate. I used Trader Joe's 70% Cacao chocolate, I probably could have just used dark, but I liked it this way.
- A higher cacao percentage increases the bitterness of the chocolate.
-Equipment - it is optional to use a heart shaped pan. For a real Valentino, bake it in a heart shaped pan or cut it out into a heart shape. You may use any shape pan that gives you an area of 50” - 6x8 or 7x7. An 8” spring form pan works with great results as do smaller pans or ramekins.
I didn't have any of these (my spring form pan came back with me after spring break, but this was before for my friend's birthday) so I used a regular 8" pan and wasn't able to unmold it, we just ate it out of the pan.
-An instant read thermometer highly recommended. (this is one of my top birthday presents)

Note on recipe - the recipe consists of 3 simple ingredients and how you interpret them is part of the challenge. The simplicity of this recipe gives credit to the ingredients much in the same way of French baguette.
-This recipe comes together very quickly with a hand mixer.
-This is a very decadent cake that will sink a little as it cools but will still hold its shape.
-Very dense and fudgy cake that tastes divine.
-The top forms a light crust kind of like a brownie

Chocolate Valentino
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter.
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes or until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Notes: I overbeat the egg whites, which made it a little dry. Don't do this. If I made it again I would first, of course, use my springform pan, and second probably be a little more experimental with it. I might throw some cinnamon in it since I love the chocolate/cinnamon combination.

Also, cocoa whipped cream:
I pint whipped cream
Dash vanilla
cocoa (to taste) I went light on it to just provide a subtle tie between the cake and whipped cream. No one appreciated it, including me, since I don't like whipped cream, even when it's chocolate flavored

Beat the ingredients.

Kale!

So after going to the farmer's market last weekend, I've been making lots of kale recipes. And actually, they didn't end up being that different (I didn't want to make soup because the weather was warm). So I made White Beans and Rigatoni, I threw some extra fresh basil in it and replaced the canned tomatoes with a bell pepper I had cut up already, also I left out the mushrooms. It was kind of bland. I also made Bean and Kale Ragu, which was pretty good, and I took a picture, which is above. The only comment I have here is that fresh oregano is much stronger than I expected, so I did what I do with basil, cut it very coarsely and put about twice as much as it called for, and this was a bad idea with oregano, just to warn you. I cooked it down a little more.

Finally, my favorite kale recipe of the week was Kale Puttanesca. My modifications: I used fresh tomatoes instead of canned, I left out the anchovies because I dislike fish (especially anchovies) and the olives, which yes, I'm sure makes it less authentic, but I wouldn't eat it otherwise, and as always, I added extra garlic (or maybe I just used to large cloves, I forget). But this was a great dinner, a nice light, spicy pasta dish. It seemed like the perfect warm weather night food, and was complemented perfectly by mint ice cream for dessert.

Actually, I think this was the majority of my cooking for the week...

Pseudo-Indian Feast

So I'll be cooking a lot this week/weekend so be prepared. The reasons for this: 1) I went to the farmer's market today and 2) I'm moving a lot of my stuff, including most of my pans and what not. I'm cooking ahead, so I can have a bunch of reheatable meals for the future weeks.

So today, I made Indian Flavored Vegetable Pancakes, which aren't too expensive when you go to the farmer's market and get all your veggies and spices for next to nothing and a great way for someone like me to eat veggies. I also attempted a new dahl: Red Lentil Dahl, another ridiculously nutritious for the buck meal. I used red split lentils because that's what I bought today (and I misread the recipe) and reduced the oil by a lot. The were both great dishes and went well together. I forgot plain yogurt for the dipping sauce for the pancakes, but I'll pick that up tonight, I kind of think they needed the lime flavor.