Entries Tagged 'cooking' ↓

I also made seitan, using Bittman’s recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. The nibble I had to test done-ness was tasty, but it’ll be better when I actually do something with it.

For reference, here is what I put in the simmering water (6 cups):

• huge heaping tablespoon of brown miso
• generous glug, glug from the tamari bottle
• two cloves garlic, peeled and cut in half
• 2 star anise
• 4 cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• generous amount of alder-smoked sea salt

Into fall and winter… the time for smoky salt and smoky tea…

I’m sure someone has thought of this before, but I didn’t know about it before I came up with it.

So, I’m the queen of multitasking in the kitchen. I turn around to stir something in the middle of measuring out ingredients for something else, and…. oh crap, was I on the third or the fourth half cup of flour?? Argh.

My solution:

• Get a very small container. I use a stainless steel dipping bowl.
• Put some popcorn kernels (unpopped!!) in it. Beans or many other things could also work. I just spied popcorn first.
• Put it in a convenient place.
• When you get to one of these repeated measuring tasks, figure out how many times you are going to need to do the measuring to get to the full amount. For example, the Joy of Cooking Fast White Bread recipe I make calls for 1.25 cups of flour added in .25 cup increments, so I lay out 5 kernels.
• Every time you measure, move a kernel back into the container.

Now, as long as I’m sure I remember to move a kernel every time, I cannot lose count while measuring.

I make myself move a kernel before I’m allowed to put down the measuring implement. Otherwise, I’d just have another problem on my hands.

The predicted thunderstorm has finally arrived, and will hopefully cool things off a bit.

God knows I didn’t this evening. I was very busy in the kitchen. I made:

• coconut-cabbage curry with paneer (I made it up as I went along. It’s a bit spicier than I prefer. It’s ok, but I don’t think I’ll make it again.)
• another made up thing, this one rather divine: a broiled-in-multiple layers eggplant, basil, tomato thingy. Recipe to follow in another post.
• bread (Joy of Cooking Fast White Bread, made with part whole wheat flour)
• pizza dough, 2 to freeze
• pesto with walnuts instead of pinenuts
• yogurt

Whew. I just time out to eat some of the eggplant/tomato stuff and some curry. And now… the dreaded cleanup.

The temperature in the house is finally starting to drop. Just in time to preheat the oven to 450°F!

Yesterday I made:

• a big pot of brown rice
• a pot full of chole
• a stir fry full of carrots, green beans, celery, cabbage, and chewy twice-fried tofu
• Strawberry passionfruit banana lime sorbet
• New York style cheesecake

I also did a lot of dishes.

So the cheesecake is for Warner’s birthday, which is today. I used the basic New York style cheesecake recipe from Joy of Cooking. It is truly a monstrous, formidable concoction, calling for 2.5 pounds of cream cheese (of course I used full fat), 5 whole eggs and two yolks, and half a cup of heavy cream for good measure. It was nearly too much to fit into the springform pan. The top got too dark on one side, but it is nonetheless delicious. I think I like Ken’s recipe better, though.

The sorbet was because Warner got a bag of passionfruits on quick-sale reduced price, and something needed to be done with them. So I made up the recipe and it worked and is delicious.

It is such a good feeling when you know you have learned the skeleton of a certain type of food, so you can start being creative with the recipe.

Item!

Sous-vide now has an Library of Congress Classification number:

Home economics
- Cookery
– Cooking processes
— TX690.7 Sous-vide

One day I want a vacuum sealer and an immersion circulator. And then I make the perfect eggs. Yes.

Today is a day full of Joy of Cooking.

Upon waking, I started the “Fast White Bread” recipe which appears to have turned out wonderfully. It’s not completely cooled yet, so I haven’t tasted it. *taps foot impatiently*

Tonight I’ll use the red beans and rice recipe for dinner. The kidney beans are soaking and Weaver Street Market had andouille sausage.

If I’m very productive today, I might then use the lemon sorbet recipe. But that’s iffy. And I’d have to zest lemons–something I’ve not yet gotten the hang of. I have a zester but either it is of negligible quality, or I don’t have a clue what I’m doing because it is always just an exercise in frustration.

Anyway. As I recently Twittered: “the english muffin is a challenge to those of us who like to spread our butter and jam precisely and evenly.”

But it still tastes good. A lesson? Perhaps.

This is as far as I got on the sorbet today.

As you can see, one is made with orange bitters (instead of the Kirsch called for in the recipe) and the other is made with balsamic vinegar.

As they are now, they are both far too sweet, but I’ve read that freezing takes the edge off of the sweetness. I hope so.

I’ll probably freeze the balsamic one first.

So, if you can’t get a photograph of some food item you have made before the food item has almost disappeared, the food item might have turned out well.

The cheesecake, while not up to being a real food model, turned out very well.

Here is the recipe… Continue reading →

My beautiful friend Maria‘s lovely husband gave her a box of Vosges Collezione Italiano truffles for Valentine’s Day. Lucky girl. Maria was kind enough to give me two of the truffles, as we have been lusting after these particular confections together for years.

And so I came into the possession of the Balsamico truffle (12-year aged balsamic vinegar + dark chocolate + Sicilian hazelnuts) which I have not yet tried. And… the Rooster, described as follows:

Your tasting begins with the Rooster truffle, a mélange of Taleggio cheese, organic walnuts and Tahitian vanilla beans draped in bittersweet dark chocolate. A bit salty, slightly tannic and rich in mouth-feel with an undercurrent of sweetness.

And it may be one of the most exquisite things I have ever eaten. On par with the pink grapefruit sorbet at Berthillon, which stopped me in my tracks on the rue saint Louis en l’ile so that I could lean against a building and taste…

sigh.

After that truffle, I had to pour a glass of wine–the cheapo Alcion Malbec I get by the case at Weaver Street Market that is actually very delicious, especially for being so ridiculously inexpensive. If I were a smoker, I might have had a cigarette…

And, speaking of Berthillon, the ice cream making is so far successful. I am trying the coconut recipe from the previous post. I have succeeded in not boiling the cream or ending up with chunks of egg yolk floating in the cream.

Last night I had dinner at Il Palio with Diane Kelly and a faculty position candidate, Jenna Hartel. Jenna’s dissertation was on information behavior in the hobby of gourmet cooking. At one point during dinner, she explained that there are two categories of food hobbyists: the gourmets and the down-home cooks. The latter are concerned with simplicity and low cost, while the former love the exotic and the complicated, which tends to translate (in my experience) to the more expensive.

Anyway, last night at Il Palio, I ate:

• Local Bibb Lettuces – Oven Dried Tomatoes, Radishes and Parmesan Dressing
• Bucatini all’Amatriciana – House Cured Guanciale, Onion and Spicy Tomato Sauce
• Bailey’s Crème Brulée – Bailey’s, Kahlua, Vanilla Bean Custard

The crème brulée was probably the best I ever remember eating, but the rest was just ok.

And I actually got ill when I got home. Blech.

Tonight is a much more down-home night.

Actually the truth is that I’ve had too much going on to feel like I can stop and figure out what to cook at home, so I don’t have a plan and I don’t have supplies. Sometimes it seems too overwhelming to think about what to eat for the next week and I just blank on it and ignore it. Then nights like tonight happen.

I had a bag of pre-soaked kidney beans in the freezer, so I put those in a pot, covered them with water, brought that to a boil, covered the pot and stuck it in the oven at 250°F for 45 minutes while I made a phone call to a friend and folded my laundry.

When the beans were cooked, I drained them. Diced an onion. Sauteed it in veg oil until it was soft. Threw in the beans. Threw in a couple of cups or so of mixed frozen vegetables, a frozen tablespoon lump of tomato paste,* and a jar of spaghetti sauce. Added some salt, a healthy amount of dried oregano, and a bit of red pepper flakes. Cooked until everything was hot and cooked through.

I cooked a couple of potatoes in the microwave.

Then a big pile of the mush from the stove was piled on top of a potato and that whole mess was covered with shredded “Italian style” cheese, and popped back into the microwave to melt the cheese.

I’m eating it now as I type. Actually it isn’t terrible. It isn’t good, but I’ve thrown together much worse.

And so it goes. After dinner I’ll make a menu for the next few days. And a grocery list.

I’m thinking some sort of curried winter squash. I have a surfeit of coconut milk and basmati rice. Yum.

* I freeze the leftover tomato paste when a recipe doesn’t use a whole can. I wrap individual lumps in plastic wrap and put all the lumps in a storage bag in the freezer.