Entries Tagged 'what i'm eating' ↓

Here’s a favorite thing I make. It is:

• Cheap
• Easy
• Quick, in the sense that it requires almost no hands-on time
• comfort food
• Voluminous. Yay for not having to cook for a few days when I’m trying to write my dissertation proposal.

I just ate a bowl almost as big as my head full of it. Here are the steps:

• Make a pot of brown rice. Let it cool off a bit and put it in the fridge.

This takes about a minute to throw rice and water in a pot, and a few minutes waiting for boilage. Those few minutes may be spent doing some dishes or wiping off the counters or something else useful. And then you turn the heat down and leave it alone for 45 min to an hour. It’s forgiving. Then there’s nothing else to do to it.

Then, make a pot of pinto beans. I guess other beans would work too, but I like pintos best. My recipe is as follows:

• Before going to bed one night, dump the beans in a big bowl and cover them by a couple of inches with water. Put a plate on top so the cats don’t drink the water. (1-2 minutes)
• The next morning, dump out the water, rinse off the beans, and do a cursory look for any rocks. They will not have expanded any in the water, so they will be easy to see. (1-2 minutes)
• Preheat oven to 250°F.
• Put the beans in a pot that can go in the oven at low temperatures and cover them by an inch or so with water. Put on the stove and bring to a boil.
• While it is coming to a boil, I usually add a few things: salt, a pinch of asafetida, a generous teaspoon of ground cumin. If I’m feeling ambitious I peel two or three garlic cloves and toss them in whole. And plop in some dried whole Indian chilli peppers. (5 or so minutes, depending on bean and water temp)
• I usually also dice half an onion while waiting for the beans to boil. Put the cut up onion in a small container in the fridge.
• When the pot boils, put on the lid and pop it in the oven. In an hour, check a few beans. If they aren’t soft, put back in the oven for another half hour. Again, forgiving. It doesn’t matter if the beans get quite soft. Try not to drop the pot when returning it to the oven, splattering your cat with bean juice. (2-4 minutes hands on time)
• When done, let the beans cool a bit, fish out the dried peppers if you have used them, and then put the beans and cooking liquid in a container in the fridge

Now you have a bunch of rice and a bunch of beans. Yawn. But! The beauty comes at each time you need a meal for the next few days.

First, put rice and beans in your favored proportions in a microwave safe bowl.

Then, dress them up and heat them up.

I don’t know what you keep on hand, so these might not work for you, but with my general staples, I choose from the following options or make something new up on the fly.

• Probably my favorite, and what I just finished eating: Dump in a generous amount of frozen collard or turnip greens. After you heat the whole thing up in the microwave, stir in some of those diced onions and a good dollop of mango pickle.
• Heat up with some salsa, cheese, and diced onions. If you are being extravagant and have an extra few minutes, cut up an avocado and stir it in after heating. If you dip your beans out with a slotted spoon on this one, you can then wrap this mush up in some tortillas.
• Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, some sun-dried tomato slivers, and some sliced kalamatas. Some feta cheese makes it even better.

You now have a hearty, yummy, not unhealthy meal.

This usually takes me 5-6 minutes to put together and heat. Almost as good: the dirty dish count is (in my house anyway): a bowl, a spoon, a fork, and a serving spoon.

Now get back to work.

Notes:

• After soaking, you can put the beans in the fridge if you want to cook them later that day. You can freeze the soaked beans so that you won’t need so much lead time to make beans at some point in the future. You can dump the frozen beans in a pot, cover with water and cook as usual. It just takes a little longer for them to come to an initial boil.
• YES, put salt in your beans! You are cooking them in the oven where they are getting heat from all sides, instead of on the top of the stove where the beans near the bottom are really hot and the ones at the top are not. You will find the unevenly cooked, hard beans are not the salt’s fault. And the beans soak up the salt as they are cooking and taste better than they ever could if you just added salt after.

“From food all creatures are produced. And all creatures that dwell on earth, by food they live and into food they finally pass. Food is the chief among being. Verily he obtains all good who worships the Divine as food.” -from Upanishads

Ran across this on a post at Mahanandi, which is probably my favorite food blog right now. I’m back on a bit of an Indian food kick, when I’m cooking at all.

More often than not lately it’s peanut butter on crackers, or ramen noodle/tofu soup, or Warner whipping up some scrambled eggs with some sort of vegetable, etc. in them.

It has been the end of the semester, and I have a very big paper to turn in next Monday. So it has been a little busy/crazy. Plus, we’ve had several +80°F days already, and the heat always makes me lose my appetite for anything but plain yogurt, popsicles, and cucumbers.

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.

I sing the praises of chickpeas. How I love them.

Tonight was a simple dinner that doesn’t qualify as a mush, but feels much the same. It goes together easily in one pot, feels comforting to eat out of a bowl, and makes lots of servings.

I pre-soak beans of all sorts, drain them, and then freeze them in bags. Then I can pop them out of the freezer, bring them to a boil on the stovetop, and them pop them into the over @ 250°F for 40 minutes or so. This isn’t actually quick, but it requires next to no effort. And I’m now spoiled on home cooked beans and canned ones don’t seem as good.

Drain the chickpeas.
Into the now empty chickpea pot, put olive oil.
Heat oil and then add chopped onion and garlic, sauteeing until softened and starting to become translucent.
Dump in .5 lb of frozen okra. Cook until it mostly thaws out.
Add the chickpeas and a big can of diced tomatoes.
Bring to a simmer.
Crumble in a generous amount of feta.
Eat.

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.

So a couple of years ago I started taking a medication. Soon after starting to take the drug, I lost my appetite for coffee. At the time I was drinking at least four cups in the morning and two in the afternoon. And suddenly I didn’t want it. Since then, I’ve been happy with my tea except for the occasional craving for a cappuccino.

But recently, my medication dosage was halved and Warner started making coffee at my house occasionally. Strange, coffee smelled and sounded almost good again.

I tried some Warner made using my Mr. Coffee. Blech. Mr. Coffee just can’t make the kind of coffee I actually like, even when set to Brew Strength: Strong. Nope. Mr. Coffee won’t do.

I’ve wanted a Bialetti Moka Express since Will and I went to Paris and there was one in the apartment we rented. Here’s me using it for the first time in the tiny kitchen:

A Southern Season sells them for some ridiculous price (as per usual), but every time I saw them there I was reminded that I wanted one.

Then, I recently saw a 6-cup model for sale at Target for $25. I almost impulse-purchased it, but came home and did comparative shopping online instead. That seemed to be the going price, so I ordered one at CutleryAndMore.com because I also needed a decent springform pan, which Target didn’t have and A Southern Season would over-charge me for. I was pleased with CutleryAndMore as far as shopping and shipping go.

Somehow I avoided spending more money than I have on a nice knife on sale to replace my Chef’s knife with the cracking handle. (Henckels Professional S 8-inch Chef Knife on sale for $89.95 from $129.95 — drool) I reasoned that I needed to handle a knife before I bought one (logical, true), so I should go to A Southern Season or elsewhere and spend a while fondling and taking notes on knives to shop for them online later.

Anyway, yes, coffee.

My Moka Express arrived yesterday and I made coffee in it. The only coffee we had in the house was some Decaf Espresso Roast that Warner got on Ocracoke (and then asked “Why did I get this decaf?”) and the coffee was still satisfyingly thick and good.

So I am happy. Tea in the morning, coffee in the afternoon.

I went to college in Gainesville, GA. At the time, Gainesville was the poultry processing capital of the world. I once attended the Annual Poultry Festival. I stopped eating chicken when I lived there because of gut trucks. I still don’t eat chicken. My motto became: Fowl is foul. (I confess that I accidentally ate the turkey gravy at Thanksgiving, though, and it was pretty tasty…)

No more chicken noodle soup for me.

Gainesville is a 45 minute - 1 hour drive from Athens, GA. For various reasons I ended up spending a fair amount of time in Athens, though I never did learn to find my way around the town.

One of my favorite things in Athens was The Grit. The “indie-rock Moosewood.” One of my favorite things at The Grit was The Golden Bowl: browned tofu cubes sauteed with soy sauce and nutritional yeast served over brown rice. Now, you can get vegetables and in your Golden Bowl, but I always preferred them on the side, leaving a perfectly beige, perfectly delicious mix of the best tofu you have ever eaten, brown rice, and cheese. Umami and yet just bland enough without being boring. A perfect comfort food.

After I moved outside of easy driving distance to Athens, I was compelled to figure out how to make a Golden Bowl at home because the meal is an addiction. I succeeded. My home-made Golden Bowl hit the spot.

A couple of years later, The Grit published their cookbook. Sure enough, I had nailed the recipe and technique except for that second frying of the tofu that creates a little extra crispiness.

I make mine with tamari instead of soy sauce, and with mozzarella cheese. It is what I’ve been eating for the past couple of days. With veggies on the side, of course.

Here is the recipe: Continue reading →

A wonderful time for strawberry/balsamic vinegar sorbet.

Next time, I’ll use a little less sugar, but overall it is amazingly yummy. And pretty.

Oh wow, Warner and I whipped up the best dinner I’ve had at home in a very long time.

He made tomato pudding. I made sweet potato curry and lemon-roasted asparagus. It was all so good and pretty on the plate–red and orange and green and yellow.

I made up the sweet potato curry as I went along, so I’ll jot it down before I forget…

• Peel 4 small-to-medium sweet potatoes and cut into 1/2 inch cubes.
• Cut one onion and one green pepper into approximately 1 x .25 inch strips.
• Heat up a generous pour of vegetable oil in a large-ish heavy bottomed pan.
• Fry onion and green pepper over medium-high heat until getting a bit soft.
• Add a tablespoon or two of jarred curry paste (I had vindaloo on hand, but others I have tried would have worked just as well.)* Stir to mix well until the fragrance seems to peak.
• Lower heat a bit and dump in a can of coconut milk. Stir to mix well.
• Add sweet potatoes and bring to simmer.
• Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are cooked through.
• Serve with rice.

I’ll write up the lemon-roasted asparagus later. It is one of my mottoes that roasting is the best way to cook nearly anything…

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* I get these on the cheap at the Indian grocery and they are very handy.

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.