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Sunday, July 19th, 2009

🦋 Blanched

Here is a chicken salad recipe that I came up with today and brought along to a potluck supper, where it was a hit. It is a good use for leftover chicken.

• All or part of a roast chicken, cut into bite-size pieces.
• 1 head fennel, chopped into bite-size pieces
• 2 or 3 carrots diced
• 2 green bell peppers diced
• 1 red onion diced small
• a head of spinach cleaned and picked

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add carrots and fennel. After about a minute add peppers -- immediately drain and rinse with cold water. Combine all ingredients in a salad bowl and toss with whatever dressing you like -- I used balsamic vinaigrette.

posted evening of July 19th, 2009: 1 response
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Saturday, July 4th, 2009

🦋 Cruda

Today I made a raw tomato salsa that came out pretty well. Here is the recipe:

Note: part of the target audience for this is Sylvia, who does not like spicy food, so there is only a little bit of heat in it from the garlic. Add spicy peppers according to taste.

Salsa Cruda

Spices: (all measurements extremely approximate)

• 1 tbsp. fennel seed
• 2 tbsp. cumin seed
• 1½ tsp. rock salt
• 3 cloves garlic

Vegetables:

• 2 large tomatoes
• 1 red onion
• 1 bunch cilantro

Wash vegetables; pluck leaves off of cilantro. Roast fennel and cumin until the seeds start to pop, i.e. about 2 or 3 min. over a high flame. Grind spices in a mortar; add and grind salt, then add the garlic and mash it all together. This is easier if you slice the garlic fairly thin first.

Dice the tomatoes and onion fairly small, and chop the coriander fine. Put all ingredients in a bowl with a pinch of salt, toss together.

This is ready to use right away but improves with an hour or two in the fridge.

posted afternoon of July 4th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, December 25th, 2008

🦋 Cooking on Christmas

Here is a nice activity for a wintertime holiday which you don't observe, when you feel like staying inside comfortable with your family: Sit in the kitchen listening to/playing music and make stock, then make soup.

Lentil Soup with beef stock

• Inexpensive cut of beef with bones in it.
• Onions, carrots, celery, garlic
• Bay leaves, fennel seed, peppercorns
• Lentils and any vegetables you like -- I am trying Swiss chard here.
• Potatoes and/or rice

If there is a lot of meat on the bones, trim it off and reserve. Roast the bones with some onions, carrots, celery and garlic chopped roughly and some bay leaves, fennel seed and peppercorns. When it is sizzling and starting to brown, put it in a soup pot, fill with water, and bring to a boil. Allow to simmer a half hour to an hour, then strain.

In the bottom of a soup pot, sauté some salted onions and garlic and any meat you reserved from the stock bones. (Bacon might also be a nice addition here.) Add carrots and celery and when it is looking soft, lentils and starch. Sauté briefly and then deglaze with red wine, and add stock. Simmer for an hour or so and season to taste.

posted afternoon of December 25th, 2008: Respond

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

🦋 Two recipes: a snack and a meal

Haven't posted any recipes in a while; here are two -- no real connection between them except that I've made both in the last couple days and both have some tangiential relationship to my parents being in town.

Fruit and Nuts

Sylvia and I were playing backgammon this afternoon and needed a snack. Well my parents brought along with them the fruits of the Central Valley, in the form of a big bag of almonds and a big bag of dried fruit from their friend Indira's farm. It's been a while since I had fresh almonds; they are the bomb. Here's one way to prepare them:

• Roast nuts in a skillet over a high flame. Shake the pan every minute or two so they don't burn. You can sprinkle on top a bit of salt, pepper, cinnamon and sugar. The nuts are ready after about 7 minutes, when you start to smell the toasty flavor.
• The pan will be quite hot; turn the flame off, remove the nuts and put some pieces of dried fruit (peaches, apricots, plums) in. Press them down so some bits of the flesh burn onto the pan. Then pour in about ¼ cup or less of water -- little enough that the remaining heat in the pan is enough to boil it. Put the fruit in a bowl and pour the liquid over it.

Chicken Lo Mein

Thursday morning, my parents took Sylvia to Kam Man Foods, the Asian supermarket in East Hanover, to buy ingredients for making dumplings -- they also got a chicken, a bag of lo mein noodles, and some vegetables.

• One chicken
• ginger
• garlic
• scallions
• soy sauce
• rice vinegar
• bok choy and/or other green vegetables
• mushrooms (those little white ones with the long stem and round cap are best; I don't remember what they're called.)

1. Remove skin and bones from chicken. This is a pain and takes me a while; basically you just pull the skin off and trim away any gristle, and then cut the meat off of the bones. Save the carcass and skin for making stock. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces.
2. Peel and chop ginger and garlic and scallions.
3. In a wok, heat some oil over a high flame. Add the ginger, garlic and scallions and sauté briefly. Then add the chicken and stir-fry until it's just about done. Put some water up to boil while you are doing this and chop the vegetables.
4. Pour some soy sauce and vinegar over the chicken and add the vegetables. Stir well and cover the wok. While this is steaming cook the noodles -- they take about a minute in boiling water.
5. Drain the noodles and stir them into the wok. Serve.

   posted evening of November 8th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, June 6th, 2008

🦋 Salad

Wilted spinach salad is one of my old favorites. Tonight, I figured out how to make it without bacon, since Ellen and I are trying to limit slightly, how much fat we are eating. The figs have a similar flavor profile -- sweet and smoky. The mushrooms give a meaty texture.

Vegetarian Spinach Salad

Serves 2

• about ½ lb. baby spinach leaves, picked, washed, and dried
• a bunch of scallions, washed and chopped
• 5 dried figs, chopped small
  (fresh figs would probably be good too)
• 6 mushroom caps, cut into quarters
• olive oil
• sherry vinegar*
• balsamic vinegar
• grated pecorino romano

Combine spinach, scallions and figs in a salad bowl.
Heat oil in a heavy skillet; when hot, add mushroom caps. Season with salt and pepper and saute a minute or two.
Pour vinegar into pan -- about one part sherry vinegar to two parts balsamic to six parts oil. Quickly remove from heat and pour over salad. Toss salad up into skillet so that it gets warm and wilted.
Top with grated cheese.

This makes a very nice, light dinner served with bread and cheese and red wine.

*(I had some sherry vinegar on hand from when I was making Redfox's Onion Jam recipe -- so I thought I'd use it. It seemed to give a very nice flavor in this dressing, though I can't think of any other salad where it would really be appropriate. It's not an ingredient I'm really familiar with.)

posted evening of June 6th, 2008: Respond

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

🦋 Summertime Salad

Ellen made this salad for dinner last night, and it was very tasty. She remembered it from a Greek restaurant she ate at when she and Sylvia were in D.C.

Watermelon and mint salad

• Watermelon, cut into bite-size chunks
• Bucheron, cut into small pieces (the restaurant used feta cheese; Ellen used bucheron because it was on hand. I think the goat cheese was great.)
• Scallions, chopped thin
• Kalamata olives, pitted and cut in half
• Fresh mint leaves

Mix everything together in a bowl and serve. The juice from the melon will combine with the cheese to make a fabulous dressing.

posted morning of May 20th, 2008: Respond

Friday, May 9th, 2008

🦋 Autumn Leaves

You want to know what is a really excellent pasta? Foglio d'Autunno, is what. I bought a bag this evening to go with the dinner I was making for Ellen, and man -- I don't know if I have ever tasted a more pleasant pasta. It's really surprising, since noodles are usually made in regular shapes; these are like little irregular lumps of pasta in different colors. I recommend it.

This recipe was inspired by A White Bear's Cauliflower Pasta Sauce. (For reasons too complicated to explain in this short context, you can log in to AWB's recipe site using as a password, the initial letters of the phrase "Why Must You Be Such A Little Bitch?") I was scanning through the wiki this afternoon looking for a dinner recipe; my eyes kept coming back to that one. Thanks AWB for reminding me of the existence of asiago cheese, which I had somehow forgotten about.

Modified Cauliflower Pasta Sauce

• one red onion
• garlic
• one head of cauliflower
• a bit of spinach
• grated cheese, asiago or romano

Sauté the onion, garlic and cauliflower in olive oil for a good long time, about half an hour. It's ready when the the cauliflower gets tender and pleasant to bite into. At this point you should put pasta into the water that you have been bringing to a boil.

Add a few handfuls of cheese and the spinach leaves to the pan. As the cheese starts to burn, pour some liquid over it and stir well. (AWB used broth, I used white wine.) Turn the heat down to a simmer.

When the noodles are ready, toss everything together in a bowl and serve.

posted evening of May 9th, 2008: Respond

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

🦋 Dinner

Ellen came up with a very tasty recipe this evening:

One Pot Wonder: Baked Monkfish and Italian Sausage

adapted from Real Simple. Serves 3.

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 sausages, cut into small chunks
• 1 lb. Yukon gold potatoes, sliced thin
• 1 leek, white and light green parts only, halved lengthwise, rinsed, and thinly sliced into half-moons
• ½ cup low-salt chicken broth
• pinch of crumbled saffron threads
• kosher salt
• black pepper
• ¾ lb. monkfish fillet
• chopped parsley for garnish

Heat oven to 400° F.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and brown on both sides. Add the potatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Add the leeks, broth, saffron, pinch of salt, a couple of grinds of pepper. Bring to a boil.

Rinse the monkfish, pat dry, season with salt and pepper. Place on top of potatoes and drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Transfer pan to oven and bake until the fish is cooked through, about 15-20 minutes. If potatoes are not ready, take out fish and wrap in foil, until the rest is done. Serve with parsley on top.

The parsley (along with a little bit of oregano) was the first use our new herb garden has seen.

posted evening of May 8th, 2008: Respond

Friday, May second, 2008

🦋 Dinner

You want to know what is a really nice feeling? Thinking of a recipe while you're at work, for which you have a couple but not all of the ingredients; coming home, taking a walk to the (new! good!) market in town;* finding exactly the ingredients you were thinking about; bringing them home and making dinner and having it come out just like you had planned.

Shrimp and scallops, with saffron cous-cous

(to serve 2)

• ½ lb. small shrimp
• a few scallops
• 1 head basil
• about ½ lb. snow peas
• 1 can baby corn
  
  
• 1 cup dry cous-cous
• 4 cloves garlic
• a pinch saffron

Prepare all ingredients beforehand as this is a quick dish to cook: wash the peas and basil, drain the corn, chop the garlic. Peel and vein the shrimp.

Heat 1 cup water in a small saucepan, with a bit of butter, about half the garlic, and ½ tsp. salt. Heat about a Tbsp. canola oil in a wok over high flame.

Stir-fry garlic, shrimp and scallops with a pinch of salt until shrimp turns pink, about 2-3 min. As water comes to a boil, remove from heat and stir in cous-cous and saffron. (I was going to put a little nutmeg in, but I forgot.) Cover pan. Add snow peas, basil, and corn to wok and stir until everything is hot and wilted, a couple of minutes.

Toss cous-cous with a fork. Serve immediately. Boy, this is tasty.

For dessert we had fruit salad with chocolate and crème fraiche, which is not really worth writing out as a recipe because it's pretty intuitive. I recommend such a dessert highly.

* South Orange has a market! This is something new. It is Eden Gourmet. They have close to everything I want in a market. Prices are high but what can you do -- they are competitive with Whole Foods, the other grocery option around here; their produce looks to be better and cheaper than Whole Foods. Their grocery selection is absolutely better and wider than Whole Foods; on items that both carry I think the prices are roughly similar.

posted evening of May second, 2008: Respond

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

🦋 Equipment Maintenance

For a while my A string has been fraying and in need of replacement -- tonight I put a new string on. Well a couple of things about this: it took a frustratingly long time to get it on and wound properly, a job that should take less than a minute. So I'm frustrated about not being skillful at it. But more, I don't like how long it took me to get around to doing it -- I get intimidated by stuff like this in a really not useful way.

Both of these things are also true of sharpening knives, and it drives me crazy that all the knives in my kitchen and most of the blades in my wood shop are not sharp the way they ought to be, and how intimidated I get at the thought of making them sharp. I'm not sure how to approach this.

posted evening of March 15th, 2008: Respond
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