Rice and Beans

Whole Wheat Bread

2011-12-01T20:13:00.000-08:00

I decided to make bread. It's the season for baking, and I'm getting tired of so much sugar. Candy, cookies, cakes, pies, brownies, eggnog... it's all getting me down. I don't like to be down. So I got some dehydrated fungus and made a bread out of it. Please, go make some more. It's not difficult, and you don't need any fancy equipment.

Just an oven, really.

WHOLE WHEAT BREAD

2 1/3 cups warm water (110°F is ideal, but anywhere between 105° and 115° is fine)
1/4 cup honey
2 packets (1 1/2 tbsp) active dry yeast
3 tbsp shortening
1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
3 cups whole wheat flour
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1 tbsp sea salt

1. Dissolve the honey thoroughly in the warm water. Whisking does this pretty effectively. It will take longer with old honey that has crystallized some. Yeast loves to eat sugar, but will get overwhelmed if there are huge bits of undissolved sugar, so it's best to take care of that before the yeast enters the pool. When the honey is dissolved, whisk in the yeast.

The yeast should mainly fall flat to the bottom of the container. Let it sit for a few minutes (five or so should do it) to allow the yeast to wake up. You'll know it when it does.

2. While you wait for the yeast, melt the shortening with the molasses until it's just barely melted (you don't want it too hot because you'll be adding it to the yeast; you want happy yeast, not dead-from-burning yeast).

It should be done melting about the same time the yeast is done blooming. It should look pretty foamy on top of the water.

3. Whisk the shortening/molasses into the yeast water really well. In a separate bowl, mix together both kinds of flour and the salt really thoroughly. Add about 3 cups of the flour mixture to the yeast mixture and mix it until there is naught but smoothness. I tried doing it with a spatula but had to revert back to a whisk. It should look like batter and smell kind of good.

4. Now you can add the rest of the flour. Mix it in a bowl, either with a wooden spoon or your hands, until you get a big craggy-looking ball of dough and all the flour is mixed in.

5. Dump it onto a countertop that has been thoroughly sanitized since the last time the cat was up on it, and start to knead. Push, fold, turn. Over and over and over, constantly moving and working the dough for five minutes. It should look considerably smoother afterward.

Take a brief rest; wash your hands if you want, drink some water. Then get back to kneading and do it for five more minutes. It should look smoother still, but the difference this time will be much more subtle. You are now done kneading the dough.

(By the way, during the early stages of my time kneading the dough I thought about how much easier it would be with a KitchenAid stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. I could just watch it spin and knead and not cramp my fingers. But then I considered the fact that people making bread in the Middle Ages didn't have a KitchenAid stand mixer at all, not even one that was not fitted with a dough hook. This made me feel delightfully smug that I was kneading dough the right way. The original way. But it occurred to me furthermore that people in the Middle Ages also didn't have an electric oven to bake their bread, or an electric stove to melt their shortening and warm their water, and still they baked bread. So then I felt as though I need to make my own oven and power it by fire if I want to really make bread right, and melt my shortening in a hand-forged pewter mug over the firepit. My common sense told me, however, that I was unlikely to fashion myself a firepit or fire-powered oven in the near future, and would then probably just buy bread at the store if I was to refuse making it altogether if I had to utilize the help of electricity. It hit me, then. I was finished kneading and I had reached the conclusion that I, much like the bread-bakers of the Middle Ages, was simply using the best tools I had at my disposal. No shame; no wrong. But if you have a KitchenAid stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, or something, you can probably just use that.)

6. Put some water on the stove to boil, and place a rimmed baking sheet in a cold oven. Oil a very large bowl and place the dough ball in it. Roll the dough around to coat it all over with oil, so it doesn't stick to anything when it expands.

Then dust a clean kitchen cloth with flour.

Place it over the bowl, flour-side down. Then it won't stick. Pour the boiling water into the baking pan in the cold oven, and then place the bowl with the dough on a higher shelf in the oven and close it up. Leave the oven off (should be warm and steamy in there, though). This will be the first rise; it will last about an hour and a half.

7. Take the dough out of the oven after about an hour and a half. It should be doubled in size from the yeast eating sugar and farting all over and stretching out the gluten with its gaseousness.

8. Deflate the dough and divide it into two very equal clumps. This is best done with a sharp knife, so you don't tear the dough too much. Pat out one at a time into a relatively even rectangle (about 9"x12").

Roll it up so that the roll is 9" long, and pinch the seam closed. Plump it up so it's relatively the same width all over, like so:

Do the same with the second blob of dough.

9. Place the rolls seam-side down, each in a thoroughly greased 9"x5" (or similar size) metal baking pan and press them out a little so they touch all four sides.

Cover again with the floured towel. But don't keep them in the oven this time, because you'll need to preheat it (also, take out the rimmed baking sheet with water in it. You won't need it again).

10. Preheat the oven to 400°F, while you let the dough rise in the pans for another 45 minutes or so. Your time may vary, but when they're done, the sides should just barely be clearing the top of the pan.

11. Stick the pans in the oven, carefully so you don't deflate the dough, right next to each other. Bake them for 35 minutes. If you have an instant-read thermometer, check one of the loaves before taking them out (should be between 200°F and 205°F). But if you don't, and they look done, they probably are.

12. Unmold immediately and place them on a cooling rack. If you don't, they'll get soggy; yuck! Mine didn't get soggy. Look how pretty they are.

You're really supposed to wait until they're cool before slicing, but I didn't, and nothing terrible happened. The inside was all steamy and the butter I put on it melted right up and it was pretty heavenly, to tell you the truth. Look how perfect the inside is. My bread is awesome.

Unless you're going to eat the bread within three days, it needs to be kept somehow. Dried as croutons, frozen, or *gasp* in the refrigerator. Not ideal, but trust me when I tell you that it will mold quickly. It lacks the calcium propionate of Wonder Bread to prevent timely spoilage. I don't think they had that in the Middle Ages, either.

Lentil Stew

2011-11-10T13:25:00.000-08:00

So, I had this jar of dried little French lentils sitting in the back of my cupboard. Before I moved to Arizona a year and a half ago, it was sitting in the back of my food shelf in Washington. I'm pretty sure it traveled around to at least three different places of residence with me over the years. Anyway, I rarely cook with lentils.

It may be because they do not share the American culinary ubiquity of, say, black beans or pinto beans or chickpeas. Lentil burritos? No. Refried lentils? No. Lentil hummus? No. But I'm actually inclined to believe that my reluctance to use them originates in my childhood.

We had dried lentils in our pantry, too. They were in an old cylindrical plastic food container, opaque with scratches, with a yellowed snap-on lid. A little paper label on the front read, in my mother's handwriting, "LENTILS." I don't know how long they'd been there (probably about as long as my French lentils stayed unused in my own supply).

It was afternoon. I felt adventuresome, and I wanted candy (bear in mind, not that it changes the story, but I was about 5 or 6 years old at the time, and my parents weren't the type to freely give candy to their offspring). Bored with my usual crime of grazing on pinches of flour out of the container, disillusioned by my recent experience trying to eat baking soda (it looked like flour), and probably running dangerously low on tubed decorative icing nabbed from the spice cabinet, I remember distinctly that I decided to broaden my horizons a bit.

"Lentils," I wondered. I didn't know what those were. I evaluated the shape of a lentil. It was notably comparable to the shape of an M&M. But lentils were smaller, and relatively colorless. "Flour has no color," I thought. "Flour tastes good." As it often does, my sense of exploration overcame my trepidations. I took a small handful of lentils, and I ate them.

The texture was unpleasant. Hard, stale, and simultaneously crunchy and chewy, they had no satisfying give when masticated. The lentils tasted like old, musty rags. I remember making a face and thinking something along the lines of, "yuck," as I grabbed a second handful and swallowed those whole. Positively gag-inducing; certainly no better than the first bunch and likely a little worse. I remember tossing back another handful and a few more individual lentils before deciding, with great disappointment, that this venture was better abandoned.

I don't remember what went on for the rest of that afternoon and evening, but I do recall with clarity the feeling of nausea. The continual aftertaste of musty rags. A dull, building headache. Rolling discomfort in my stomach, and the wrenching quease that never brought relief. I tried to bring them back up to no avail. I didn't want to tell my parents because, well, it's embarrassing when you intentionally eat a bunch of dried lentils and then feel shitty. Besides, I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to snack on dried goods out of the pantry.

(Looking back over this experience, it seems apparent that, as a child, I had some sort of eating disorder.)

In any case, lentils have never really enchanted my adult self like other legumes. I got the French lentils during some crazy scheme I had one day to have available in my own personal store, every type of dried legume on which I could get my hands. You know, just in case I needed them for something.

After about four years (read: a few weeks ago) I decided to finally cook up my lentils and serve them in a coconut-squash soup. I was excited, because it sounded good, and it's soup season. This is all really beside the point, because it took about 2 hours for the lentils to mostly cook, and the soup didn't really turn out that well.

I don't like giving up on myself, though. I got more lentils (regular ones, this time) and made a soup in which to put them, using neither squash nor coconut milk. It turned into a stew, but whatever. It's amazing when it's cold out. And cheap, which is good when you're living more in the red than you've ever lived before.

LENTIL STEW

1 cup dried lentils, rinsed and picked and then cooked
cooking oil
3 stalks celery, all chopped up
3 carrots, all chopped up
1 onion, all chopped up
2 lbs potatoes, all chopped up (1/2 inch cubes is great)
5 cloves garlic, all chopped up
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
few leaves kale or spinach or other green, all chopped up

1. Cook the lentils in 2 cups of water until the water is absorbed and the lentils are thoroughly hydrated and not at all crunchy. This can take anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour, depending on how old your lentils are. Stir every so often toward the end, and add some sea salt to taste.

2. While the lentils cook, toss the carrots, celery, and onion in a little cooking oil in the bottom of a stockpot and put it on medium-low heat. I was going for a sweetening-of-the-onions effect, but I didn't consider the fact that the carrots and the celery were hanging out too and they got kinda bored in the pan. That, and I didn't even have a whole onion to work with like I'd planned. Just half. So... that didn't really do anything. Make sure to stir them every so often.

3. While the vegetables are cooking, you can cut up the potatoes. I like red potatoes. You can leave the skin on, and the texture is nice, and they don't fall apart too much.

Look. Look at that relative uniformity.

4. Maybe, by the time you're done chopping, the vegetables will have relaxed rather a lot in their pot. They cooked in there nice and slowly for about 20 minutes. Maybe more. I don't remember, to be honest.

5. Toss the garlic, oregano, thyme, paprika, salt, and red pepper flakes into the cooking vegetables and let that cook another minute or two.

6. Add the potatoes to the pot, and cover with water. I think I added about 6 cups total. Add the bay leaves. Give it a bit of a stir, cover, and turn the heat up to medium-high to bring to a boil.

7. After it's boiling, reduce heat to medium-low again and cover the pot just partially. Let it simmer away until the potatoes are tender, then stir it every few minutes for 10-20 minutes more, so some of the potatoes break up and thicken the stew. Yeah. Then it gets good.

8. Dump in the lentils. Stir it up a final time, and taste for salt. Add if necessary. You can add your green bits at the end. I leave them out altogether and drop them in when I'm heating up individual portions for leftovers. They should really only be hot for 5 minutes or so. Otherwise they go rather limp and become somewhat gray. Not appealing.

Cooked lentils are easier on the stomach than are dried lentils, come to think of it. They're a lot more palatable in general. There's nothing to fear from lentils in a stew, anyway... especially this one, since it's amazing. Slightly spicy, but it's cold out so that's warranted.

That's really all I have. Go forth and consume more expensive things in my stead.

Green Rice (and Things That Go With It)

2011-06-23T22:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't really been cooking much lately. I think it's because they raised my rent but not my wages and I can't afford food anymore. So I haven't really been eating much lately, either. Let me tell you, it's like poverty for an eater like me to live on so little food. I should stop doing anything social and just spend my money on healthy comestibles, I suppose. I reduced my grocery budget but not my weekly coffee/pastry budget. It's funny the things we choose when we have to choose, you know?

(What's actually funny is that I have an entire shelf in my cabinet full of dried pasta. But honestly, I'd rather go hungry than eat plain pasta with no sauce. And I have no sauce, so the pasta is just sitting there. Yes, it's true. I make tons of sense. I promise I'm not complaining.)

But once in awhile, a lady needs a square meal to hold her down. And I really wanted to cook something; I've been in a slump. Originally, I was going to go with risotto. But I've been out of the game for some time, now, and making risotto seemed daunting for someone hungry, devoid of energy, and out of practice. It's got the wine... and the broth... and all that stirring. Actually, just thinking about making risotto makes me want to take a nap right now.

The alternative? It's comparatively cheap and easy. Green rice. It's pretty much just finely processed vegetation into which cooked rice is stirred and heated.

And you can't have just rice, regardless of color, for dinner. Not in my home, anyway. So I sauteed some shrimp and made a really [un]healthy salad of avocados and hearts of palm with grape tomato wedges. I swear, it didn't look big on my plate. But now that I've consumed it all I happen to be one stuffed duckling.

You can have whatever you want with green rice. I've had it with panfried trout. I've had it with black beans and smoked salmon tacos. I think it actually goes pretty well with seafood. I guess maybe because the sea is green, too.

GREEN RICE
based on Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without

a bunch of cooked rice (3 cups or so), white or brown or both
4 green onions, cut into lengths of whatever handlable size you prefer
big handful each of spinach leaves, parsley leaves, cilantro leaves, and mint leaves
olive oil
2 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
sea salt 'n' freshly ground pepper
chopped walnuts, pecans, or whole pine nuts
lemon wedges

1. Cook your rice however you like; unless you have some cooked on hand. If you start with 1 to 1 1/2 cups of uncooked rice, you'll end up with the right amount. I always rinse it first. I guess it removes starch and makes it less sticky after it cooks.

After you cook it, set it aside to prepare your green things.

2. Toss all your leaves and green onions in a food processor. Maybe a blender works too, but I don't know. I guess you could also spend 3 hours chopping it into miniscule pieces by hand. But I live in Arizona now, and that's not how we roll here.

Process away until it gets as fine as it will get and sticks to the sides instead of processing further.

3. Heat some olive oil in a pan over medium heat. When it gets hot enough, toss in the garlic and stir around for a little less than a minute, and then add all the green stuff.

Stir this a lot over the course of five minutes. Try to prevent it from sticking to the pan; this shouldn't be a problem because of a) all the water in the leaves, and b) the oil you've put in the pan. Or you could use a nonstick pan, if you want cancer of the body.

After five minutes, it should look pretty much the same, albeit a little drier.

4. Now is the time to add rice, and season to taste with a fat pinch of salt and some pepper. Just dump it in and stir it well enough to coat all the little rice grains with green. At first it might seem an impossible task. But plug away, o friend, and you'll be amazed at how far the green truly stretches.

If the starchy, starchy rice sticks to the pan, turn off the heat and add a little water and stir it around. This should make it possible to unstick the sticky bits. I like to cook with a wooden spatula, which makes a good firm yet unsharp scraping surface for pans. It unstuck the rice like magic with a little water.

5. Meanwhile, toast some nuts.

Shown above are chopped pecans. Pine nuts work best, but I didn't have any and they're pretty dad gum expensive. I have a bunch of pecans in my freezer, though. I thought, hey... they're fatty and soft like a pine nut. Why not? So I used them. Just toast them in a little pan for several minutes over medium low heat until they start to smell, then stir them a lot until they start to darken, and then transfer them to another container. Put some on the rice when you serve it.

6. Whip up whatever else you're having. I made a quick avocado and heart of palm salad a la My Kind of Food, except I added tomatoes. I then sauteed peeled, deveined shrimp very quickly in some olive oil and garlic, and took it out and sprinkled some sea salt and red pepper flakes on it. Don't forget the lemon wedges - one for the shrimp, and one for the rice. And there we have it, kids. A square meal for a hungry lady.

The soundtrack for the making of this meal was provided by the Jimmy Cliff station on Pandora Radio; the digesting, Paul Simon; the blogging, Alice in Chains. I am surprised I've never mentioned it before, but it's the sagest of advice of which I am currently capable:

Always cook with music.

Month o' Pies, Week 5: Mince Pie

2010-12-31T15:28:00.000-08:00

O ho! I have returned to bring you the fifth and final December pie. ~~Never mind that I'm posting it in May; I have backdated this entry to appear as though I stuck with the program. Muahaha.~~ I actually did make the pie on time, yes precious. For New Years! And I haven't blogged since then because this had to be posted first, and it was a bit of a daunting task.

This really is one of my favorite pies, although many people claim not to like mince pie. I think the offending factor might be the slight bitterness in the citrus peels combined with the heavy spices, which themselves are ever so teensily bitter. I like it because it's strong and warm-tasting, and not sickly sweet. The flavors have balance. Sometimes you need a little bitterness to drive the cold winter away. Plus, you can always add a little freshly whipped cream.

On a different note, do you have any idea how impossible it is to find organic candied orange peel? Seriously. It's completely impossible. So I have to make my own, which is kind of tedious but not actually that difficult. If you don't care if your orange peel contains the pesticides of centuries under all that sugar and that its production contributed rather heavily to toxic runoff into streams, it's much easier to just buy a container of candied orange peel. But just in case you want to make your own, here's how.

CANDIED ORANGE PEEL

3 orange peels, quartered and pith scraped out a bit
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup water
sugar for rolling

1. Start by blanching your peels. This takes out a good deal of bitterness from the pith, and softens the peels for candying. Cover the peels with water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil 5 minutes, then drain. Cover with water again. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 more minutes, then drain again. Do this one more time. Then you'll have a pan of blanched peels.

2. When the peels have drained, and cooled a little, cut them into 1/4 to 1/2-inch wide strips. You can set them aside for a few minutes.

3. Add the sugar and water to your saucepan and heat until it boils and comes to 230°F on a candy thermometer. If you don't have one of those, you'll just have to wing it.

It should get very bubbly, and be careful - it's much hotter than boiling water and will stick to you, so try not to splash around in it unless you want severe burns.

4. Add the orange peels and reduce the heat just a little so that it continues to simmer but isn't so angry about it. You want to maintain the heat, but not cook down the syrup so much that it doesn't cover the peels anymore.

Aim for 30-40 minutes of simmering, and check it frequently to make sure the peels are still covered. When they're done, they'll look slightly translucent.

5. One by one, remove the peel pieces using tongs and toss them into some granulated sugar and roll to coat. You can then put them on a cooling rack covered by a piece of parchment paper and simply wait for them to cool. Neat, huh?

So that's how you make candied orange peel. You'll need it - but not all of it - to make a good mince pie.

Oh, did I mention that mince pie (mincemeat pie) used to be made with meat that had gone off, and is heavily spiced to cover up the bad taste? That's pre-refrigeration for you. Later (and now) it's not made with bad meat - or good meat, for that matter - but instead with beef suet. Beef suet is not a delicacy in which I partake, so I find that using butter makes for an awfully good non-beefy mince pie that instead features the flavors of fall fruits. Thank you, Cook's Illustrated.

I should also note that this pie can take the better part of a day to make if you're not prepared. If you have done it before and/or know what you're in for, you can crank it out in about 4 and a half hours.

MINCE PIE

Crust (I found a winner!)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
10 tbsp shortening
1/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
6-8 tbsp ice water

Filling
3 lbs flavorful, local, in-season apples (at least a few Grannies in the mix makes it interesting)
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup currants
zest and juice from 1 orange and 1 lemon
1/4 cup diced candied orange peel
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups (maybe more) fresh, local apple cider (this is important! If you're in the Seattle area, I recommend Minea Farm in Woodinville for this one)
1/3 cup brandy

1. For the crust, mix the flour with the salt and sugar as well as you can. Cut in the shortening until it's pretty well mixed but a little sandy-looking. Then cut in the butter until it is almost as mixed as the shortening, but with a few pieces here and there. Add the water (try just 6 tbsp at first) and fold it all together until you can make it adhere to itself. Divide in two pieces, wrap them up, and refrigerate until you need them. You can also save this step for when the mince filling is cooking.

2. Peel, core, and dice your apples. By hand, this takes forever. And I'm not gonna lie, my grandma sent me a peeler-corer-slicer and I FREAKING LOVE IT. What usually takes me at least half an hour took me about five minutes.

It cored, peeled, and spiral-cut all the apples in less than five minutes.

All I had to do was trim the peel bit at the end (maybe eat it) and add cross-cuts to dice them, which also took less than five minutes. You want about 1/4-inch pieces. Chuck them in a large stockpot.

3. Add to the aforementioned stockpot the raisins and currants, citrus zests, juices and peel, brown sugar, spices, butter, and a cup of the cider. Toss it a little to combine.

4. Heat this pot over medium-low until it starts to simmer. It will take awhile, but that's OK. The first time I made this pie, I got too excited and burned it in my attempts to simply make it simmer faster. Don't do that. Actually, you don't have to do much of anything at this point, except let it simmer. For like, three hours. It will let out liquid.

Stir it a bit every so often so it doesn't scorch. Just make sure it's on the lowest heat that will allow it to continue simmering. You don't want to over-stir, either. I did that the second time I made this pie and it turned into a spicy jam pie. Not nearly as exciting.

5. Over time, it should gradually darken and smell absolutely divine.

The lighter bits are the pieces of Granny Smith, and the translucent bits are the pieces of other apple kinds. That's why it's nice to have a mix of apples; you also get a mix of textures and some independence of flavors. But not necessary, if all you have is a bunch of Pippins or Galas or something, you should be ok. Just keep simmering. It's a good time to make the crust, this three hours. You don't have to do it beforehand.

6. If you really need to, as it's cooking down ever so slowly, you can add a touch more cider. But only if it's threatening to scorch and is all dried up, which it shouldn't be at the proper heat. It should be gradually getting slightly viscous with just the smidgeniest bit of apple-butterness to it. After three hours it should look roughly like this.

At this point you should stir every few minutes. No more than three minutes in between, but don't stir it constantly, either. Cook like that for 20 minutes, and take out that pie dough from the refrigerator.

7. Now you can stir in the last half cup of cider, and the brandy. Now it really smells good. Cook that down just ten more minutes, and preheat the oven to 400°F.

8. So. That crust you have that's been refrigerated. Roll half of it out to a 12-inch circle and put it in a 9-inch pie pan, and put all the mince filling into it. Trim the edge to about half an inch beyond the lip of the pie pan.

9. Take the other crust half, roll it out to a 12-inch circle, and use a crimped-edge pastry roller to cut ten evenly-spaced strips in it.

10. Using all the cleverness at your disposal, lay the strips on the pie - five going one way, five perpendicular to that - and weave them. It's really not that difficult. Lay down all the ones going in one direction first. Then, as you lay down the other direction, just lift up the ones you need to lift to get the dough underneath and in a weave pattern. You can figure it out. Trim any overhang to match the lower crust.

11. Although you may have used up your cleverness, hopefully you still have some skill left in your fingers to crimp the edge as nicely as I did.

Bake that pie in the lower third of the oven for 45 minutes. If your oven runs hot on one side, rotate the pie halfway through baking. It doesn't hurt to cover the edges of the crust with foil at that point, too. They like to burn, as evidenced by my final product.

Regardless, this mince pie was really good.

And THAT concludes pie month.

Month o' Pies, Week 4 (part 2): Cranberry-Pecan Pie

2010-12-30T22:59:00.000-08:00

This is the pie I didn't know I was going to make. After all, nobody expects a cranberry-pecan pie, do they?

People had all sorts of interesting and helpful suggestions as I was wracking my brain to come up with a fifth pie for pie month (yes, I know it's only the fourth, but they aren't in any particular order). Everything from Nesselrode pie to crème de menthe to chocolate pudding to the abominable cherpumple. But cranberry-pecan - it sounded so simple, yet so unique. Different from all my other pies. Thank you, Miss Amy the koala keeper, for the idea and the recipe!

I baked this pie in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. I think that's probably why Santa never showed up. He knows when you're awake, see, and doesn't want you to glimpse him, so he skips your home. I also don't have a chimney, and I lock my doors and windows, so he'd have had a time of it anyway.

Let me just say that organic (non-GMO) corn syrup is frustratingly difficult to find. The only one I can find is by Wholesome Sweeteners, but it has vanilla in it already. I didn't really know how to adjust my recipe (which calls for vanilla) to accommodate, as I saw no instructions on the corn syrup bottle - so I just used half a teaspoon of vanilla instead of one teaspoon. It seemed to be fine.

It's actually kind of an easy pie. Or maybe I'm just settling into the piemaking groove. But there was no prebaked crust to prebake or meringue to beat or even apples to peel and slice. Just dough, some filling, and a good hot oven.

CRANBERRY-PECAN PIE
filling recipe courtesy of Steve Evans, pie extraordinaire

Crust
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp shortening
3 tbsp cold cubed butter
3-4 tbsp ice water

1. Make the dang crust. You should know how by now. Mix up the flour and salt and sugar. Then mix in the shortening really well. Then cut in the butter until it's just a little crumbly. Then fold in the water, quick as a bunny, until you can make it just come together in a ball. Less water is better, if you can get away with it.

2. Roll it out to a 12-inch circle. Put the dough in a 9-inch glass pie plate and trim the edges, fold them under, and flute.

Filling
6 oz chopped pecans
about that same volume in fresh or thawed frozen cranberries
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 little wee bottle of bourbon (1-2 oz)
pinch of sea salt
3 tbsp butter, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F for at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, mix up the chopped pecans and cranberries and put in the crust. It should fill it about halfway. Don't skimp on the cranberries. I wish I'd added more.

2. Whisk together the eggs, brown sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, bourbon, and salt. Just mix it until the brown sugar is more or less dissolved. It should be dark and kind of thick.

3. Drizzle in the butter, and whisk as you go. It should sort of creamify the whole thing. It'll be a little less apt to bubble thinly.

4. Slowly pour all this into the pie shell to fill in the gaps between the pecans and cranberries. It should get relatively close to the top but not spill over (if it gets too full and you still have more, bake it in a separate ramekin.

5. Stick it in the oven, and bake somewhere in the range of 45 minutes to an hour. The center should be a wee bit jiggly, but not very much and not as much as the pumpkin in the previous pie. I had it in for an hour, but I probably didn't need that much time. Anyway, you should definitely smell it.

Serve these pieces small; they're sweet. They are fantastic with brandied whipped cream (as found in the "pumpkin" pie recipe), or regular whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream.

Another successful pie, made and (mostly) consumed. I'm beginning to think I cannot fail at pie.

Month o' Pies, Week 4 (part 1): "Pumpkin" Pie

2010-12-29T16:52:00.000-08:00

This December has been difficult.

Aside from it being my first Christmas away from my hometown (home state, even), I unexpectedly lost a very good friend, who was quite close to my heart, to cancer. Most people that know me know that the most important part of my life is my cats. It's true, of course. Tom had been with me for 17 years, since he was a kitten and I was only eight. I miss him terribly. It's been almost two weeks and I'm definitely still reeling.

Forgive me for skipping a few weeks of pie baking and blogging, but sometimes other parts of life take priority, you know?

As they say, however... the show must go on. How can it not?

I actually made two pies last week, within two days of each other, right before Christmas. I'm more or less back on schedule, as long as I make my final pie tomorrow.

This pie is pumpkin. "Pumpkin," rather. It's actually made from another type of winter squash called "kabocha." Kabocha squash comes in different colors and varieties; the one I used is one of the more common ones, simply named "green kabocha." I used to find several varieties at the University District farmer's market in Seattle, but this one I found at a Scottsdale Whole Foods.

It's a little sweeter, drier, and more flavorful than a sugar pumpkin (the kind used for most pumpkin pies). This is my second year making it, and I think it turns out rather well. I only take issue with the top cracking. It's not necessarily unattractive, and certainly doesn't make it taste bad, but it is a little alarming. I can't help but picture tiny piewalkers skipping merrily along the top of the pie and falling to their deaths in the fault lines. Ah, well.

"PUMPKIN" PIE

credit goes mostly Cook's Illustrated for the pie filling and whipped cream recipes
1 kabocha squash

1. Start by preheating the oven to 350°F. Wash and cut your squash in half, whichever way allows the halves to be the flattest. I cut mine along the equator. Scoop out the seeds. Place the squash halves in one large glass dish (or two smaller ones, depending on how they fit) with a half-inch to an inch of water.

2. Bake for 90 minutes, until the whole thing is soft. It should look soft, smell like sweet squash, and be sort of glistening all over. Let it cool completely (remove from water as soon as you can).

When it's cool, scoop out the flesh (you can eat the skin, too, but it's not as effective in the pie).

Crust
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp shortening
3 tbsp butter
3-4 tbsp ice water

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Make the crust as in the previous pie (only, it's a single crust instead of a double). That is; mix together the dry ingredients, mix in the shortening until it's finely crumbly, and cut in the butter until it's coarsely crumbly. Then quickly fold in the ice water until you can make it come together in a ball. Since it's a single-crust pie, don't split it in half.

2. Roll out the dough ball on a floured surface to a 12-inch circle (flouring it more if it starts to stick). Transfer it carefully to a 9-inch pie dish (folding in quarters works), trim, patch, and tuck under the overhanging edge, and flute prettily.

3. I tried something new this time in an attempt to make crust-prebaking more successful. Since my crusts tend to shrink, I decided instead of just using pie weights on foil, I'd also put a second pie plate inside the crust, to hold the sides so they couldn't shrink.

If you have something that fits a little better, you can try that. Anyway, bake the crust like that for 25 minutes, remove all the foil and weights and second plate, and bake another 5.

The crust didn't shrink, but the pressure on the sides from the other plate resulted in strange little indentations from the foil.

Oh well.

Filling
2 cups baked kabocha squash flesh (18 oz if you're weighing it)
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp sea salt
2/3 cup cream
2/3 cup whole milk
4 eggs

1. While the crust is baking, make this. It should take roughly the same amount of time as the crust takes. If you have a food processor, use it to puree the squash with the sugar, spices, and salt. Puree it until it looks even and not at all stringy (kabocha is not a very stringy squash, so this shouldn't be too much of an issue).

2. Chuck this mixture into a saucepan and heat it up over medium heat until it starts to get mad. When it's starting to get quite hot, start stirring it to prevent the bottom from scorching. It should look dark like chocolate.

(When it's really hot, and spitting a bit, and shiny, the crust should be just about ready to come out. Take the crust out of the oven, put the oven rack on the bottom, and turn the oven up to 400°F. Set the prebaked crust on top of the oven (but not on a burner) to keep it warm.)

3. Keep stirring the squash and add the cream and milk. Whisk them in until it's well mixed, and bring it up to a simmer. It should be more pumpkin-pie colored at this point. When it's reached a simmer, take it off the heat.

4. Don't worry about cleaning the food processor, just toss in the eggs (well, not in the shells) and whir them up until they're foamy and mixed. Just a few seconds, really. Keep it running and start cautiously pouring the squash mixture through the feed chute.

(By the way, I don't know if a blender works quite right for this recipe, but if you don't have a food processor, it doesn't hurt to try one).

Once you have about half of it through the tube (with the machine running), turn off the machine and dump the rest of the squash in. Run the processor 30 seconds, or until everything's all mixed together.

5. Hopefully your pie shell is still warm. Pour the filling (as much as will fit, anyway) into the crust. If you have leftover, save it (put it in a pourable measuring cup, even) and add it in a few minutes.

6. Bake the pie on the bottom oven rack for 5 minutes - you can now add the rest of your filling if necessary - and continue baking for 20 more minutes or so. When you take the pie out of the oven, the center should be slightly wiggly (but not super wiggly) if you gently move the pie plate around. I think mine was a teeny bit underdone (could have taken 5 more minutes, maybe), but every pie is different.

Put it on a wire rack. It should be all puffy and delightful.

After it cools at least an hour - preferably more - the top will have settled. It will have gotten quite shiny, and may have developed cracks. I don't know how to avoid that, but it's not really a big deal, anyway.

Whipped Cream
1 1/3 cups chilled cream
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp brandy

1. Mix the cream and sugar in a bowl.

Beat it until it starts getting voluminous, then add the brandy. Beat it just a tad more until it holds its shape. I overbeat it slightly, completely by accident, but it didn't turn to butter so it's not too horrible.

Really, it will turn into butter quite quickly, so be careful.

Serve a piece with a spoonful of whipped cream, and you'll find you have an extremely delightful slice of pie.

So, my little Tom, I know you would enjoy stealing some of this pie while it cools. Just as you have enjoyed stealing sweet potato pie, and apple pie, in years past. It makes me sad to know I can leave it out on the counter now and never find sections of crust inexplicably missing, but wherever you are - I bet they have tons of pie.

Month o' Pies, Week 2: Apple Pie

2010-12-09T12:41:00.000-08:00

Three pounds of apples down, six more to go (more applesauce and apple crumble, I am thinking; but that's neither here nor there).

Last week I naïvely thought that making a pie a week meant that I couldn't realistically eat all the pie without some help and would have to give some pieces away (or at least freeze for the future). I am often stingy with the food I make, though; it is crafted from expensive, thoughtfully sourced ingredients and put together in an extremely time-consuming fashion, and frankly - most people don't care, they just want free food. Nonetheless! 'Tis the season for generosity! For charity! For giving and sharing and selflessness! Besides, how can I possibly consume a whole pie in a week by myself?

I don't know, but somehow I managed. The lime'on meringue pie was quite delicious, might I add, but I must now experience the karmic nagging pangs of guilt of not sharing such a bounty. This week will be different. I have apples up the creek (and they were free). I can give some of this away. I intend to. Maybe I'll bring it into work.

Some of it, anyway.

(Maybe my New Year's resolution should be to be less of a greedy fat kid)

This is one of the easiest pies to make. No beating of egg whites or chilling dough 32984029384 times. You can even slice it warm. It's not an all-day pie. In short, anyone can make it, as long as they have the ingredients, a pie pan, a rolling pan, and a working oven. Or if you're crafty, maybe only the first one.

The no-chill-required dough I must credit to my mum, although I made some changes to it to suit my tastes.

APPLE PIE

Pie
3 lbs apples, whatever variety as long as there's something tart in there - I had a mix of Granny Smiths and Golden Delicious and Gala
1 tbsp lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
fresh grated nutmeg (how much? I don't know, maybe 1/8 tsp)

Crust
2 cups flour
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt (next time, I will increase this to 1 tsp)
1/3 cup shortening (again, try to spring for a non-hydrogenated, organic brand like Jungle. Spectrum works in a pinch, but is a bit crumbly for my taste)
6 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
5-7 tbsp cold water

1. Peel, core, and thinly slice the apples. Ha! I did this last week and froze them. So it was pretty easy for me, I just put them in a bowl. Anyway, they should be less than 1/2-inch thick, or they won't cook all the way. I don't like crunchy apples in my pie. Toss them with the lemon juice.

Mine are a little brown from freezing and thawing. I don't really care; they're going in a pie.

2. In another bowl, whisk the sugar for the pie with the flour, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. This is your pie seasoning. Don't put it on the apples yet, they'll get too soupy as they sit. Make sure you mix the sugar well with the other stuff, because otherwise it may not mix evenly with the apples. I don't like encountering pockets of nutmeg in my food, and you probably don't either.

Set this, and the apples, aside for later.

3. In a largish bowl, whisk the flour for the crust with the sugar and salt to combine. Then cut in the shortening with a fork or pastry blender and mix as well as you can, so it looks kind of like wet sand. Except more like fatty flour.

4. Add the butter to the flour and shortening, and cut that in too. If the pieces are too big to start with, you'll have to work harder. You want to blend it pretty well. The whole thing should be kind of a pale yellow, but you don't want it to be so well blended that there aren't itty pieces of butter here and there in it.

5. Sprinkle a few tablespoons of water over the whole thing and quickly fold with a spatula to combine as much as you can. Add a few more, and do the same thing. Don't add any more than 7. After about 5, it should look kind of shaggy, like this:

When you get there, you just need a smidgen more water. Add it and continue to fold.

6. When you think you have enough water in there for the dough to stick together, or you've reached 7 tablespoons, take the dough out onto the counter and squoosh it together a few times with your hands. Don't ever overwork it. Just make it come together in a cute ball.

7. Separate the ball into two equal-sized pieces. These will be your top and bottom crusts. Flour the counter, put one piece of dough on it, and flour the dough. You're ready to start rolling it out.

8. Roll it, rotating it as you go so you roll all parts evenly. When it cracks, just pinch it back together. If it starts to stick, flour the top and flip it over. Try to keep it circular.

It should end up to be about 1/8-1/4-inch thick.

9. You can now transfer it to your 9-inch pie plate. Fold in quarters and quickly pick it up and plop it in, and unfold it again. Make sure you ease it into the corners of the pan.

Leave the overhang for now.

10. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Roll out the second piece, the same as the first. Leave it on the counter and work on the apples.

Toss the apples with the spiced sugar mixture, until the sugar appears to dissolve and the apples let out a bunch of liquid.

Then you can put the apples in the bottom crust...

...and the top crust on the apples.

11. Trim the crust all the way around so you have an even amount of overhang all around (about half an inch). If there are some lacking areas, supplement with the cut-off scraps. Then pinch the top and bottom crusts together and fold everything underneath so you get a rounded edge all around that is flush with the pie dish.

Flute! However you prefer.

Cut some slits in the top. They don't have to be fancy.

12. Place the whole pie in the middle of the oven, with a baking sheet under it (on the next rack down, preferably) to catch any fruit juice that bubbles up through, because there probably will be some. Bake for an hour.

In the meantime, you need to do something with your pie crust scraps.

Some people make cookies with them (sprinkle sugar on the top and bake). Some people throw them out. Some people even eat them. Really, who would do that?

I won't tell if you won't.

13. When your pie is done, it should be a light golden brown, with the edges a little darker, and fruit juice may or may not have come bubbling up through the crust. If so, that just means your pie is wild and free. Take pride.

Happy holidays, and joyful baking!

Month o' Pies, Week 1: Lime'on Meringue Pie

2010-12-04T18:18:00.000-08:00

Sometime in between having an unnaturally intense craving for lemon meringue pie, procuring nearly 10lbs more of free, organic, blemished apples, becoming ecstatic at finding a Kabocha squash at Whole Foods, and feeling the pull of my family's holiday tradition of making mince pie, it occurred to me that there was something I could do.

Make pies. Lots of them. I will make a pie a week this month. I will fill December with pie.

My plan is this. To satisfy my most immediate of cravings, I shall make the lemon meringue pie. Since it will be the furthest pie from Christmas, I do not feel too bad that it doesn't contain any traditional holiday charm. Then, in a yet undetermined order, I will make apple pie, pumpkin pie (enter the Kabocha squash - it performs like pumpkin, but... better), mince pie (minus the rotting meat, if you please, I prefer my mince pie to be on the fruity side), and - but wait, there are 5 pie-making opportunities in December.

!!!

The last one is TBD. So far I'm leaning toward something of a pecan-cranberry. My requirements are that it has to be of-the-holidays, and completely different from all the other pies I'm making.

We'll see how things go.

So, while I'm sitting here, blogging, I might as well talk about the pie I made this week. I had the most unfavorable realization during my grocery shopping that there are no organic lemons to be found in any one of four Whole Foods, two Trader Joe's, or even a Fry's. Since my recipe (and any good lemon meringue pie recipe) calls for lemon zest, conventional lemons of indeterminate origin are a deal-breaker. Why yes, I will have an extra helping of those oil-soluble pesticides.

But it's like I always say, when life doesn't give you lemons, make your pie with limes.

For one reason or another, organic limes are not difficult to find right now, and I happened to have some in my very own refrigerator. I was afraid, however, that by using juice and zest from exclusively limes, I would never be able to really satisfy my craving for lemon meringue pie. Enter my lovely Lakewood lemon juice from a bottle. Don't cringe, snobbish foodie, good lemon juice from a bottle will not make your pie taste bad. Nor will it mine, for that matter.

Lime'on meringue pie was born.

LIME'ON MERINGUE PIE
thanks (mostly) be to Cook's Illustrated

Crust
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp cold shortening (I use Jungle Shortening, which is an organic blend of sunflower oil and sustainably produced palm oil)
4 tbsp cold butter cut into bits
5 tbsp cold water
2-3 graham crackers, all crushed up

Lime'on Custard
1 1/2 cups cold water
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
pinch o' sea salt
6 egg yolks
1 tbsp lime zest
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 tbsp buttah

Meringue
1/3 cup water
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
4 egg whites
1/2 tsp vanilla

Crust
1. Start this pie by making the crust. It has to be prebaked because of the liquidity of the filling, and the fact that it takes longer to bake than meringue. Now. Whisk up the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt) in a bowl, then cut in the shortening with a fork or pastry blender. Mix it pretty well, it shouldn't be chunky at all.

2. Cut in the butter. Make sure it's cut up in small pieces before you start, or you'll have terribly overworked pie dough by the time you're done.

Mix it in until it's crumbly. Not chunky, and not sandy, but crumbly. You'll know.

3. Drizzle the water all over the top, and mix it quickly with a spatula. Folding it is best, as you don't want to stir it too much or it'll be tough. Just keep mixing it until it starts to stick together. You can use your hands a bit. Give it a squeeze. Don't use your hands too much, or the butter will melt and that just sucks. When you can make a shaggy/flaky looking lump, it's good to chill. Keep it covered in the fridge for an hour.

4. After it's thoroughly cold, you can roll it out. Here's where this pie crust becomes special. Instead of dusting the counter with flour, you need some of this.

How much you use really depends on you. I used two normal-sized graham crackers and got the right amount, but I suppose I could have used more.

Anyway, put some graham cracker crumbs on the counter, with the dough on top, and some more crumbs on that, and start rolling.

Roll it until it's a big circle, about a foot in diameter. Whenever it threatens stickage, add more graham cracker crumbs. If you can, make the circle relatively even, unlike mine, because it's much easier to fit into a pan and trim.

It should look like a big piece of pie dough with a bunch of graham cracker crumbs forced into it.

5. The easiest way to get this into a pie dish (for me, at least) is to fold it in half, and then in half again, and pick it up carefully and quickly and put it in the pan. I've tried the whole "roll it on the rolling pin" thing, and it always ends badly. Either way, you should end up with this (in a 9" pie dish, by the way):

There should be some overhang. Just trim where it's long and supplement where it's short, and tuck it under all the way around, so the folded edge is flush with the pie plate edge.

Then, using all the skill you can muster, flute the edge (that means crimp it). You can either do what I did and make waves with your fingertips, or press down with a fork all along the edge, or make a neat circle of thumbprints, or leave it plain. I do what my mom taught me.

6. Here comes the frustrating part. You have to chill the damn dough again. For 40 minutes. And then 20 in the freezer (next time, I'm using my mom's recipe, with no chilling required). 10-15 minutes before you take it out of the freezer, preheat your oven to 375°F.

When the extremely cold pie dish comes out of the freezer, cover it double with foil (stagger the corners for maximum coverage) and put in two cups of pie weights. I only had one cup of pie weights, so I used some really old dried cannellini beans to supplement. The weights help keep the crust from shrinking too much, or puffing on the bottom. The foil keeps it from getting burnt on the surface.

Bake it for half an hour, then remove the foil with the weights inside. Leave the crust in for 12 minutes more to finish cooking and brown.

It was around this point that I realized that in my adding a lot of cannellini beans to my pie weights, they had mingled amongst themselves and I now had to fish out all my individual pie weights to put them back in their little jar. Whatever. Next time I'm just getting more pie weights.

Oh, and my crust still shrunk. :( Not the end of the world, but it always makes me sad, and it always shrinks. Maybe it's the pie weight insufficiency.

So anyway, that's how you make the crust. Set it on a wire rack to cool all the way. It doesn't really take all that long.

Lime'on Custard
1. When the crust is cooled, or nearly so, start on this. Whisk the water with the sugar and cornstarch and salt in a saucepan, and put it over medium heat. It should look cloudy-white.

It is of the utmost importance that you get all your ducks in a row, like, right now. Arrange your ingredients as follows, from closest to the saucepan to furthest from: egg yolks, lime zest, lemon juice, and butter.

2. Whisk your saucepan's contents every so often as it heats up. When it starts forming weird clear spots and starts simmering, whisk a lot. It should have gotten more clear overall.

While whisking, slip in the egg yolks, two at a time. Whisk fast, because you don't want the yolks to cook before they're evenly distributed. Keep whisking.

Add the zest. Whisk. Add the juice. Whisk. Add the butter. Whisk until it melts and then comes to a hearty simmer. Keep whisking.

And then take it off the heat and cover it with parchment. Some would say plastic wrap, but to them I reply, "I do not someday want mutant babies." The idea is merely to prevent a top skin from forming, and to keep the whole thing very warm.

Woah, surprise! Your filling is done.

Meringue
1. My favorite part! Egg whites beaten into complete and utter submission. Start virtually the same as last time, but just mix the water and cornstarch in a teeny saucepan over medium-low heat and keep whisking until it gets all thick and goopy. Then you can set it aside.

Then set aside a small bowl with the sugar and cream of tartar mixed together. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

2. The star of the show, of course, are un-blemished, un-tainted, un-impressive egg whites. It all begins with a bowl (copper is amazing for beating whites, but any metal bowl is good, glass will do in a pinch, but for the love of cheese do not use plastic). Put the whites and vanilla in it.

I don't recommend attempting this by hand. I've done it only once, with help, and it was not fun. Fortunately I have an electric hand-mixer with a whisk attachment. Really, any electric mixer will do. On low speed, mix up the egg whites and vanilla until it gets frothy and the egg whites are no longer... you know... mucousy.

3. Little by little, add the sugar mix to the egg whites while beating it up. Keep the speed low, you really don't want to rush it. By the time you're done adding, you should be at the soft-peak stage or nearly there. If you're not there yet, keep beating until you get there.

"Soft peaks" is when you lift out the whisk and the egg white holds its shape, for the most part, but droops over at the point. It looks like a Santa hat.

4. Now it's time to add the gloopy cornstarch mix. Again - little by little. Keep beating in between. In the meantime, take the parchment off of the lime'on pan and return it to low heat to ensure its hotness.

By the end of the cornstarch-gloop-adding, you should be nearly at stiff peaks. If you're not there, get there. Be very careful, and check every 5 seconds or so when you're getting close. If you go too far, something happens to the egg whites and they just... dry up and collapse (much like we all will do, some day). There's no saving them then, so don't get there. Stop beating when you get to stiff peaks. It is much like soft peaks, but the point does not droop. It looks like a witch's hat.

5. So now, you can put your pie together! Pour all the lime'on filling into the cooled crust, as shown.

Then, carefully, put the meringue atop. Go around the edges first, and adhere the meringue to the crust in all places. This ensures two things. 1: the filling cannot escape between the meringue and the crust, and 2: the meringue will not shrink away from the crust in the oven.

Then pile the rest of it in the middle and smooth it all around. Yes, there's a lot.

Oh! And then take a spoon or something and make it stick up all over the place. Then it'll have peaks, and they'll brown.

6. Pop it in the oven for 20 minutes. Take it out to cool on a wire rack, and do not cut until it's completely cool. This takes practically forever. I had to go to bed and have it for breakfast, it took so long.

But then you can cut it, and eat it, and be smug that you have pie when others do not.

And that, friends, is lime'on meringue pie done right.

Cantacoco Smoothie

2010-11-24T14:23:00.000-08:00

You know how sometimes, life just starts getting crazy and you can't keep up your habits? Yeah.

Actually, it pleases me when these things happen. Most of the time. After all, most of my habits only exist to prevent me from getting bored. If I know what I am going to do at any given time, I don't have to wonder about what I'm going to do at any given time. But... sometimes something neat happens, and it prevents me from completing my habitual activities. For a whole two and a half weeks I was unable to a) run in circles every other day, b) blog midweek, c) pine about missing my cats and my friends 24 hours a day. I went home to Seattle for awhile, and came back with the two sweet kitties whom I've been missing more than anything else.

None of this is relevant to my post, of course, save the part about being unable to blog midweek for awhile. I meant to, at one point. I made a delightful red kale and golden beet salad, but I never actually got around to typing up a post. Such is life.

So now that life is settling down, I bring you a smoothie. Because I am a fan of fruit, and you should be too.

Oh! And it's evil, I mustn't forget to mention. (My goal for the week, you see, is to use my powers for evil.) Clearly it's evil, as none of my ingredients were sourced even a little bit locally. Well, I guess the cantaloupe comes from Mexico, and I am closer to Mexico than I used to be. But honestly - it's not even the same country. None of them are from the same country as me, none are from the same country as each other, and none of them are in season. HA! How's that for evil?

(Please, though - somebody, stop me from coming up with all these ridiculous names for things.)

CANTACOCO SMOOTHIE

fresh young coconut (they look like... well, see below)
small-medium ripe banana
1/4 small-medium cantaloupe

This (above) is what a fresh young coconut looks like. The white part is just a fibrous cover over the round coconut (like the ones you may be used to seeing), and it was taken out of a big green thing, which you probably will never see. Fresh young coconuts are full to the brim with clear liquid, which tastes like cool, sweet, refreshing water. The flesh is white, and soft and a little jellylike - unlike that of mature coconuts (the round ones with the brown hairy husk). Most of the ones you find in stores are from Thailand, and mine was no exception. They are at Asian markets and some natural food stores, and perhaps normal grocery stores, but I wouldn't know.

1. Get into your coconut. Take a sharp, large knife (I prefer to use a standard-sized chef's knife) and shave the fibrous part off the top of the coconut. You'll have to go around shaving bits off in a circle, but it should take you about 30 seconds total.

2. Hold the coconut in one hand, and take your knife in the other and tap the sharp heel of your knife (hard) all around the top of the coconut in a circle.

This is not difficult, because the weight of the knife does most of the work. You don't have to grip the handle super hard or anything. But you will have to hit it kind of hard. Experiment until you get the right amount of pressure. You should hear it crack when you get in.

3. Carefully pop off the top, and there will probably be some liquid that spills out. It should be super full.

Pour this liquid through a strainer into some kind of container. It's ok if little fibers get into it. You'll never notice them. If you're super anal about that kind of thing, you can strain it through a coffee filter or paper towel.

4. You should have a coconut and a top of a coconut. Use a spoon to scrape out all the flesh into another container. This is easy peasy. When you're done, take care to remove the hard bits of shell that may be clinging to some of the white flesh. A little bit of brown stuck to it is fine, but no hard bits.

5. YAY! You are done with that bit. Now you can cut up a cantaloupe quarter, as shown.

Remove the seeds from the center, and then cut once down the middle (like you were cutting it into two long slices, but don't go through the rind), and slice it many times across, then run the knife around underneath everything. Ta da! Another 30 seconds.

6. Put all the coconut flesh, half the coconut water, the cantaloupe, and a sliced up banana into a blender. Or, if you don't have a blender but have a wand blender, into a bowl.

I wasn't sure if I wanted the whole banana or the whole quarter cantaloupe, so I only added half of each at first. But then after blending and tasting, I decided to add the rest. And then I blended again. You should just add it all the first time and blend once.

It's a pretty simple breakfast smoothie. If you like, you can add some plain yogurt to it. I like it as is. It's not as thick as some smoothies, but I don't care. If you want it thicker, and colder, you can pre-cut and freeze the cantaloupe and banana ahead of time and blend them frozen into it. But whatever you do, don't add ice.

I like this smoothie, (and other smoothies using the same model), because it doesn't taste like watered-down under-ripe fruit. It tastes strong. Strong and good.

Speaking of strong fruit, maybe some day I'll make a smoothie with durian. If you haven't had durian, be sure to try it. Another Asian market find... just make sure you don't open it in a less-than-well-ventilated area. Outside is best.

Enjoy your exotic fruiting.

Shadow Cupcakes

2010-11-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

There's more than one way to celebrate a birthday.

So long as it includes cake, of course. You can have layer cake, sheet cake, angel food cake, chiffon cake, cheesecake, coffee cake... or cupcakes... and really, even if you don't like cake, you probably like cupcakes. Who doesn't?

My mom always wants the same kind of cake for her birthday: what she calls "shadow cake," which is chocolate cake covered in vanilla buttercream and drizzled with dark chocolate ganache. She likes it made with Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake mix. Hahahaha. No.

Unfortunately, I have yet to master the art of devil's food cake from scratch that is a) dark, b) rich, c) moist, and d) fluffy (aka not dense). And since I don't use cake flour, the going is even tougher. But I make wonderful chocolate cupcakes, that are proven popular to her palate, so this year, I did that instead. And they're vegan, to boot (which nobody seems to care about, since rarely do I feed them to vegan people). Complete credit for just about everything I used goes to Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero for the masterpiece Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. That is a book worth getting for anybody that makes cupcakes, vegan or not.

SHADOW CUPCAKES

"Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
"Fluffy Vegan Buttercream Frosting" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, only I used butter instead of margarine and cream instead of soymilk, and cut the recipe in half (nobody was vegan, and we already had butter, so why not? it's less processed anyway)
"Quick Melty Ganache" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

1. I can't tell you exactly how to make these cupcakes. But I'll sort of walk you through the basic steps, if for no other reason than to show you that it's easy. You really should get the book.

Anyway, like many a baked good, you start by preheating your oven and preparing your pans. In this case, line a muffin pan with cupcake papers. A word to the wise: even the neatest, brightest-patterened papers will be lost to chocolate cupcakes. You just won't be able to see them. Foil liners work well, or plain liners. I used these nice parchment ones.

2. Then you want to curdle your milk/soymilk with some vinegar for a few minutes. After 10 minutes or so, put it in a medium bowl with some oil, sugar, and vanilla.

3. Get ready your dry ingredients. Flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. You can sift it all together, and then whisk it up. Or, what may be better (but I haven't tried) is to whisk it up first and then sift it together. This part I like, because it looks like cake mix. Heehee. It kind of is, too.

4. Take the wet ingredients and beat them up good with a whisk. It should get good and foamy.

In two batches, add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients. In the first addition, stir gently to mostly incorporate it. When you add the rest, you can whisk it nicely until it just looks like batter. Not super lumpy batter, but don't beat it to death, either. 10 seconds of whisking heartily should do it. There should be no dry pockets.

5. Put it in your liners, which should be ready, if you've done the thing properly. It works awfully well to have an ice cream scoop with a release mechanism on it, so you can portion out roughly 3 tbsp of batter per cup. But if you don't, gently pouring it or using a small ladle should work fine. If you get some on the pan, just get it with your finger and have a taste. Try and clean messes off the pan before you bake, especially ones between the pan and a liner, because it will be very tough to get the cupcake out intact if there's stray, unbound cupcake between the liner and the pan. It acts as a nice adhesive.

The top of the batter should be a little ways from the top of the liner. Try and get them relatively even.

6. Pop in the oven and bake for a reasonable amount of time. Take them out when they're done (do the toothpick test on the largest one. This is where having a good oven comes in handy. Cheap, old, and no-good ovens like to see-saw their temperatures around when you're baking, causing the cupcakes to become confused and fall either in the oven or just after you've taken them out. Fortunately, cupcakes with chocolate seem less prone to this problem, and my mother has a good oven.

It's ok if they're a little domed, but they shouldn't be all muffiny on top, lest some schmuck calls them "muffins." If someone calls your cupcakes "muffins," do not give them one.

7. Cool the cupcakes in the pan on a wire rack 10 minutes, and then on a wire rack naked but for their papers until they're room temperature.

Taking them out of the pan can be tricky if you're a novice. I start by gently turning them with my fingers. If they turn easily, they are not stuck and will be easy to remove. If they don't, then I gently pull the sides away (again, with my fingers, or a knife if you're brave) until they can turn. Keyword: gently. And then, deftly grab the sides of the top with your fingers, pull it straight out and pop it right into your palm (the less time you spend holding the top and not the rest of it, the less likely the top is to come right off). Put it straight down on the rack (liner side down). Be careful with metal liners, they're hot. And the whole thing may take some practice; I certainly got a lot of practice picking up hot, just fried donuts and dunking them in toppings when I was a baker at Mighty O Donuts. The worst thing ever is to pull off the top and leave huge, awful fingerprints in the sides. Do not do this.

8. After (and only after) the cupcakes are cool, make the buttercream. I almost always use the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes when I make buttercream, which is equal parts of shortening and non-hydrogenated margarine (I used non-hydrogenated shortening and butter, in this case, because I had some), beaten together with sifted powdered sugar added, with a little bit of soymilk (I used cream, as it gives it just a little lightness, when you beat, it that I like). You beat it a few minutes until it's fluffy but not lumpy (if you beat it too long, it gets lumpy). And then, if you have a pastry bag and a neat fat spiky tip, load it up :)

9. Pipe a swirl on each cake. I start at the center, straight out to the outside, in a circle coming around back to the center again. But you can do it however you want. Or just spread it on, which tastes just as good but doesn't look as fancy.

When you're done, they'll all look kind of the same. This part actually only takes about 30 seconds (for all the cupcakes put together).

10. Make your "shadow" part using dark chocolate and cream. Heat up the cream first, and take it off the heat when it's steaming and stir in chocolate. Keep stirring until the chocolate is melted. You may then put it in a baggie with the teeniest bit cut off the corner. You can also use another pastry bag with a small tip. It's a bit too thick to drizzle with a spoon, and if you try it might just land in large glops and destroy your nice piping work.

Depending on how fast you are making cupcakes, it shouldn't take you too long. Maybe 2 hours start to finish. They actually cool quite fast, provided their wire rack is not sitting atop the oven the whole time.

And watch out for cats. They'll eat your work. They'll eat it right out of the pan; right off the rack. My suggestion is to put it in a cabinet to cool, or atop the refrigerator if your cats are old and relatively infirm and/or incapable of jumping up there. Unless you want to watch it cool, which is an option as well, but no promises that your cats won't eat your work while you're looking at it, too.

Black Bean Tacos

2010-10-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

There are so many different kinds of tacos. One could dedicate an entire blog to tacos alone.

But I have many other things I'd like to cook, so I'll just settle for this post. Maybe in the future, I'll do another post about tacos. Salmon tacos. Tofajita tacos (I made that up, and I like it).

In these tacos, as I am wont to do, I used black beans - as opposed to, say, pinto beans or red beans. I have this thing where I feel like the darker a food is, the more nutrient-rich it is. It's not entirely true, of course, but I like to think it. In that light, black beans are the best thing ever.

So I made up these tacos, and I don't know the first thing about authenticity when it comes to Latin American food (or any food, for that matter), but that's not all that important to me. What's more important, is that it's nutritious and delicious, and preferably colorful. And that, these are. There are a few things I'd change - namely the fact that black beans are merely an equal component of the entire dish, and not featured - but I'll get to that at the end.

I do have to say one thing, though, and if you remember nothing else, remember this. Avocados are not optional on this taco.

I swear up and down I don't say that simply because I love avocados and think you should too (although, I do), but they provide a coolness, neutrality, and velvety lushness that nothing else can provide. They contrast the sharpnesses and strong flavors in the rest of the taco. They're completely necessary. Get over your "texture thing" and start experiencing a whole new world of food.

BLACK BEAN TACOS

red bell pepper
ear of corn
corn tortillas
shredded lettuce (whatever you have on hand)
shredded cabbage (purple or green)
thinly sliced onion
cooked and seasoned black beans
goat cheese, crumbled
sliced avocado
lime juice
fresh cilantro
sour cream or lime crème fraîche
Tabasco sauce
pinch of salt

1. If you don't have a grill, and you want "grilled" vegetables, sometimes sticking them right under the broiler will get the job done. In my case, I did the aforementioned treatment to an ear of corn and a red pepper. If you want lots of leftover "grilled" vegetables, just put lots of them in there. First of all, you want to put them on a cookie sheet.

Turn on the broiler and put the cookie sheet on the top rack so the vegetables are as close as they can get to the heating element without touching it (this might also be good if you lightly oil the corn first, but I haven't tried it). Leave them in there awhile, but make sure you watch to see when they are charring. Use tongs (or whatever you have) to turn them as they char, so you can char all the sides. Don't be alarmed if you hear popping and sizzling.

2. While your vegetables are broiling, cut up some of your other ingredients. I did my lettuce, cabbage, and onion during this time - it won't suffer if it sits out, cut, for awhile. The avocado, on the other hand, you should save until last.

Make sure to keep an eye on the oven during this time. If one vegetable gets done faster, take it out. In my case, that was the pepper.

You'll see that it got all wrinkly. This means the skin has started to separate from the flesh, which is ideal when you cook a pepper (it gets tough and curly and you need to peel it). Let it cool for a few minutes (10, maybe), and peel the pepper. During the cooling time, steam should form in the pepper that separates the skin further and makes it easier to peel.

Next came my corn, and it looked good.

Obviously, I like a little carbon on my food.

3. Cut the stem off the fat end of the corn cob when it cools, sit it upright and slice off the kernels. Just keep turning the cob and slicing off the kernels from the pointy end to the fat end. Mmmm!

4. Here's where it gets kind of blurry. You need to heat up your tortillas, but there are lots of ways to do this, and all of them are a little bit temperamental. The best way that I've found is to dip them briefly in water (however many you're going to use), stack them up, and wrap them tightly in foil that has a light coating of oil on the inside. Then you heat them, either in a warm toaster oven, or normal oven if it's on for something else (don't heat it up just for tortillas, though), or in a hot pan, covered. Heat them until the foil puffs a little. The goal here is to get the tortillas to soften and not be really dry.

5. Lay your warmed, softened tortillas on a plate, and pile stuff on them. (If you want to make them easier to pick up, stick their sides together so it's like that scene in Forrest Gump where Bubba and Forrest are sleeping outside in the rain and they lean their backs up against one another so they don't have their heads in the mud.) I started with lettuce and cabbage, followed by onion, and then spooned some delicious black beans (they should be warm, bordering on hot) on that, and crumbled a good amount of goat cheese over it. I lined it with broiled corn and red pepper, topped it with sliced avocado (onto which I sprinkled some lime juice) and cilantro, and drizzled on some lime crème fraîche (you can substitute a small amount of sour cream - I only used lime crème fraîche because I still had some). I then doobled on some Tabasco, and sprinkled some sea salt over the whole thing. It's all a matter of taste how much you use; if you find it lacking, put more on.

So... that's pretty much how I make most tacos, the only variations being in the ingredients.

In these tacos, I might leave out the lettuce and cabbage altogether. I don't think it added anything. I would use a little more black bean, and a little less pepper and corn.

The rest, I do believe, is lovely.

Roasted Applesauce

2010-10-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

I started out the week thinking I was going to be blogging about rice and beans again. Plain, old rice and beans. See blog name. Funds are low, spirits high, yada yada. I enjoy it. But then I went to a farmer's market on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe, and given a golden opportunity. One too good to pass up.

Free locally-grown blemished organic apples.

Like, FREE. So I took 5 pounds.

I believe that slightly wrinkled, a little old, somewhat banged-up apples make the best sauce. I can only hope that I prove to be as useful when I'm slightly wrinkled, a little old, and somewhat banged up.

They were a mixed variety, all grown in Willcox, AZ. As they were unmarked, I don't know exactly what they were - but it looked to me as though they were selections from their golden delicious, red delicious, and gala apples. Before you cry, "why, red delicious?? How awful!" I feel compelled to tell you that these red delicious apples in no way resemble the grown-in-Washington red delicious abomination of an apple for which my home state is unfortunately famous. They were small and round and stripy. Not tall and knobby, overly shiny and the color of ostrich meat.

One more thing, before I get to making the sauce. I must forewarn you that if you do not have a food mill and you do not wish for skins to remain in your applesauce, you are in for a workout when it comes time to strain the sauce. Don't worry, it makes your applesauce (and your triumphant victory) taste all the sweeter.

"Mightn't I just peel the apples first?" you ask naïvely. "No, good applewife (or appleman)," I tell you, "you may not." For the apple skins provide unparalleled color and flavor to your sauce as they cook, not to mention the pectin that thickens it and gives it body. If you're in it to take the easy way out, go to the 7-11 and buy a jar of ~~lamesauce~~ commercially-prepared applesauce, which gets all the color it needs from food coloring and all the flavor it needs from the ambiguous "natural flavors."

OK, I lied - one more thing. This was my grand experiment with making applesauce in the oven. That is, to say, roasting it. I must say, I approve of the result. One might say this is actually the recipe for...

Wait for it...

Awesomesauce? Yeah, I said it.

ROASTED APPLESAUCE

5lbs mixed apples, or McIntosh (they'd probably make the best sauce), or whatever
3 tbsp lemon juice (about 1 1/2 lemon's worth)
1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp brown sugar
5 cinnamon sticks
10 whole cloves
Pinch of sea salt
3/4 cup water

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F and start with your large amount of blemished (or simply just nice and ripe) apples. Bruises are fine. Mold and rot are not so fine. As for worms, that's your discretion. Cut out whatever you're not comfortable with. I should mention that there's sort of a formula to this recipe - for every pound of apples, you should have about 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice (I rounded up a little), 1 tbsp brown sugar, 1 cinnamon stick, two whole cloves, and 2 tbsp water (I rounded up a little). It's not an exact science, just a guideline.

So, you have your apples. Core them and cut them in eighths, like I did making the apple crumble, only do not skin them. Just leave them in eighths. For larger apples, you can cut them in 12 slices. It doesn't really matter. The bigger they are, the longer they need to cook, and vice versa. Try and make them somewhat even, though.

2. If you can find a bowl large enough for your 5lbs of cut up apples with a little room, great! I could not, however, and ended up simply with a very full bowl.

It makes it interesting, anyway, as you then have to toss the apples with the lemon juice and brown sugar. Somehow I managed.

3. Pile them all in a largish-sized roasting pan. If you don't have a roasting pan, a 9x13-inch cake pan will do. If you don't have a cake pan of that size, a 9x13-inch-ish glass baking dish should work. If you don't have anything like that, improvise.

Pour in the water and tuck the cinnamon sticks wherever they'll fit, but make sure they're buried under apples, or they'll lose their flavor to the hot oven air. Stick the cloves into apple slices.

4. Put the pan in the oven and leave it there for about 40 minutes. Remove it after this time, but keep the oven on. The apples should have a slightly brown appearance.

Take a potato masher or similar device and smash as many apples as you can. Just try and get them into small pieces.

Put it back in the oven for - oh, 25 minutes or so.

5. Take it out again, smash it again, and return to the oven.

When you remove it a third time, it should be ready. Smash it some more, just for good measure, and you're ready to strain it! It should look like this, by the way. If there are still somewhat firm chunks of apple, it needs more time in the oven. If it's looking dry, you can add some water.

6. In batches (I did three), run it through your food mill into a large bowl. If you find yourself devoid of a food mill, your only option is a large strainer/colander/sieve and a big spoon. Scoop some of the apples into the strainer (set over a bowl, if you please, otherwise you'll be trying to salvage applesauce from your countertops), and mash it through with the spoon. Remove the cinnamon sticks and cloves as you go. A rubber spatula is not strong enough for this. Just keep mashing, scraping, pushing, and muscling through until all that's left in the strainer is a pile of skins.

Repeat with the remaining portions of applesauce until you have your skins in one place:

...and your sauce in a bowl.

At this point, what you do with the sauce is up to you. I freeze some, refrigerate some, and eat some. I like it just as it is, sometimes with a little vanilla ice cream. Some people put it on stuff. Maybe it's good mixed into oatmeal (but I don't know, so don't blame me if it's not). It is certainly worth the trouble to make, though, particularly if you are able to score free apples.

I'm sure there's something interesting you can do with the skins, but I just like to eat them. Why not? They're toothsome and spiced and taste like apples. The cinnamon sticks and cloves I plan on sticking in a small, shallow pan with water on the stove and simmering gently to keep this lovely aroma alive. Make some holiday potpourri afterward, maybe.

Happy applesaucing.

Apple Crumble

2010-10-14T18:59:00.001-07:00

Haven't done a dessert in awhile, which makes for sad times.

But I was inspired by the autumn storm we had last week, the sudden cool and cloudy weather, and... BAM! The crap-ton of apple varieties that have landed in Whole Foods. Not that it matters as to which ones I use - I'm pretty set - but all those colors, the fragrance... shiny streaks of green and red and yellow all over the produce department.

Sad times are over, my friends. You can now enjoy delicious apple crumble in the comfort of your own home.

It smells like fall, and I'm not kidding even a little.

I have grown fond of the favorite apple pairing of America's Test Kitchen (that is, to say, for baking in fruit desserts). They always seem to use a 50/50 ratio of Granny Smith to McIntosh. Their reasoning, and I agree, is that the grannies hold their shape and provide the appley tartness that is so agreeable in baked apples, and the macs break down into this thick appley filling base and add unmatchably appley perfume and flavor. A good McIntosh apple is round, has a shiny skin (that is green and red in patches or smudged streaks) that "pops" when you bite into it, flesh that is soft (but never mealy) and succulent and green-tinted white with the occasional streak of red. If you were presented with one apple from each variety found in your grocery store (mac among them), blindfolded, and given an apple "smell test," you should be able to unquestionably pick out the McIntosh in the group by its most enticing fragrance. Go. Try. This. Now.

Note that you can use whatever kind of apples you want. You can use one kind, or seven kinds, or any amount in between. As long as you have the right amount of apple, you're probably going to be OK.

The recipe for apple crisp in my Baking Illustrated book influenced the recipe I came up with, but mine is by no means a copy of it. I haven't even tried their recipe, actually, but in true America's Test Kitchen style, in making it "the best" apple crisp, they also made the process kind of involved. More than is necessary. I can see how that would be warranted in making cake (I swear by their cake recipes, by the way), but this is apple crisp... peasant food.

Anybody should be able to make it, and not be discouraged, and see how simple and beautiful and wonderful it is. For me, this is a close-your-eyes-and-be-a-child-eating-dessert-that-mom-made-while-watching-colorful-leaves-fall-outside kind of food. It reminds me of simple times, a warm home, a cooking mother, and quiet. Not dead-silence quiet, though... The kind of quiet in which the breeze outside can be heard by the whispering of dry leaves and murmuring of cedar boughs, and the tiniest raindrops falling delicately on the roof and massaging your mind. The kind of quiet that means you're safe.

It occurs to me that maybe, to you, that kind of feeling is invoked by the odor of Kraft Macaroni 'n' Cheese from a box, glopping away on the stove like some kind of top-secret government chemical that's going to turn you into the Joker when you fall in/eat it. And hey, that's OK, but it doesn't mean you can't enjoy apple crumble. It only means that I will not be indulging your particular affliction on my blog. For what it's worth, I don't even know if my mother ever made apple crumble when I was a kid, but I know we had homemade apple pie, and the flavors are similar.

APPLE CRUMBLE

3/4 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped finely
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger
3 largish Granny Smith apples (or whatever kind you want)
4 medium McIntosh apples (or whatever kind you want; total weight of all varieties of apples should be about 3lbs)
1 tbsp lemon juice

1. Start by making the crumble topping. Make sure your nuts are chopped prior to mixing them with other things (should be obvious, but you never know, these days). I use the food processor because it's very fast and easy, but if you don't have one, you can definitely chop them by hand. They should be pretty fine, but some larger chunks are OK - it's really up to you.

Mix the nuts, brown sugar, oats, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl. Mix it up good. Don't worry if your brown sugar is a little clumpy; some pea-sized sugar clumps will only enhance the crumble experience.

2. Your butter can be cut into whatever small size you want, as long as it's under 3/4". I generally go with 1/2". Make sure it's cold, or you'll get a mushy topping.

Using a pastry blender (see tool above in bowl) or a fork, cut the butter into the dry mixture. "Cutting" the butter into a mixture means you toss it in, and press down on it with your pastry blender or fork and stir it around to break it into smaller pieces and mix it into the dry stuff. Your end goal is a clumpy mixture, NOT a homogenous mush. It should look much like this, when you're done:

There will still be pieces of butter in there, but they should be small. When it's satisfactorily clumpy, stick it in the fridge so it doesn't soften up.

3. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Prepare for the filling by mixing the sugar and ginger in a wee bowl. You want it to be evenly distributed over the apples, so mixing it first works well.

4. Now you can make the filling. This is by far the most time-consuming work of this dish, or really any apple pie-type baked dish. All of your apples should be cored, cut into eighths (top-to-bottom slices), peeled, and each eighth cut in half. I don't recommend using a corer/slicer tool, because it makes the slices too fat. You'd have to cut them each in half lengthwise, and I think it would take you even more time (unless you can find one that cuts into eight slices). Start by scooping out the top and bottom of the apple (removing the stem and the flower end). I do this by carving them out in a cone shape (thank you, Jacques Pépin!), but you can do it however you want.

Then cut the apple in half down the middle, and do the same with the core: scoop it out of each half. I also do this by carving out a cone.

Cut each half in half, and then each quarter in half, so you get eight identical slices. Peel them (this should go pretty fast) and then cut them in half so you get two chunks.

If you have both Granny Smith and McIntosh to work with, I recommend starting with the grannies for two reasons. One, they don't turn brown as fast once they're cut. Two, they're more difficult to cut and peel, and you should always get the tough stuff out of the way when you can. After them, macs cut and peel awfully smoothly. Like taking apart an orange. Only, with a knife and maybe a vegetable peeler.

5. Once you have all your apples cut up (it should take you about 15 minutes to do all of them), chuck them in a large bowl (you can actually do this as you go). Right away, toss them in the lemon juice.

Sprinkle the sugar/ginger mixture over the top, and stir them until all the apples are coated and the whole thing starts to look wet. Dump them all into an 8x8-inch square glass baking dish, or similar volume glass baking dish. At this point in my culinary adventure I wished for a more attractive baking dish.

But then I remembered how much fun it always is to pack up all my belongings and move from home to home, so I felt grateful that I only had one.

6. Anyway, crumble your refrigerated topping over the apples, as evenly as you can get it.

And stick it in the middle of the oven and leave it there for 45 minutes. When it's ready, the top will have browned a bit and the apples should have gotten all bubbly. And you'll start to smell it after about 30 minutes. Savor this fragrance.

Let it rest about 15 minutes before you dig in, or it will burn your mouth and run amok all over your plate.

Oh, and it's spectacular with vanilla ice cream, when it's still hot.

I really need some decorative plates to use for food photography! I mean, I like my plates, but there's no variety after awhile. I did see some pretty ones at Ross for like, $1 per plate. I might go for it.

But then again, I might have to move again some day (in fact, I sure hope I get to move again some day)...

I really liked this apple crumble. It was easy and simple and had just the right amount of everything.

And it's just perfect for making your home smell wonderful.

Miso Soup

2010-10-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

I think I have discovered my new sick soup.

I wanted to say something about my memories of Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup from childhood sick days, but I cannot. I begin to rant. This blog is not [supposed to be] about what is wrong with the world, it is about what is right with food, and cooking, and experiments in the kitchen.

Grilled Cheesus, how I love experiments in the kitchen!

Anyway, I did have miso soup once or twice when I was in third grade, and a girl in my class brought in miso soup for show-and-tell. It sure drove my carriage. (What does that even mean?) The umami of it all. That sweetly salty pungent miso flavor. That broth. The little seaweed bits.

For whatever reason, it is only now that I embark on the quest to find the perfect miso soup. Or at least, make the perfect miso soup. OK, just make some miso soup. I took ideas from all over the Internet, ingredients carefully imported via care package from Seattle's finest Japanese market (Uwajimaya), and my obsession with fat Udon noodles. I definitely took a good look at this recipe for miso soup with udon noodles, which featured an egg poached into the soup. Hey, when you don't eat land-flesh, you might as well get your B-12 where you can, right?

I must preface this with saying that I am not Japanese. I still don't know anything about Japanese cooking. It is also my understanding that green onions (scallions) are commonly used in miso soup. Alas, Whole Foods was not carrying green onions this week. (Really, Whole Foods?) So I used red. Very different. Still an onion. And I don't know if it's really all that common to use noodles in a miso soup - I always thought of it as tofu and seaweed and green onions in a delicious broth, but I finally found Udon noodles I like ( and I couldn't pass it up. As for the egg, I'd never seen that before, but I love poached eggs, and I love taking in all that good egg nutrition.

That said, this is my miso soup.

MISO SOUP

some udon noodles - however much you want to put in 4 cups of soup
couple of 3-6 inch pieces of kombu (dried kelp)
4 cups water
1/4 cup bonito flakes (these are dried flakes from a block of specially aged tuna. Mine came in little packets of about that 1/4 cup, so I used one packet)
3 tbsp miso (whatever kind you like - I used shiromiso/yellow miso)
6 oz tofu, cut into cubes
1/2 cup sliced green onions (or other onions, if you have no green)
few crumbles of wakame (a type of dried seaweed)
an egg or two

1. Cook your udon noodles according to the instructions on the package they came in. Mine took 11 minutes at a rapid boil, no salt. The brand I like is made in Australia by Hakubaku, but I cannot find it anywhere on the web. It is in a plastic-lined white paper package with a lot of Japanese characters on it, and in tiny letters at the top it says "The Kokumotsu Company" and underneath that in larger letters it says "Organic UDON" and has a drawing of a stalk of wheat. It is not the same product as this. Anyway, it's delicious, look for it in your local Asian market, in your grocery store, wherever. They get all fat and slippery when they cook. Just as they should. After they've cooked an appropriate amount of time, drain them and set them aside.

2. You can now make what's called "dashi," a kind of broth. Google it. There's a lot of info from people a lot more knowledgeable than I am. Start with some pieces of kombu. Another Asian market find. They are wide and flat and dry and brittle.

Wipe them clean with a damp cloth (I don't know why, but everyone says to do it, so I did) and put them in a pan with 4 cups of fresh, clean water. After 5-10 minutes they should rehydrate and become larger.

Put the pan on medium-high heat and sit tight nearby. It will take several minutes, but when the steam starts rising from the pan, you can take out the kombu. Set it aside, use it in something later, snack on it while you cook, make second dashi from it, whatever you feel like. But don't boil it.

3. You can now add the bonito flakes to the pan.

Give it a swirl to make sure they're all touching the water. Keep the pan on the heat and wait for it to come to a boil, and then take the pan off the heat. Let it sit tight for 10 minutes or so to allow the bonito to calm down and sink to the bottom.

Once that happens, strain the liquid through a sieve lined with paper towel (or a paper napkin) into a bowl. You can save the bonito flakes for second dashi, or discard them.

That liquid you have? See that? Smell it?

That's your dashi. I don't know how it smells to most people, but to me it smells like Maine. I could've held my face over that bowl of dashi for a long time and been quite happy. But then I'd never eat dinner, so I decided to soldier on.

4. Return the dashi to a clean pan, on the stove, over medium-high heat. Take out a few spoonfuls - doesn't really matter how much - of the dashi and mix it in a separate bowl with your miso, until the miso is all dissolved-looking and it's pretty thick and uniform, but liquid. Keep that handy. When the dashi simmers, add however much already-cooked udon you want in your soup. Stir it to break it up if it clumped together while sitting, and let it simmer for 5 minutes. The udon and the dashi will exchange flavors, and the udon will get even fatter and slipperier.

5. While the dashi simmers, you can chop your tofu. It can be firm or soft, silken or not. I used firm. It was good. I just cut it in pieces that were large enough to provide some kind of feeling on the tongue, but not so big that you'd not taste anything else.

You can also hydrate your wakame. And believe me, you don't need very much. You see these crumbles?

After a few minutes in water they became this.

I think that's plenty for 4 cups of soup.

6. After the udon has simmered enough in the soup, stir in the miso-dashi thick liquid, the tofu, and the onions.

Simmer all that together, over medium heat, for 3 minutes or so.

7. If you want to use an egg, now is the time to slip it in. The trick to poaching an egg without it getting messy is this. First crack it into a small bowl, make sure the yolk is intact. Check your cooking water to make sure it's not simmering too fast, or it will toss the egg around. But it does need to be simmering, or the egg will cook very slowly and just get really firm and unpleasant. Take your bowl, with your egg in it, lower it down all the way to the water, and slip it right in. Don't plunk it in, don't drop it in, don't crack it in. And once it's in, don't mess with it for a minute.

8. Cover the pan, turn down the heat to medium-low, and wait a minute to a minute and a half. Then you can peek. Lift up the egg, wherever it's hiding, with a spoon and see if the white is cooked. If not, cook it longer. If so, it's ready to eat. I left mine on an extra two minutes and it cooked too much. Boo. When the egg is cooked, carefully stir in the wakame.

9. To serve it, just get some of everything in a bowl (don't be stingy with the broth!), and put the egg on top. If you had green onions, like I didn't, you wouldn't have to garnish with chives to make it look cute. Although you still could, I suppose.

I had trouble selecting a picture I liked, so there. Have a bunch.

My thoughts on this soup are this. Leave out the egg, use scallions instead of red onion. Noodles are fantastic, especially if you're ill and need noodle soup. The broth tastes amazing. Definitely good to make your own dashi. It doesn't take that long if you have in mind exactly what you need to do. Nothing about it is difficult. Miso is wonderful. Go get some.

In other news, I didn't do a video blog this time (obviously). It's a lot of work for so few readers. Maybe next time?

Chickpea Stew

2010-09-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd throw together a little stew this week. I haven't made it before, and there wasn't a recipe. So goes cooking, though. Recipes can be tedious if that's all you ever use when you cook.

Part of the inspiration for the stew came from the failure of central Arizona to enter a proper autumnal phase, after the equinox, like all the other states. I guess I thought that if I invoked the power of butternut squash and russet potatoes (autumn) to draw the life out of tomatoes and corn (summer), somehow a new season would float in and we'd all be saved.

Alas. The forecast for tomorrow is 104 and sunny.

My stew, on the other hand, was very good. Eating it almost made me believe that I was warming my bones on a cool September evening.

I only call it "chickpea" stew because I don't know what else to call it. It was supposed to be focused on chickpeas, as the "chunk" factor, but I piled so much other stuff in there that they're just one element now. And I like the word "chickpea." Like, a lot. I always used to call them garbanzo beans, but saying that makes me feel heavy-footed and trollish. "Chickpea" makes me feel like a bird. A bird that perches on things and sings sweetly.

CHICKPEA STEW

1 cup dry chickpeas (or 2 cups cooked)
3 fat cloves garlic
1/2 large onion
2 large celery stalks (leaves are fine)
1 medium butternut squash, cleaned but not peeled
3/4 lb russet potato, or red potatoes
Sea salt
Cooking oil
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tbsp dry crumbled oregano
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp powdered mustard
2-3 tbsp red wine vinegar
28 oz can diced tomatoes (fire-roasted are best, as always!)
4 oz frozen chopped spinach
4 oz frozen corn kernels
Tabasco sauce
Handful fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
Handful fresh cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
Smoked cheese for topping
Hard, aged cheese for topping

1. Soak the chickpeas before you cook them. To do this, cover them with water by an inch, and let them sit for 3-10 hours. If you don't have that much time, do what I did. Cover them with water, to start.

Bring to a boil. Let it boil for 5 minutes, and then take the pan off the heat. The chickpeas have already begun to take in water.

Cover it, and let it sit for an hour. It's still an hour, but it beats 10 hours, right? After they've soaked they should have swollen a bit more.

Drain them and re-cover them with water by an inch or two. Bring to a simmer, partially cover the pan, and let them cook for an hour or more, depending on their age. Mine were old and took 3 hours. I didn't eat until 11pm.

2. Meanwhile, though, you may prepare the other ingredients for the stew. Garlic needs to be smashed and roughly chopped. Onions need to be sliced. Celery needs to be cut into bits, and set aside with the onions, but separate from the garlic. You can do this however you see fit, but this is my method.

3. And now you can cube the squash and potatoes. Some people like theirs peeled, but I don't know why. It's not like the peel tastes bad, or gets in the way, or is ugly. It has nutritional value, and adds fiber. And it will take you twice as long to prepare your vegetables if you peel them. But suit yourself.

I tried to cut the squash into 1/2-inch cubes and the potatoes into 3/4-inch chunks. To simplify things, I cooked them together, and potato cooks fast; I didn't want it to cook faster than the squash and then fall apart. Plus, with all the stirring I knew I was going to be doing, I didn't want the potato to completely disappear into mush, so I thought it had ought to start out in larger chunks than did the squash.

4. Once your starchies (read: potatoes and squash) are cubed, you can cook them. You will be cooking them in water - the very water that will become your soup water. I used filtered water, because I want to believe that it makes the tap water of Phoenix taste acceptable. It doesn't, but who can afford that much bottled water? And who wants to waste that much plastic?

Anyway, cover your potatoes and squash with water in a large pot. Maybe a half an inch to spare. Add a fat pinch of sea salt and bring to a gentle boil. A hearty simmer, if you will.

5. Let them simmer for 20-30 minutes, until both squash and potatoes are cooked but not mushy. I believe the term is "fork-tender," but I don't really like it. It seems fleeting and faddish.

The water will look slightly orange and cloudy, and that's OK.

Set the pot aside and bring out a frying pan. Or, if you have more than one large burner, as I do not, you can bring out the frying pan while the stockpot is cooking the starchies. It's all up to you.

Add some oil to your pan, over medium heat. When it heats up properly, add the celery and onion that you set aside earlier.

Stir it up good, and continue to do so for about 3 minutes. Maybe 5. Definitely not 4.

6. Stir until the celery is popping and the onion is limp and threatening to brown if you stop stirring. (If it does brown, I don't see what the big deal is. Mine always does when I stop stirring to take a picture, and I haven't suffered from it yet.)

Toss in the garlic, spices, and oregano. Stir that up and keep at it. The moment you see the spices stick to the pan and start to smell amazing on the cusp of burnt, douse it with some red wine vinegar. Or maybe wine; I haven't tried that. It'll hiss at you something fierce. Respond by dumping the entire can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes into the pan and mixing the whole shebang together. That oughta hush things up.

7. Now everything will be coming together. Take the frying pan off the burner and return the stockpot with the starchies. Keep the heat on it - medium is fine - while you add things. You can add spinach and corn now. Stir it gently to distribute everything, but try not to pulverize the potatoes in the process.

You can also drain, rinse, and add the chickpeas to the stockpot, assuming they've cooked by this point. Add the tomato mixture.

This would be where a wand blender comes in very handy. To thicken the stew so it's not just chunky seasoned water, I used the wand blender to blend just a little bit of the contents of the stockpot. Most things were left intact, but enough squash and potatoes and onions and spinach got pureed that the stew developed a really hearty base. Desirable in a stew.

Season it with sea salt - and really, you need a fair amount for it to not be bland and tasteless. Just keep adding a little bit and tasting until you get the right amount. If the stew tastes like hot water, add more salt! And Tabasco sauce, of course. Just ploonk a bunch in until you get the right amount of zip.

8. You can take the (hopefully simmering) stew off of the heat, now, and stir in the chopped fresh herbs.

Bowl it up, grate on some cheese, and eat your heart out.

Despite the lengthy ingredient list, this is not an expensive stew. It uses no broth, no cream or butter, and I had at least 75% of the contents in my pantry/refrigerator already. It is a great way to use things you don't know what to do with.

Let me tell you right now, the stew was really good. It may be a temptation (at least, it was for me) to serve it over rice or some other kind of grain, but I would advise resistance to this particular hankering. Most of the calories (although they are few) that come from this stew are carbohydrate calories; you don't need more added from a grain, even a whole one. I would be intrigued, however, to try this stew ladled on a piece of sturdy white fish (cod or halibut, perhaps). It may compliment nicely.

Of course, you are welcome to do what I did and simply enjoy a bowl by itself, as 11pm is rather late to be eating a large meal.

(Oh, and I'm still on the fence about this whole video thing. My arms are really beefy. And it took me 8 hours to edit all this stuff and make an entry.)

West Coast Grits

2010-09-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering what the bloody hell I think I'm doing, going up on YouTube like this. It's a grand experiment. An experiment to find out a) whether video additions to blog posts make any sort of useful contribution; b) whether it's worth the extra trouble; and c) how much can I possibly detract from my content with my grating personality? You decide.

Except that ultimately, I decide.

Phase 1 of this experiment has shown me that I talk funny, have extremely beefy arms, and a really wicked farmer's tan (which, by the way, is not entirely my fault; it's a product of the Arizona desert sun, the fact that I spent the whole month of August under it raking hoofstock poop, and the t-shirts supplied to us by the zoo). I think it might work.

Anyway, grits. I love 'em. Nobody else I know eats them (or has even tried them, for all I know). What I call "grits" could also be considered polenta. Actually, I prepare polenta in the style of grits, if that makes sense. Polenta and grits are technically the same product, only grits are made with corn treated with lye (aka "hominy"), and polenta is just plain corn. It's basically a very coarse cornmeal. I like Bob's Red Mill brand.

Why call them "west coast" grits? Because people on the west coast like untreated food (no lye) and vegetables more than they like purified fat and starch. And people on the west coast generally don't eat traditional grits. I guess there's not a lot of creativity that went into that name.

Just an FYI. Upon re-evaluating my food budget this last month, I have come to the realization that I am spending about three times more on groceries since I moved down to Arizona. Granted, there were two-three days per week that someone else was buying my food back in Washington, but that's not even half a week. Three times more money is insanity. So I've reduced my budget (again), which means just one thing, people. I'm going to have to get creative with cheap food. Be prepared for a lot of variations on... well, rice, and beans. And cornmeal. Ideas are welcome.

(By the way, did you know that a dozen large organic eggs are like, $5-6 here? They're $3.50 in Washington. Anyone in the Phoenix area have chickens that produce more eggs than you can use? I'll pay you $3.50 a dozen for them.)

WEST COAST GRITS

3/4 - 1 cup water
1/8 - 1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup frozen chopped spinach
1/4 cup frozen corn kernels and/or frozen peas
1/4 cup grits or polenta (not pre-prepared. the stuff that looks like coarse cornmeal)
1 large egg
Freshly ground black pepper
Lime crème fraîche (optional)

1. Put the water in a pan, with the salt, over high heat, and cover to bring to a simmer. I know, this is difficult.

When the water simmers, you can turn down the heat to medium-low or low, and add the vegetables. Wait for it to simmer again, if it stops (because frozen vegetables are cold, believe it or not), then add the grits and stir.

2. Stir it every few minutes for about 5-7 minutes, until the grits swell up and take up a lot of space in the pan, and you don't see much water. If you don't stir it, the water comes up to the top and the rest of the stuff in the pan sticks to the bottom.

When most of the water is absorbed, you can add the egg. You don't have to pre-beat it, just crack it into the pan and stir it around. When you see the gelatinous clear part (the "white" of the egg) make lots of white streaks in the grits, and it takes on a smoother, more creamy consistency, it's probably ready! It depends on the amount of heat you have on it. Add your pepper, and you're done.

Unless you have lime crème fraîche to drizzle on the top. That makes it even better. A stroke of genius, that was.

So, I'm undecided on the video. It is a little unnecessary, right? I suppose this might not be the best recipe on which to try the video, as there is no real "technique" to show. I mean, boil water and put stuff in a pan and stir it. There's really nothing easier. Opinions are welcome...

Oh, and this is super cheap, super easy eats. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner. One of my fallbacks when I can't decide what to make, or if I hardly have anything to fix. I always have some grits around (I keep grits in a jar in the freezer, so they don't spoil). You can make it with cheese instead of eggs, but it has fewer nutrients and more fat, so... depends on what you're looking for.

Aaand.... discuss.

Oaxaca Tacos

2010-09-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

I think it's time to add something new to my repertoire. Enter the Cafe Flora Cookbook and one of the restaurant's most popular dishes. Cute, aren't they? Sitting there all propped up on black beans? Tasty, too, crispy and oven-fried. I will be filing this away in the "usable recipes" section of my brain. The techniques I learned are applicable in... oh, billions of ways. Oaxaca tacos will be back, in one form or another. Just you wait.

Reading the ingredients, I didn't find it to look all that... nutritionally balanced. A corn tortilla (starch) filled with potato (starch) and cheese (fat). Mmm, fatty starch. But then I read on and noticed that it is typically served with a black bean "stew" (enter fiber and protein, albeit carried by more starch) and pico de gallo (YAY! color!). Well. If it has fiber and protein and fatty starch, and is naturally colorful, sign me up. Especially when the fat includes smoked mozzarella.

Dear sweet son of a biscuit-eating bulldog, try some smoked mozarella if you haven't had it before.

Unfortunately for those who might want to make this, I feel obligated to refrain from posting the exact recipe. You can buy the book. If you live in Seattle, go eat at Cafe Flora and order the Oaxaca tacos.

I don't feel guilty enough to refrain from posting my progression through cooking, however. I am confident that if you follow along and experiment a little, you can recreate them. Or at least something similar.

--- --- ---

So, I started the day prior to cooking, really (two days ago, to be exact). I prepared some "crème fraîche" by mixing just a smidge of buttermilk into heavy cream and letting it sit out at room temperature for a day. I cooked my black beans. For goodness sake, if you don't know how to cook black beans, learn. It's terribly easy and far cheaper and more ecological than buying them canned.

This made cooking day rather easy. Into the cultured crème fraîche I added some fresh lime juice and zest and stuck it in the fridge. Nobody wants to use room temperature crème fraîche. I then boiled and drained some russet potatoes, and mashed them up good with a little butter and salt. This time, I had a potato masher. Why, you ask? I didn't have one last time, right? Well, it's because partway through cooking the potatoes I realized I had no toothpicks. And I need toothpicks to hold the tacos together when they cook. So, naturally I had to huff and puff over to the store and get some. I figured I'd be clever and also pick up a potato masher. See what I did there? That's called breaking the cycle.

Following the potato mashing, I preheated my oven to 400. Back onto the stove went my cooked black beans, into which I tossed some frozen corn, chopped cilantro, garlic, and a few spices and an herb. Which ones? Oh, figure it out. Learn to season your black beans.

I simmered that for a little while (not that long) to let it make itself happy, and prepped my other taco ingredients. My favorite part was a 50/50 mix of shredded cheddar and smoked mozarella, with some red pepper flakes added for interest. I also briefly fried (a few seconds on both sides) 8 corn tortillas in vegetable oil. The goal was to get them to get hot, and soak up some oil. They need to be pliable so you can roll them (hence the heat), but you want them to get crispy and delicious and hold their shape after baking in the oven (hence the oil). You need to keep them warm while you're working, so stick something like foil over them. Not pictured is some minced up red bell pepper. Next time I'll use green and yellow, or green and red.

If you make these, shred a little more cheese than I did. And, prior to filling your tacos, divide your fillings (potato, pepper, and cheese) each into 8 equal piles. None left over, none run out. Fill in that order: potato, pepper, then cheese. Actually, fill in whatever order you want. I guess it doesn't matter. I'd probably put the potato on the bottom either way, though. And it helps to spread it out in a strip from one side of the tortilla to the other, so you don't get a really fat tortilla that splits open in the oven and has tough edges from lack of filling on the sides.

Put little toothpicks in them to hold them closed. Line them up on a baking sheet. You don't need to grease it, as the tortillas should be oily enough all by themselves.

Bake them in the oven for... I don't know if that's copyrighted. Bake them in the oven until they get crispy and melty. It should take roughly the amount of time that a sitcom episode without commercials takes.

You can take out the toothpicks now; they will hold their shape. Righteous, no? Serve with a ladle of your black beans, drizzle of your lime crème fraîche, some salsa or pico de gallo on the side, and a wee bit of cilantro.

--- --- ---

I wonder what I'd change? I'd use more cheese, for one, I think. I'd like to try it with a mix of sweet potato and yucca, with some kind of braised bitter greens and some kind of smokey cheese.

Seriously. Get some of that mozzarella.

Neatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, and Gravy

2010-09-08T17:56:00.000-07:00

For some reason, since I stopped eating terrestrial vertebrates, excuses to consume mashed potatoes have been few and far between. You'd think that an unassuming dish of smushed up roots would give little offense to my sensibilities. And it's true - I love mashed potatoes. I wish I could eat them every day. But I don't - I hardly ever do. What would I eat them with? You can't just sit down with a plate of mashed potatoes and a pile of beans and call it a meal. You can't really eat them with fish (the fish would slink off into the abyss of undetectability and viola, you've wasted $10). They're pretty good with meatloaf, though. Now, to remove the meat part...

...Not that hard, as it turns out. Instead, use a bunch of eggs and vegetables. Neat, right?

Oh, and I made gravy, too. It's something that I didn't care for too much while growing up, but have learned to cherish in very recent years. Or is it gravy? That thing I've been making? Maybe it's just a mushroom sauce. You tell me. I've never been that good at cramming content into an existing definition.

I should mention that although the recipe is not identical to anyone else's, and it was my idea to make it, I gathered a lot of ideas and ingredient/method inspiration from a blog post from Diets, Dessert, and Dogs.

NEATLOAF

2 slices fresh bread, the less refined the better (I used whole wheat, and also found that 2 slices made it taste too bready - I would use 1 slice next time)
about that volume in nuts of various kinds (I used walnuts and Brazil nuts)
2 medium carrots, shredded
1 onion, diced (about the same volume as carrots)
2-3 ribs celery, diced (about the same volume as onions)
Cooking oil
1 lb mushrooms
3 fat cloves garlic
few sprigs some fresh resinous herb (I used rosemary)
handful cilantro leaves (or parsley, you could use that)
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup vegetable broth
1/4 cup dry red wine (note: I detest drinking wine, and wine drinking culture. I love it in food. Now I have a mostly full bottle that I don't want. If you also dislike drinking wine, I recommend going to Trader Joe's and getting three buck Chuck. At least you won't be wasting lots of money. And let me know if you have some ideas for me to finish this without having to drink it)
Ketchup
5 eggs

If you're making all three, make the neatloaf first. It takes awhile in the oven and then has to cool a little, so you can do other things while that's going on. And this is a time-consuming recipe, even with a food processor, though it's actually really simple and extremely forgiving. If you don't have a food processor, I'm sure it can be done, but... good luck. Try chopping really finely? Blending in small batches? I've never tried it. *clutches her Cuisinart*

1. OK. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Whip out the Cuisinart (have I mentioned how much I love my Cuisinart and am glad that my mom doesn't use it anymore, thus my inheritance of it? The thing's like, 30 years old and still amazing). Tear the bread up, and stick it in with the nuts. Use a bunch of nuts. Give it a whir until the nuts and the bread crumbs are all the same size, and all a bit crumby. Set them aside in a bowl, and use the grating attachment to put through the carrots. You could do this by hand, but it would take you 10 minutes instead of 20 seconds. Heat up a pan on the stove over medium heat, with some oil. Mix up all your carrots, onion, and celery together (it should be a huge heap) and cook it. Stir it every so often to make sure it's all getting heat, until everything starts to turn orange and the onions get a bit translucent. Then you can take it off the heat. And put it in a bowl.

2. Put the normal blade back in the food processor and process together the mushrooms, garlic, and herbs. You can actually do this while the other stuff is still on the stove. It doesn't take long. Just make a bunch of tiny bits, like the mushrooms in vegetarian burgers. Add this mixture to the emptied pan (again, over medium heat) with some more cooking oil. Stir every so often. It will let out liquid. (Hopefully you won't have to stop it halfway through cooking when you realize that you've made it to 25 without owning a corkscrew and you have an unopened bottle of red wine that you need to open so you can use the wine in your cooking, so you have to run to the nearest grocery store to supply your need. If you have a corkscrew, carry on.) When it's done letting out liquid, it should smell good. Add the vegetable broth and the red wine to the pan and stir it up. (Hopefully you won't have to stop the cooking again when you realize that you've also made it to 25 without ever using a corkscrew and as easy as it may appear, things look rough when the cork breaks off in the bottle and you have to run to the computer to Google, "how to remove broken cork from wine bottle," before discovering that the little wings on the corkscrew should go up when you're screwing in, not down, and you actually push them down to lift out the cork, and presto! you have two halves of a cork and an open bottle of wine. If you know how to use a corkscrew, carry on.)

3. Chuck a bunch of the carrot mixture into the food processor (at least half of it) and process it to be in teeny bits like the mushrooms. Then combine all the mushroom, all the carrot/onion/celery, and all the nut/bread crumb mixture together in the pan. Squirt some ketchup in there. I don't know how much. 3 tablespoons? Whatever seems right. Stir it all up and season to taste with salt and pepper.

4. Beat the eggs vigorously in a large bowl until they're foamy. With a whisk, it'll take a minute or two. Longer with a fork, less time with egg beaters. In any case, they should look like this:

You may now dump the whole mixture from the pan into the bowl with the eggs, and stir it until it makes a very, very thick batter.

5. Prepare a standard-sized loaf pan by greasing it. And flouring it, while you're at it. I just greased with olive oil (should have used a saturated fat) and skipped the flour, and... well, you'll see later what happened when I unmolded it. Anyway, when your pan is ready, put the mixture into it, smooth out the top, and pop it in the oven.

Cook it on the middle oven rack for about an hour, give or take (mine was an hour and 10, but the loaf pan was also sitting in a glass dish, which may or may not have slowed the heat), or until it gets to 160°F in the middle (find out using a meat thermometer or instant-read thermometer), which is the proper "cooked" temperature for eggs. If you don't have a thermometer, an hour should be OK.

MASHED POTATOES

3 lbs red potatoes
few sprigs rosemary leaves, minced
1-2 cloves garlic, pressed (a really fat one will suffice)
~1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable broth
2-4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, or butter (which I didn't have much of and wanted to save it for the gravy, so I used oil)
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper

If you're smart about life, you'll have more than 4 tbsp of butter on hand when you make a huge batch of mashed potatoes and gravy. That is all.

1. Slice your potatoes (I make 1/2-inch thick slices). Bring a huge pot of water to a boil, add a really fat pinch of salt, add the potatoes, return to a simmer, and cook for 10-15 minutes. You know, until they're done. Drain them and return them to the pot. While they're still hot, add the minced up rosemary and pressed garlic.

2. Mix it up a little, then add the buttermilk and vegetable broth, and oil or butter. (Hopefully, when you ran to the store earlier you'll have also picked up a potato masher. But because you didn't, and dag nabbit, you've got something in the oven and can't go again, you will make this work and you will use the slotted spoon as awkwardly as it takes with enough elbow grease to KILL a man! If you have a potato masher, carry on.) I've never used vegetable broth before in my potatoes, or olive oil, but let me tell you this: I was really pleasantly surprised. It was almost better than butter. (I was able to serve it with a little butter, and that kind of toppled it over the hill of splendid and into the valley of amazing graze. You know, where the happy cows live.) Mix it up some more, and add salt and pepper to taste. It should taste pretty spectacular.

MUSHROOM GRAVY

2-3 tbsp butter or a mixture of butter and cooking oil (as long as butter is at least half of the mixture, which it was for me. All butter is ideal, if you have it)
2 cups sliced mushrooms
2-3 tbsp flour
~2 cups vegetable broth
~1/2 cup heavy cream
no more than 1/4 cup dry red wine

I love making mushroom gravy with wine. It has the most alluring fragrance. But once I used too much wine and it tasted then like too much wine. I didn't like that nearly as much. So don't go overboard.

1. Heat up your butter/oil in a skillet over medium heat until the butter foams, like so.

Add the mushrooms and coat them. Like so.

Let them cook in there for several minutes, turning them every so often, until they let out their liquid and then start to brown. Let them brown. Let them brown until you smell the teeniest, faintest hint of charcoal. You will also see a golden brown color developing on your pan. The French call it "fond." I call it flavor. In any case, it'll come off the pan and go into the gravy, which is what we want.

2. Then add the flour and toss it together to coat all the mushrooms. Try not to have flour clumps. As soon as you smell toasting flour (which should be very soon), slowly pour in the vegetable broth and whisk as you do. You don't want flour clumps at this point, but if you get a few, don't worry too much. You probably won't notice later and now you can be more vigilant when you make gravy in the future. It'll start to bubble, which is good. Turn down the heat to medium-low.

3. Carefully pour in the cream, whisking as you go. Do the same with the wine. The contents of the pan should have a very slightly musky purplish hue.

Bring it back up to a gentle simmer, and let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring every so often. It'll thicken a little, and don't worry if it seems a little thin in the pan, when it cools ever so slightly it will thicken up a good deal.

4. Finish up by bringing the neatloaf out of the oven, because, miraculously, it happens to be time. It should be browned on top, and a bit cracked. Let it cool in the pan for 10-20 minutes.

Carefully run a thin knife around the sides to separate it from the pan. Invert it onto a cutting board or similar surface. If you used a thin oil and didn't flour your pan, you might see this on the cutting board after inverting it:

and something that is undoubtedly the missing piece still in the pan, but if you're as clever and industrious as I am, it won't really matter. Very much.

You see? Nobody will know.

5. Slice off a piece and serve yourself, with some potatoes, and gravy over both. And if you're feeling spunky, you'll have made some braised collards or something (spinach would have been nice) to go on the side.

There we have it. The moral of the story, as far as I'm concerned, is not to get worked up about things that happen to go wrong when you're cooking. Or itty bitty oversights you may have made prior to engaging in your own personal cooking competition. What would an Iron Chef do? Use it to your advantage. Learn from it. Make a Hyperbole and a Half-esque comic strip, if you will. You will still have a good dinner.

Spinach Hot Toss

2010-09-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Right now, you may be internally questioning the legitimacy of the term "hot toss." Conversely, it's possible you have assumed that "hot toss" is, indeed, a legitimate name for some type of dish, and you just don't know what it is. I suppose it mightn't have crossed everyone's mind to read the title of the post, either, and thus many of you are unsure of the nature of my monologue. I'm going to clear the air, so to speak.

Perhaps nobody has used the term "hot toss" before, and that's okay. But it's about time we do. If we can give ridiculously descriptive names to recipes such as "Ground Beef, Onion, and Garlic Casserole Layered with Peas, Carrots, and Rosemary-Mashed Potatoes Seasoned with Sea Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper, Topped with 18-month Hand-Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and Baked in a 10-inch Round Earthenware Dish," or absolutely not even a little descriptive monikers like "Dutch Baby," surely I can, in good conscience, coin a concise yet slightly descriptive handle along the lines of "Spinach Hot Toss" (it's hot, contains spinach, and you toss it together). And we should all feel at liberty to use it. Legitimate? I think so.

I am a simple woman. I enjoy instant gratification, small pleasures, and justifiably unpretentious living. This is a simple meal. Filling, nutritious, but simple. And it costs under $5 to make 2 servings. It's no $.99-cent 12-pack of instant ramen noodles, either. (I say that with both pride and conviction.)

I am not pretentious.

SPINACH HOT TOSS

Extra-virgin olive oil or other cooking oil
chopped onion
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
some kind of herbs/spices (I used a little oregano and a bit of smoked paprika)
whole lotta frozen chopped spinach
few garlic cloves, pressed
some finely chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans are best)
small handful of cooked black beans (or other cooked legumes)
about as much frozen corn as you had beans
again as much cooked rice, barley, quinoa, or other starchy bits
bunch of grated cheddar cheese
fresh tomato, chopped up
fresh basil (or cilantro, depending on your spice palette)

1. Chuck your onions in a pan with some olive oil, over medium heat.

2. Stir them a bit and cook them until they get yellow and start to crisp. Or brown them. It doesn't really matter, just don't burn them.

3. Add a little bit of seasoning and stir it around, and then dump in the spinach, nuts, garlic, beans, and corn. Mix that up good (I forgot the nuts).

I used more beans than I wanted to (I really wanted to use up what I had leftover in my fridge, which was more than I should have), and not nearly as much spinach as I wanted to (I ran out), but it's not like the dish is ruined or anything. Anyway, it should look greener than mine.

4. Keep cooking that, and stir it every so often, until the spinach and corn is all thawed out and everything's nice and hot in the pan. Then mix in your grain/seed/starchy bit. I used pearled barley, since I had some on hand. I did have to cook it first, but that's kind of a non-involved process so I didn't care. Again, I used a little more than I intended. Oh well.

5. Take it out of the pan, put it in a few bowls, and mix in a whole bunch of grated cheddar. And then chop up some fresh tomato, and a little bit of basil, and put it on top.

Looks good, no? Except my dish ended up being more about grains and legumes, and less about spinach and cheese. I like the version with more spinach and cheese better. But it's kind of hard to mess this one up. And it takes like, 10 minutes. And why the heck wouldn't you want to make it?

I mean, Hot Toss. Come on.

Vegetarian Burgers

2010-08-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

The moment you've all been waiting for has finally arrived. You may now read a step-by-step pictorial instructive digi-manual on how to make vegetarian burgers that are not rubbery-bendable, highly processed, full-of-nothing-whole, weird-tasting, headache-inducing, perfectly extruded little cylinders. No, these are real burgers. Messy, delicious patties of summertime. Only without the flesh.

I must apologize that they're not vegan. But only a little, because I quite enjoy them as they are. I'm sure if you're vegan you can think of some way to veganify these burgers. Or come up with your own. Or keep eating frozen boxed products that resemble food in no good way. Or skip the burgers altogether.

These are relatively easy to make, especially if you have a food processor. If not, you just have to work a little harder. And for some reason, like yogurt and vegetable stock, vegetarian burgers are one of those foods that people just don't seem to want to make themselves. They'll bake themselves a fancy cake, or make a batch of cookies requiring specific temperatures, carefully measured ingredients, and perfectly spaced plops of dough on a lined sheet - but they won't throw together a few comestibles to make a burger. Why is that? I honestly have no idea. Frozen "veggie" burgers from a box taste disgusting. And call me persnickety, but I don't want soy protein concentrate, modified vegetable gum, or wheat gluten (in its most naked form) tainting my food with its indeterminate origins (or destination, for that matter). My philosophy is that if you can't make an ingredient relatively easily in your kitchen from its whole source, it probably doesn't belong in your diet (key word = "probably" - there are exceptions).

Now. I'm not on a high horse, I understand people have time limits, and budgetary considerations, but in all honesty - these don't take that long to put together and they're cheaper than buying them premade, and they are so many times better. You can also form them, freeze them, and save them for later. Maybe you could even make some kind of a meatless loaf, but I've never tried it.

A little tip for making vegetarian burgers: use lots of mushrooms. These provide juiciness, the natural glutamate flavor (also found in beef), brown color, iron, potassium, and some B vitamins as well. As for the other ingredients - onions and garlic because they're awesome and should go in almost everything, bread crumbs to absorb moisture, ground nuts for some good extra fat and to simulate those crispy bits that are on the outside of a beef burger, eggs to both hold it together (when they cook, they grab and hold) and provide some B-12 and protein and whole fat, quinoa for a complete plant protein, black beans for more plant protein and good fiber and folic acid and iron (and flavor!), cheese for some melty delicious fat, nutritional yeast for your dose of vitamins (and a good flavor), salt and pepper and Worcestershire sauce for seasoning. It may seem like a lot of fat, but one of these burgers has half the fat and barely more than half the cholesterol (and a lot more of the vitamins and minerals, except B-12) than a beef burger of the same size. So there you go. It's healthy to boot.

VEGETARIAN BURGERS

3/4 cup nuts (any soft or fatty nut will do - I used peanuts, but walnuts and pecans work really well too)
1/2 cup bread crumbs
3/4 lb mushrooms - cremini or button (creminis are great, unless they're more expensive)
1 cup cooked black beans, drained
1 cup cooked quinoa, drained and pressed dry if very moist
1-2 tbsp cooking oil
1/2 cup diced onion
3ish cloves of garlic, pressed
~1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (check ingredients for vegetarianism - many brands have anchovies)
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup shredded swiss, provolone, or mozarella cheese
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 eggs

1. Your first step is to make use of your food processor. I like processing in the following order: first nuts, then bread, then mushrooms, then quinoa/black beans. That way, you don't have to wash the food processor in between. For the nuts, process until they're pretty fine and crumbly, but do be aware that when processed past a certain point, they become nut butter. That's all fine and good, and I'm sure it wouldn't hurt the recipe too much, but it's not what we're going for. Set them aside when they're processed, and toss into the empty processor some stale artisan bread. Break it into chunks first. Let it whir away for a few minutes until you get crumbs. If you already have bread in crumb form, you can use that. If it came from a box or a can, I wouldn't trust it. But that's just me. So set your crumbs aside and put in your mushrooms. Pulse it until the mushrooms just look like itty bitty pieces but aren't quite yet a mushroom paste. Like this:

If the pieces are too big, they won't stick together as well. And they won't cook as fast. So take out the mushrooms and set them aside, and chuck in the black beans and quinoa together. Just pulse until the beans get sufficiently mushed up. The quinoa is somewhat immune to the blade, which is fine.

2. Heat up a medium-sized steel or stainless steel pan over medium heat with some oil. When it's hot (put your hand over it, you should feel a good amount of heat but not see any smoking), put in the onions. Cook them for a few minutes, stirring them around a bit every so often. When they are translucent and starting to brown, dump in the ground up mushrooms, and the garlic, and stir to get it mixed. In a minute or so, the mushrooms will release a whole bunch of mushroom juice.

This is delightful. Just let it do that. Stir it every so often. The water will evaporate and you'll get a more concentrated flavor in the pan. Once all the liquid is out, and the mixture inside the pan is formable, stir in the Worcestershire, take it off the heat, and transfer it to a bowl (if it stays in the pan, it might start to stick). Season the mushroom mix with salt and pepper.

3. Right away, stir in the cheese of your choice. Usually I use Swiss, but I had Provolone on hand this time and it worked better than I expected. It was adhesive and gooey and stringy. I was enchanted, actually. Once it's all melted, stir the mushroom mix with the bean mix in a bowl. Add the nuts, bread crumbs, and nutritional yeast and combine everything. Taste for seasoning and adjust with salt and pepper as necessary. Once you are satisfied, add the eggs. Just crack them right into the bowl and mix it all up until the eggs disappear and the contents of the bowl look wetter than before.

This is your burger mix. It'll make about eight. Or however many you want.

4. You can cook these in whichever way strikes your fancy. I like them best grilled, but as luck would have it, I don't have a grill. Some people like to broil them. I don't like to because then I have to bend over and put things in the oven. So I cook them on the stovetop in my delightful cast iron pan. In any case, it's good to toast your bun first. If you have the option, get a really attractive bun from some neat local bakery. I didn't want to scour the local bakeries, and the Whole Foods here has a very meager selection of fresh baked goods (all their own, as they don't seem to be into supporting the local economy), so I went with Rudi's whole wheat buns. (I could have made some, I guess, but that takes hours and is a somewhat touchy process.)

A side note - Rudi's has changed its label/packaging, and its products (although the press release on their website talks only of the new packaging). Whatever happened to product integrity? I got some of the pre-change whole wheat buns, and compared the ingredients to the whole wheat buns in the new packaging - totally different. In addition, the new ones have more calories, more sugar, more sodium, more carbohydrates, less fiber, less protein, and a much lower vitamin and mineral content. Uhhh... thanks, Rudi's. BTW, your new packaging is ugly.

Back on track. Toast the buns.

6. You should probably ready your condiments at this time as well so your burger doesn't sit around getting cold while you slice tomatoes. I like (from bottom to top): bun, dill pickle (or relish), lettuce, avocado, tomato, burger, completely melted cheddar cheese, fresh thinly sliced onion, ketchup, and mayo on the top bun. Unfortunately, I didn't have any lettuce and had to use kale. No biggie. And I messed up the order of the bottom ingredients. But it wasn't too bad.

Anyway, you should cook your burger. It's important that your pan or grill or broiler or whatever is not too hot. I mean, it should be hot, but not super hot. This is a dense burger with a lot of moisture - you don't have to worry too much about drying it out, but you do have to worry about cooking it through (it does have egg, after all, and it will fall apart if it's not cooked enough). If your heat is too high, the sides will burn before it cooks to the middle. But don't worry too much. Just scoop out a bit of burger mix, form a patty (make sure it's not too thick or it will never cook through), and put it on.

And flip it when it's brown and halfway cooked.

If you're using cheese, stick it on top of the browned side right now. It should be thinly sliced for maximum meltage.

I like to cover the pan with a large lid for a minute or so while the cheese melts. Do take the lid off to finish cooking the burger, though, as some moisture has to evaporate. It should be melty. And brown on both sides, and cooked all the way through.

And now... you can put it together in whatever order you want, with whatever condiments you want (the more adornments, the better). But it should look more or less like this:

and taste somewhat like a summer barbecue party.

I suggest that you make some vegetarian burgers of your own. Change the ingredients a little, if you'd like, there's no right or wrong. They're extremely satisfying. And gratifying. Maybe a touch mystifying, but only if you haven't made them yourself.

Stocking Up (and Yogurt, Too)

2010-08-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

I don't like buying prefabricated foodstuffs if I can easily make them myself - especially if they're more expensive premade. Take... oh, say, yogurt. Or vegetable stock. No wait, take both, because that's what I made this week.

(Like you had a choice.)

Making vegetable stock, for instance, is pretty simple. And it's handy to have around, because what if I want to make stew? Or risotto? Or something else that takes stock?

Why make your own vegetable stock?
- it's cheaper than buying stock
- you actually get to use vegetable scraps you'd otherwise throw away
- minimize waste from a) commercial production of stock, including packaging, and b) usable scraps
- it's very easy
- sodium control
- ingredient control
- quality control
- the stock is only subject to your whims, and not irradiation, complete sterilization, and contamination from horrid things

Every day, from whatever vegetables I use in my cooking or eating - carrots, celery, onions, kale, garlic, herbs - scraps go into a 1-2 gallon bag in the freezer. I call it my "stock bag." Onion skins go in... carrot peelings... kale stalks... thyme stems... that kind of thing. I don't put carrot greens or really inedible things in there, though, or things with no real flavor of their own (like lettuce, or potatoes). And if I have a vegetable that kind of wilts in the fridge but doesn't go bad, and I don't want to eat it because it's too floppy, I'll put it in the stock bag, too.

And then when the bag's full, I take everything out and dump it in my stockpot and cover with good water. Filtered, or bottled, or whatever. You're making a stock, so the water is kind of a feature. You don't want it to taste like Phoenix tap water.

I also chop up a few fresh carrots and half an onion and smash a few garlic cloves and toss them in. You don't even have to peel them. (By the way, don't put in the insane amount of parsley that I did here. It kind of makes it bitter.) I think the most important flavors in a stock come from carrots, celery, and the members of the Allium genus (onions, leeks, garlic, chives, etc). Make sure you have plenty of those in there.

Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer, cover partially and let it go for an hour or two. Stir it every 20 minutes or so, to make sure everything's getting overcooked the same amount. When it's done, you should be able to mash a previously-fresh chunk of carrot with a fork.

It should also smell pretty good. Put a nice big strainer over a nice big bowl and carefully pour in the vegetables and their cooking liquid.

Let that drain in there for a few minutes (prop it up if the bottom is sitting in the stock) and then set the strainer aside to cool before you dispose of the veggies. They are great in a compost pile, or eaten by a pig. If you have access to neither of those things, you can always just throw them out. They've lost all value at this point (but really, pigs love to eat anything).

Salt your liquid to taste. It's probably two teaspoons per 6 cups. I don't know. Just keep tasting.

You can use it right away, or pour it in a nice sealing jar and freeze it - whatever you need. You could freeze it in an ice cube tray, and then put all the cubes in a bag in the freezer, so when you need just a little stock you can take out the right amount. I used a bunch to make cassoulet, and stored the rest.

Tada! Vegetable stock. Kind of simple. Very cheap.

--- --- ---

And now for yogurt. I use the method (approximately) used in the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. It's not scary. You don't need a yogurt maker. It's not difficult. As long as you are capable of pouring and stirring.

You should have a few tools on hand, though. Have a watertight quart-size jar. I love the ones with the little orange rubber seal. Also have a small hard picnic cooler that will fit said jar and still be able to close. And last, but not least, have a candy thermometer that you can clip to the side of a saucepan.

Why make your own yogurt?
- it can be cheaper than buying processed yogurt
- it's easy
- it's pure - keep powdered milk, gelatin, and other thickeners and stabilizers out
- you can choose the source and type of your milk
- it will only undergo what you put it through, and not the rigors and dangers of commercial preparation

This yogurt is not quite as firm as yogurt you'll find in little plastic cups. The reason is that it contains no thickeners, other than the culture Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus (which also breaks down lactose so you can digest it). It is creamy and thick, and a great probiotic.

Start with a quart of the freshest whole milk you can get, and pour it into a saucepan (preferably one with a heavy bottom, not super-thin). It should fit with a little room. Clip your thermometer to the side so it's as far into the milk as you can get it without touching the bottom of the pan.

The first step is to re-pasteurize the milk. Yogurt is made with beneficial bacteria, but they can't work very efficiently when there's other bacteria in the way. So pasteurizing will give your milk a fresh new start. Put it over medium heat or so. Not too high, or it will scorch on the bottom and your yogurt will taste like burnt milk. Are you really that impatient?

Stir it every couple of minutes (from the bottom) so it doesn't scorch. You want to get it to 180°F - not higher, because it will lose just about anything nice that it has in it, and taste much like cooked milk, which is weird. Not lower if you want to minimize your risk of unsavory competition for your good bacteria. But if you're trying to keep it near-raw, and have raw milk fresh from the cow, maybe you could skip the pasteurization step.

When it reaches 180, take it right off the heat and put it on a cooling rack. Keep stirring it every few minutes (not as often as you did when it was on the stove). You are now cooling it to the proper temperature for yogurt cultures to thrive - between 110°F and 115°F.

The milk takes a little while to cool, so you can also prep your cooler and jar by filling them with scalding hot tap water.

Close up the cooler to retain the heat and warm everything up faster.

Your milk is still not cool, so you can get your culture ready. Take 1 tablespoon - no more, no less - of active culture yogurt and keep it handy. If it's your first time making yogurt, get a small container of plain, whole milk yogurt from a brand that advertises live cultures (the more, the better, usually), and take it from there. Nancy's Springfield Creamery in Oregon makes lovely cultured dairy products, and their yogurt makes a great starter. Get one with an expiration date as far in the future as possible. Bacteria do die off after awhile, and if you get a dud culture, you'll get dud yogurt. I had a batch from two weeks ago that I made, so I used a tablespoon of my own yogurt.

When your milk finally enters the 110-115 range, plop in the tablespoon of yogurt and whisk it up. Immediately dump the water out of the jar and cooler, dry the inside of the jar with the cleanest towel you have, and pour in the milk. With confidence. If you are afraid, you might spill it everywhere and lose everything you've ever worked for. Don't cry, though; I hear there's no use.

Seal up your jar and put it back in the cooler. Fill the cooler (so it just covers the jar of yogurt-to-be) with very hot tap water.

Close the cooler and put it in an undisturbable location (no moving or opening) and leave it alone for 8-12 hours. The longer it sits, the firmer and sourer it gets. I like yogurt sour (more good bacteria!), so I usually leave it at least 10 hours.

After your allotted time, take out the jar and put it in the refrigerator to chill. When it's chilled, it will be all yoged up. And really neat!

If you're not used to plain yogurt, or don't like the sourness, I recommend sweetening it with brown sugar, rapadura sugar, maple syrup, agave nectar, or honey (although, adding honey to chilled yogurt is difficult, as the honey gets nervous and seizes up and takes quite awhile to blend). Berries are also good, as are chopped nuts, granola, or shaved chocolate. You can use it in any recipe calling for yogurt.

Hope you enjoyed the how-to guide. It's really very satisfying to have an intimate knowledge of your food.

PS: Sorry there's no saguaro pudding. They're a protected species or something. Maybe next time, if I can find some saguaro fruit or seeds on the market.

Pan-fried Trout

2010-08-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

I ate some trout last night. It wasn't quite like the other times when I've made trout - I had no lemon, for one thing. Can you believe that Arizona - a state in which citrus grows as freely as mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest - does not sell organic lemons? At least, not at Whole Foods, which (sadly) is the only "natural" market I can find around Scottsdale. And for another thing, no sage. NO SAGE. In the desert. The desert. Really, Phoenix? Really?

But what am I, if not up for a challenge, eh? What's herby and sage-shaped? Basil! OK, it's not completely sage shaped, and the leaves are very thin... and a completely different flavor, but I'll try it all the same. You never know. Plus, that means I don't have to buy an herb, since it's growing in my living room.

To replace lemon, my first thought was, naturally, lime or orange. Apparently none of those, either. I'm sorry, I'm not keen on cooking pesticides (and consequently supporting the practice of pouring toxic chemicals into the ecosystem and farm workers) into my already probably-poisonous aquatic-raised dinner. Just the basics, folks, thanks.

What is available here? Now? TOMATOES! And they're acidic... and brightly colored... and they can slice up as nice as any lemon. And they'll be pretty all cooked in a pan. Mmm, fried tomatoes.

It was all a grand experiment, really - you can stick whatever you want in your trout. My favorite is still sage and lemon, but I did quite enjoy the hotness of the tomatoes, the way they got very soft and cooked and sweetened... maybe if I get a chance, some day, I'll cook trout with lemon AND tomatoes. And sage.

By the way, have you ever tried frying sage leaves in butter or olive oil? No? Do it now.

PAN-FRIED TROUT

Flour
Sea salt
1-3 whole trout (however many you want to cook), gutted
Freshly ground black pepper
Bunch of fresh herb leaves - sage preferable, but you can experiment
Sliced tomato or lemon or orange
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp other cooking oil (I used coconut - sometimes I use 1-2 tsp sesame oil)

1. Combine some flour with salt and pepper on a large plate. Just a hefty pinch of salt, a few good grinds of pepper. Use your instincts. Rinse your very fresh trout, inside and out. It shouldn't be very slimy. If it is, it might be off. You can probably use it anyway, as long as you rinse off any slimy texture. Unless the smell makes you want to throw up, then it's most definitely not ok. Ideally, you should not really be able to smell the trout at all unless you put your nose quite close to it, and then it should be just a very small smell. Remember, buy trout from a well-chilled, busy fish market. A busy fish market almost always has the freshest fish.

Pat dry your trout with paper and put it on your flour plate.

2. In the meantime, put on a very large cast-iron or steel pan to heat up. Use the heat setting that provides a moderate amount of browning for butter. On most electric stoves, this is somewhere just shy of medium, as long as you let it preheat. On gas, it's probably higher.

3. Coat the fish well on both sides with the seasoned flour, and put some plain sea salt and pepper on the inside cavity. The inside won't be the direct recipient of hot pan bottom, so you don't want to put flour in there. It will just get gummy.

4. Cram some sliced up tomatoes/lemon/whatever in your trout cavity. If it's a small trout, like mine, you can cut your tomato slices in half to fit better, like I didn't. Stick the herbs in there too, next to the trout flesh. I put in a very small amount of fresh thyme with my basil, just to see what would happen.

Nothing noteworthy, as it turned out.

5. Add your oils/butter to the pan and swirl them around to mix. If your butter starts spitting and turning dark very quickly, your pan is way too hot. Take it off the heat and let it settle for a minute or so before putting it back on (at a lower heat). You can still add the trout, though, especially if you're using cast iron, since that stays hot a long time. Put some tomato/lemon slices around in the pan, and a few on top of the fish. And some herbs. Don't forget those.

6. Depending on the size of your trout, and the heat of your pan, you'll want to cook it on each side about 6 minutes, give or take. Take a peek inside the cavity to see if the flesh on the lower side is opaque. If it's translucent, leave it on until it becomes opaque. You can turn it over when it's white. I didn't wait quite long enough, so I had to turn it back over again, but fortunately trout is relatively forgiving.

7. When the second side is cooked, you have to do something about the back of the trout, which is quite thick and will not have had a chance to get close enough to the heat to cook through. I like to prop up the trout on the side of the pan, back-down, and cook about 3 minutes per side (prop on the other side after three minutes, in other words).

Don't be alarmed if parts are falling off your trout. This is good. If they look cooked (this goes for tomatoes in the pan, too), take them out. I think it looks tastier when it's falling apart and charred in parts.

And make sure the head gets sufficient heat to cook. Because you're going to eat it, or you don't deserve to be eating fish.

8. When the trout flakes easily, the skin wants to peel off, and it looks ready to eat, take it out and put it on a plate and admire it. Oh, I do love trout.

At this point, you can eat it. Pull the meat off the bones going with the grain, so you can leave the skeleton behind and not pick 8290348028340 pinbones out of your dinner. Be on the lookout though. But if you get one and crunch it up and accidentally eat it, that's probably ok. I've done it a fair number of times. Sometimes on purpose.

I'm not going to fib. My favorite parts of a trout are the eyes and brain. At least try them once, with an open mind. The trout is opening her mind to you, the least you could do is return the favor. If you don't think you can eat the head, don't even cook it. Just toss it to the cat.

If you're a glutton, have a very wee trout, or share a fish with someone else, what you're left with is this:

which you need to dispose of as soon as possible lest your pets get to it and drag it around the floor. If you have leftover meat, just refrigerate it and have it cold, or heated up, with some lemon butter or something. Put it on crackers with some interesting spread. Have a trout melt with swiss. Add it to your shrimp cocktail. Put it in chowder. Whatever you want.

The basil was alright. It didn't benefit from frying like sage does. In a bite with tomato, it was very good, as basil and tomato always are together. It didn't argue with the fish. But it didn't get chummy with it either. (Get it? chummy? salmonids? Yarr.) I'll stick with sage, if I can ever find it here. In the desert.

I really need to get used to living in Phoenix. I can't expect the same types of foods to be as readily available as they are in Seattle. Maybe for my next post I'll focus on something a little more Arizona. Saguaro pudding or something. Hey, that's a thought...

Mediterranean Pearled Barley Salad

2010-07-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

Here I am, trying to make a rice salad (rice salad is one of my favorite summer foods, you know). Right now, I'm out of rice. Perfectly aware of the fact when I got my groceries two days ago, I also reminded myself that I had some emmer farro in the cupboard (a type of ancient wheat berry), and wouldn't that suffice just fine? Besides, I'm on a budget and even as cheap as brown rice is, I should be using what I have.

So come time to make dinner, I'm all excited, getting out my ingredients, because really, this salad practically makes itself. I get out a cup of farro and admire the golden grains, and remember the last time I had it. (Admittedly, that was several months ago. December, as I recall.) It sort of pops as you chew it, and has the taste of wind and sweet water and a little bit of the earth. Happy, no?

Into my saucepan it goes, covered with water. At this point I'm starting to notice something. There were a bunch of little dark seeds in with the farro, and they all floated up to the top. "Well gosh," I thought, "How on Earth did flaxseeds get into my farro?"

Upon closer inspection I realize that this is a very special type of flaxseed known as the flour beetle. I scoop them out and rinse my farro and put it in more water and swoosh it around to make sure they're all gone. They are. I sit there, staring at my farro, for what amounts to probably 45 minutes before I reluctantly admit it's just too creepy to want to cook and eat that grain. So it goes in the garbage (it, and all the rest of my farro supply). I putz around until about 9:30, studying the only live specimen of the ~~flaxseeds~~ flour beetles I can salvage. Kind of cute. Sigh.

No problem, I'll just go to Trader Joe's and see what kind of grain they have. Oh wait, they close at 9. So does Whole Foods, and having already driven the 10 miles to the nearest store that day, did not want to go back anyway. Albertson's up the street it is. They have a natural foods aisle, right??

Yeah, no. The most natural things at Albertson's are poison apples and Horizon milk.

Down to Basha's I go (another grocery chain here, it's like any other nasty grocery store), in the opposite direction. Lucky me, there's an aisle that says, "NATURAL" on the hanging sign. Apparently that means that there's a spot on the shelf for Gorilla Munch cereal. You know, next to the Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Frosted Mini Stupid Grossness.

I give up. By the grace of Whomever, there are three or four selections of Amy's frozen entrees in the freezer aisle. I recommend the Matar Paneer.

--

After a visit to Trader Joe's in the morning I relent to going back to Whole Foods (Trader Joe's has no organic uncooked grain that appeals to this salad), where I scour the bulk bins and pick up some pearled barley. It was that, or Kamut (another ancient form of wheat), which takes 2 hours to cook, or wheat berries - and I figure I get enough of standard wheat anyway. Or rice, which I am determined not to get at this point, because then I would feel silly for not getting it in the first place.

And I make my salad, which is delicious, except I discover that pearled barley (which I've never cooked before) has the bran and germ removed, rendering it NOT a whole grain and not nearly as beneficial to one's gut. Disappointing. But I got my salad, and it was delicious, so neener neener.

This is the ongoing battle I wage with the universe. I can't decide if it's telling me to give up and move on, or daring me to overcome something. Ever a fan of stories of overcoming great obstacles, I usually barge in and see what a mess I can make with what I've been thrown. Take that! See what I did there? Yeah! Somethingorother-power-struggle-taking-charge-of-chaos-mumbojumbo.

Somewhere in the back of my mind at this point is a tiny voice, sounding somewhat like my father, saying, "You're only punishing yourself..."

Wait, was there a lesson here?

You bet! I'm going to teach you how to make a delicious salad. :-D

MEDITERRANEAN PEARLED BARLEY SALAD

2 1/2 cups water
1 cup pearled barley
1/2 tsp sea salt
Extra virgin olive oil (get one with a delicious aroma and flavor)
1 tsp red pepper flakes
Freshly coarse-ground black pepper
1/4 cup finely diced red/purple onion
8 Kalamata olives, pitted and all chopped up
2-3 tbsp finely chopped sundried tomatoes (either the kind packed in oil, or the kind you have to rehydrate... doesn't matter, but not the paste)
1/2 cup thinly sliced or finely diced celery
1/4 cup - 1/2 cup chopped parsley leaves (curly or Italian flat, either's fine)
Fresh(ish) lemon juice
1/4 cup - 1/3 cup crumbled Feta cheese
Sea salt

1. Start by cooking the barley.

Bring the water to a boil, add the salt and barley, give it a quick stir. Turn it down and cover the pot. Let it simmer for 35 minutes. Check it every so often to make sure it's at a simmer and not a rapid boil. You can always adjust the temperature. After your minutes elapse, test a grain to make sure it's a good texture for eating. If it's not cooked, cook it some more. It's not difficult. If it's done, drain whatever water might still be left, and put the barley in a bowl and into the refrigerator to chill for a couple of hours.

2. When the barley is sufficiently cold, take it out. If you need to, add it to a bigger bowl. It's probably stuck in the shape of whatever it was chilled in, so break it up a little. Fluff it. You want independent grains.

3. Drizzle in some olive oil. I honestly don't know how much I used. I never measure it. I'd say maybe 1/4 cup? I don't know, drizzle it in and mix it until all the grains are coated and when you take a bite you get a hint of whatever delicious olive oil you've selected. Also add the red pepper flakes, ground pepper, and onion at this time. The pepper flakes and pepper because they need to be evenly distributed, and they tend to get confused and stick together if you add them after everything else. The onion because the longer it sits in there, with the oil, with the barley - the more it mellows and the flavors diffuse and become rather happy with one another.

4. You can chop your celery one of two ways. Either thinly slice it (1/8 inch thick, no more) or finely dice it (1/8-1/4 inch). They're both good. I did it both ways so you could see.

Actually, I did it both ways because I changed my mind halfway through cutting it. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that you could chop your celery one or two of two ways.

5. Add the celery, sundried tomatoes, and olives. Mix it all up.

6. Take a bunch of leaves from your parsley and chop them roughly. I like curly parsley for this salad because it doesn't seem as whiney. It's easy to cut it up and it gives a little bounce to your dish. Mix in the parsley, and then some lemon juice. I also don't measure the lemon juice, but I probably use about half as much as I did olive oil.

7. The last step is feta. Add it (crumbled) and taste. Add whatever it might need: pepper, olive oil, lemon juice, or sea salt. (If you're having trouble deciding on a brand of Feta, I like the Valbreso brand in the plastic package with the little sheep face on it. It's quite good. I used the Whole Foods brand that was precrumbled, and it was all dry and uncreamy. But it was also 1/4 the price, so there you go.) Once it's seasoned just right, it's pretty much ready to eat.

It's also good for a few days afterward, cold and delicious. I really like it with brown rice. I'm sure it would be good with wheat berries, spelt berries, farro, kamut, triticale, or maybe even whole oat groats. They all cook differently, so make sure you look into that if you try one of them.

And always check your stored grain. You might make a new friend (or 20). Or however you want to look at it.

Collard-Potato Soup

2010-07-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

Because nothing calls for a steaming hot bowl of soup like a 105 degree July evening in Arizona.

Times like this, I think I must be out-of-touch with my environment. I used to love going for ice cream during winter in Seattle. Or does that make me in-touch with my environment? Perhaps I just want to be feeling on the inside what I'm feeling on the outside. Helps with intra-body communication. Or maybe body-to-Earth communication. Either way it gets everyone on the same playing field, and I'm starting to sound like a communist, so I'm going to move on.

It was a stock-up-for-the-week cooking day. Earlier on, I made pinwheel cookies for the first time. I used the recipe from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins.

They were crisp and light, but the chocolate flavor was strong. To be fair, I used vanilla extract instead of the bean like they called for, but I don't know if a bean would have mellowed out the chocolate any better. I used Dutch cocoa... maybe next time I'll use natural and see if it helps. Or add some almond extract. Or peppermint. Or orange. But no. Digression.

Supposedly I'm blogging about soup today, so here goes. This soup is so... bistro. Every time I make it, I plan my future as the owner and sole employee of a small cafe, where I serve a soup of the day, which is usually this (I think I'd sell a bowl for $4.5, and maybe a cup for $2.5), because none of my other soups are very trendy. Fortunately, this is a soup that bends as easily as your whim, so to speak. If you don't want to use collard greens, you can use broccoli. Or asparagus. Or kale. You could probably even use celery. Or carrots. Maybe even eggplant. Hmm, that would be interesting.

I have to give Robert credit for this soup, really, as it was originally mostly his idea.

Mostly.

COLLARD-POTATO SOUP

Olive oil
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 bunch (1/2 to 1 lb) collard greens, washed and stems separated
2 cups sliced yellow onion
4 medium red potatoes, sliced thinly (4 cups, maybe?)
2 fat cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
Water
1/2 cup heavy cream
Fresh chives for garnish

1. One thing I really like to do with making a pureed soup like this is to roast at least part of the star vegetable ahead of time. It adds a hint of a charred flavor to the soup, which I like. So the first thing you should do is preheat the oven to 375°F. Cut the collard stems into sticks a few inches long and toss them with some olive oil and salt and pepper. Spread them in the bottom of a glass baking dish, which you will then put in the oven when it's preheated. Keep it there for 30 minutes while you do the rest of the soup.

2. Start your pot. You'll need a relatively large pot - not because you're making a lot of soup, but because greens start out large and get small after they cook, and you need to give them space. I used a big honkin' stockpot. Anyway, the long and short of it is that you need to slice your onions - however you want is fine - and chuck them in the pot with a little olive oil over medium heat.

You should then slice your collard leaves. This might seem like a pain, but it doesn't have to be! I stack a bunch of them together, roll them tightly, cut them once hot-dog-style right down the middle of the roll, and then slice the roll the fat way in about 1/2-inch slices. So you get a bunch of leaf pieces. It should take less than a minute to do the whole bunch. Toss them with the onions.

3. Let the onions and collards cook for several minutes so the greens can reduce, but stir them a lot so the onions don't burn on the bottom of the pot. In the meantime, you can smash your garlic and slice your potatoes!! This is so exciting. To smash garlic, keep the skin on and whack it hard coming straight down with a mostly-full bottle of olive oil. Then cut off the ends, peel (quite easily, I might add), and roughly chop. It will be simmering in water for awhile, so you don't want it too fine lest the garlic flavor cook out.

Ooh, potatoes. So all you do is slice each potato in half the long way (so you get two elongated flattish halves) and then lay the flat side down and slice thinly from the end. It goes pretty fast. The thinner you slice, the less time it takes to cook. I would go anywhere from super-duper thin to maybe 3/16 of an inch. Or just eyeball it. Or use one of those mandolin slicers. But mind your fingertips if you do use one, as they may slice off and will subsequently get lost in the potatoes and then become rubbery with cooking and ruin the texture of the soup. At this point, your greens and onions should look something like this, and start to be leaving a residue on the bottom of the pot despite your efforts.

4. This means it's time to add water. Add potatoes, add garlic, a hefty pinch of sea salt, and add enough water to just cover everything. Probably more water than I did, because I had to add more later.

Turn the heat up a bit to bring it to a simmer, and then turn it back down to keep it simmering gently and cover the pot partially with a lid on cockeyed.

5. Let the pot cook like that for 15 minutes or so, stirring every few minutes to make sure everything's getting cooked evenly. If ever you notice a lot of things poking out of the water, either add more water or push them back under. Your roasting collard stems will probably be ready around this time, so take them out of the oven. They should have gotten some nice browned edges.

Take the most even-looking half of them and cut them into very short pieces and set aside to use as garnish. The rest of them you should cut into 1-inch segments and toss into the simmering water.

6. When the potatoes are tender (take a piece out and eat it and decide if they're cooked or not), then you're in the home stretch. Everything should have mellowed out together in the pot, like so.

Take it off the heat and whip out your immersion/wand blender (that's the hand blender on a stick which is so handy in situations such as these). If you don't have one, you can use a normal blender and do it in batches, but that's a pain. Or you can use a food mill, which is also a pain. A food processor probably works too, but I have never used one for this purpose, so I don't know. An immersion blender is a good tool to have around. Put it in your pot of soup and start whirring it around. In a few minutes it should look like a comic book swamp.

This is good. Taste for seasoning, and add salt and pepper as needed.

7. The final steps are thus. Add your cream, in a drizzle (why? I don't know. because it's fun.). I didn't measure how much I put in, but it was probably about half a cup. Blend it some more, until it gets evenly pale green. Taste again, adjust as necessary. If it's really thick, don't add more cream, add more water.

8. So now you can put it in a bowl. Add some of your chopped roasted collard stems. And some chives. And then eat it. OM NOM NOM this is a really awesome soup. I mean it, it's really good. You should try it.

So, if I were changing anything about this recipe, I'd make it more often. That is all. I mean, really - it's an organic soup that contains probably 8 servings for under $10 for the whole pot. Good. Deal.

I also want to dedicate this soup, and the blog post, and the recipe, to my late great uncle Bym. I always associated this particular shade of green with him, and I thought of him when I made it. And I think maybe he would have liked it.

Lasagna

2010-07-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

This post is long overdue. I make lasagna all the time. It's one thing I feel comfortable doing start-to-finish with no guidance, experimenting with, and it nearly always turns out quite perfectly. To my tastes, anyway. I'm not sure if I should even call it lasagna, actually, because like most things on this blog, it's a bastardization of whatever the original dish is supposed to be. Oh well. Any cook should be able to tell you there's no "one way" for a dish to be. They always evolve. Tradition be damned.

I'm not a big fan of lasagnas that are oozing with copious amounts of completely pureed marinara or indecent levels of gooey cheeses. I like flavor in my lasagna. Mushrooms, eggplant, basil, olive. I like lasagna textured. Each layer should offer something new to the palate. There should be some chewiness/crunch to the very top layer, lightly topped with flavorful, aged Italian cheese. Slight al dente *fwood* when you slice into a noodle. Each vegetable should dance and sing its own number together in a medley of garden-fresh tastes. You should run across a whole basil leaf now and then. Tomatoes brighten the whole face of lasagna, but doesn't smother it. And the white layers... should be quiet. Mellow... and dear.

Speaking of the white layers. I follow in my mom's footsteps here, and use cottage cheese and sour cream instead of ricotta or a bechamel sauce. I imagine this is probably because it's cheaper to buy cottage cheese, but I've prefer the taste of it. Associations, you know.

One thing I always try to do nowadays with my lasagna is make my own noodles. I think the texture and taste is superior to boxed dry noodles, although it tacks on about an hour extra to prep time (I'll include my recipe for this, although of course you can buy noodles if you wish). It would have been much easier had I remembered to bring my pasta machine (essentially a dough roller) with me when I moved. I made do with a rolling pin, and felt like a real cook. You really get to know your food this way. You can feel what it feels. Understand what brought it to you. It's a little bit surreal. That said, I didn't grow the wheat or grind the flour or raise the chickens that laid the eggs. Some day, maybe, but not in a small apartment in a desert city.

Oh yeah, and I use bread flour for the pasta. Bread flour is like all-purpose, but with a higher protein and gluten content. You can probably use all-purpose flour, but you'd have to work it longer to develop the gluten, and maybe add less flour to make up for the extra working. Maybe it would perform pretty similarly. Try it and let me know.

LASAGNA

9 5/8 oz (about 1 3/4 cups plus 2 tbsp) bread flour
3 large eggs
1 large eggplant, chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
Extra-virgin olive oil
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 medium onion, diced
bunch of cremini or button mushrooms... maybe 10? 15?, sliced
red pepper flakes
fennel seeds
oregano, dried or fresh
thyme, dried or fresh
pinch salt
freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, pressed
handful of pitted, drained Kalamata olives, chopped coarsely
28-oz can diced tomatoes (fire-roasted are lovely)
16 oz cottage cheese (the highest fat you can find)
8 oz sour cream (full-fat)
1 egg
1/2 cup or so frozen chopped spinach, thawed
bunch of fresh basil leaves
chunk of some aged Italian cheese, such as parmesan, asiago, romano, or a blend (I used Pecorino Romano)

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Make your pasta dough. It's actually pretty easy, especially if you have a food processor. Put your flour and 3 eggs into the food processor, like so.

I know you can only see two eggs in the picture. Trust me, I used three. One made a break for it and went to the other side of the bowl. Turn on the processor and let it whirl until the dough forms a big clump (you can mix it with your hands if you don't have a FP).

And then take it out and knead it forcefully until it gets smooth and not at all sticky. This could take anywhere from 2-8 minutes. When it looks like this:

wrap it up (or put in a close-fitting bowl and cover) and put it in the fridge to rest for an hour. You have to let it rest. The gluten strands relax during this time. If you try and use it now, the gluten will tighten so much that you won't be able to roll it out thinly because it will keep contracting and you'll get really weird, lumpy, thick noodles.

2. Prepare the eggplant. Toss it in a bowl with a little oil and salt and pepper (just a sprinkle of each, enough oil to barely coat). Spread them on a cookie sheet like so:

Put it in the oven and keep it there for 45 minutes to roast.

3. Time to make the sauce, which is probably the messiest part of the whole process. Start by heating a stainless skillet over medium heat and putting in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Dump in the onions and mushrooms right away and toss a bit to coat. Keep an eye on it, stir every minute or two. It will go through a "wet stage" where the mushrooms let out a bunch of liquid. Don't worry about this, just keep it cooking and let it evaporate.

In the meantime, put a bit of red pepper flakes (tsp, probably), fennel seeds (maybe 2 tsp), oregano (tbsp or so if dried and crumbled, more if fresh), thyme (2 tsp if dried leaves, more if fresh), a wee pinch of salt, and some pepper all in a mortar and grind it with the pestle until the fennel seeds are a little crushed. To have it ready to add, put it in a little bowl with the pressed garlic. It all goes in at once, after all.

Dump it into the onion-mushroom mixture (when the liquid has evaporated) and stir it around. Let it cook for a minute (stirring frequently) while you chop up your olives.

When it smells amazing, and looks like this:

dump in the olives and give it a toss. If there's a little bit stuck to the bottom of the pan (there should be some residue, but not too much else unless you're cooking at too high a heat), don't be tempted to add more oil, because you really don't need it. Dump in all the tomatoes and listen to it hiss. That's the sound of all the residue coming off the pan. Mm, browned stuff. Give it a good stir, turn down the heat and let it simmer.

4. At this point, you can probably take your eggplant out of the oven.

Run a spatula under it at this point so it doesn't adhere to the pan while it cools. You can leave the oven on, if you hurry up with the rest of the process, or turn it off and remember to turn it back on later when you're getting ready to bake the lasagna.

5. While your sauce is cooking and your eggplant is cooling, it is probably time for your pasta dough. Take it on out of the fridge, divide it in two, and re-cover one half and save it. With the half you took out, make it into a ball, flatten it slightly, and dust it with flour. You should also dust your counter with flour, as you don't want the dough to stick.

OK, so you have to roll out this little ball of dough. It sounds easy. Hahaha. HAHAHA I laugh at your ignorance. Anyway, you have to get it to approximately 1.5cm thick evenly throughout. Put some muscle into it. You'll have to add flour as it spreads out. The key is not to stretch the dough, because it will just elasticize back into shape again. You want to spread the dough, which is difficult and requires lots of downward pressing of the rolling pin as you roll. Or pasta roller, which is so much easier. After some sweat and tears, you should arrive at this stage.

You can get 4 approximately 12"x2" noodles out of this, with scraps. I like to cut the sides using my little zigzaggy pastry cutter tool. I don't know how to make them curly like the ones in the box, but that is a reasonable enough approximation. You don't even have to do that. A knife works just fine. Just set the noodles aside as you cut. Ball up the scraps and roll it out again, trying to make it a foot long and a few inches wide.

You can get two more noodles out of this. Whatever scraps you have can be cooked as weird pasta shapes, discarded, or put into the next half of the dough to be rolled. I may or may not have eaten mine.

Put on a large pot of water to boil. Repeat the rolling and cutting process with the second half of dough, so you have 12 noodles.

Don't you feel amazing??

If your water is boiling, add a tbsp or so of salt and your noodles, carefully, one-by-one. Cook for 3-4 minutes and remove to a plate, layering with a little olive oil so they don't stick together.

6. When your sauce has reduced and no longer looks watery, mix in all your eggplant pieces and take it off the heat.

Also, mix in a bowl your cottage cheese, sour cream, egg, and spinach. This is the constituent of your white layers.

7. Assembly time is always fun. You can make it look pretty. This generally goes in a 9x13-inch glass baking dish, but I don't have one right now, so I had to squeeze it into a 8x11-inch glass baking dish. I had to cut my noodles so they fit (if your noodles don't fit the long way, do trim them, as they will otherwise hamper the ease of assembly and final deliciousness of the lasagna by running up the sides).

Anyway, put just a little bit of your sauce in the bottom of your baking dish, along with a sploosh of water and a splish of olive oil, and mix it around to coat the bottom as evenly as possible. Then you can put your first four noodles in, overlapping each other slightly if necessary.

In your pan, divide your sauce into three heaps (it should be reduced enough that it doesn't run back together when you smoosh it apart). Put one heap over the noodles and spread it evenly. Top with a layer of fresh basil leaves.

Put half of your white sauce mixture over the basil leaves in small dollops (trust me on this, you want it evenly dolloped or you will just be mushing around a mixture of red and white sauce and it will no longer be pretty, or quite as tasty). Spread it very carefully so it covers the entire thing.

Repeat, with another layer of noodles, red sauce (you can decide whether or not you want another basil layer, I usually just have one), remaining white sauce, remaining noodles. Before you put the last bit of sauce on top, add a bit of water (1/4 cup, maybe?) and a little olive oil, to thin it out a smidge. Mix it all up in the pan, then put it on top and spread to cover the noodles the best you can. Any noodle that sticks out is going to get impossibly chewy when it cooks. Grate your cheese on top.

8. Cover the dish very loosely with foil and bake 20 minutes (still at 375). Remove the foil, and bake it another 20 minutes. When it comes out, it should be bubbly, a little melty, aromatic, and cooked-looking. And the noodles will have warped and wiggled and will look really neat.

Now you're done, and you can slice and eat it. I usually have one portion and then cut the rest into portions and wrap them in waxed paper and then foil and freeze them. Then I can have them at my leisure.

So, that's how I make lasagna. You can use different vegetables. You can take shortcuts. You can ignore it and make something else entirely. Lasagna doesn't mind. It will still be here. It will be here after you're dead and gone. It doesn't need you. Lasagna is one of those people that is perfectly content with herself, regardless of what everyone else is thinking or doing. If you are nice, she will be nice. If you make time for her, she will make time for you. Or at least a nice dinner.

Would I change anything? Yes... I only used 4oz of sour cream, but I should have used all 8 (like I said in the recipe). I also should have used Organic Valley cottage cheese instead of Nancy's. I dearly love Nancy's cottage cheese, but its cultured, lightly soured taste is not right for a dish with so many tomatoes. Plus, that's what the sour cream is for. I would have used more basil. A bigger dish. A little more seasoning. I probably should have sang and danced as I cooked. Oh well. I am building character.