Category Archives: Cooking techniques

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food

CSA week 2: Savory (if unseasonable) risotto with chard

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Oh, what a couple of weeks it has been. I will try to post several times in quick succession to get caught up… Meanwhile, let us travel back in time to mid-June, when the second CSA pickup of the season graced us with:

csa

-1 bunch rainbow chard
-Parsley
-Garlic scapes
-Kohlrabi
-Lettuce
-Mesclun
-Strawberries
-Weekly eggs

It’s been funny to watch the internet suddenly take on scapes and kohlrabi over the last month, with the explosion of CSAs exposing so many more people to them!

Since we have had a month of cool rainy weather, I’ve been treating most of these spring vegetables to wintery applications. The chard was no exception; I had some cooked sausage ready to go, so I made a nice easy risotto (my former-go-to meal, and one that I had sort of forgotten about this winter).

I found it incredibly soothing to stand over the stove, stirring the dry vermouth (which I sub in for white wine) into the onion and arborio; adding the broth and eventually the chard and feeling the warmth of the steam.

And what is better than sitting down to something that simple and warm and savory? I’d probably choose risotto over brownies most days.

But then, I’m a person who chooses garlicky kale over chocolate chip cookies, so maybe I’m not to be trusted.

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BTW, I’m struggling with photo hosting problems and thinking it’s finally time to fork over for a Flickr Pro account. I’ve maxed out Picasa and I don’t like how it sizes my photos, anyway. I’ll post what I have already uploaded but then I have to figure out a solution.
EDITED: Guess what I got as an early b-day present? Flickr Pro it is! Thanks, M&D!!

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Disasters, Food

Garlic can explode.

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(I am currently in Italy (Venice, today!), but I thought I’d leave a couple entries for you while I’m gone.)

I think a lot of food blogs make it seem like the author is incredibly talented and perfect and never has an off night. It’s hard, when you’re putting yourself out there for the world to see, to present the failures in addition to the successes (and maybe readers don’t care to see the grim results), but posting my pizza disaster was so therapeutic that I thought I’d give you another little window into my less-than-perfect world.

A couple weeks ago the temperature dropped suddenly, and we had a really chilly, wet, clammy day. I was feeling a bit clammy emotionally, too, so I thought tomato soup and grilled cheese would be just the ticket. I googled around a bit to find an easy recipe for tomato soup. One that I found suggested roasted the canned tomatoes with a little olive oil before making the soup, which seemed like a swell idea, so off I went, feeling a little smug and very domestic.

tomatoes pan

I tossed a handful of unpeeled garlic cloves on the sheet pan, thinking roasted garlic would be a nice addition to the soup, put the pan in a 400 degree oven, and went back to work in my office. 10 minutes later there was a very, very loud BANG! in the kitchen, followed by a strong scorching smell. One of the garlic cloves had EXPLODED. Violently. The entire oven was covered in shards of it. I pulled the other cloves out of the oven and dropped them on the stovetop (hot! ouch!), and eventually threw them in while I was softening onions and celery for the soup.

(Picture is blurry because it’s very hard to take a photo of an oven without it being all oven light, plus my hand was shaking.)

If you look closely, you can see that the garlic forced itself up to the lining that rims the outer edge of the door.

Meanwhile the tomatoes weren’t looking remotely roasted at 15 minutes (which was when the recipe said to take them out), so I set the timer for 15 more and walked away. The house was full of burned-garlic smoke, by the way. And then I forgot to come back and check the tomatoes’ progress before the buzzer went off.

When I did pull them out, I found this:

Yum!

The tops of the tomatoes never roasted. The bottoms scorched and welded themselves to the pan. I popped the minuscule unscorched remainders off and tossed them in with the juice from the can, and set the pan to soak for a couple hours. Meanwhile I figured I might as well still make soup.

soup ingredients

Using the immersion blender improved my mood, and thanks to the remaining semi-roasted garlic the soup was plenty creamy without any cream added:

soup

It was kind of bland. I should have grated parmesan into it.

By the way, I had bacon to add to our grilled cheese, and I was so dismayed by the Garlic Explosion that I decided to cook it in the microwave instead of hassling with it on the stove. I have done that before and it works ok, normally (nothing to write home about but fine for a sandwich). Not this time. Somehow all the salt was drained out and we were left with what I imagine those Beggin’ Strips dog snacks taste and feel like. I erased the photos.

soup sandwich

Sigh!

(Hopefully I am eating unbelievably delicious soup Canal-side, as you read this.)

City Life, Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes, The Apartment

Ushering in summer: Bulgogi on the porch

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(I’m in Italy right now, but I thought I’d leave you with an entry or two while I’m gone!)

We eat on our narrow but lovely little porch almost every night during the summer, so we were delighted when the weather first warmed up enough for us to dig out the cushions and dust off the table and chairs. To celebrate, I made bulgogi, the unbelievably tasty Korean barbecued beef that you can cook on your own tabletop griddle at Korean BBQ restaurants.

After grocery shopping in the afternoon, I started by making a batch of daikon radish pickles, which were fine but a bit bland.

daikon

The daikon I got from th CSA was less carrot-shaped and much fatter. Different varieties, I guess! Aren’t the patterns in the slices pretty?

daikon slices

I used a basic marinade recipe from AllRecipes, spiked with plenty of sesame (seeds and oil) and soy. The real trick to recipes like this is to freeze your meat for about an hour before slicing it. That makes it to easy to slice nice thin pieces without the meat mushing all over the place. Remember to cut against the grain. (I used sirloin tips, I think.)

sliced steak

I marinated the meat for a couple hours, and when dinner time rolled around I cooked some sushi rice and dished out kimchi and the daikon pickles:

I also washed a bunch of lettuce leaves for wrapping.

The meat was a snap to cook because it was sliced so thin. From this:

to this:

took about two minutes for each batch, on a hot grill. I piled up the meat on a plate, squeezed all the various dishes onto our porch table, and we got to the messy business of wrapping our little rolls, starting with a base of rice, then meat, then the pickles and kimchi:

I’m hungry as I write this, so let’s take another look at that luscious, flavorful meat:

It was a perfect kickoff to summer, lit by the pale glimmer of our new Ikea solar string lights and washed down with gin and lemonade! I’m dying to go do some research at Koreana and make note of more of the little bowls of pickles that they bring over–there are usually about 20 and they are my favorite part. Great, now I’m starving.

City Life, Cooking, Cooking techniques, Family, Food, General, Home, Recipes, Travel, Vintage

Chili, cornbread, and leftovers

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It was months ago that I saw a chili recipe on Oh Happy Day and thought “must make.” And, actually, it was months ago that I made it–oops! Jordan called this “Pepper’s Famous Chili,” and I think it’s a great starting point to play with. I’ve made it a couple times and it is a bountiful and delicious recipe, extremely filling.

“Pepper’s Famous Chili
As seen on Oh Happy Day!

1lb. ground beef
1 (15 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 (15 oz.) can kidney beans with liquid
1 (15 oz.) can pinto beans with liquid
1/2 c. diced onion
1/4 c. diced celery
2 med. tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp. cumin
1 T. chili powder (2 T. if you like it hot)
1 tsp. black pepper
2 tsp. salt
1 c. water

Brown beef and drain liquid. Crumble beef and put into a large pot mix in all other ingredients. Cook over low heat stirring every 15 to 20 mins. for 2 to 3 hours. (You could also use a slow cooker.)”

I bought everything at Trader Joe’s, so the sizes of the cans of beans were a bit varied, but I don’t think it matters. And one time I made it with stew beef instead of ground beef, with moderate success–you need more meat, it turns out, and Tom was visiting and we ran into a bit of a problem while browning the meat (too much liquid, too small a pan), so it wasn’t as flavorful as it could be. Both times, I made cornbread muffins to accompany the chili, first using an Epicurious recipe, then ceding control to Tom for his favorite recipe.

Ingredients:

The fresh stuff livens up all those cans of beans and sauce:

tomatoes onions celery

Honestly the cooking process doesn’t present many opportunities for photos. You brown the beef, then throw everything in together for a couple hours. (Incidentally, I didn’t have chili powder and cumin but I thought I did. I ended up using a taco seasoning mix from the awesome spice shop in Inman Sq., which worked just fine.)

Here’s the result with ground beef:
chili cornbread

Good stuff, easy to make. Not bad! I must say, we were eating leftovers for what felt like a year. I think next time (and it took me two batches to think of it; I am so braindead lately!) I’ll freeze half.

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Oh man, while Tom was visiting we hit the slightly pathetic array of thrift stores in the neighborhood, as per tradition, and the one good find was a  sweet white-enamel 8-inch Copco cast iron frying pan for a couple bucks. It was *filthy* but we soaked it in soapy water and scrubbed it with barkeeper’s friend and fine steel wool, and now it’s in really great shape. Love.

Before:

After:
clean

Fantastic shape—I love the little pour spout.
copco frying pan
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Note: Why yes, I’m posting things I cooked in March, why do you ask? The good news is that I’m hoping to pull together a couple posts to publish while I’m away next week. In Italy. HURRAY! (Also? Panic. I get so freaked out before trips because I loathe packing, never feel like I have the right clothes, and actually never do have the right shoes. I’ve got a fresh sketchbook and some maps, we should be fine!)

And: 1 more month until CSA time! Thank god.

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes

Dubious combo, great results

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(By the way, I went back and added some photos to my last post, including a teensy tiny baby hand, aw!)

If you read Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn, you may have seen a complete rave review of a Jamie Oliver recipe for chicken braised in milk, with lemon, sage and cinnamon. I have been burned several times by classic italian pork-in-milk recipes, but for some reason I had to go out and make the chicken version immediately. The writer, Faith, accidentally misread the recipe and covered the chicken for 2/3 of the cooking time, then tested it uncovered and preferred the covered version, so I followed her lead.

Here’s the recipe, from Jamie.

I think the ingredients look like a still-life–maybe I should paint them!

Though things aren’t as scenic if you zoom out:

The recipe is seriously easy. I hate hate hate cooking chicken, especially whole chickens, but the braising aspect made me more comfortable. The most annoying part is browning the chicken in the butter and oil, since it’s awkward to flip it around in the pan.

In an hour and a half of unsupervised (mostly) cooking, this unappetizing sight:

Turned into this:

I have never had crispier skin on a roast chicken; not sure why. The fat rendered out of it completely. And I’ll add my voice to those of Faith and Jamie in saying not to freak out at that curdled sauce. It tastes amazing. The first night we had shredded meat on rolls, as little sandwiches:

And the next night we had more of it (with that delicious, nasty-looking sauce) with israeli cous cous and sauteed greens:

We ate the meat for about a week, and it was scrumptious hot or cold. I’ll definitely make it again, maybe omitting the cinnamon if I want slightly more versatile leftovers, though it gave a really nice musky flavor. It hurts to use a whole stick of butter to brown the chicken and then toss it out, but I saved mine in a pyrex in the fridge, so maybe I could re-use it? It’s lovely browned butter now; I wonder if it would burn on a second use. Anyway, compared to dry-roasting a chicken, this method was way less stressful and gave really juicy, tender meat. As I said, I followed Faith’s lucky “mistake” and kept the pot covered for the first hour, opening it for the last 30 minutes to crisp up.

City Life, Cooking, Cooking techniques, Disasters, Food, Recipes, The Apartment

One-stop-shop for amazing messes

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Ok, so. I have spoken before about my unending love for Jamie at Home, and back in February I watched the pizza episode and promptly felt the urge to make dough from scratch. Hurray! It’s so easy! (Note: I had a tremendously bad day leading up to this attempt.)

Pizza Dough
adapted from Jamie Oliver‘s Jamie at Home
7 cups strong white bread flour or 5 cups strong white bread flour plus 2 cups finely ground semolina flour (next time I want to try it w/ semolina)
1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
2 (1/4-ounce) packets active dried yeast
1 tablespoon raw sugar
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 1/2 cups lukewarm water

pizza ingredients

Ok. So you’re supposed to sift the flour and salt together into a mountain on the counter. No sweat! I am a brave person who will go ahead and work straight on the butcher block. No fear! Mountain, ahoy!

flour

Now, that photo does not accurately depict the towering majesty of the 7-cup flour mountain. It was tall and steep. Back to the recipe:

“In a large measuring cup, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough.”

Sounds easy enough, and Jamie made it look like a cakewalk on the show. Proceed: Liquids mixed with sugar and yeast:

liquids

Commence whisking, while feeling extremely smug and craftsmanlike:

whisking flour

Here’s the important part: Get cocky and pour in too much liquid at once, collapsing the walls of the too-tall mountain and flooding yeasty-oil-water down the dishwasher and your pants. And socks. And under the baseboards. Stand stock still while it gushes over, before fitfully trying to shove flour into the liquid to stop the onslaught. Grab paper towels to make a moat, then take a photo that doesn’t come close to portraying the chaos:

mess

(Aren’t I brave, giving you the warts-and-all view into my kitchen?)

Take stock, recognizing that you have used nearly all of the flour in the house, all the yeast, and you don’t have an alternate plan for dinner. Decide to soldier on, mixing what liquid is left on the counter into the flour and then adding additional water and kneading until, miracle beyond miracles, the dough pulls together into a gorgeous, silky smooth ball.

Set it to rise while you pry off the baseboards and scrub yeasty flour paste off the inside of the cabinet doors.

Now, back to the original plan!

“Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about 1 hour until the dough has doubled in size.

Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands – this is called punching down the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in plastic wrap, in the fridge (or freezer) until required. If using straightaway, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas – this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas. “

Fine! The dough rose, though maybe not quite as much as normal:

I froze half and made the other half into four pizzas:

dough balls

It rolled out like a dream, not sticky like store-bought dough:

I made half with flat edges and half with pinched crusts like my mom does, to see which I preferred. (Note: The Food Network version of the recipe doesn’t specify baking time or temp. I cranked my oven to around 450 and just watched the pizzas carefully; I think they took about 10 minutes but I could be wrong.)

Pinched won:

And dinner did eventually get served. Without the 45 minutes of cleaning up the kitchen, it would have been a really easy process.

(BTW I think I’m over white pies, at least with the slightly-dry cheese blend I have been using. The other half of the dough got slathered with various sauces, to be explained in a future post.)

(Also, I’m totally uninspired and haven’t been cooking much. Is it just the late-winter doldrums? Anyone else feeling it, too?)

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, General, Recipes

Love and baked goods

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Ben has moved on from breakfast pancakes or oatmeal on weekend mornings, and has discovered the connection between organized personalities and the joys of baking. In addition to churning out no-knead bread for his lunch sandwiches, he has recently started baking biscuits.

Our downstairs neighbor, Jean, is a lovely lady who hails from North Carolina. At her annual pre-Christmas tree-trimming party, she serves about as much food as a table can hold, but the highlight is the delicious ham accompanied by basket after basket of tender buttermilk biscuits. This year we asked for the recipe, and not only did she e-mail it to me, she brought us back a bag of biscuit flour from her holiday trip down South! Now that is neighborly.

Ben and I made the biscuits together the first time, but since then he’s been making them before I wake up on the weekend, including Valentine’s morning. I strongly equate love with baked goods (don’t we all?), so it was a wonderful start to the day!

BEST BISCUITS
(From Jean)

Cut together 2 cups self rising flour with 1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter (I use unsalted) until well blended. Add a pinch of salt if you want. I do this step in the food processor, then dump it into a bowl to add the buttermilk.

Add 3/4 cup buttermilk and gently mix until moistened. Do not overmix

Turn out on a floured surface and knead very gently a few times (pat it, really) until the dough forms a coherent ball. Do not knead vigorously like you would knead bread.

Pat out to about 3/4 inch think, cut with a round cutter, and bake at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

The biscuits will be better if you use Southern Biscuit or White Lily flour –something about soft wheat, I think. But they will be good anyhow.

This was the first batch, a bit raggedy because we were so careful not to overwork the dough. It does need (ha!) a few kneads to pull together.

One of Ben’s finished batches, complete with lovely presentation!

Topped with my mom’s raspberry jam, they are unspeakably good. Sadly, we used up the last of the jam in the biscuit mania.

Not bad, right?

Now, as if waking up to fresh biscuits weren’t the way to a girl’s heart, Ben made me dinner for Valentine’s day. But not just any dinner. I ordered him to take photos, but I had no idea what he was making, and he recreated the meal I always always order at my favorite restaurant in NYC, Inoteca. At least, what I always ordered: On my last visit it came to light that they have changed the fantastic romaine-raddichio-ricotta salata salad that I’ve loved for years. Good thing we started making it at home a while ago.

Ben’s perfect salad (he added a couple drops of truffle oil for good measure):

TRUFFLED EGG TOAST!!

I have meant to make that at home for years but never did. There was a slight mis-reading of the recipe (you’re not supposed to use whole eggs, just egg yolks), but on the whole it was a swoonily romantic and delicious gesture. Best Valentine’s ever! (He even got cupcakes for dessert.)

Here’s what he made Sunday morning:
french toast

He’s making meatballs again as I type. I think Ben has spent much more time in the kitchen than I have lately, and I’m not complaining.

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Stay tuned for brussels sprouts (and creative use of leftovers) and an epic mess.

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Good stuff

The vegetables of winter: Turnips and Swede

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I am unnaturally obsessed with vegetables, but even I know that most people don’t get too wound up about the root vegetables that locavores in northern climes are working their way through this time of year. I also think we should all give up on the word Rutabaga altogether, and follow the Euro lead in calling it Swede. No wonder no one cooks the poor thing; what an awful name. But my Bubble and Squeak didn’t use a fraction of the vegetables I’ve got in cold storage, so prepare yourselves for a few more entries on how to use The Other Root Vegetables.
(Alternative slogans:
We’re not sexy but we sure store well!
Lumpy but delicious!
Off your feed? Try some Swede!)

(Oh my god, someone help me.)

ANYWAY. Look, turnips!

I tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted for….a while. A long while. I kept tasting every so often once they looked cooked, and by the time Ben had grilled [more] steaks they were wrinkled-looking but tasted awesome.

Now for the really photogenic stuff. Go get some swede. Seriously, go. It’s a huge wax-covered lump in most grocery stores, though mine were much smaller than normal since they came from the CSA. I used two small and one medium; a normal-sized large one would do all by itself.

Peel and cut it up into smallish pieces so it will cook quickly and evenly. Be careful while cutting it and keep in mind that before pumpkins were common in the British Isles, the original jack o’ lanterns were made from swede. These things are tough. Cover the pieces with water, add some salt, bring to a boil and cook until soft.

Drain, add butter and get out your trusty masher (I found an Oxo one
that resembles Jamie Oliver’s, and I like the design a lot.)

Mash. Add salt and pepper to taste. Do a little dance to celebrate how tasty this nutritious vegetable is (wiki tells me it’s a cross between a turnip and a cabbage! I love cabbage!). Serve with something good: in this case, crispy pork cutlets and corn from the farm that I froze in August.

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Oh, and by the way. While this is what winter looks like in these parts (snowier, actually; it’s snowing as I type)…


(The beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA in mid-January)

…I have to celebrate our wonderful annual visit to our friends Josh and Keren and The Amazing Adley in Florida. This is their reality:

Here I am, baffled by this “sunshine” and “warm weather” of which I’ve heard so much:

It was hard to come back to this:

But I have pretty tulips this week and I know spring will come eventually.

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Good stuff

One tiny chicken, three+ dinners

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You know, if I were to write a parody of Real Simple and other magazines aimed at over-scheduled upper-middle-class suburban moms (and those of us who will no doubt be OSUMCSMs (catchy) in a few more years, heh) I would probably focus the food section on how rotisserie chickens are The Answer! To Everything!

And I’ve never bought one.

But last month I was down in CT visiting Greta and Jack, along w/ our friend Ann, while all the husbands went skiing for the weekend, and Greta turned out a series of awesome meals while also chasing after a toddler, and one night she pulled out a rotisserie chicken and we pretty much just ate it while standing around the kitchen counter and pulling pieces off with our hands, and I thought “Genius! Ready-to-eat meat, plus leftovers!” as if I hadn’t read that exact tip 9000 times.

So I had Ben pick up a rotisserie chicken, and when he got it home I looked at the weight and thought “good lord, a pound and a half? It’s minsky!” but then I got three meals out of it and still had leftover shredded meat, which I never did use because I’m a mess.

Anyway. Night one: Chicken w/ fried polenta cakes and cavalo nero slow-cooked with garlic. Oily and delicious, just the way I like it.

Night two: Shredded chicken quesadillas. (I shredded the chicken and heated it up in a bit of broth with taco spice from Christina’s spice shop in it, but I don’t think I used enough spice mix.)

BTW, I use greek yogurt instead of sour cream. My mom always used plain yogurt and you don’t really notice the difference, especially w/ greek yogurt, since it’s so thick.

Night three: Nachos! It was Friday.

Once again Trader Joe’s impressed me: I used their “longboard” corn chips, which were delicious, and the mild salsa that isn’t chunky, from the refrigerated section. That was *awesome*.

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I’m in a funk, guys. I miss NYC and I’m kind of lonely in Cambridge. I don’t leave the house enough, especially when the weather is bad. I feel like there are art projects or something exploding inside me, but I can’t seem to actually do anything. I am excited to work on updating my downstairs neighbor’s apartment: He has loads of great antiques and things, but needs a hand picking paint colors, rearranging the rooms, and paring down. I already found him a leather chesterfield sofa on craig’s list for a song, which was satisfying. And yesterday I amused myself drawing a floorplan and playing with furniture placement. But what am I to do with all the inspiration pictures I just put in Domino Deco File books last week? Sigh.

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

Bubble and Squeak

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I’m obsessed with Jamie Oliver‘s show Jamie at Home, and have saved nearly every episode on my DVR (messy!). This might sound ridiculous, but this is the only modern cooking show I’ve seen that captures a bit of Julia Child’s spirit: Jamie is having so much *fun* and is so relaxed and human on camera (not to mention so free with “tablespoons” of salt or butter that look more like quarter pounds!). Anyway, I usually just watch it for technique ideas of how to use my CSA vegetables, since the whole show is based around seasonal cooking using what’s in Jamie’s garden. I haven’t looked up many of the recipes, though I did give my mom the show cookbook for her birthday.

But considering that my fridge is fairly packed with rutabaga (or “Swede,” in the UK), turnips, carrots and cabbage, I couldn’t resist giving the Bubble and Squeak recipe from the “Winter Veg” episode a try. And it ACTUALLY SQUEAKS. I stood in the kitchen giggling, no joke.

[I didn’t make the onion gravy, and we just grilled some sausages. I want to try again and make the gravy; this was delicious but could have used an extra boost of moisture and flavor.]

Basically you peel and trim and cut up a one-to-one mix of potatoes and assorted winter vegetables; a bit more than a pound each. I used white potatoes, white and red turnips, rutabaga and a bit of cabbage:

Cover with water and boil until fully cooked. My vegetables cooked at really different rates, and I’ll play around with cutting the denser ones into smaller pieces next time. Jamie says 15-20 minutes to cook, but I think I needed about half an hour since some things wouldn’t soften!

Drain the vegetables and heat olive oil and butter in a large nonstick pan; add the vegetables and mash them together (add salt and pepper now) to make a giant pancake/hashbrown sort of thing:

Then all you do is cook it on medium heat for about 30 minutes. Every few minutes, when the bottom gets golden, you flip the pancake piece by piece and mush it together again. Eventually you get the delicious crispy bits all through the pan, not just on the top and bottom. And meanwhile, listen for the squeaking! I think it’s air escaping from within the smushed-together pancake.

This was a great side dish with sausage, but would also be good with pork chops (and apples, for some juice), or with a stew.