an invitation to the barbecue

Best Ever Zucchini-Carrot Muffins (with gluten free options)

2011-10-06T11:57:00.005-04:00

I love a cooking challenge, so recently when a friend asked me to bake something for a party that needed some gluten-free options for the guest of honor, I offered to bring some baked goods. I first tried making some gluten-free oatmeal cookies, which, while delicious, fell apart into a million pieces when I tried to take them off the pan. Then I decided to adapt a recipe I have been making all the time this fall, this recipe for zucchini bread, also adapted from a Cooking Light version. I learned a lot in the process: that people extremely sensitive to gluten can't even eat food made from regular oats, because wheat and oats are sometimes processed on the same equipment, as this article explains. So, if you're really cooking for someone who can't have gluten, get the special oats.**

But what is even more amazing about these muffins, which I make all the time with whole wheat pastry flour, is that you can swap out carrots for the zucchini, you can use a mix of both, you can chop 'em all up in the food processor, or you can grate them nicely with a hand grater, and no matter what you do, the end result tastes delicious every time. Yesterday I did the half carrot/half zucchini version and then in a mixing bowl, blended up some cream cheese, lemon juice, a few spoonfuls of plain yogurt, and powdered sugar for a cream cheese frosting that had me thinking of carrot cake.

Below I include both regular and gluten free options.

Zucchini-Carrot Muffins

**2 cups white, whole-wheat pastry flour
**1 cup oat flour (you can make your own by putting 1 1/4 cups regular oats in a food processor and blending until they are a flour-like consistency)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup applesauce
2 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons lemon zest
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
3 cups shredded zucchini and carrot (or some combination thereof, can use all zucchini if you want)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

** Gluten free substitutes: I used 1 cup oat flour, 1 cup garbanzo bean flour, 1/2 cup cornstarch. Note: make sure you buy special oats that are guaranteed gluten-free - Bob's Red Mill makes some, which might be in the specialty food section at a regular supermarket, or in places like Whole Foods.

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with cooking spray, line with cupcake papers, spray those too. Mix dry ingredients together in one bowl, up to baking soda. In another bowl, beat eggs, applesauce, oil, lemon zest, and vanilla. Add sugar. Mix dry ingredients with wet, just barely (overbeating muffins will make them tough), then fold in zucchini-carrot mixture and walnuts. Pour into prepared pan, bake 18-22 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. You could also bake it in a loaf pan, though it will take longer- maybe 50-60 minutes.

Butternut Squash and Red Lentil Soup

2011-09-27T22:55:00.007-04:00

In January, when the sidewalks elsewhere are covered with ice, I'll gloat about the 70 degree weather here, but for now, I'm just wishing for a little bit of fall. It's been unseasonably warm, even for Florida, with 90+ temperatures during the day, afternoon thunderstorms, and humidity so thick that you could slice it with a butter knife. I tried a pumpkin spice latte at Starbuck's last week, which seemed pretty much like a cruel joke.

Nevertheless, I'm still up for some fall cooking. And I tried this recipe for butternut squash and red lentil soup, which is so amazing you must run out and make it RIGHT NOW. I altered it to use the spices I had on hand, but I had a big bag of red lentils, so all I needed was to run out and buy one of those seasonal vegetables. Red lentils are my favorite - they taste nothing like brown lentils, cook up quickly, are light and low-fat, but have tons of good stuff in them: fiber, folate, magnesium, and iron, to name a few. And combined with the very slight sweetness of butternut squash, they make an amazing combination: filling but not heavy.

Butternut Squash and Red Lentil Soup

1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 cup red lentils
1 quart (4 cups) water
2 Rapunzel vegetarian boullion cubes (You could also use broth in the last step)
1 onion, chopped
1 15-oz can diced tomatoes (Mine had basil & garlic in them, you could also kick it up a notch and use Rotel)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. dried coriander
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp cayenne

Saute onions in a large saucepan coated with the olive oil. Add garlic, cook for another minute. Add squash, diced tomatoes, lentils, water, boullion, and spices. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes until squash is tender.

Blend half of it, then put it back in the pot. I use an immersion blender to keep some of the consistency. Welcome to fall...

Roasted Black Bean Tacos with Chipotle Sour Cream

2011-09-20T20:53:00.006-04:00

I discovered this recipe on one of my new favorite food blogs, Eat, Live, Run. It sounded delicious - vegetables & black beans slow-roasted in the oven, then served in tacos with chipotle sour cream. It would definitely be a crowd pleaser even for an ardent meat eater. Apparently, the recipe originally came from Oprah, but I've made it a couple times and adapted it slightly-- the original version calls for a cabbage slaw, which I wasn't crazy about. I also made a few other small adjustments, and substituted carrots for red peppers - not very Tex-Mex, I know, but I am appalled at how a single red pepper costs about $3.99.

I'm also inspired by this Mexican supermarket on my drive home from work, which has a cooler full of steaming, freshly made corn tortillas, and Hass avocados that are always perfectly ripe and significantly cheaper than they are in regular grocery stores. With black beans simmering in the slow cooker, I picked up avocados, cilantro, and fresh tortillas on the way home. I'm loving Florida lately, especially all the excellent little ethnic markets like this one. (The picture above is from when I made this recipe the first time with whole wheat tortillas)

ROASTED BLACK BEAN TACOS WITH CHIPOTLE SOUR CREAM

2 cups corn, fresh or frozen
1 lime, juiced
2 tsp. cumin
1 1/2 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. salt
2 Tblsp olive oil
1 cup organic baby carrots, sliced in half
1/2 big red onion, sliced thin
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed, or 3 cups **slow cooker black beans (see recipe below)

SOUR CREAM:
1 cup sour cream
2 canned chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, chopped, plus 2 tsp. adobo sauce

SIDES:
2 avocados
1 tomato
1 lime
handful cilantro
shredded cheese - Cheddar or Monterey Jack
soft corn tortillas

Preheat oven to 425. In a large bowl, mix corn with 1 Tblsp of the olive oil, juice of one lime, 1 tsp. salt, cumin, carrot, and red onion, then spread out on half a baking sheet.

In another bowl, mix remaining Tblsp. olive oil, paprika, black beans. Salt to taste - may need up to a teaspoon, or not so much, depending on how much salt you added to slow cooker beans. Then spread this on other half of baking sheet.

Bake 20-25 minutes, tossing occasionally, until beans are slightly crisp.

Make sour cream: mix in a bowl with chipotle peppers and adobo sauce.

Make guacamole: peel and chop avocados, mash, seed and chop a tomato, add to mash, add about a tablespoon of chopped cilantro, salt to taste, and lime juice to taste.

When beans are done, assemble as many tacos as you like, layering beans, corn mixture, cheese, guacamole, sour cream.

**SLOW COOKER BLACK BEANS: I bought a bag of dried black beans, washed them, soaked them overnight, drained them, then put them in the slow cooker today with a chopped onion, a bay leaf, and covered with water. I cooked them all day on low in the slow cooker, then added salt and a chopped up bunch of cilantro. The recipe above used about three cups of those beans, more than in a can, just because I felt like it. You could, at this point, drain them and save the remaining beans for another recipe. OR - when I got done with the tacos (the beans were still a little firm), I left the remaining beans in the slow cooker and continued to cook them on high with the lid partially off, stirring occasionally, until some of the water cooked off and I was left with a delicious, black bean soup, which will make another dinner tonight. Add a can of drained rotel if you want to make it really spicy (I won't be able to do this with a toddler), then serve over rice, but these beans are AMAZING - sooo much better than canned, which I usually use out of sheer laziness.

The Appliance That's Changing My Life

2011-08-24T22:14:00.006-04:00

So, as you could tell from my last post, I have been into green smoothies lately. The stars must have been in alignment, because suddenly it was Vitamix Demonstration time at my Costco. Normally I find this akin to a carnival sideshow where an obnoxious man on an elevated platform hawks seriously overpriced, sham-wow blenders. I did enjoy the smoothie samples (it's important to time one's visits to Costco with the need for a snack and/or dinner), but I didn't believe the claims - that this thing could make ice cream in thirty seconds? That it broke food down to the cellular level so that your body obtained maximum nutrients from it, much more than a normal blender could do?

But this time, the demonstrator was a very kind, Cuban-American woman named Loretta. She exuded motherly care, she was vivacious without being pushy, and Sofia took an instant liking to her. Over our next few visits, Loretta showed us what the Vitamix was capable of. Here's what sold me: watching her throw undetectable spinach, red cabbage and kale into the Vitamix, along with a host of fresh fruits, and having Sofia eagerly drink up the results. Sofia is already fascinated with food, will try almost anything you give her, and we spend a lot of time in the kitchen together making things. But I liked the idea that with this machine, which can pulverize in a way a blender just can't, we'll be eating even more fruits and vegetables. Also, I've always been a bit disappointed that my smoothies were routinely a little grainy and never had that smoothness of a smoothie from a restaurant. This changes everything.

We learned how to make a mint mojito smoothie, a frappucino to rival Starbuck's, tortilla soup (the Vitamix cooks!), and a number of other concoctions. Back home, I spent some time with the Magic 8 Ball that is Google asking questions like, "Is the Vitamix a sham/scam/etc?" Most people who owned them didn't think so, and now that I own one myself, I'm 100% sure it was a good investment. Plus there's a seven year warranty, and I've already been through three blenders in the past six years alone. This thing is so heavy duty, it can handle anything you put into it. It could make a smoothie out of a shoe. And I can make a few of my own personally verifiable health claims, too: I have lost my intense craving for sweets (the reason for so many dessert recipes on this blog), my complexion is better, and I have more energy. I'm sure of those "facts."

The Vitamix also comes with a great cookbook - we've tried at least ten of the recipes so far, and have a lot of favorites - the enchilada sauce is great (we combined half with shredded chicken, rolled into tortillas, covered with sauce and baked), and another one I like a lot is a peanut butter and chocolate shake made from raw peanuts, which would be impossible in a regular blender.**

So here's a favorite recipe - for yet another green smoothie. Its consistency in the Vitamix is unbelievable.

Green Smoothie

1 cup organic green grapes
1 slice cantaloupe with seeds
1 slice pineapple (or handful frozen pineapple chunks)
1/2 banana (skin removed)
1/4 orange (not skin)
1/4 organic apple with seeds and skin
4 pitted dates or 1 tsp. honey
1-2 cups spinach
2 cups ice

Blend on high for 1 minute. It's that simple.

**Peanut Butter- Chocolate - Banana Smoothie

Here's my take on the Vitamix chocolate-peanut butter smoothie recipe. I'm having this for lunch today, and it's incredibly delicious. Would make a good post-workout smoothie as well. Makes enough for one, but you can easily double it.

1/2 banana
1/4 cup unsalted, roasted peanuts
1/2 cup almond milk (could use any type of milk here)
1 Tblsp cocoa powder
1 Tblsp agave (or to taste)
2 cups ice cubes

Place in Vitamix, start at 1 on variable, then go up to high. Use tamper if necessary to distribute the nuts for grinding. Blend 1 minute until milkshake consistency.

Green Monster Smoothies

2011-08-15T06:48:00.005-04:00

In Morocco, most cafes serve a few different types of Moroccan smoothies, known as panaches (pronounced pa-na-shay). My favorites are a milk-based avocado smoothie and an almond one. Encountered by first-timers (as I saw when I took a group of students to Morocco this past Spring), the sickly green avocado panache can be a bit disconcerting. But it's delicious, and after you drink it, you feel fortified with energy and ready to conquer the world. During Ramadan, which is happening right now, many Moroccans drink the avocado panache for s'hor, the early morning meal that will, especially in this brutally hot August, have to last them until eight p.m. at night when they break the fast.

This summer I also discovered the green monster movement, through one of my favorite websites, though it looks like it originated here. The philosophy behind this one could basically be said to be that spinach=fountain of youth. You get both a fruit and a vegetable serving, and for many of us who are not getting enough veggies, it's a good way to get in a serving that, and here's the most amazing part, YOU WON'T EVEN TASTE IT. I like spinach fine, though I worried that in a smoothie, it would muck things up. However, it's almost impossible to detect. And my three-year-old, who helps me make them, loves the idea that we're drinking a monster. We make it a couple times a week, and I have to say that at least so far, many of the health claims of the green monster movement seem to be panning out - my complexion is a lot better, I have more energy, and I crave sweets a lot less.* So, here's the recipe I've been making the most frequently, though the varieties are endless (and can be found on the above link to the green monster website):

Green Monster Peach Smoothie

1.5-2 cups loosely packed, organic baby spinach
1 peach, peeled & cut up (or substitute banana)
1 cup milk
1/4 cup crushed ice
dash of sweetener (I use a squirt of agave syrup)

Following the order above, starting with spinach, place the ingredients in a blender. Blend at least one minute. Serves 1, or a parent and very small child. (To make small child happier, after blending, thrown in a handful of cookies and blend for 10 seconds, making it a cookies and cream smoothie)

The varieties are infinite - substitute mango for peach, add blueberries, throw in some flaxseed, matcha powder for a caffeine boost, etc. Or add half an avocado, which makes things a bit creamier and more Moroccan. But interestingly, you never taste the spinach.

*Disputed health claim: this could also just be a factor of summer, which, in a professor's life, is infinitely less stressful.

Miskuta (Moroccan Pound Cake)

2011-08-06T20:55:00.005-04:00

When Americans bake, we're pretty obsessed with measurements. It's gotten to the point now where many cake recipes don't even call for measured cups of dry ingredients anymore, but you're supposed to be weighing your flour - as if your cake will be a flat disaster if you don't have, say, a perfect 113 grams.

But in Morocco, it's different. Not only are recipes still a pinch of this, an eyeballed quantity of that, but the same goes for cakes. There's a wonderful pound cake that my sister-in-law makes, and I've been unable to approximate it without help, despite having a number of delicious American pound cake recipes. The quest ended this summer when I observed her making it from start to finish. And the best thing about it is that she uses a small tea glass for measurements - and it always turns out wonderfully, even if the glass varies in size from time to time. You'll also see some seemingly bizarre variations that actually turn out quite wonderfully - orange juice or milk, who cares? I've made it with both and seen her do the same. The best part is how easy this cake is-- in under fifteen minutes you can have it in the oven. I brought back a Moroccan miskuta pan, pictured in the back, which is more like a bundt cake mold than an angel food cake one. And you can use your American cup measures - no need to find a Moroccan tea glass.

Kenza's Miskuta (Moroccan Pound Cake)

1 cup milk (OR orange juice)
3 eggs
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup cooking oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups flour
2 Tblsp. baking powder
dash salt

Mix milk, eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla in a mixer OR a blender. Add 3 cups flour, 1 cup at a time, and mix well. Prepare bundt cake pan by buttering and flouring the surface. Pour cake in pan. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour (check with a toothpick to see when it's done; it should be golden brown). Leave as-is to serve, or sprinkle with powdered sugar, or glaze with honey.

Feeling the Zumba Love

2011-08-03T21:23:00.015-04:00

I've fallen hard... for Zumba. I hesitate to make enthusiastic pronouncements in writing. I've always been prone to mild obsessions, which I throw myself into, heart and soul, only to burn out after a couple months. Marathon running. Photography (obviously not in evidence from anything I've posted on this food site). Stocking up on purees to sneak into the food of the child who was not even born yet (and thankfully, at three, eats almost everything). It's almost embarrassing, later on, to witness my absolute lack of consistency, recorded for posterity in a blog post. So, with full knowledge that I might read this some day and be annoyed at myself for finding yet another all-consuming hobby that I could not stick with, I announce my great love for Zumba.

I had really been enjoying the Zumba classes at my local YMCA when I found out the Zumba convention was here in town. I decided to check it out and talk to people about why they loved Zumba so much (approaching the whole thing with my anthropologist's cap on), after which I wrote this piece. But going to the Zumba convention got me hooked. Until then, I found the outfits a little bit too bright, a bit garish. But afterward, suddenly I was on EBay browsing bright orange racerback tanks emblazoned with inspirational Zumba messages. I reached out to a couple old, old friends on Facebook who I knew were Zumba instructors. I started following a couple blogs. I couldn't believe some of the stories I was hearing- both in person at the Convention and through the blogs. People who lost over a hundred pounds with Zumba. People who conquered major illnesses, addictions, you name it. Could a sport/dance/fitness program truly be that transformative? Will those people gain that weight back later, will interest in Zumba fade? I have no idea. But I understand why it's so infectious.

Then there are the classes, which remind me of how much fun exercise was as a kid. Back in the days when I'd pretend to be a Solid Gold dancer and choreograph routines to Chaka Khan (fantasizing that at some point I'd surely get a gig on Soul Train). It appeals to the 4th grader in me who brought a dismantled refrigerator box to my private school's playground so I could breakdance (alone) during recess. (Okay, so I was kind of an eccentric). I also spent a couple years studying Middle Eastern dance (a respectable term for belly dance), and many happy nights when I used to live in NY and New Jersey going to salsa clubs. I have always loved reggaeton, salsa, merengue, etc., which forms the core of Zumba's music. It's like all of that history is suddenly coming together in a fitness program, and when I'm in a class, I literally forget about everything for a little while.

Not only have I been trying to attend different classes here in Orlando to check out different instructors' styles, but I just returned from visiting family in South Carolina for a couple weeks, and I went to six classes with four different instructors. Each class is not only an intense workout masquerading as a good time, but also a mini ethnographic experience - what, in anthropological terms, sort of means checking out a different culture. Here in Orlando, the classes I've attended so far have been more intense, with maybe 90% international music, 10% garden variety hip hop. In South Carolina, there was a lot more hip hop. But the diversity of the participants has been unbelievable-- diversity in age, race, you name it. This morning, for example, at my local Y, there were forty people in the class, ranging in age from 16 to 80. People are drawn to Zumba for different reasons. I love people watching and thinking about how you'd probably never find the same group of people in a room for a common interest, except for Zumba. But most of all, I just love going to Zumba classes, and I hope it doesn't go the way of most of my obsessions but instead can simmer for awhile without boiling over. Because my life is infinitely happier with Zumba.

So how does all this relate to food and cooking? It's summer, and I've been cooking so much lately that I have multiple recipes stocked up, ready to write about. I'm eating way less meat and chicken, much lighter in general, except for the desserts, which will always be my weakness. But also, with the Zumba, I am working harder than ever at eating well, and I feel great. Exercise has always been important to me, especially so that I could eat what I want to, but now, with Zumba, it's like not even trying. It just makes everything fun. So, please bear with me if I occasionally post something about Zumba, and I'll be back soon: with recipes for Moroccan pound cake, a green monster smoothie, and more...

Vanilla Sugar Cookies, No Refrigeration Required

2011-07-23T21:28:00.003-04:00

I love sugar cookies, but I don't love the way many of the recipes I've used in the past require you to refrigerate the dough for an hour beforehand. (I want instant cookies!) I also love sugar cookies that are crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, which is also a challenge, since they usually turn out one way or the other. This recipe, adapted slightly from Martha Stewart's Living magazine, manages both challenges, allowing you to bake up a batch of soft/crisp sugar cookies from scratch in less than thirty minutes. No refrigeration required.

Vanilla Sugar Cookies

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 3/4 cups white sugar
1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 sticks butter, softened
2 large eggs

Sanding sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt. In a mixer, blend butter and sugar until fluffy, 3 minutes. Add eggs & vanilla. Lower speed, add flour mixture until well mixed.

Place parchment paper on cookie sheets, making a tablespoon or so of dough, roll into a ball, then flatten. Sprinkle with sugar, brush with water using a pastry brush, then sprinkle with sugar again.

Bake until golden, 14-16 minutes. Cool on cookie sheets on top of wire racks for 5 minutes, then take off sheets and cool on wire racks.

Apricot-date-pistachio bars

2011-07-07T14:06:00.003-04:00

I've been trying out some recipes from a cookbook called "Perfect One-Dish Dinners" by Pam Anderson (not the one of Baywatch fame). It's a pretty decent cookbook, with lots of ideas for food for entertaining that can also be adapted to family cooking, where you want to mess up a minimum of dishes and still want something that covers all basic food groups. My favorite recipe so far, however, has been for Apricot-Date-Pistachio bars. Sort of like a magic cookie bar combined with a granola bar, it has multiple textures, and is crunchy, sweet, soft, and gooey, all at the same time. It's also a good one to make with a kid who's interested in cooking with you - opportunities abound for stirring, pistachio cracking, etc. Here's the recipe, adapted slightly:

Apricot-Date-Pistachio Bars

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
6 Tblsp. packed light brown sugar
dash salt
1/2 stick (4 Tblsp) melted butter
3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1 cup shelled roasted pistachios
1 cup chopped pitted dates
1 cup chopped dried apricots

Spray an 8x8 pan with cooking spray. Take a 16 inch piece of aluminum foil, fold it in half, and fit it in the pan so that ends come up the sides a little bit. Spray pan with cooking spray.

Mix flour, oatmeal, sugar, and dash of salt. Stir in melted butter until well mixed. Press 3/4 of this mixture into the pan.

In another bowl, mix together coconut, pistachios, dates, and apricots. Add condensed milk, combine. Pour entire mixture over oatmeal mixture in baking pan, sprinkle remaining oatmeal mixture on top, bake at 325 for 30 minutes until lightly golden. Cool on wire rack five minutes. Lift out of pan with the foil, cool on the rack until reaching room temp. Cut and serve.

Awesome Spinach and Feta Turkey Burgers

2011-07-04T22:16:00.005-04:00

I sometimes buy turkey burgers at Whole Foods flavored with spinach and feta, and I decided recently I could make them just as well on my own. I made this recipe tonight for 4th of July and we grilled them outside. They were so good I want to write down what I did, since I improvised. No photos - they were gone too quickly to document.

Spinach and Feta Turkey Burgers

1 package lean ground turkey (not turkey breast) - about 20 ounces
Breadcrumbs from 1 slice wheat bread
Egg white, slightly beaten
2 ounces crumbled feta cheese (half a normal sized container)
5 ounces fresh spinach (half a bag)
1 small Vidalia onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 generous slug Worcestershire sauce
ground pepper

Saute onion and garlic until soft. Chop the spinach and mix with the onion and garlic mixture until wilted but still bright green. Mix with ground turkey, breadcrumbs, feta, egg white, generous slug Worcestershire sauce and pepper. Form into burgers and refrigerate for a couple hours, otherwise it will stick to the grill.

Restaurant Review: I visit Jimmy Hula's so you don't have to

2011-04-09T21:50:00.007-04:00

Each day for months on my way home from work, I've passed that former sushi restaurant on Aloma next to the also defunct Habana Grill and wondered about their next incarnation. For whatever reason, Panera didn't like the structure of the Habana Grill and tore down the whole thing to put up its bakery, but the sushi place got a remodeling job. Now Jimmy Hula's aspires for Key West charm, with a pastel paint job and a wraparound porch facing Aloma in all its billboard-and-traffic-choked glory.

It's been open for a few weeks and is almost always packed. I've been there twice now. I was pretty excited when the signs went up advertising fish tacos. Fish Tacos! Something new on the Winter Park food landscape. I first had them in San Diego about ten years ago, supposedly the first place they crossed the border. Although undoubtedly they've existed for centuries in Mexico before Americans 'discovered' them, in 1974 a spring breaker from San Diego State named Ralph Rubio went to a town called San Felipe to surf. He tried his first fish taco, later opened a chain of restaurants, and is now a billionaire.

At their most basic, fish tacos are whitefish filets battered and deep fried, served in a tortilla with cabbage, sour cream, salsa and lime. Jimmy Hula's can do this. They can also do burgers and beer, chicken and pork, and a variety of improvisations on these themes: a "Venice Beach BLT," for example, a BLT featuring the addition of tuna, or "Teriyaki steak tacos," or "loco chicken tacos," featuring orange chicken, orange ranch dressing, lettuce, carrots, and scallions. Some of these sound more appealing than others.

The fish tacos are decent, and cheap - about $3.50 each. Two could feed someone with a good appetite. The basic, historical version is the "Epic Cali Fish Taco." I also tried the "Malibu fish taco," which additionally features cilantro-lime sour cream, guacamole, and pepper jack. They were a little bit too sauce-y, and the fish was good, but there wasn't a lot of it. I ordered mine with chips and guacamole - on my first trip, the chips were multicolored and tasty, though on the second visit, they were pale yellow and could have passed for matzoh. I have one objection to the guacamole - it tastes exactly like the stuff you buy in a package at Costco, which is to say, not as good as mashing up a few avocados yourself. How hard would this be for a restaurant to do? Chipotle seems to be able to accomplish this, and they are a giant chain.

And here lies my main issue with this place - the line and cash register suggest this is fast food, as does the fact that the waiters will only bring your food out, not let you order more from them. Jimmy Hula's has the decor to make you want to stay awhile, the free advertising of all those customers sitting out on the porch drinking beer while you gaze enviously from behind your commuter's windshield listening to NPR reports about the day's global disasters. Why not come in and just forget it all for a while? On my first visit, I tried to treat it as a restaurant. I sat down, the food came. It was good. I needed more chips, but there was a line out the door and the waiters would only bring what I'd ordered at the cash register, not letting me order more from them. I complained; the waiter shrugged and said, "You'll just have to get in line like everyone else." The second time, I tried take-out - queuing up in the staggeringly long line, ordering, taking a number. Then waiting 20 minutes.

Somehow this is immensely frustrating. You can't really pick up a couple of quick tacos on the way home from work without having to wait 20 minutes, but also you can't really sit back and relax, because if you need even one extra item, you'll have to get in line again, and nobody is going to help you. So what does this place want to be? Fast food? Sit-down restaurant? I don't think it can be both. And it's hard to really feel the Baja surf/Key West vibe when I'm staring at a parking lot and four lanes of rush hour traffic. Though it might conjure up certain parts of San Diego.

Restaurant review: Moghul Indian Cuisine

2011-01-14T21:19:00.003-05:00

I was thrilled to see a new Indian place had opened in Winter Park, Moghul Indian Cuisine. Until now, we've had to drive a long way for Indian food, and much as I like Kohinoor (in Longwood) and Woodlands (south Orlando), spending a half hour to forty-five minutes in the car to get Indian, when you already live in a city, is depressing... Moghul Indian Cuisine is on Semoran Boulevard, just across the street from La Granja, the excellent Latin American rotisserie chicken place. The only reminder of its former glory as a Krystal burger joint is the tiny industrial bathroom. Otherwise, the place has been transformed. And it was packed with customers. I hope this is a good sign that a place like this can survive.

We started with savory potato samosas. Chicken tikka masala was excellent, tangy and creamy, with tender chicken chunks. Also terrific was the vegetarian malai kofta, hot garlic naan bread, and a very respectable gulab jamun for dessert. Gulab jamun is basically donuts in a hot syrup, but at a lot of restaurants, the donuts taste chewy and have obviously been heated up in a microwave. Here, they were perfect. But I get ahead of myself. Beghun bartha, an eggplant-tomato dish, with peas, was good, lamb vindaloo just so-so. Vindaloo is supposed to be spicy, right? And if you order medium hot at most Indian places, it should blow you through the roof. The medium here was not particularly hot. That was okay with Sofia. She ate a little of everything and managed to behave herself pretty well for 2 hours.

Prices are typical Indian restaurant prices. The service was okay - they're still finding their way a little bit and don't quite know their menu. But everyone was friendly and they're trying. And we did not have to wait long for our food. I plan to return and am also hoping they do take-out. I can see myself becoming a regular customer.

Pappardelle with Pistachio Pesto

2011-01-13T21:14:00.003-05:00

I was inspired this week by Mark Bittman's recipe in the Minimalist column of the New York Times for pasta handkerchiefs, or fazzoletti. The description made pasta-making sound so easy - preparing it in the food processor, rolling it out, cutting it into squares. I've made pasta before using my parents' pasta maker, which was always labor intensive and never seemed to turn out particularly well for me. But this was a revelation. I made one batch as squares, just like Bittman shows you (watch his video, because you see how easy it is), and it was good but too thick. Then for another batch, I rolled the dough out even thinner and cut it into pappardelle, a little wider than fettucine.

The other revelation that has happened lately is that my 2 1/2 year old is suddenly very interested in helping me cook. She likes to get on her stool and help knead, stir, or whatever I'm doing. Keeping her away from hot things and knives, of course, is the challenge, but it's so exciting for me, since until now, whenever I cooked, she would only to my legs, whine and demand I do something else. (This is also accompanied by her new favorite iPhone distraction, watching cake decorating videos on YouTube. I don't quite know how we discovered them, but they are a hit).

I didn't use Bittman's accompanying pesto recipe. I had a pesto recipe I wanted to try, which I copied from a magazine in a doctor's office, though I can't remember its source. The pistachio pesto accompanying this super easy pasta is terrific - great for winter, when basil is harder to come by. And with the spinach, it's good for you too.

Pappardelle with Pistachio Pesto

PASTA:
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1 teaspoon salt, plus more as needed
2 whole eggs
3 egg yolks

Put flour and salt in food processor, pulse a few seconds to combine. Add eggs, turn on the food processor, and wait until dough comes together in a rough ball. Put on a floured surface and mold into a ball, but you don't have to knead it too much. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside for 30 minutes, or refrigerate for later.

After thirty minutes, roll out to 1/8 inch thickness. Add flour as needed to keep from sticking. Cut into ribbons. Into a wide, large pot of boiling water, throw pasta and cook 2 minutes. Reserve a little pasta water as needed to supplement pesto if too thick. Serve immediately, topped with pesto and a little grated parmesan.

PISTACHIO PESTO:
1/4 cup pistachios
1 cup packed spinach
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup parmesan, grated
1/2 tsp. salt
1 clove garlic

Throw everything into food processor. Blend until it forms a slightly chunky sauce. Serve over pasta.

Chocolate Chip Banana Oatmeal Cookies

2011-01-10T11:57:00.006-05:00

My friend Charlene gave me a little bag of these amazing cookies with the recipe tucked inside. They were so good she must have known I'd want to make them. Which I did, repeatedly, which might explain why my clothes don't fit anymore. (There's also no picture because they didn't stay on the plate long enough to record for posterity). So I'll have to swear off desserts for awhile, though I'd like to find this recipe here, reminding me to make it, for once those clothes start to fit again.

These are like oatmeal lace cookies - slightly crunchy yet moist. My version is adapted from the original, from HEALTH magazine and originally a creation of one of the Real Housewives of New York. This is another excellent recipe if you get the urge to consume cookie dough, since there are no eggs involved. You can adapt it by swapping out chocolate chips and using raisins and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon instead. Also, despite the presence of banana, they don't taste particularly banana-like, so don't be deterred by that ingredient if not a fan. (Bananas help to bind in the absence of egg).

Chocolate Chip Banana Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup oat flour (grind up some old-fashioned oatmeal in the food processor for this - or just buy a bag at Whole Foods - Note:
don't use regular flour. Cookies will come out more cake-y and won't be as good.)
3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
2 Tblsp. ground flaxseed (optional)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
slightly more than 1/4 cup white sugar (you could probably experiment with something healthier)
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup milk (can be soy milk if you want it to be vegan)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 ripe banana, cut into tiny pieces
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or other favorite nut
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
a handful of dried cranberries or raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°. Combine first 6 ingredients (through sugar) in a bowl. Whisk together oil, milk, and vanilla in a separate bowl. Add wet mixture to dry ingredients; stir to combine. Fold in banana, walnuts, and chocolate chips and cranberries.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Parchment paper is THE BEST - I use it all the time now. Scoop small spoonfuls of dough onto the baking sheet. Bake 25 minutes or until golden brown, turning baking sheet halfway through. Let cool on a wire rack. Makes about eighteen cookies.

soft sugar cookies...

2010-12-22T22:31:00.009-05:00

Two great cookie finds recently, this recipe for homemade Oreos, and a good recipe for sugar cookies. My 2-year-old is fascinated with cooking and asks for YouTube videos of cake decorating on my iPhone. She helped me make the dough for the sugar cookies (pressing mixer buttons, plunging her hands in the flour and trying to eat dough despite my warnings about raw eggs) and decorated them after we cut them out. At Target I found these cool jars of sprinkles shaped like cows, dolphins, hearts, stars, and dinosaurs. I intended to make some icing but ran out of time. Out of curiosity, I looked at the supposed "cream cheese" flavor of icing in Target, and the label mentioned that it "might contain dairy." Might? (This is to say nothing about the first two ingredients: high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oil.) Gross. But the from-scratch cookies are delicious.

My favorite thing about the holidays so far is this three dollar advent calendar we got from IKEA, full of chocolate. Each morning Sofia asks if she can have her "date," which she then opens and eats immediately. And she'll never get ahead of herself-- she understands perfectly that taking a future chocolate away means one less chocolate she gets on the right day. One morning she sat in the living room and just looked at the advent calendar, waiting patiently for us to get up so we could show her which day it was. That took a lot of discipline.

Soft Sugar Cookies

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

Sift dry ingredients. In a mixer, cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Mix in flour mixture, scoop up in a ball and refrigerate for a few hours. Preheat oven and roll out dough on a well-floured board. Cut shapes. Sprinkle. Bake 6-10 minutes, depending on thickness. Thick cookies will be softer.

Ina Garten's Outrageous Brownies

2010-12-01T22:31:00.003-05:00

It's the end of the semester here, and today I did some cooking to celebrate. Made empanadas to take to a holiday party and these, ostensibly to take somewhere... but perhaps it would be better if I just keep these all at home. They may be the best brownies I've ever made. A student of mine recommended this recipe and said it was out of this world. Like many other awesome Ina Garten recipes, it definitely delivers. Individual chocolate chips hover inside and melt slightly during baking, and plentiful walnuts add a satisfying texture and crunch. Here's the slightly adjusted version, made to fit in an 8x8 pan.

1/2 pound butter (2 sticks)
1 12 ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate (I used Baker's)
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/8 cups sugar
slightly more than 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Melt butter, half the chocolate chips, and baking chocolate together over low heat. Remove from heat, allow to cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, but not using a mixer, stir together eggs, coffee, vanilla and sugar until combined. Combine egg mixture with butter/chocolate mixture. Allow to cool to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 350. In another bowl, sift most of the flour (save a few tablespoons), baking powder, and salt. Combine with chocolate mixture.

In another small bowl, mix the remaining flour with walnuts and chocolate chips. This keeps the nuts and chips from sinking to the bottom. Stir this into the chocolate mixture.

Pour into 8x8 pan that you've coated with butter and dusted with flour. Bake 50 minutes to an hour total. 20 minutes into it, bang the pan against the oven shelf to let out air bubbles. After 50 minutes, test to see if a toothpick comes out clean. When the toothpick is no longer wet but with moist crumbs, it's ready. Be careful not to overbake.

This supposedly tastes better the next day. I think it tastes pretty amazing right now.

Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

2010-11-08T21:19:00.008-05:00

This is the first recipe in a long time that has just cried out to me to prepare it upon becoming aware of its existence. The NPR story made it sound tempting and delicious. A pumpkin, slow roasted for two hours and stuffed with a mixture of bread, gruyere, heavy cream, bacon and herbs. It's French, from cookbook author Dorie Greenspan. And you can improvise on this one-- the version below has a few minor adaptations, but she says it's also good stuffed cooked with rice, nuts, etc. I might try adding apples next time. Vegetarians could leave out the bacon.

I made it, with a few adaptations, and it was out-of-this-world. It's a great savory entree, perfect for this time of year when Florida is finally cooling off a little, and for everywhere else in the country. My daughter (2) wasn't crazy about it, but she filled up on the side salad: spring baby greens plus cheddar and apples and a mustard vinaigrette. A nice riesling would have been a good accompaniment. (Not for the baby).

Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good (adapted from Dorie Greenspan)
Makes 2 very generous servings

1 pumpkin, about 4 lbs
1/4 pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1/4 pound cheese, such as Gruyere, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
6 strips turkey bacon, cooked and chopped
Handful of chopped spinach
1 shallot, chopped
2 scallions, sliced
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
Dash nutmeg
A little more than 1/3 cup heavy cream, with a dash of salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 350. Using a big knife, cut out the top of the pumpkin. Using your hands, pull out the seeds and the stringy parts. Salt and pepper the inside of the pumpkin generously. Place pumpkin on a piece of parchment paper set on a baking sheet.

In a mixing bowl, mix bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, spinach, shallot and scallions. Season with thyme, pepper, a dash of nutmeg. Stuff into the pumpkin, pour heavy cream over top. Put the top on, and cook for 90 minutes. After ninety minutes, remove top and let the top of the stuffing brown for the last 30 minutes or so.

To serve, you could either slice the pumpkin pieces or scoop out pumpkin + stuffing. I did the latter method.

Restaurant-style Chicken with Broccoli

2010-11-07T10:50:00.004-05:00

I found this great and inspiring website about putting good meals on the table while trying to balance work and family. The recipe for Restaurant-style Chinese Chicken & Broccoli is one I'll make again, probably doubling the sauce and not making the mistake of buying the package of chopped broccoli (yuck, those little pieces of broccoli disintegrate everywhere rather than providing sturdy little trees to dot your sauce). But oh, it is good. Definitely better than strip-mall Chinese.

Restaurant-style Chinese Chicken, Broccoli and Cashews

Chicken breasts (1-2 lbs)
cornstarch
1 onion, chopped
garlic cloves
2 Tblsp. rice wine vinegar
2 Tblsp. hoisin sauce
1/4 cup water
1 small 10 ounce package broccoli florets, steamed
1/2 cup cashews, roughly chopped

Cut chicken breasts into small pieces and saute in neutral cooking oil. When almost done, add chopped onion and cook until soft. Add about 1/2 to 1 tsp. cornstarch, stir. Add garlic, cook 30 seconds. Add vinegar, turn up heat, add hoisin sauce and water. When finished, toss with broccoli florets and cashews. Serve with rice.

Citrus Tilapia

2010-08-09T10:00:00.004-04:00

This is a good marinade for tilapia that appeared in this past month's Cooking Light. I was afraid it would be sweet, but somehow once it's roasted, it isn't.

4 6 ounce tilapia filets
1/2 cup orange juice (about one orange)
3 Tblsp lime juice
1 Tblsp brown sugar
1 Tblsp olive oil
2 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. ground red pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced or crushed
1/2 tsp. paprika.

Combine all marinade ingredients up to garlic cloves. Place fish in shallow roasting pan coated with cooking spray. Poour marinade over fish. Let rest no longer than 15 minutes (or you'll have ceviche).

Preheat boriler. Sprinkle fish with paprika, broil 15 minutes or until desired degree of doneness. Drizzle sauce over fish. Makes four servings.

Madeleines, a rough draft

2010-07-23T13:15:00.006-04:00

There's a cafe in Fes, where our Moroccan half of the family lives, called La Villa. It's a state-of-the-art, trendy place in the Ville Nouvelle or new city, with wireless Internet, tile and mirrors everywhere, and air conditioning. It was there that I first had truly amazing madeleines. Morocco has a long tradition of great pastry making, some of which they inherited from the French, but I noticed that people referred to almost anything that was muffin shaped and cakelike as madeleines. But when I finally tried the real thing last summer in La Villa, I understood what made Proust so nostalgic. There are a few different varieties of madeleines, but the ones I'm talking about have the consistency of cornbread, the taste of the crust of a good lemon poundcake, and get their leavening from eggs alone. They are often described as cookies but to me are some intermediate form between cookies and cake. I recently decided to learn how to make them - and though the results haven't yet been beautiful, the taste is out of this world. With the help of Julia Child, I found the ideal recipe - now if I could just get my pan seasoned enough that they would take the scallop shape they are supposed to assume after baking, all would be perfect.

I first consulted two of my favorite food blogs, where one posted an attempt at madeleines that didn't turn out so well, while the other had a recipe that was claimed to be out-of-this-world. Bypassing the first, I attempted the second, which had 4 eggs in it and came out extremely eggy and gross. I decided then to look for a Julia Child recipe and discovered the perfect one. I had ordered a madeleine pan from Amazon.com since I couldn't find one locally, so perhaps the new metal pan just needs to be seasoned to keep them from sticking. Julia's solution is a butter-flour mixture to grease them with, which I tried, but to no avail. They still came out intact, but just not with that beautiful, golden-brown scalloped surface. Nevertheless, the pan and the recipe are great investments, since I will certainly be making them again.

Madeleines (from Julia Child)

2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 c. sugar
1 c. flour + 1 T for preparing pans
1 1/4 stick butter (5 ounces)
pinch of salt
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon, or slightly less (they were a little lemony- I will probably do less than this next time)
1/2 t. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan and let it simmer until it starts to turn caramel colored. Then reserve 1 1/2 Tblsp of this butter in a separate bowl, mixing with 1 Tblsp flour to grease the pan with. Set aside. Place the rest of the melted butter in a glass dish over a bowl of ice water to cool off, stirring from time to time so it doesn't congeal.

Beat the eggs lightly, then divide in half (should be about 1/4 cup each). Set aside 1/4 cup, put the other 1/4 cup in an electric mixer with sugar and flour. Blend until mixture is sandy. When butter is cool, mix with remaining eggs and add to flour mixture, along with lemon, zest, and vanilla. My batter was slightly looser than cookie dough, not as smooth as a cake.

Grease madeleine pans, place about a tablespoon of the mixture in each form, and bake for 13-15 minutes. Dust lightly with powdered sugar.

Vegetable Lo Mein with Spinach and Other Neighbors (Edamame)

2010-07-19T13:13:00.006-04:00

This is a good summer recipe, light but filling, something that could satisfy one's cravings for Asian food without having to resort to a strip mall Chinese restaurant and an overly greasy, deep fried General Tsao's chicken. My daughter loves soybeans, or edamame, which she pronounces as "other neighbors." (She also calls tofu "toe food"). I buy frozen bags of organic soybeans, cook them in boiling water for 5 minutes, and salt them lightly, and as anyone who's eaten at a Japanese restaurant in the last ten years would know, they make a great appetizer. But I assume they also are great food for a toddler because they're green and filled with protein. Nonetheless, they are the star of this dish, which is adapted from a Cooking Light recipe, and can be varied infinitely - I'd just keep the sauce proportions in check.

Vegetable Lo Mein with Spinach and Edamame

5-6 baby bella mushrooms, chopped (can use any kind here)
3 cups chopped spinach
14 ounces spaghetti noodles
4 Tblsp. soy sauce
1 Tblsp dark sesame oil
2 Tblsp canola oil
1 Tblsp grated peeled fresh ginger
1 cup carrots, julienned (could also use a pepper here instead)
a few green onion stalks, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 1/2 cup frozen shelled edamame, cooked
3 Tblsp hoisin sauce

Cook spaghetti until done. When done, drain and mix with 1 Tblsp soy sauce and sesame oil, tossing to coat. Then, in a wok or large skillet, heat canola oil. Saute ginger 5 seconds, add mushrooms, carrots, onions, and garlic, and stir-fry 3-5 minutes. Stir in spinach and edamame, fry another 30 seconds. Mix in noodles, 3 Tblsp.soy sauce, 3 Tblsp hoisin sauce, until thoroughly heated, about 2 minutes.

Dinner Rolls, perfect every time

2010-07-07T14:31:00.003-04:00

These dinner rolls, loosely adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe, turn out rewardingly well every time I make them. Sure, you could go to Publix and pick up some of their delicious, in-house bakery-made French sourdough dinner rolls, but you could make these yourself, and they would be even better, fresh out of your own oven with a smear of butter and some honey. If you make them a little bigger than normal, they'd be great as hamburger rolls. This adaptation continues my love affair with whole wheat pastry flour, which really is amazing, since it can be used in almost all baking situations without weighing down your cookies/cakes/bread/etc, and yet it's healthy for you.

DINNER ROLLS

3 1/2 cups flour - combination of whole wheat pastry flour and white flour, in any proportions you like
1 Tblsp salt
1 Tblsp sugar
1 package instant yeast (about 2 tsp.)
3 Tblsp. cold butter
1 egg
1 cup milk

Put flour, salt, sugar, and yeast into food processor, pulse a few seconds. Add cold butter and egg, process 10 seconds. Keep machine running and pour the milk in. Run the machine for 30 seconds, or until dough starts to spin around in ball form. If it's too loose, add more flour, if too dry, a tablespoon or two more of milk. It should be a slightly sticky, easy-to-handle ball. Knead it for a minute. Place it in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, let rise for 1.5 hours.

Take the dough out, deflate and reshape into a ball, let rest in bowl for another 15 minutes. Roll out until it's 1/2 inch thick, then cut out big circles with the top of a glass or a round cookie cutter. Place on baking tray. Preheat oven to 375. Brush tops of rolls with egg beaten with a small amount of milk, bake 20 minutes, or until rolls are golden brown.

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

2010-06-30T22:21:00.010-04:00

This is a cake based on a Nigella Lawson recipe. It's made the rounds on the Internet. People talk about how ugly, yet delicious, it is. Most recently, I saw a variation of it on this site, and decided I had to make it myself. But I wanted to make the original version first, and I also didn't want to do the 101 Cookbook recipe, which involves spelt flour. I've already upset various family members with obsessive recent forays into vegan baking, experimentations with quinoa, marginally tasty black bean brownies, etc. It was important to prove to said family members that I was still willing to do the full-on, non-healthful, 2-sticks-of-butter version and see if it was really "all that" before trying to lighten it up. So I did. Nigella's original version can be found in a lot of places on the web, like here. And it was pretty good, but it lacks salt, and it NEEDS salt. I shared the cake with friends and family and then made it again, this time subbing other stuff in. White, whole wheat pastry flour. Smart balance in place of half the butter. Salt. It is still excellent, and in its second incarnation tasted better to me than the original. Other tasters who tried both agreed. The cake doesn't really need icing or a smear of cream cheese or any of the random recommendations I've seen on the web. Some claim it tastes better the next day, but it is just as nice once it cools. What's key, I think, is using very good chocolate. I used Ghiradelli's bittersweet baking chocolate. It will definitely be a recipe I'll make again.

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake (adapted from Nigella Lawson, marginally healthier with less butter and more whole grains)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup other shortening (I used Organic Smart Balance)
1 2/3 cup loosely packed dark brown sugar**
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
4 ounces best quality bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup white whole wheat pastry flour (it's important to buy PASTRY flour, otherwise simple whole wheat flour will be too heavy)
1/3 cup regular white flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup plus 2 Tblsp. boiling water

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a 9x5 bread loaf pan with shortening, then line with parchment paper - this keeps the cake from sticking. Grease parchment paper as well.

Cream butter and sugar together in mixer. Add eggs and vanilla. When blended, stir in melted chocolate. Mix dry ingredients, separately, and add 1/3 of the flour mixture to batter, alternating with 1/3 of the boiling water, then stir in the remaining flour and water in thirds. Pour batter into loaf pan.

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, turn heat down to 325, then bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, allow to cool completely. If top appears cracked and not runny, it's done - a tester inserted inside will come out doughy, so that's not a good test. Once cool, turn onto a baking dish. Serve. Enjoy.

**yeah, I'd try for Muscavado sugar if I happened to be going to Whole Foods, but good old fake brown sugar like you buy in any regular grocery store is fine. Store bought brown sugar is usually refined white sugar with molasses added.

Flan, Barcelona

2010-06-27T20:40:00.009-04:00

We recently returned from a couple weeks in Morocco, followed by a few days in Barcelona. I always get to eat amazing food with my husband's family in Morocco, and from time to time I've posted family recipes on here. But Barcelona was fairly new for me. I'd been there ten years ago but didn't do much touristy stuff then - literally the Picasso museum and a couple nightclubs. Now, with a two-year-old whom we dragged to Japan in December, I was apprehensive. Japan was amazing, but she never seemed to catch up with the jet lag, and it was too cold and crowded everywhere for her to walk much, so she mostly got shuttled around in her stroller. But she did great in Barcelona and was a good sport about everything. We did everything we wanted to do -- eating in the Plaza Real on a late night when we arrived (she loved paella with mussels and chicken), riding the double decker open-top tourist bus all day, getting out to see things like Gaudi's unfinished, trippy Sagrada Familia church, walking endlessly up and down the streets from La Rambla, the wide, tree-lined walking boulevard in the middle of the city, to Barceloneta by the beach. We took the cable cars (which S calls "tiny houses") up the mountain of Montjuic, from which you can see the entire, breathtaking city and port spread below. Our daughter's favorite thing was the array of people posed on La Rambla who pretend to be statues, some of which were amazingly creative. Like the metallic, tin-colored chimney sweep who seems to be reclining on a chair, yet there's no chair visible beneath him.

I was on a paella kick, and we stumbled upon a pretty good one our first night in La Plaça Reial (note: Catalan spelling, not Spanish), where the guys who gave us the keys to the apartment we'd rented (free sales pitch: apartime.com) had recommended we go. It was late, our flight from Morocco had arrived at 10, so we wandered around La Plaça Reial, which is down a street from the main drag, staring at the fifteen or so restaurants until we randomly picked one called Ambos Mundos. Of course there were a lot of tourists, but there were a lot of Spanish people, too, and I took this as a good sign. It was great fun to finally be off the plane, sitting outside in perfect weather, sipping sangria and eating patatas bravas (potato wedges with a spiced mayonnaise sauce). Paella had chicken & seafood and was very good, but it wasn't the place I'd planned to eat paella. That honor went to La Taverna Catalana, in an affluent neighborhood called Eixample, about a 45 minute walk from where we were staying. This neighborhood was built on a grid design in the 19th & 20th centuries and has some gorgeous modernista architecture and also seems designed for walking. (I'd read a book about Barcelona architecture ahead of time, by Robert Hughes, so I felt much more in-the-know about the buildings I was seeing than I normally do).

After a stop off at the department store El Corte Ingles, where of course I'd had to buy a 30 Euro paella pan to take home, we arrived at La Taverna Catalana at 7:30 and were told they didn't start dinner until 8:00, but they obliged us with cañas (little glasses of beer) and tapas (appetizers) while we waited. This place was not at all near hotels or anything touristy, and the few people dining that early were definitely locals. When it was time to order, we got another paella. This one was also really good, with grilled vegetables radiating out from a mountain of saffron-colored rice.

Non paella-related cuisine experiences included trying a fast food vegetarian restaurant called Maoz, which had incredible falafel with a million different colorful veggie toppings and sauces, and La Boqueria, this amazing central market that has been around for centuries and sells everything from fresh fruit and vegetables to cinnamon-sugar coated almonds, ham hocks, olives, baguettes, and cheeses. I was able to successfully eat my way through Barcelona, and found it surprisingly affordable.

So why is this post entitled "flan"? First of all, because although I've broken in the paella pan, I didn't make a paella I was ready to write about yet. Secondly, because flan is ubiquitous in Morocco, at restaurants and in homes, and it's pretty much everywhere in Spain, too, though I suspect in most of the places I have eaten it, that it's made from a mix. In Morocco you can buy Flan Ideal in every tiny drygoods shop-- instant flan mix, just add hot milk and refrigerate. (I even found these cool old commercialsfrom Moroccan t.v. for the flan mix.) Okay, so it's not terrible, but it's not great either. But I suspected I could do it better from scratch, and find a relatively simple recipe for it too so I could just whip it up anytime. After tinkering, I think I've found one. But with a caveat - due to the Florida humidity, although the caramel turned out perfectly the first time, the second time I made it, it turned into sugar. I redid it, only to have it crystallize again. I have made caramel before and never had this happened. I spent an hour and a half standing over the stupid stove, trying to get it right. I tried to be careful about not getting the sugar crystals back in the sauce to not contaminate it, but to no avail. With the help of Google, I learned a trick - a teaspoon of corn syrup will keep this nasty problem from ever happening again, so nothing now can stand between you and a show stopping yet simple flan...

Flan

Caramel sauce:

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp. corn syrup

Flan:

*1 14 ounce can evaporated milk
1/2 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla

4 large or 6 small ramekins

1) In a small saucepan, bring water and sugar to a simmer, stir to dissolve sugar, then turn heat down low and allow to simmer until it starts to turn golden. Watch carefully until it turns amber (takes at least 20 minutes, but you can ignore it for most of the time), then pour evenly among your ramekins. Now preheat your oven to 350.

2) In a mixer (or with a whisk), blend milk with sugar, egg yolks and vanilla until bubbly. Pour among the ramekins and set them in a baking dish with high sides (I was able to use 4 big ramekins and a square, 8x8 baking dish). This is your water bath. Fill the baking dish with water up to the level of the milk mixture. Place baking dish/ramekins in oven, bake 40-45 minutes until golden brown and set. Remove from water bath and cool on a rack, then transfer to a refrigerator.

3) To serve, slide a knife around the flan and invert onto a plate.

*Lest anyone be suspicious or snobby concerning evaporated milk - it is basically milk from which 60% of the water has been removed, after which it is sterilized at 245 degrees farenheit, resulting in a slightly carmelized flavor which is nothing short of AWESOME. It is the secret ingredient in the best waffles I have ever had.

Baked Pinto Beans, Enchilada Style

2010-05-20T20:37:00.007-04:00

More recipe experimentation has been going on, though I've been caught up both with the end-of-the-school year and unwise decision on my part to teach a May term to make some extra cash. Somehow even a class that I've taught many times before becomes like slogging through molasses when it meets every day for almost three hours, just after the regular semester is over and everyone is already tired, students and professors alike. It's also cutting in to my summer research/writing time, which I value dearly, though I thought I'd have more energy to do both. Oh well - it will be over soon enough. Meanwhile, I continue to puzzle over the quest to get a square meal on the table every night for my family, which most nights I manage to do, though I find myself getting in mental ruts where, when I try to come up with a dinner, I find myself stuck on certain themes and forgetting things I've made from the past that would be perfectly acceptable and delicious. Which is why I have this blog to remind me.

Experiments included a couple Indian dishes from the Madhur Jaffrey World Vegetarian book, which I remember as being good but when I tried to look up what I made just now, my mind drew a complete blank as I stared in the index at the hundreds of Indian recipes. Lentils? Potatoes? Spinach? I dunno. (See, I told you I'm tired).

I also tried a Mark Bittman recipe this week for Baked Pinto Beans, Enchilada Style, that blew me away. Though he describes it as "couldn't be easier," it actually was pretty time consuming, because to make the recipe truly amazing, you have to prepare a tomato sauce in a particular way. Basically the dish itself is just pinto beans (2 cans, drained) layered atop the tomato sauce, dotted with 1" cubes of cheese (1 cup), 1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco, a cup of crumbled tortilla chips, baked 20-30 minutes. This part, it's true, was pretty easy, but the added step of the sauce making caused it to take considerably longer.

For the sauce, "Salsa Roja," I went to my local Mexican grocery store and bought a little bag of dried guajillo chile peppers. Poured boiling water over two of the peppers, soaked them, removed seeds and stems, minced. In a skillet, I sauteed them along with 2 onions, finely chopped, 4 minced cloves of garlic, then after those softened, 2 lbs. tomatoes, cored, peeled, seeded, and chopped, 1 T sugar, salt & pepper. I used fresh tomatoes so those also took awhile to core and peel, though he says canned ones are fine. You cook this for about 20 minutes, then stir in 1/4 cup minced cilantro and 3 T lime juice. I pureed it slightly with a hand blender then used it as the bottom layer for the aforementioned baked pinto beans. Oh, and I microwaved a sweet potato, chunked it up, and tossed it in as well - a variation he recommends - and this added considerably to the salty-sweet-crunchy-chewy-savory Tex Mex deliciousness of this dish. But if I do it again (and I plan to), I'm going to make the sauce ahead & freeze it. Soooo good. The guajillo chiles are essential - they make it really unique and smoky.

Pad Thai

2010-05-10T21:24:00.004-04:00

In my favorite food column, Mark Bittman's "The Minimalist," posted every Wednesday in the New York Times, there was a recipe recently for Pad Thai. This is one I've tried numerous recipes for. The premade, boxed Thai dinners with sauce are boring. Other recipes tasted inauthentic. But this one, finally, approximates what it's like to eat pad thai at a Thai restaurant. I altered it to be heavier on the noodles and lighter on the cabbage. I could not find bean sprouts at Whole Foods or Publix, so I skipped those - didn't feel like driving downtown to the Asian market. Could do this with or without shrimp - I used a mix of both shrimp and tofu.

Pad Thai

7 ounces rice stick fettucine-width noodles (can find in Asian section of most supermarkets)

2 Tablespoons tamarind paste (this stuff keeps forever, buy it cheap at Asian markets)
1/4 cup fish sauce (nam pla-- also keeps forever & available at Asian markets)
1/3 cup honey
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/4 cup chopped scallions
1 garlic clove, minced
2 eggs
1/2 head of green cabbage, shredded
1 cup bean sprouts (I skipped these
1/2 pound peeled shrimp, pressed tofu or a combination
1/2 cup roasted peanuts, chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 limes, quartered.

In a small saucepan, mix tamarind paste, fish sauce, honey, vinegar, and red pepper flakes. Heat on low until it simmers, turn off.

Put noodles in a big bowl and cover with boiling water. Check every five minutes, stirring occasionally, testing after 10 minutes to see if they are soft. Keep checking every five minutes until ready. When done, drain & drizzle with a tablespoon of peanut or canola oil.

While noodles are soaking, in a wok or big saute pan on medium heat, add a generous slug of neutral oil - canola or peanut oil, if you have it. Add scallions and garlic, saute one minute. Add eggs, scrambling, when they begin to set, add shredded cabbage. Stir and fry several minutes until cabbage begins to wilt. Add shrimp and tofu. When shrimp turns pink and tofu begins to brown, add noodles to wok along with the sauce. Top with peanuts & cilantro, squeeze lime over all.

Veggie burgers...

2010-04-24T22:07:00.005-04:00

It's difficult to know where to start with Mark Bittman's cookbooks. Mainly because they're so enormous - How To Cook Everything Vegetarian clocks in at almost 1000 pages. I use his How To Cook Everything as a consummate cooking reference - anytime I want to make something I look it up there first, and his recipes almost never disappoint. But the challenge of a vegetarian meal is how to get your head out of thinking that meat has to be the center of it. So what should that center be, or is it more about several peripherals that come together to form one holistic dish?

I decided there were a couple strategies here: 1) buy an ingredient and look up his suggestions for how to prepare it 2) open a page at random, or 3) search for things I know I like already, like gratins, or pasta dishes, or things involving beans.

Strategy #1 I did with tofu. I used half a block of extra firm tofu to make pad thai, then had some extra left over. He suggests simply roasting it for an hour at 350. He offers a few ideas for things to brush the tofu with. I cut it up into cubes, brushed it with a mix of miso paste and mirin wine (left over from the Japanese food kick prior to our trip to Japan in December), and roasted. This was really nice. When it was hot and fresh out of the oven, it tasted almost like cheese with a slightly chewy yet crisp exterior. It was good.

Strategy #2 I haven't really tried yet. But here are a few that come up when I open pages at random: pearl couscous gratin with pesto and goat cheese (how could this not be good?), parsnips and wheat berry pie with phyllo crust (ummm, not sure).

Strategy #3 has resulted in several dishes so far. Creamy baked noodles with eggplant and cheese. Good, but not amazing or worth the effort it took to prepare bechamel, eggplant sauce, layer it all, bake it, etc. Today I made his Espresso black bean chili and actually used dried beans, something I don't normally do but would like to do more often. They take forever to cook, even with his recommended pre-soaking (boil 2 minutes, let sit 2 hours), but this was an excellent chili, dark & smoky without being heavy. The chili also had a cup of espresso in it, which you wouldn't be able to identify if you didn't know. I took it to a potluck supper with cornbread and it was yummm... couldn't stop eating my own potluck contribution.

But the one I've made a couple times so far has been his recipe for The Simplest Bean Burgers. Really easy, and infinitely variable, and here's another thing that's great about his cookbooks - he always gives lots of suggestions for how to adapt dishes with what you have on hand. The template is:

2 cups well-cooked beans, can be white, black, red beans, chickpeas or lentils, or 1 drained 14 ounce can
1 medium onion, quartered
1/2 cup rolled oats (not instant)
1 Tblsp. chili powder or other spice mix
salt & pepper
1 egg
Bean cooking liquid, stock, etc. if necessary.

(My additions: several crimini (baby bella) mushrooms, grated cheddar.
I've done this with chickpeas and black beans. Both have great flavor, chickpeas held together better.)

Throw all of the above into a food processor, pulse but keep it chunky. Add liquid if necessary, burgers should not be wet or pureed. With wet hands, form into patties, let stand or refrigerate if you have time. To cook, saute 5 minutes per side or broil 5 minutes per side.

These are super easy and taste much better than the pre-made patties. Could grill them but they might fall apart too easily.His infinite variations include suggestions like adding fresh herbs, sauces, cooked veggies, nuts, spinach, you name it. I don't think you could go wrong unless you lose the consistency necessary to keep them holding together.

Tortilla pizza with refried beans and sweet potato

2010-04-21T22:31:00.005-04:00

Since watching Food, INC several weeks ago, I've changed the way I eat. It's a great documentary, a disturbing look at how farming has become thoroughly corporatized. There were a number of things that disturbed me, such as how the push to make a profit has led to chickens whose growth process is sped up before their skeletal development can catch up, and cows eating corn (not a natural part of their diet) and having more E. coli infections as a result. There was also the very sad story of a mother whose toddler died eating a hamburger, and who has argued for higher inspection standards since ground beef can come from multiple plants with only the smallest sample tested for E. Coli.

So, this was all bothersome enough that I decided to switch to a more vegetarian diet. I don't think I'm ready to completely give up meat or poultry, but I do only want to buy beef or chicken from places that can guarantee a more humane, less corporate existence. I'm inspired by my favorite NY Times columnist & cookbook author Mark Bittman, who himself switched to a 70% plant-based diet recently. I guess you could call this being flexitarian. But I'm also conscious of what I'm feeding to my now 22-month old daughter, and if that part of Food, Inc that focused on the mother who lost her child was intended as a scare tactic, it worked with me. Sofia doesn't like meat much anyway (too hard to chew), loves seafood, and will eat chicken if it's interesting (say, a drumstick rather than a bland breast that's been dressed up).

If I can get my act together to post here more often, I'm going to start writing about my recent efforts to cook from three of the vegetarian cookbooks I own: Bittman's "How To Cook Everything Vegetarian," Madhur Jaffrey's "World Vegetarian," and Nava Atlas' "Family Vegetarian. I've been trying out a lot of recipes lately. Not all of them are a success. In fact, in order to promote family harmony, I think I am going to have to frequently fry up a piece of chicken or a steak on the side. It's also challenging to rethink my own expectations for a meal at which some form of meat is the center, with vegetables a sort of dutiful supporting act. I may flake out. But I'm going to try.

So here's one that has entered the regular rotation on the dinner table. Sofia loves it. It's adapted from a Dr. Sears baby newsletter from several months ago. Basically it's a tortilla topped with a number of good savory & sweet things and then baked, but it's infinitely variable.

Tortilla Pizza - serves 2-3 people

Package of small corn or flour tortillas
1 large sweet potato
1 can refried beans
frozen corn, defrosted
grated cheese (1-2 cups cheddar, jalapeno monterey jack, etc)
Generous handful of spinach, chopped up small
Salsa, chopped tomatoes, chopped avocado, green onions - basically any extra garnish.

Preheat oven to 400. Cook sweet potato in microwave. Take skin off, mash with butter, milk, and salt to taste.

On tortillas, spread a layer of refried beans, followed by a layer of sweet potato, spinach, grated cheese and corn. Bake for 10-12 minutes until cheese is bubbly. Salt to taste, serve with salsa, toppings & Tabasco sauce.

food updates

2010-03-13T13:59:00.003-05:00

It seems every time I think about doing an update I get stymied by an inability to find my camera to photograph the food prior to consumption, or I write an update in my head and then never transfer it to the screen. I have been cooking up a storm and have some great new cookbooks, and gone on various food obsessions over the past few months, but here are some highlights.

1) Grits. I grew up with grits, which, for non-Southerners, are basically like polenta. In the South they tend to be eaten with cheese. While visiting my parents in SC, at a restaurant I had the most incredible grits ever. I began a quest to figure out why they were so incredible, so toothsome and savory and complex, when most of the grits I've ever had have been basically a gelatinous patty on a plate next to some eggs and bacon. I decided that their deliciousness was due to the fact that they might have come from a place like Anson Mills, which went out of their way to find obscure, antebellum varieties of corn grown by bootleggers, and then grew the stuff organically, then stone-grinding them to perfection. I ordered a whole mess o'grits and experimented with them for a few weeks. Followed the directions on their website for cooking coarsely-ground grits in a slow cooker, which came out weird. Talked to my friend George, owner of Egg, a restaurant in Brooklyn famous for its Southern fare. He recommended cooking separately and then mixing coarse ground and quick grits from Anson Mills (quick=30 minutes), which seemed to do the trick. Voila, the dreamy grits from the restaurant. I ordered a second (pricey) batch from Anson Mills and am now enjoying the best grits ever, though I mostly am just making the quick cooking variety.

I think one reason these Anson Mills grits are so awesome has to do with the generic, genetically modified Frankencorn that apparently now constitutes 90% of our corn supply (and food supply, since the grocery stores are full of packaged products made out of said corn, everything from diapers to Coke to chips).

2) Vegetarian Cooking. Relates to post #1 and the notes about Frankencorn. I just saw Food, Inc, and it freaked me out. I was already not buying hamburgers anymore due to the E. Coli risk after reading this scary article in the NY Times. We only eat beef once a week or so anyway. I would love to have more vegetarian days but not all members of the household would like this. Fish is good, but how do you know whether your fish is OK or not? If it's farmed, it's probably eating corn too. If it's wild, it might be full of PCB and all other sorts of cancer and infertility-inducing endocrine disrupters. But if you're happily moving to a vegetarian diet, you're in trouble with E. Coli there, too - recall the issues of the past few years with Spinach. But this is a disturbing movie. Can't get the images of all those chickens out of my head.

Prior to all this, I already had a decent little library of vegetarian cookbooks. I really like Nava Atlas' "The Vegetarian Family Cookbook." Almost every recipe in there has been good, and I've tried 15-20 of them. A new addition is Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. I had found one of her recipes online for Turkish red lentil soup, and it was pretty good. The cookbook came this week and last night I made Spanish swiss chard and potato soup and French Provencale chickpea pizza. Baby Sofia (now 21 months old), who will still eat pretty much anything, ate the soup and was then sick all night. I don't know whether this is due to the soup or a virus, but probably because of the negative associations and four hours of sleep upon which I'm writing this, I won't be making it again.

I think I did a little vegetarian-vegan overkill because I also made Nava Atlas' blueberry muffins, sans eggs, and a recipe for chocolate chip cookies (also without eggs) from the white, whole wheat organic pastry flour I had just bought. The blueberry muffins were just OK (I like her zucchini muffins MUCH better) and the choco chip cookies kind of pathetic. I had made all of these within a 24 hour time span. Bombarding my family all at once with these multiple experiments was a mistake. Chickpea pizza, however, was yum. Baked in a cast-iron skillet after "setting" on the stove, topped with diced tomatoes, onions, and parmesan cheese. Chickpea flour is an exciting new development in my life. It was like a protein-filled flatbread.

3) Favorite food blog: Smitten Kitchen. I've now made multiple recipes from this site. They are always amazing. Her recipe for chewy granola bars is nothing short of incredible.

4) A most awesome cookbook recommendation - Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon by Claudia Roden. My friend Delia gave it to me a while back. I made one or two side dishes/desserts from it, then, as sometimes happens with cookbooks, I stopped. Dug it out recently and started making Moroccan recipes in earnest. Found that they really and truly live up to the food my Moroccan in-laws make - i.e. they're not some weird adaptation like Pork Loin with Moroccan Spices or couscous with mint, which most Moroccans would find anathema. (Mint is for tea. Period.) So far I've made Roast Cod with Potatoes and Tomatoes, Tagine of Chicken with Preserved Lemon and Olives, and Lamb (I used beef) Tagine with Potatoes and Peas. Yum, yum, yum, best Moroccan cookbook I've found so far. Here's the chicken with preserved lemon and olives:

Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemon and Olives (Adapted from Claudia Roden)

3 Tblsp. olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped in food processor
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp. crushed saffron threads or saffron powder
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
6-8 pieces of chicken, mix of legs, breasts, whatever
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 Tblsp. chopped cilantro
2 Tblsp. chopped parsley
peel of 1 large preserved lemon (can get these from a middle eastern grocery store, or make your own, just google it, but this dish would still be good without them)
16-20 kalamata olives

In a large casserole heat oil on low heat and add onions, stirring until they begin to soften, then add garlic, saffron, and ginger. Cook 1 min. Add chicken pieces, season with salt and pepper, and pour in 1.5 cups of water. Simmer, covered, turning from time to time and adding water if they become dry. Remove breasts after 15 minutes, reserve. Keep cooking remaining pieces until done, about 25 min. Return breasts to pan. Once chicken is done, add lemon juice, cilantro & parsley, lemon peel cut into strips, and olives. Simmer 5-10 minutes until sauce is quite thick. If chicken is falling off the bone, take it out and cook down until the sauce is thick.

books about food and children

2010-01-17T13:44:00.005-05:00

In the fall, I was briefly on a kick of reading books about children & cooking. In an earlier post, pre-baby, I talked about Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook, which involves making lots of purees and sneaking them into your children's food. I hoped I didn't have a child for whom I'd have to do this. And now that I actually have a 19-month old, that book seems incredibly fussy to me. Spend Sunday nights whipping up roasted butternut squash purees for the week, to be labeled and frozen in snack bags? I don't think so. I still make the effort to cook dinner most nights of the week, even if Sofia is clinging to my leg and demanding, "Up! Up!", which she does most of the time, particularly when she is hungry. But I'm not going to make special meals for her, unless I'm making something for us that is extremely spicy. However, I do recognize that childhood pickiness is a very real phenomenon, and I'm cringing as I wait for it to descend upon us. We may have seen signs of it in our winter trip to Japan. Sofia was extremely jet lagged for the first week, had a bad cold and then a stomach virus, and literally would not eat the entire time. I'm glad I brought a bag of O-shaped cereal with us for her to eat in our hotel room every morning, or otherwise she would have starved. We had tried making sushi, onigiri, teriyaki, you name it, prior to departing, which she seemed to enjoy, but faced with the actual food of Japan (and the fact she had her nights and days confused), she wasn't interested. Thankfully, now that we've returned, she's eating again.

During the fall I read two books that discuss children & food - one is Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater, by Matthew Amster-Burton, the other Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 mom, 4 kids, and 102 recipes, by Emily Franklin. Hungry Monkey was by far my favorite of the two, though neither parent seemed to have much success in getting their children to eat adventurously. However, Burton writes humorously and self-deprecatingly of his own adventures as a food writer and some of the quirky foods his daughter likes, and some of his recipes are terrific. Particularly one for cowboy beans and enchiladas. Too Many Cooks just annoyed me. Not only do the kids and the dad in this book not seem to eat much of anything, but the author keeps reminding us how she cooked on a yacht and writes smugly of how well she manages her large and chaotic family while also stealing upstairs to write numerous (published) young adult novels. Struggling to raise one baby (and unable to imagine how you handle four), I had a hard time picturing this kind of life, and I'm amazed at people who can do it. But I still tried several of her recipes, because she did write very enticingly about them. I liked one recipe for chowder, zucchini muffins could have doubled as baseballs, and everything else was kind of lackluster. Here's her recipe for comfort food: hamburger, frozen peas, salt, and elbow macaroni. No spice, no creaminess, no cheesiness, just that. Hmm.

Here, however, is Burton's awesome recipe for cowboy beans. I highly recommend the book, though, both for entertainment value and recipes.

Cowboy Beans

4 slices bacon, diced (I used turkey bacon -would be even more delicious with the real stuff)
2 minced garlic cloves
1/2 can diced tomatoes (he recommends Muir-Glen fire roasted)
2 15 ounce cans pinto beans, not drained
1 Tblsp. minced pickled jalapenos
2 Tblsp. finely chopped cilantro

Cook bacon in large saucepan over medium heat until crisp. Add garlic and stir 30 seconds. Add tomatoes, cook and stir 4 minutes. Add beans, simmer over low heat 15 minutes. Add peppers (if using), then cilantro and salt to taste. Beans will be soupy. Great with his whole enchilada recipe, or as a side dish or accompaniment to other Tex-mex fare...

2009-10-25T21:16:00.006-04:00

So for most of September, I was down with one daycare illness after another. It thwarted my plans to get back to updating this site regularly. But right now I'm okay - and making plans for a trip to Japan in December. Today we decided we needed to cook Japanese food in preparation. (An article on Bentoin the New York Times has been in the back of my mind for some time now, and I even went so far as to order a bento box to pack cute lunches for my daughter, but again, illness interfered with the cute lunches part.) With the help of the internet, a few good blogs on Japanese cuisine, a YouTube video or two, and a manga cookbook, we set out to make sushi rolls.

Our first step was going to an Asian supermarket -- I've been to a number of them on Colonial Drive here in Orlando, but today stumbled upon the best of all of them - Dong A on Mills Ave. They had absolutely everything, and one of their employees quickly led us around the store after every single thing we needed (I wanted to make miso soup too, and some other recipes). Dashi, miso, tofu, nori, sesame oil, sushi rice, mirin, curry mix, sushi-grade tuna, imitation crabmeat, scallions, sesame seeds, etc... see first pic, above. Back at home, we followed our rice cooker cookbook's recipe for sushi rice, which involved washing the rice in a special way and adding a vinegar-sugar-salt mixture at the end. Nour actually made the rolls-- california and variations on tuna-- and they were terrific. The best were the spicy tuna rolls.

Two great Internet finds: a recipe for a spicy tuna mayonnaise (1/4 cup mayo, 1 Tblsp. sriracha, 1 tsp. sesame oil), and a nice recipe for miso soup from this website:. The sushi rolls were perfect. We stuffed ourselves and calculated how much money we must be saving by making them ourselves, all you can eat. Our first venture into Japanese cuisine, hopefully more to follow.

Nutty about Quinoa

2009-09-05T22:57:00.003-04:00

I've been on a cooking rampage since the semester started. The baby, well, she's a toddler now at 14 months, started daycare, we started back teaching, and cooking something good at the end of a long day feels like the best kind of stress relief. I'm always hopeful the next recipe I try is going to be life changing. Nine times out of ten it isn't (recent ehhh recipes included Cornish pasties and tomato pie), but experimenting is always fun. I'm also thinking about trying to send good foods to daycare with S, and happy that she still eats everything. So today I was reading somewhere about quinoa, and how it's a super food. Packed with protein, full of all 8 amino acids, plus iron, fiber, calcium, vitamins, etc etc. Claims that it can lower your blood pressure or improve your memory.

I've tried cooking with it before and wasn't that crazy about it, but I decided to give it another try. You can use quinoa as a substitute in recipes that would call for rice. Picked some up at Whole Foods, and for dinner, made a risotto I normally make with arborio rice, roasted butternut squash, and chicken. I roast 1 squash at 400 for 45 minutes, saute a shallot and garlic in butter, add 1 diced chicken breast, cook it for a minute until no longer pink, then add 1 cup quinoa and 2 cups water. After ten minutes, added half the roasted squash, chopped up small. Salt & pepper to taste. Topped with parmesan cheese, the first bite was interesting, but after that it grew on me. Something about the smell or taste reminds me of cruciferous vegetables, but just a hint.

Then I had some uncooked quinoa left over, so for dessert I adapted a Martha Stewart recipe for quinoa muffins. And this one was worth writing about. May top a previous Best Ever Muffins recipe, since it's probably better for you and also has an interesting nutty crunchiness to it. You can replace blueberries with whatever you have on hand-- raisins, cranberries, dates would all be nice...

Quinoa Muffins

1 cup quinoa, rinsed (You have to do this or apparently it's very bitter)
1/4 cup vegetable oil,
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (or more!) blueberries
3/4 cup whole milk (I'll try using lowfat next time)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Boil 1 cup quinoa with 1 cup water for about 11 minutes or until water is absorbed. Preheat oven to 350.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add 2 cups of the cooked quinoa (you might have slightly more) and mix well. In a small bowl, beat milk, egg, and vanilla. Add milk mixture plus blueberries to flour mixture, mix just enough to get the ingredients together or the muffins will be tough.

Pour into 12 muffin cups sprayed with cooking spray. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Cool in pan 5 minutes, then remove to wire rack.

Moroccan Foods for Ramadan

2009-08-29T15:58:00.006-04:00

After being married to a Moroccan for almost a decade, I finally figured out how to make harira. Harira is a tomato-based soup with meat and chickpeas that Moroccans eat to break the fast during Ramadan. I've tried a number of delicious recipes, but none of them ever tasted quite like the harira made in my husband's family. Somehow, even though I got other cooking lessons, I never learned to make harira the way they did. So finally this past summer while in Fes, I wrote down my sister-in-law's directions. I pulled out the recipe a few weeks ago and realized it was just a giant list of ingredients, a little here and there, approximated using tea glasses or small spoons, most of said ingredients thrown into a blender and then a pressure cooker, with other things added later. So I worked on the measurements until I got the recipe right. Last night we finally had some authentic food-- I've also been tinkering with the recipe for bghrir, otherwise known as the "pancake of a thousand holes," and I think I've got that one down, too. I'm writing them down now for posterity, and so I can remember what I did next time.

Harira (Serves 4)

Part 1:

1/2 lb stew beef, cut into 1 " pieces
4 large tomatoes
1 large onion
3 stalks celery, with leaves
1/2 cup parsley
1/4 cup cilantro
1 Tblsp canola oil
1 tsp. salt, add more to taste
1/2 tsp. black pepper
A can of chickpeas, drained
2 teaspoons Better than Boullion, or beef boullion cubes, or beef stock

Part 2:

1/8 cup flour
1/4 cup water
2 Tblsp. tomato paste
1/4 cup long grain rice
1/4 cup cilantro
4 cups water

Part 3:

Small handful vermicelli noodles, preferably fideo, broken up angel hair noodles that they sell at Hispanic grocery stores.

Place stew beef in a pressure cooker, or large Dutch oven (will take longer). Blend tomatoes in blender then strain them through a colander, adding strained tomatoes to pot. Blend large onion with 1/2 cup water, add to pot. Blend celery with 1/2 cup parsley, 1/4 cup cilantro and another 1/2 cup water, add to pot. Turn on the burner, bring to a simmer, keep adding stuff: oil, salt, pepper, beef stock or boullion, chickpeas (You can use canned, but if so, don't add them now, add them at the end). Seal pressure cooker, cook 45 minutes, turn off heat. If using a dutch oven, simmer about 2 hours, or until beef is tender.

In a blender, blend flour, 1/2 cup water, 2 Tblsp tomato paste. Add to pot, along with rice, cilantro, and 4 cups water. Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring frequently to keep flour from sticking.

Best if you let it sit for another hour or two before eating. Salt to taste. It should be a slightly thick soup. If too thick, add more water. Just before eating, add a very small handful of fideo noodles.

Serve with lemon. Some people also put in lentils; you could do 1/4 cup or less at the same time you add the rice. This is the best soup ever; very filling.

Bghrir (Pancake with 1000 holes)

1 3/4 cups semolina
1/2 cup white flour
1 tsp. salt
1 cup milk, warmed slightly
3 cups water, lukewarm
3 eggs
1 Tblsp yeast (or a yeast packet)

Sift semolina, flour and salt. In a separate bowl, mix milk, water, eggs, and yeast with a whisk. Add SOME of the milk mixture to the semolina until mixture gets thick-- like a thick soup. Put that in a blender, blend for 3-4 minutes. Now strain it through a colander and then add the rest of your milk/eggs mixture. Allow to rise in a warm place for two hours.

Batter will be frothy. Stir gently with a ladle, and fry, crepe-style (not too thick) in a small frying pan coated with nonstick cooking spray over medium heat. Pancake will gather lots of tiny holes, but don't turn it over-- when it's golden on the bottom and done on the top, place it on a cookie rack or clean dish towel, but don't stack. This makes a LOT of tiny pancakes.

Before serving, heat another skillet with some butter (or butter substitute) and honey. Warm the pancakes you will be eating in the honey mixture, then stack on a plate to keep warm. Extra ones keep well.

The Julie/Julia Movie

2009-08-24T22:47:00.005-04:00

We lived in New York in 2002, during the time when Julie Powell was writing her blog cooking through all the recipes in the Julia Child cookbook. I followed it religiously. I was trying to finish writing my PhD dissertation and working day jobs as a temp at places like Clinique and Tiffany's, in their corporate headquarters, or in big financial firms. The names of the places sounded glamorous but the work was not-- I remember being hired to fill in for a secretary on vacation at a big financial firm and being shocked that actual shoeshine men would go from office to office, collecting shoes, sitting outside and dutifully shining them. Always at these places there was a hierarchy, still with white men at the top (I'm thinking of Mad Men), and I was usually taking orders from some guy who needed Excel spreadsheets typed up rapidly, or else someone to help him fill out Evite invitations for a party, and who could care less that I was working on a doctorate. It was an interesting year, it was fun at times, and it was also a struggle. And I had my own food blog, site designed by my husband, on its own server (that we eventually stopped subscribing to so I could do a free blogger page). I wrote a lot more back then and loved reading other people's sites. So it was cool to watch Julie Powell's rise to fame, and to reminisce about living in New York in a similar time in our lives.

The movie was great fun, and it made me fairly hungry for French food, even though many of the scenes involved not fully cooked food but ducks being deboned, or other raw scenes. Not quite as mouth watering as other food movies, such as Big Night. So this past weekend for my birthday dinner, my family and I went to Cafe de France, one of the best restaurants in our town. It was terrific. I had veal piccata, with perfectly cooked asparagus and a potato galette, and creme brulee for dessert. Because he'd heard it was my birthday, the waiter propped a tiny candle on the side of my plate in wax, a perfect gesture. I went home and dug around for my copy of the Julia Child cookbook-- I know I bought it years ago at a yard sale-- and couldn't find it anywhere. Oh well. Instead I took several yellow potatoes, sliced them thin, layered them in a gratin dish with sliced onions, parmesan, salt, and pepper between the layers. I poured milk over the whole thing, baked it for an hour at 375, and added more cheese at the end. Would have been even better with gruyere on hand but not bad, nonetheless. But now I'm desperately searching for that cookbook.

Oven French Fries with Dijon Mayo

2009-08-17T10:38:00.004-04:00

This is a fool-proof recipe for French fries, and it always turns out well for me. An adaptation of a Cooking Light recipe, with a dipping sauce that tastes like something you'd be eating in the south of France, at a seaside cafe somewhere, with lots of fresh grilled seafood.

2 lbs Baking potatoes or yukon gold potatoes
2 Tblsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. white wine vinegar
1 minced garlic clove
3 Tblsp. mayonnaise
1 tsp. chopped parsley
1 1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard

Preheat oven to 450. Slice potatoes lengthwise, anywhere from 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thickness. Place in a large bowl, fill with hot water, let stand ten minutes while you make sauce.

Combine vinegar and garlic, let stand five minutes. Add mayonnaise, parsley, mustard.

Drain potatoes and pat dry with paper towels. In a dry bowl, mix them with oil and salt. Arrange on baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray, place in preheated oven. Check after ten minutes to see if you need to turn them-- if they're golden brown on the bottom. Could take anywhere from 20-35 minutes total, depending on how thick you slice them.

Bibimbap with Salmon and Spinach

2009-07-27T11:32:00.004-04:00

This recipe for Bibimbap, rice with salmon and spinach, has been in heavy rotation in my kitchen for almost a year now, since a NY Times article on the joys of rice cookers. The article made rice cookers sound so tempting that I ran out and bought one. You can get them for very cheap at places like Target, though there are also fancy versions. I got a large, basic one, and it's really great-- does excellent rice every time, and also acts as a slow cooker. This can also be made without a rice cooker, and I've improvised on it and taken a few liberties, so it's not fully authentically Korean, but the essential ingredient is kimchi, pickled cabbage. Our grocery store has it and it can also be found at stores like Whole Foods and Asian supermarkets.

Rice Cooker Bibimbap with Salmon and Spinach

10 ounces leaf spinach, fresh or frozen
Roasted sesame oil
Rice vinegar
Salt & pepper
8 ounces salmon filet, sliced into 1/4 inch strips
1 1/2 to 2 cups rice, medium or short grain, rinsed
5 Tblsp. kimchi, finely chopped
4 eggs
Sriracha (should be an authentic chili paste called Kochuj ang, but I don't like it as much)

Steam spinach in rice cooker steamer basket (with an inch of water below, boiling), or simply saute it until it just wilts. Drain and squeeze excess moisture out, season with salt, pepper, sesame oil and rice vinegar.

Seam salmon in top steamer basket of rice cooker, about 15 minutes. (Without a rice cooker, you could saute, quickly broil, or steam some other way).

Clean out cooker. Rinse rice a few times until water is no longer chalky. Add rice to cooker and cook with a bit of salt. (Here you could just make rice separately).

When timer goes off and rice is done, stir in kimchi, scraping bottom of rice cooker. Smooth top. Drizzle 4 tsp. sesame oil over rice, gently break eggs on top, one on each side of cooker. Cover, press "cook" on rice cooker again for 8-10 minutes. (Without a rice cooker, in a large pot, you could arrange everything and steam the eggs).

Switch rice cooker to warm, arrange salmon and spinach next to eggs, cover, and steam until egg whites turn white, yolks will still be runny. Place 2 tsps. chili paste in center, mix everything up. Serve.

I like to keep the rice cooker on because it makes a nice crust on the bottom of the rice. Serves 4.

sriracha mayonnaise

2009-05-25T22:13:00.002-04:00

I learned this week in the NY Times that sriracha, a spicy red pepper sauce that we always have in the refrigerator, is not an authentic Vietnamese condiment, but in fact was invented by a Vietnamese immigrant to Los Angeles of Chinese origin. Interesting! Apparently it's all the rage among chefs in New York to use it in subtle and imaginative ways. I tried the accompanying recipe for sriracha mayonnaise, which is excellent with both French fries and steak. It's worth saving to make again. (I made a fourth of this quantity and had enough for two batches of oven fries and a steak).

Sriracha Mayo

2 cups mayonnaise
1/2 cup sriracha hot sauce
2 tablespoons condensed milk
1 tablespoon sea salt.

Mix everything together, preferably in a food processor. Spicy and good. Supposedly also a good accompaniment for onion rings.

Quick dinner idea - grilled chicken with harissa and yogurt

2009-04-30T08:51:00.003-04:00

I have lots of updates but just haven't had time to post... but a recipe in yesterday's NY Times for beef marinated in harissa and yogurt gave me a good idea. You may know that tandoori chicken is marinated in yogurt to tenderize it, but this is a brilliant idea. Harissa is a spicy pepper paste we bring back from Morocco (it's Tunisian in origin), which you can get at Middle Eastern grocery stores and gourmet food shops. Adding harissa to yogurt for a marinade and then grilling the chicken is AWESOME. I chopped up some regular and sweet potatoes, chopped an onion into chunks, and mixed it with crushed garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Italian seasoning, then cooked those in the oven at 450 for about 30 minutes. Very fast dinner.

Grilled chicken with harissa and yogurt, side of roasted regular and sweet potatoes

2 large boneless chicken breasts
1/2 cup yogurt
2 Tblsp. harissa (could do more to make it spicier)
salt
1 crushed garlic clove

Mix the marinade, chop the chicken into small, one inch chunks. Marinate it two hours. Grill. 45 minutes before you want to eat, make the potatoes. I used about 2 pounds potatoes, one large onion, chopped, 1 crushed garlic clove, 2 tsp. Italian seasoning, 4 Tblsp. olive oil, and 1 Tblsp. balsamic vinegar. Toss well, cook at 450 for 30 minutes, turning occasionally.

another chocolate chip cookie recipe...

2009-02-28T11:14:00.003-05:00

Can this blog stand yet another chocolate chip cookie recipe? I admit I came across this one under rather dubious circumstances. Having a craving for cookie dough, yet continuing with my resolve not to eat raw eggs while still breastfeeding the baby, I was scouring the web for eggless dough recipes I might consume. I found this one, which apparently originated in a vegan cookbook by author Chandra Moskowitz.I didn't have high hopes for the recipe at first-- where's the brown sugar? Where are the eggs? but if I could consume a little dough in the process of baking the cookies, I figured I would be happy. I was surprised when this one actually turned out to be quite delicious. Really good, in fact I'd make it just for the cookies alone. (And the dough doesn't taste half bad either). Again, the recipe is good enough to make me curious about the cookbook-- it's now on my Amazon wishlist.. I adapted it with less salt from the original recipe and with nuts.

Eggless, vegan chocolate chip cookies...

1 cup Smart Balance butter substitute, i.e. margarine
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon molasses
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt (doesn't need much if your margarine already contains salt)
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (or vegan carob chips)
1/2 cup walnuts, pecans, whatever

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cream margarine and sugar until fluffy. Add molasses and vanilla, then dry ingredients. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Drop by big spoonfulls onto an ungreased cookie sheet, bake 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool slightly on baking sheets before transferring to cookie rack.

Eggplant Parmesan

2009-02-20T14:05:00.002-05:00

A good eggplant parmesan ought to be substantial enough that you almost feel like you're eating meat. For years I've tried different recipes but haven't found anything that creates this effect. I also didn't really want to deep fry the eggplant, even if that might have been a potential secret. But I just found a great recipe-- thanks to my friend Bob. He had served it before at a dinner party and I vowed to get the recipe. I made it last night, and it's amazing. I believe the original source is Cook's Illustrated. The eggplant is baked, too, so it's almost good for you.

EGGPLANT PARMESAN

2 pounds globe eggplant (2 medium eggplants), cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick rounds
1 tablespoon kosher salt
8 slices high-quality white bread, torn
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
6 tablespoons vegetable oil

Tomato Sauce

3 cans (14 1/2 ounces each) diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 medium cloves garlic , pressed through garlic press
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped

8 ounces shredded part-skim mozzarella, (2 cups)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
10 fresh basil leaves torn, for garnish

1. FOR THE EGGPLANT: Toss half of eggplant slices and 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt in large bowl until combined; transfer salted eggplant to large colander set over bowl. Repeat with remaining eggplant and kosher salt, placing second batch in colander on top of first. Let stand until eggplant releases about 2 tablespoons liquid, 30 to 45 minutes. Arrange eggplant slices on triple layer paper towels; cover with another triple layer paper towels. Firmly press each slice to remove as much liquid as possible, then wipe off excess salt.

2. Put two rimmed baking sheets on each rack, and heat oven to 425 degrees. Pulse bread in food processor to fine, even crumbs, you should have about 4 cups. Transfer crumbs to pie plate and stir in 1 cup Parmesan, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper; set aside.

3. Combine flour and 1 teaspoon pepper in large zipper-lock bag; shake to combine. Beat eggs in second pie plate. Place 8 to 10 eggplant slices in bag with flour; seal bag and shake to coat eggplant. Take out one baking sheet, add three Tblsp. regular oil. Remove eggplant slices, shaking off excess flour, dip in eggs, let excess egg run off, then coat evenly with bread crumb mixture; set breaded slices on heated baking sheets. Stick in oven. When sheet is full, do same thing with other baking sheet.

4. Bake until eggplant is well browned and crisp, about 30 minutes, switching and rotating baking sheets after 10 minutes, and flipping eggplant slices with wide spatula after 20 minutes. Do not turn off oven.

5. FOR THE SAUCE: While eggplant bakes, process 2 cans diced tomatoes in food processor, about 5 seconds. Heat olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes in large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and garlic is light golden, about 3 minutes; stir in processed and remaining can of diced tomatoes. Bring sauce to boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened and reduced, about 15 minutes. Stir in basil and season to taste with salt and pepper.

6. TO ASSEMBLE: Spread 1 cup tomato sauce in bottom of 13 by 9-inch baking dish. Layer in half of eggplant slices, overlapping slices to fit; distribute 1 cup sauce over eggplant; sprinkle with half of mozzarella. Layer in remaining eggplant and dot with 1 cup sauce, leaving majority of eggplant exposed so it will remain crisp; sprinkle with 1/4 cup Parmesan and remaining mozzarella. Bake until bubbling and cheese is browned, 13 to 15 minutes. Cool 10 minutes; scatter basil over top, and serve, passing remaining tomato sauce separately

best chocolate chip cookies ever...

2009-01-01T15:49:00.006-05:00

The recipes on this blog give the appearance that my diet consists only of pasta, chicken, and cookies. Which isn't true, but I do have another another amazing cookie recipe to share. People have been rhapsodic over these cookies on various food blogs, but the hype is true-- they're great chocolate chip cookies because they have the maximum of chocolate chips and nuts. And it's nice how they cook on parchment paper, which I've never tried- they cook smoothly and come up very easily. They are made with cold butter, another difference I've noticed from other cookie recipes, and the oven is a little cooler than in standard cookie recipes. And the nuts are toasted... Those might help make these cookies so amazing, but who cares. They're just incredible. And I plan to buy the cookbook as a result of having tried this recipe...

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever
from David Lebovitz, Great Book of Chocolate

1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar (I used dark brown with no problems)
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped

Preheat oven to 300. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Beat sugars and butter until smooth, add egg, vanilla and baking soda. Mix flour and salt, add to batter. Add chocolate chips and nuts.

Scoop by heaping tablespoons onto baking sheet, three inches apart. Bake 18 minutes. Yum.

Ligurian Chicken

2008-12-22T08:49:00.002-05:00

Been making this for five years now... adapted from a NY Times recipe from chef Jamie Oliver. I had this on my old food blog, which I kept from 2000-04, but I never transferred it to this new one, so I am always hunting for the recipe. This is an excellent chicken preparation-- good for winter, and hearty yet light.

Ligurian Chicken

2 Tblsp. flour, mixed on a plate with salt and pepper
1 four pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces (bone-in)
2 Tblsp. olive oil
4 fresh rosemary sprigs
6 thinly sliced garlic cloves
1 1/2 cups white wine
1/2 cups Kalamata olives, with or without pits
3 ripe plum tomatoes, halved, seeded, and coarsely chopped

Dredge the pieces in 2 Tblsp. flour, mixed with salt and pepper, then saute them in olive oil over medium-high heat. Don't be tempted to touch them until they develop a golden crust and the juices are sealed in. Turn them over, adding four little branches of rosemary and 6 cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced. When garlic softens but does not color, add 1 1/2 cups white wine and bring to a boil. Then add 1/2 cup kalamata olives, and 3 ripe plum tomatoes, seeded and coarsely chopped. Simmer partially covered until chicken is cooked and broth is reduced and tastes savory. The recipe said 15 to 20 minutes but the pieces of a big bird took slightly longer, so make sure it's done without overcooking it.

holiday cookies

2008-12-15T14:48:00.004-05:00

I found two recipes for cookies this year that I will add to my library of cookies: Lemon Cornmeal Cookies (from this month's Cooking Light) and Triple Chocolate Cookies (originally from the Food Channel, altered slightly). The Lemon Cornmeal cookies are unusual; they develop a sugary crust on the bottom but are chewy on the inside from the cornmeal. The chocolate cookies are great-- and their ingredients can be altered slightly to make a different type of cookie each time. I will definitely be making these again.

LEMON CORNMEAL COOKIES

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup softened butter
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup light-colored corn syrup
2 tsp. grated lemon peel
2 large egg whites

Preheat oven to 350. Mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt together, set aside. In mixing bowl, blend butter and sugar until smooth. Add oil, corn syrup, lemon peel, and egg whites until well mixed. Slowly add flour mixture, mix well. Drop by tablespoons one inch apart on greased baking sheet, bake 10 minutes or until edges are golden. Cool cookies on tray on top of wire rack-- this helps to crisp them up a bit.

TRIPLE CHOCOLATE COOKIES

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch processed)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips (OR 1/3 cup brittle chips)
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Mix butter and sugar in mixer until well combined, add oil, egg, vanilla and mix until creamy.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix well. Stir in the two kinds of chocolate, and the walnuts and mix well. Using a tablespoon, scoop the batter onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 12 minutes. Transfer cookies to a rack to cool.

Thanksgiving Dressing

2008-11-25T10:39:00.002-05:00

My mother's recipe, which I make every year:

3 T butter
1 c. finely chopped onions
6-8 cups white bread chunks, 1/2 inch
3 medium-sized apples, peeled and cored and coarsely chopped
1/2 c. coarsely chopped nuts (I use walnuts)
1/4 c. finely chopped parsley
1 tsp. dried marjoram
1 tsp. salt
freshly ground pepper

Saute butter and onions, add other ingredients, toss to combine. Can be used to stuff turkey, or place in foil, covered, bake for 50 minutes at whatever temperature your turkey is cooking. Serves 4-6.

Turkish pasta with eggplant, beef, and yogurt sauce

2008-09-30T22:15:00.003-04:00

When I used to live in Turkey in the mid 1990s, one of the best foods I tasted there was manti, meat-filled dumplings served with a warm yogurt sauce. I had a Turkish friend, Sumer, who knew a place in her neighborhood that made the best ones, and we'd get them as take-out and watch movies at her apartment. I never tried tackling them, since dumplings can be time-consuming, but when this recipe appeared in last week's NY Times for an easy version of them, I decided to give them a try. I was worried they wouldn't live up to memory, but in fact, they were terrific. So good, in fact, that I will certainly make them again. Hearty, rich, creamy, spicy, yum... but it's necessary to use the real ingredients here-- shallots and not onions, Greek yogurt and not plain Ameican yogurt... I did, however, use beef instead of ground lamb because I'm just not that crazy about ground lamb, and I used parsley instead of dill because I couldn't find it...

1 large eggplant, cut in 1/2 -inch cubes
5 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
3 fat garlic cloves, minced
1 large shallot, minced
1 pound ground beef
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, preferably Turkish or Aleppo
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1/2 pound bowtie or orecchiette pasta

2 to 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup plain Greek yogurt.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Boil water for pasta. Toss eggplant with 4 Tblsp. oil and a generous pinch salt. Spread on baking sheet and roast until crisp and brown, 15-20 minutes.

In a skillet, heat 1 Tblsp oil. Saute 2 of the garlic cloves and shallot for 1-2 min. Add beef, salt, red pepper flakes, and black pepper, cook until done. Stir in parsley at end and saute another 2 minutes. Mix in eggplant.

Cook pasta. Meanwhile, melt as much butter as you want to use, cooking until it turns golden brown, about 5 min. In a separate bowl, mix together yogurt, remaining garlic and pinch of salt.

Drain pasta, place on serving platter. Top with meat-eggplant mixture, then yogurt sauce. Pour melted butter over top. Garnish with more parsley and pepper.

Yield: 2 to 3 servings.

Oven-fried catfish

2008-09-18T12:04:00.003-04:00

This is one I have made several times, and each time I have to dig around to find the recipe, so it's time to launch it on the website. It's really good-- will satisfy a craving for fish and chips, but in a healthy way. I usually slice up some sweet potatoes, toss them with olive oil, cayenne pepper, paprika and salt, and roast them at about 450.

Oven-fried Catfish

Sauce:
1/4 cup light mayonnaise
1 tablespoon chopped pickles
2 teaspoons capers, chopped
1/8 tsp. salt
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco

Fish:
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon paprika
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder, divided
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 large egg whites, lightly beaten
2/3 cup yellow cornmeal
4 (4-ounce) catfish fillets

Rolls, sliced tomatoes, lettuce...

Preheat oven to 450. Mix sauce ingredients: mayonnaise, relish, capers, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and Tabasco.

Combine flour, paprika, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and pepper in a shallow dish. Place egg whites in a shallow bowl. Combine cornmeal, remaining 1/8 teaspoon salt, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder in a shallow dish. Dredge fish in flour, then egg whites, then cornmeal. Place on baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Spray fish lightly with cooking spray, bake 6 minutes. Turn and spray again, bake another 6 minutes.

Serve immediately with sauce, making a sandwich if you like.

Blueberry Coffee Cake

2008-08-29T14:00:00.005-04:00

I got this one from my friend Laurel. It's definitely as good as my standby coffee cake recipe; even better, in fact, since it features blueberries. It has a great, sugary streusel topping that will melt in your mouth. Make this one while it's still summer.

Blueberry Streusel Cake

1/3 c. butter or smart balance
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. sour cream
2 TB milk
1 3/4 cup flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. blueberries

Streusel:
4 T. butter, 4 T. flour, 2/3 c. brown sugar, 2 t. cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar until light and then add eggs. Beat well. Add remaining ingredients and pour into a greased 9" pan. Top with streusel and bake 40-45 minutes at 350.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

2008-07-30T15:26:00.003-04:00

These cookies, a recipe from my friend Darla, are unusual-- there is no flour in them, but you would never guess from eating them. I altered her recipe to substitute organic Smart Balance instead of butter to keep out some of the fat and cholesterol, and it worked just fine. I like to think that these are somehow healthy, perhaps to justify having polished off an entire bag of them in two short days. (In my defense, I halved the recipe). They are, however, delicious, and will easily stand up to any oatmeal cookie recipe I've tried before:

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

2/3 cup butter or smart balance
6 cups regular oats
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 cups raisins
3 eggs, beaten
2 cups chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups crunchy peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350. Melt butter and pour in a mixing bowl. Add sugars, eggs, and peanut butter. Add oats, baking soda, raisins, and chocolate chips. Form into balls on a cookie sheet, flattening slightly. Bake fifteen minutes.

Turkey and Eggplant Lasagna

2008-07-29T11:33:00.006-04:00

Between the last posting and this one, our baby daughter was born-- a month early. Needless to say, I haven't been cooking much, but I have been relying on the kindness of family and friends for the majority of our meals. We received a couple of excellent lasagnas, but then after a month I was craving lasagna again, but didn't want to make the traditional, meat-heavy one or a fully vegetarian one. The other night I improvised, using a vegetarian recipe from this month's Cooking Light as a base (difference: the magazine version had zucchini and no spinach or turkey, nor did it call for roasting the eggplant) and came up with this one, which was so good I will definitely make it again.

Turkey & Eggplant Lasagna

1 large eggplant, sliced 1/4 inch thickness
salt
olive oil
1 large chopped onion
3 minced garlic cloves
3/4 pound ground turkey breast
1 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/8 tsp. or more ground red pepper
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1/2 of a 10 ounce bag of fresh spinach, chopped
1 cup chopped fresh basil
1 cup lowfat ricotta
1 package precooked lasagna noodles
2 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella

Preheat oven to 350. Salt eggplant slices over several layers of paper towels and allow some of the water to drain out. After fifteen minutes, roast on a cookie sheet coated with cooking spray while you do the other steps in this recipe.

Heat a dash of olive oil in a large skillet and saute the onions and garlic until translucent. Add ground turkey breast, cook through. Add 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. black pepper, oregano, red pepper, and tomatoes, bring to a simmer and cook at least 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. When ready, add spinach and stir until wilted. Turn off heat.

Remove eggplant from oven.

Combine basil, ricotta, and 1/2 tsp. black pepper in a bowl. Assembly: spread 1/2 cup tomato sauce into a 13x9 inch pan sprayed with cooking spray. Place four noodles over, top with half of the eggplant. Spread ricotta over eggplant, cover with four more noodles. Spread 1 cup tomato sauce over noodles, top with the other half of the roasted eggplant. Add four more noodles, then remaining tomato mixture over top, and finally with mozarella. Spray a sheet of aluminum foil with cooking spray, bake 35 minutes. Remove foil-- bake 25 minutes more...

Num, num...

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Chili

2008-06-07T10:52:00.003-04:00

I have a slow cooker I don't use very often. A neighbor gave it to us as a wedding gift several years ago, and each time I get inspired to use it, I start searching for recipes on the Internet, ending up discouraged when all the recipes seem like they're about hearty American fare I'm not always interested in eating, such as Brunswick stew. But I do like the idea of throwing a bunch of things in a pot and having them simmer slowly over a couple of hours, even if I'm still not convinced that a regular pot-on-stove couldn't do the same thing. Nonetheless, I tinkered with this easily adjustable vegetarian chili recipe from the Food Network and came up with the following. You could easily substitute other things you have on hand-- corn, different types of beans, eggplant or green pepper instead of zucchini, etc. With all the spices, this ends up being pretty flavorful.

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Chili

1 14 ounce can diced tomatoes (you could use Mexican-flavored)
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can red kidney beans, rinced and drained
1 zucchini, chopped into small pieces (could substitute red or green pepper here)
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 tablespoon minced pickled jalapeno (from can or jar) and/or canned chipotle pepper
1/2 cup portion butternut squash or sweet potato puree (optional)
1 Tblsp chili powder (I've been using Penzey's medium hot chili powder lately and it's sooo good)
1/2 Tblsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. Tabasco sauce

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Your favorite cheese, shredded (sharp cheddar, mont. jack with jalapenos would be good)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put all ingredients up to Tabasco in slow cooker. Cook on high for 3-4 hours, low for 6-8 hours. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add more water if necessary. Just before serving, stir in cilantro. Serve with grated cheese on top, cornbread on the side, and if you like, a dash of sour cream.

Favorite Coffee Cake

2008-06-02T10:49:00.003-04:00

I've been making this recipe for a while now, and it deserves to be recorded. Depicted here is a double recipe I made for some friends-- and people always eat the whole thing. Great for company, great for weekends, and not bad for you, either-- this is a Cooking Light recipe, adapted slightly. The sour cream makes it incredibly moist.

Favorite Coffee Cake

1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 large egg whites
1 cup low-fat sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease an 8x8 baking dish.
Combine first 3 ingredients; set aside.

Mix granulated sugar and butter with a mixer until well blended. Add egg whites, beat in sour cream and vanilla.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture; beat well. Spread half of batter into baking pan, top with half of walnut-brown sugar-cinnamon mixture. Spread remaining batter over this. Top with remaining walnut-sugar mixture.

Bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool the cake on a wire rack.

12 servings, 243 calories each.

Chocolate & cream cheese pie, with secret ingredients...

2008-05-30T16:16:00.013-04:00

I was really curious to try this recipe for heavenly pie from 101 Cookbooks. The recipe came from a 1970s hippie manual on living off the land. It looked so delicious on the website, and I was intrigued by the secret ingredient: silken tofu. And graham cracker crusts are my favorite. So I made it, and it was good. The filling is kind of like a combination of chocolate mousse and chocolate cheesecake, and I'm convinced the secret ingredient remains well-hidden. It definitely needs to be fully chilled to be at its best, but it slices nicely-- I just need to get better about figuring out how high to make my pie crusts so the filling comes just to the top. I've renamed it here, since "heavenly pie" sounds a little too ecstatic for me.

Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake

2 cups crushed graham crackers
1/3 cup melted butter
2 tablespoons honey

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 ounces organic silken tofu
1 large egg
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla

Sweetened Greek yogurt or whipped cream for topping

Combine the cracker crumbs, butter, and honey in a food processor. Press into a 9-inch pie pan.

In either a mixer or a food processor, blend together the cream cheese, tofu, egg, chocolate, and vanilla. Scrape down the sides once or twice. Blend until smooth, looking out for any renegade cream cheese lumps.

Spoon the filling into the pie pan and bake at 350F degrees for about 30 minutes, no longer or surface starts to crack. CHILL COMPLETELY BEFORE SERVING. Serve with a dollop of sweetened yogurt or whipped cream (if desired).

I don't know if it would work with lowfat cream cheese, since that sometimes refuses to solidify in pies. I like the semi-sweet chocolate chips here-- they add just the right bite to it, whereas dark chocolate might be too bitter, while milk chocolate might be insipid.

Flavor tripping

2008-05-28T12:33:00.003-04:00

A berry that makes sour taste sweet... sending your taste buds on an LSD trip for an hour or so.
This is fascinating.

Cookbook Review - Deceptively Delicious

2008-05-21T13:33:00.005-04:00

Okay, so this isn't the latest in slow food or Spanish nouvelle cuisine... but when I found Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to get your Kids Eating Good Food on sale at (c)Ross Dress-for-Less, I decided to get it. I was intrigued by the concept (vegetable purees artfully concealed in typical "kids' food" like brownies or spaghetti), and I saw it as a possible way to sneak more vegetables into my own diet as well as preparing for future arrivals (in whom pickiness will not be tolerated, but we'll see). A disclaimer: aside from PB&J sandwiches at lunch, my mother never fed me typical American kids' food, but I discovered it in high school when I first tried macaroni & cheese, and I've had a weakness for it ever since.

The basic concept behind this cookbook is that you make a bunch of purees out of steamed & roasted vegetables, store them in snack-size plastic baggies in the freezer, and whenever you need to add something to your food, you defrost in a bowl of water for 30 minutes or so. Then you follow the recipes, which range from souffles, muffins, and french toast for mornings, meatloaf, mozzarella sticks, spaghetti, burgers, and quesadillas for daytime fare, and brownies and cookies (made with garbanzo beans!) for dessert. I bought butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower to make purees, and those were relatively easy to do, so now my freezer is stocked. Then I tried some of the recipes.

In the "would make again" category: French toast (with sweet potato), macaroni & cheese (again w/butternut squash), chicken nuggets (a maybe), turkey chili, creamy potato soup. In the "disgusting disaster" category, spaghetti pie and oatmeal. To start with the spaghetti pie: the cookbook shows a picture of a cheesy, crunchy baked spaghetti topped with broccoli-infused meatballs. To be sure, the broccoli was subtle enough that you couldn't really taste it, but I was suspicious when I saw the recipe did not ask you to saute the meatballs before simply placing them, raw, on top of the spaghetti pie. I was also suspicious of two cups of tomato sauce for only three ounces of spaghetti. Even though I was using 93% lean ground beef, grease was still floating over everything, the noodles drowned in the tomato sauce, and despite my attempts to bail out the poor drowning meatballs by scooping out excess liquid, the dish never achieved its desired consistency. The morning oatmeal with sweet potato, milk and brown sugar was also a little too rich for breakfast, though I love oatmeal in general.

The real standouts so far have been the macaroni and cheese and the turkey chili. Who knew that butternut squash could add such a mellow, creamy sweetness to mac-and-cheese. Turkey chili was pretty decent too, especially with my new favorite recipe for sweet cornbread (below), which is almost like a decadent cake. Depicted here (or will be depicted here, as soon as Blogger uploads my photo) are the chicken nuggets with the aforementioned mac-and-cheese, and while in the chicken nuggets, the proportion of puree is WAY too high (you'll have more than you need to dip them in, and they'll turn out slightly soggy), the mac-and-cheese is perfect.

What I learned more than anything is that I can just throw vegetable purees into a number of the recipes I make regularly anyway, and that I may not need follow a special cookbook to do so.. all you do is steam or roast the vegetables, throw them in the blender or food processor, then store them in 1/2 cup size portions.

Macaroni & Cheese 1 (adapted slightly from Deceptively Delicious)

1 1/2 cups elbow macaroni
1 T olive oil
1 T flour
1/2 cup skim milk
1/2 c. butternut squash OR cauliflower puree
1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese
1/4 cup cream cheese
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper (my favorite addition to everything)
1/8 tsp. paprika
1/8 tsp. pepper

Boil macaroni until al dente. Drain. Meanwhile, heat oil in large saucepan, add flour, and cook until you have a thick paste but mixture has not yet browned. Add milk slowly and cook until thick, 3-4 minutes. Add vegetable puree, cheeses, and seasonings, stir until cheese melts and sauce is smooth. Mix with macaroni and serve warm.

And this cornbread recipe, which I found on meals.com, is out of this world if you like sweet, dense, cake-like cornbread:

SWEET CORNBREAD

1 1/2 cups flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup yellow corn meal
1 Tblsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups milk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease an 8" square baking dish.

Combine flour, sugar, corn meal, baking powder and salt in medium bowl. Combine milk, eggs, vegetable oil and butter in small bowl; mix well. Add to flour mixture; stir just until blended. Pour batter into greased 8-inch-square baking pan. Bake for 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. If you want muffins, bake for 18-20 minutes.

chocolate pudding

2008-05-08T17:22:00.004-04:00

This is a good, low-fat recipe for chocolate pudding, originally from Cooking Light. I've experimented with different types of chocolate, and you can't go wrong, whether you prefer semi-sweet, bittersweet, or milk chocolate. I actually like to eat the pudding when it's still hot, but technically you're suposed to refrigerate it:

Chocolate Pudding

2 1/2 cups fat-free milk
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

Bring 2 cups of the milk to a boil in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat. In a large mixing bowl, mix sugar with cornstarch and salt. Separately, combine remaining 1/2 cup milk with egg yolks, mixing well. Add egg yolk mixture to sugar mixture, stirring with a whisk. Slowly add half of the hot milk to the egg yolk mixture, whisking constantly (you do this so the eggs don't curdle). Return everything to saucepan, bring to a boil, then simmer one minute, stirring, until thick. Add butter, vanilla, and chocolate, mixing until melted.

Spoon pudding into a bowl. Place bowl in a large ice-filled bowl for 15 minutes or until pudding is cool, stirring occasionally. Or eat it while it's hot, then cover remainder and chill.

split pea soup

2008-05-03T12:32:00.007-04:00

Probably most of us need to eat more vegetables. I can always manage to incorporate one or two in a day, and I can do vegetarian entrees, but I often find myself lacking imagination with side dishes or easy main courses. Usually I don't beat myself up about it, but there's a baby on the way so I've been trying to eat better. (I'm also feeling the urgency to catalog all the recipes I make on a regular basis so I will have easy dinner ideas to turn to once my life turns upside down). On a lazy Saturday when I might otherwise succumb to the urge to just make cheese quesadillas for lunch, I've been making the split pea soup recipe from 101 cookbooks. These are the quantities I use for two people, especially since it's so easy you can make it again sometime, and you may not feel like eating leftovers later...

Split Pea Soup

1 onion, chopped
dash olive oil
1 cup green split peas, rinsed
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vegetable boullion (I use Better Than Boullion)
2 1/2 cups water
dash cumin or smoked paprika
lemon juice (optional)

Saute onion in olive oil until translucent. Add split peas, boullion, salt, and 2 1/2 cups of water, and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, covered, at least 20 minutes, until peas are tender. Mash with potato masher, add a dash of your favorite spice and a squeeze of lemon juice at the end. Serves 2.

Best Ever Muffins

2008-04-14T22:01:00.006-04:00

I've adapted a muffin recipe to make it healthier, with the added result that putting wheat bran in gives these muffins a sweet, crunchy crust. Ideally this is with fresh cranberries, but I can't find them now that it's spring, so you can use dried cranberries, raisins, or blueberries instead. These are very quick to make.

Best Ever Muffins

1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 cups wheat bran (not wheat flour, but wheat bran)
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped fresh cranberries (or 1 c. dried)
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup melted Smart Balance organic spread
1 teaspoon grated orange peel (or lemon)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 400°. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add cranberries. In a separate bowl, combine milk, butter, orange peel, vanilla, and egg; add to flour mixture, stirring just enough to mix. Spoon batter into 12 greased muffin cups. Bake at 400° for 18 minutes. Remove muffins from pan; place on a wire rack.

Sour Orange Marmalade

2008-03-23T20:34:00.005-04:00

We have a normal orange tree and a tree that gives sour oranges... and after devouring every single one of the oranges from the sweet tree, we are always at a loss as to what to do with the fruit from other one. My mother helped me to make orange marmalade-- we improvised using her canning knowledge (she makes pear jelly every year), and quantities from a pectin package. Looking up recipes on the Internet (with fancier titles like "Valencia Orange Marmalade), I was deterred by how elaborate they were, but she had some good short cuts, so we didn't need muslin or a canning set-up to boil the jars later. With some homemade Moroccan bread Nour baked up at the end of the day, our marmalade ended up delicious, one of those glad-to-live-in-Florida experiences. I probably wouldn't make these without organic oranges just out of nervousness for all the chemicals, but since our trees have nothing on them, it's safe. For future reference, here's how we did it:

Sour Orange Marmalade

7 sour oranges
1 sweet navel orange
10 cups sugar (slightly less than a 5 lb. bag)
2 packages of sure-jell pectin (one box had 2 packages in it)
1 package canning wax (available at most grocery stores)
Assortment of jelly jars (also available at grocery stores, or Target)
Large pot, Dutch oven size

Using a vegetable peeler, remove just the orange part of the peel from the oranges. Chop up into small pieces, place peels in Dutch oven. Add 1 1/2 cups water and 1/8 tsp. baking soda, bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, peel off the white part and throw it out. Squeeze the juice into a large bowl, then chop up the orange pieces, removing seeds, and throw the orange pieces into the bowl too. After peels have simmered 20 minutes, add the orange pieces and juice from the bowl, simmer 10 minutes.

You can stop here and do the rest another day if you want, putting it all in the fridge. The final steps: canning. It's not as difficult as it sounds. Wash your jars in hot, soapy water, rinse and drain. Take the lids and put them in a pot with boiling water for a few minutes, drain that.

Now find out how many cups of the juice/peel mixture you have. For six cups of the juice/peel mix, you need 10 cups sugar. We had 7 cups of juice/peel, so we measured out 11 cups sugar. Stir all the sugar into the juice/peel mixture, then bring to a full rolling boil. Stir in both packages of pectin. Return to a full, rolling boil and boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

Ladle jelly into jars, leaving about 1/2 inch at the top. Wipe the inside of the jar rim with a clean, wet paper towel to make sure no juice is left on the inner rim. In a saucepan, melt the block of wax. You'll do two stages of pouring wax on top of the jelly-- this preserves it so you don't get sick. (If there's one jar you're going to eat right away, you don't need to do the wax with this one). After jars are filled with jelly, pour wax on top, leaving about 1/4 inch. Let it set-- could take 30 minutes to an hour. When it's obviously set (it appears white), melt some more wax or re-melt what you might have in the saucepan, and pour this on top of the other wax layer. Let this set, too-- another 30 minutes or so. When it's also dry, squeeze the lids on tightly. And that's all there is to it.

Baked Chicken Enchiladas with Salsa Verde

2008-02-18T11:46:00.005-05:00

I first had enchiladas with salsa verde in Madrid in 1996. It was my first encounter with tomatillos, and since then I often order them at Mexican restaurants. I've tried my hand at elaborate recipes that involve making your own tomatillo salsa, but lately, as time seems in shorter and shorter supply, I've been looking for shortcuts. This is a good one.

Chicken Enchiladas with Salsa Verde

1 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup cilantro
2 minced garlic cloves
1 7-ounce can salsa verde (can be found at any Mexican grocery store, or even in supermarkets)
1 large chicken breast, cooked and shredded (poach 15 minutes with an onion, peppercorns, and parsley)
1/3 cup cream cheese
1 cup chicken broth
Package of flour tortillas, small or large
1/4 cup monterey jack cheese, with jalapenos, or queso fresco
1/2 tsp. chili powder

Preheat oven to 425.

Combine onion, cilantro, garlic and salsa verde in food processor, process until liquid. Mix shredded chicken and cream cheese, stir in 1/2 cup of the green salsa mixture, reserving the remainder.

Place about 1/4 cup chicken mixture on a tortilla, roll up and place in greased 11x7 baking dish. Repeat with remaining tortillas, pour salsa mixture over all, sprinkle with cheese and chili powder. Bake 18 minutes or until cheese is nice and bubbly.

Ina Garten's macaroni & cheese with gruyere and tomatoes

2008-01-17T12:12:00.000-05:00

This one, from the Barefoot Contessa on the Food Channel, is worth the splurge on gruyere, which makes it so much more elegant and rich than normal everyday macaroni and cheese. And the tomatoes add something special too. I divided the recipe in half, which would have easily served four...

1/2 pound macaroni
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons butter, divided
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups Gruyere, grated
1 cup extra-sharp Cheddar
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
dash ground nutmeg
2 small fresh tomatoes
3/4 cup fresh white bread crumbs

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Cook macaroni acc. to package directions.

Meanwhile, heat the milk in a small saucepan just until hot. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a large saucepan and add the flour. Cook over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring with a whisk. While whisking, add the hot milk and cook for a minute or two more, until thickened and smooth. Remove from heat, add the Gruyere, Cheddar, 1/2 Tblsp. salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add the cooked macaroni and stir well. Pour into a square baking dish.

Slice the tomatoes and arrange on top. Melt the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter, combine with the fresh bread crumbs, and sprinkle on the top. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbly and the macaroni is browned on the top.

Vietnamese summer rolls...

2007-07-25T17:17:00.000-04:00

I've seen two recipes for Vietnamese summer rolls recently and thought about tackling them-- they seemed intimidating somehow, but as soon as Mark Bittman (The Minimalist column in the NY Times) described their preparation as basically like rolling up a burrito, I thought I could handle it. We have an Asian grocery store close to our house, and they had all the ingredients I'd never bought before-- including rice paper rolls (burrito-sized, comes in a round plastic box), rice vermicelli, and fish sauce... All much cheaper than in a regular grocery store.

I've made them several times now, along with a peanut sate dipping sauce I like (Bittman has another dipping sauce, included here, which is also good-- but I prefer peanut-y flavors). These are not difficult to make at all-- the recipe makes enough for a small dinner party (he says 4 servings), but you could also reduce it and just basically throw some things in a roll and it will be a delicious snack.

Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Two Dipping Sauces

16 6 inch rounds rice paper
8 leaves lettuce, washed, dried & torn
2 cups cooked rice vermicelli, rinsed and drained
1 cup shredded peeled carrots
1/2 cup fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup basil leaves
1/2 cup cilantro leaves
32 poached shrimp, split lengthwise (or slices pork)

Dip a rice paper round halfway into a bowl of very hot water for 2 seconds. Turn it and dip remaining section, then lay on DAMP TOWEL (important, or else it sticks). Put a little lettuce, rice, carrots, mint, basil, cilantro, and shrimp in the bottom third of the round. Roll up as if rolling a burrito, fold ends over before reaching the top, then roll up all the way.

Peanut Sauce:

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/8 cup soy sauce
1 tsp. red chili paste (also available at Asian groceries)
1 Tblsp. brown sugar
juice from one lime
1/4 cup hot water

Mix in food processor or blender, scraping down sides.

Bittman's dipping suace:

1/2 cup fish sauce (nam pla)
1 Tblsp. sugar
1 Tblsp. minced ginger
1 tsp. red chili paste
salt & pepper

Mix in a bowl with a fork...

Dip and enjoy!

Chipotle-lime Black bean hummus

2007-07-05T14:12:00.000-04:00

I invented this recipe for Fourth of July and am feeling proud of myself...

Chipotle-lime Black Bean Hummus

2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained
2 generous tablespoons of tahini paste
Juice of one lime
1 tsp. cumin
3-4 canned chipotle peppers (use less if you like them less spicy)
salt & pepper to taste

In a food processor or blender, mix together all ingredients, and adjust seasonings. Take to a party and serve with tortilla chips. Divide recipe in half if it's just for two or three people.

My favorite place to get Middle Eastern ingredients here in Orlando is Abu Maher International Foods, on Hanging Moss Road off Forsyth, between Forsyth and 436. I've recommended them to a number of people. You can always buy tahini paste at Whole Foods or Publix, but it's somewhat more expensive, and Abu Maher also has other fun stuff like pita bread, dried apricots, full-fat yogurt, and spices...

Fettucine Alfredo (lowfat)

2007-06-03T19:00:00.001-04:00

Here's one I make all the time-- a good standby when you can't think of anything else.

Fettucine Alfredo

1 tablespoon butter
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups 1% low-fat milk
1 1/4 cups grated fresh Parmesan cheese, divided
2 tablespoons lowfat cream cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups hot cooked fettuccine (8 ounces uncooked pasta)
2 teaspoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Cracked black pepper

Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic; cook 1 minute, stirring frequently. Stir in flour. Gradually add milk, stirring with a whisk. Cook 6 minutes or until mixture thickens, stirring constantly. Add 1 cup Parmesan, cream cheese, and salt, stirring with a whisk until cheeses melt. Toss sauce with hot pasta. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and chopped parsley. Salt and pepper to taste

Serves 4, supposedly, but I'd double it to REALLY serve four.

Bulgur Wheat Salad

2007-05-27T09:30:00.000-04:00

I had this at a lunch party a few weeks ago, and the recipe comes from the classic Silver Palate Cookbook. Good to take to summer barbecues or to have on hand for a weekday lunch. Make half the amount for 4 people.

4 cups water
2 cups bulgur wheat
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup dried currants
4 Tblsp. chopped parsley
1 Tblsp. olive oil
grated zest of one orange
salt and pepper, to taste

Cook bulgur in water, bringing to a boil, then simmer, covered, for 35 to 40 minutes, until water is absorbed and wheat is tender. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate. When cool, add pecans, currants, parsley, olive oil orange zest, salt and pepper. Add a dash of orange juice for extra flavor. Mix well and serve at room temperature or chilled. Serves 8.

Fettucine with Butternut Squash and Gorgonzola Sauce

2006-12-27T19:39:00.000-05:00

Another one I've made a few times and want to write down for posterity... This makes a really big recipe, could feed 8 if you have a substantial salad and other side dish. Divide it in half for two very hungry people, or four peckish ones...

Fettucine with Butternut Squash and Gorgonzola Sauce

1 tblsp. butter
3 cups sliced onions
3 cups 1" pieces of butternut squash
1 1/4 tsp. salt, divided
1/2 tsp. black pepper
2 minced garlic cloves
3 cups lowfat milk, divided
3 Tblsp. flour
1 1/2 cups crumbled Gorgonzola cheese, divided
1 lb. uncooked fettucine
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup toasted and chopped walnuts
1 tsp. grated lemon rind.

Cook pasta in boiling water. Meanwhile, melt butter in large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, squash, 1/4 tsp. salt, and pepper, saute until tender-- taste until squash is ready, 6-10 minutes. Add minced garlic, cook one minute. Turn off heat.

Bring 2 cups milk to boil. Combine remaining 1 cup milk and flour, stirring well until there are no lumps. Add to boiling milk, reduce heat to medium, stirring constantly for 5 minutes or until a little thicker. Add 1 cup cheese, mix until smooth.

Mix together squash, pasta, and cheese sauce. Sprinkle with remaining 1 tsp. salt, mix well. Place on plates, decorate with parsley, walnuts, lemon rind, and remaining 1/2 cup cheese. Serve immediately.

The mother of all breads...

2006-11-26T16:05:00.000-05:00

My favorite food writer, Mark Bittman, has done it again. His recipe for No-Knead bread is so amazing and out of this world that I made it three times in four days. It tastes like bread you'd buy from an expensive bakery-- a perfectly crisped crust, a center with large, satisfying air pockets. I haven't tried it yet with wheat flour, or with little pieces of black olives (another idea I had), but I bet it would be terrific. I've made it both with the eighteen hour version and with only letting it rise for six hours (but using a whole teaspoon of yeast)-- both were excellent...

No-Knead Bread

Here is the recipe for no-knead bread. (Can somebody forward this to Andrew? I don't have his email.) Tastes best if you make the dough the night before and cook it the next afternoon or evening, but it will do well with slightly more yeast (a teaspoon) and about six hours of rising time... Don't be alarmed by how sticky it is. Crucial steps include placing the Dutch oven in the oven to heat, also covering bread for first 30 minutes of cooking time (steam=good crust). No need to grease the Dutch oven; the bread won't stick to it.

No-Knead Bread

3 cups flour
1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1 1/4 tsp. salt

Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

In a large bowl, combine flour, yeast, and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, stir until blended. Will be sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

Dough is ready when surface is dotted with bubbles. Flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle flour over and fold it over on itself once or twice. (It will be very sticky). Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest 15 minutes.

Coat a cotton towel (not a terry cloth one) with cornmeal or wheat bran. Scoop dough into ball and place on towel, sprinkle with more cornmeal or wheat bran. Let rise another 2 hours.

At least half hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 and place a Dutch oven or other heavy covered pot (cast iron, enaml, Pyrex, or ceramic) in oven as it heats. After 30 minutes, slide your hand under towel and pick up dough, turning over into pot. Shake pan once or twice to evenly distribute dough. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes. Remove lid, bake another 15-30 minutes (15 works for me) until browned. Cool on rack.

grilled chicken burritos

2006-08-27T20:26:00.000-04:00

I had the chance to visit both China and Mexico this summer, China along with a group of professors from my university and Mexico to give a paper at a conference. Both trips were great. Everyone says that real Chinese food in China tastes nothing like what we have here in the States, but if that's the case, the Chinese are now making remarkable concessions to American tastes. Everything I had vaguely resembled something I'd had before in the States, only better. Much better. Fresher ingredients, nothing soggy or congealed, a lot of vegetables. There were some familiar dishes-- staples like kung pao chicken, only better than any kung pao chicken I'd ever had in my life...

It was also my first trip to Mexico, and the two best meals I had were at a restaurant in San Miguel de Allende called El Correo (some kind of spicy pork dish) and in a village in the countryside outside San Miguel, a lunch that was entirely vegetarian, with fresh salsas, refried beans, something that resembled spinach, and some other tasty things.

Now it's back to school, and to celebrate the end of the first week, I decided to experiment with this week's installment from the Splendid Table, the NPR feature on food that I get delivered to my email inbox. After making these grilled chicken burritos, I'm thinking of making a big donation to the program. What made this so awesome was not taking any shortcuts-- marinating the chicken in a mixture of cumin, lime juice, garlic, and cilantro for a few hours, actually GRILLING it (Nour's job), carefully preparing the guacamole (which turned out much better than the usual stuff I slap together with a smashed avocado and some lime juice and salt) and the green tomatillo salsa. I also made refried beans-- I don't think the canned ones taste as good as the recipe claimed. Then you cook your tortillas on the grill, spread with refried beans, the sliced chicken, cheese, the guacamole and salsa, and you have something really and truly amazing... I don't know about "weeknight kitchen" though, unless you happen to have a few hours to spare for marinating, a pound of tomatillos, some Mexican queso blanco, and some charcoal on hand.

Recipe adapted very slightly from the Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper

The Chicken:

1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 Tblsp minced garlic
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Mix ingredients together. Marinate chicken in plastic bag for at least three hours. When it's time to grill, grill 5 minutes per side, let stand 5 minutes, then slice diagonally.

Accompaniments I used:

Flour tortillas
2 cups refried beans, heated
2 cups queso blanco or Monterey Jack
2 cups Guacamole (recipe follows)
2 cups Tomatillo Salsa (recipe follows)

Guacamole (adapted for what I had on hand)
Makes 2 cups

3 ripe avocados, peeled and diced roughly
1/3 cup chopped plum tomatoes
1 Tblsp. minced jalapeno pepper,
1 Tblsp. chopped cilantro
3 Tblsp. lime juice
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
3 dashes Tabasco

Combine all the ingredients and mix well. Smash the avocados to keep a bit chunky. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Tomatillo Salsa:

1 lb. tomatillos, coarsely chopped
1 roasted jalapeno, peeled and seeded
1 cup chopped tomato
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 Tblsp. lime juice
1 Tblsp. minced garlic
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste

Combine all ingredients, mix well, chill until ready to use.

Once chicken is grilled, let stand 5 minutes, then slice diagonally. Grill tortillas 30 seconds per side, spread with refried beans, cheese, chicken, salsa and guacamole. Num, num.

Agave field, Jalisco, Mexico

2006-08-27T20:25:00.000-04:00

Erhai lake, Dali, China

2006-08-27T20:19:00.000-04:00

blueberry coffee cake

2006-07-02T10:09:00.000-04:00

This is a recipe I keep making since seeing it on Paula Dean's show last year on the food network. It's an unusual blueberry coffee cake that is also very decadent, with buttery, sugary layers between crunchy oatmeal and buttermilk biscuits, good right now when blueberries are so cheap. I've made a few minor adaptations, such as cooking time and the amount of sugar used.

1 12 ounce can buttermilk biscuits (I can never find this, so I get the 16 ounce can & leave two out)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter (this could probably be trimmed slightly)
1 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
1/4 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 375, grease a 9 inch square baking dish. Mix together brown sugar and cinnamon, melt butter. Take 12 oz. of biscuit dough and cut each biscuit into four pieces. Dip each biscuit piece into butter, then sugar/cinnamon mixture, then place in pan. On top of these, sprinkle half the oatmeal. Combine blueberries with sugar and spread over oatmeal and biscuits. Top with remaining oats, then drizzle remaining melted butter over all. Bake for 45 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm.

broiled salmon with marmalade-dijon glaze

2006-03-30T20:03:00.000-05:00

This salmon is something I made last night from the latest issue of Cooking Light. I was afraid it might be cloying, but it's not at all-- the mustard tempers the sweetness of the marmalade. It's good and easy for those nights of coming home from work exhausted, chopping up a couple potatoes and tossing them with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and rosemary, and roasting for an hour at 375, then cranking up the oven to BROIL and making this salmon... The second recipe, for balsamic-roasted asparagus, is one I keep making again and again, and I want to have it in one place so I don't have to keep searching for it.

Broiled Salmon with Marmalade-Dijon Glaze
1/2 cup orange marmalade
1 Tblsp. Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/8 tsp. ground ginger
4 6 ounce salmon fillets

Preheat broiler. Combine first 6 ingredients in a small bowl. Place fish in jelly roll pan coated with cooking spray. Brush half of marmalade mixture over fish, broil 6 minutes. Brush fish with remaining marmalade mixture, broil 2 minutes or until fish flakes easily.

Balsamic Roasted Asparagus
1 lb. asparagus
1 Tblsp. olive oil
1 Tblsp. balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 425. Snap off ends of asparagus, place in roasting pan. Drizzle with oil & vinegar, sprinkle with salt, garlic & pepper, toss to coat. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, 4 servings.

Chicken curry with fried onions

2006-02-17T15:40:00.000-05:00

I'm slowly making my way back into my kitchen... which starts not with experiments but with old favorites, things I make again and again. I have several different curry recipes I keep returning to, but the only problem is that while I always have chicken and yogurt on hand, I often don't have almonds, and many of the curry recipes I've used call for that. Here's one that doesn't, adapted from a Madhur Jaffrey recipe, and which I made last night, along with potatoes sauteed in turmeric, cumin and mustard seeds, basmati rice, and a green salad. Fairly easy-- maybe 45 minutes of active time?

Chicken curry with fried onions
2 lbs. boneless chicken breasts, chopped into bite-sized pieces
4 onions, peeled
1.5 inch chunk fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled
4 Tblsp. vegetable oil
1 Tblsp. ground coriander
1 Tblsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/4-1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
4 Tblsp. plain yogurt
2 1/2 cups water
2 medium tomatoes, finely chopped
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. garam masala

Chop 2 of the onions coarsely and throw into food processor. Ad ginger and garlic, puree until mixture forms a paste.

Slice the other two onions in half and then into thin slices. In cooking oil in a nonstick skillet, fry and stir until reddish-brown. Remove from pan. Add onion paste to skillet, stir and fry until brown, 3-4 minutes. Add spices, stir once. Begin adding yogurt, 1 Tblsp at a time, until all is incorporated. Add chicken, stir for one minute until pink. Pour in water, tomatoes, and salt. Bring to a simmer, cook covered for 20 minutes. Uncover. Add garam masala (can be purchased in small quantities at stores like Whole Foods) and fried onions. Cook, uncovered, until sauce thickens, may take 20 minutes. Serve with white rice.

sorry for not posting

2006-02-07T10:17:00.000-05:00

I'm in the whirlwind of an extremely busy second semester, plus visits from family in Morocco, who have, amazingly, been doing all the cooking. I thus have no discoveries to report but hope to return to cooking (and posting) soon...

new ways with mac & cheese, part II

2006-01-15T11:06:00.000-05:00

I had a dinner party last night. It was one of those dinner parties where everything comes together, where every recipe turns out wonderfully and everyone's having a good time, talking for hours. Good food can definitely facilitate that. The menu: mustard-and-herb chicken from this month's Food & Wine, balsamic-roasted green beans, the crusty macaroni and cheese recipe from the NY Times, a salad with walnuts & pear dressing, and for dessert, molten chocolate cakes (I've made these before-- sometimes they unmold beautifully, sometimes they don't, but they always taste delicious).

The two recipes that I will absolutely 100% make again were the macaroni & cheese and the mustard-and-herb chicken. Amazing. The mac & cheese recipe, the second from the NY Times article on the perfect macaroni and cheese, blew the creamy recipe out of the water. (Actually, after making this one, I am pretty sure I will not return to the other recipe). This recipe was not grainy but flavorful, crunchy, creamy inside, a hint of spice... in short, unbelievable. There were two kids at our dinner party, a 6 and 9 year old, and they loved it, too, which impressed me because I've seen so many American kids who will only eat the stuff from the box.

The original article commented that American cheese has superior meltability, so the recipe is a mix of sharp cheddar and American. I couldn't find the American in the Publix supermarket, so I was shocked when I asked and discovered it was in the nonperishable food aisle-- not refrigerated at all. Okay, no big deal. It does melt perfectly. Basically this recipe is just cooked macaroni mixed with a ton of cheese, placed in a pan, milk poured on top, and cheese sprinkled over, then baked for a very long time until it develops a crust both on top and on the bottom.

The mustard-herb chicken thighs are prepared in a skillet that can go into the oven (my new cast iron skillet is wonderful-- very affordable at Ross Dress-for-Less). You saute them first, flip them over, smear them with mustard and place a breadcrumb coating on top, then bake in the oven for 15 minutes. The recipe directions are firm that you should use fresh breadcrumbs, not the stuff in a can, and in this case you really must do this. Yum, yum, yum. Here are the two recipes:

Crusty Macaroni & Cheese
3 Tblsp. butter
12 ounces extra sharp cheddar, coarsely grated
12 ounces American cheese, coarsely grated
1 lb. elbow macaroni, cooked and drained
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
salt to taste
2/3 cup lowfat milk (using lowfat did not make a difference here)

Heat oven to 375. Coat 9 x 13 pan with 1 Tblsp. butter. Mix together the grated cheeses and set aside two cups. When pasta is cooked, toss in a large bowl with the rest of the cheese, cayenne, and salt. Place in baking dish and pour milk over top. Sprinkle reserved 2 cups of cheese on top, dot with remaining butter, and bake, uncovered, 45 minutes. Raise heat to 400 and bake another few minutes until crusty. (Recipe said 15-20 minutes of extra baking, but mine was already well-browned after 5.). Serves 8.

Mustard-and-Herb Chicken (Serves 2-- double for more people)
2 1-inch slices of country bread, torn
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp. finely chopped fresh rosemary
1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan or pecorino romano
1/4 cup olive oil
4 boneless chicken thighs
2 Tblsp. Dijon mustard
2 Tblsp. butter
1 small onion, thinly sliced
Pinch sugar
1 Tblsp. fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 400. Pulse bread in food processor until finely shredded. Add garlic, rosemary, parmesan, season with salt & pepper to taste and combine. Add 2 Tlbsp. of olive oil and pulse just to moisten crumbs.

In an ovenproof skillet, heat 2 Tblsp. olive oil over medium-high heat. Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper, saute on one side until golden, about 6 minutes. Turn over, smear Dijon mustard over skin, and spoon bread crumbs on top, patting with back of spoon. Place skillet in oven and roast for 15 minutes or until crumbs are golden and crunchy. (I left mine in the oven, which I switched off, while I finished the rest of the dinner, and with thighs I don't think they dry out, although breasts would).

Sauce: I made this but the chicken really would have been fine on its own, without it. Saute onions in butter with sugar for 6-7 minutes until soft. Add lemon juice, cook until evaporated, about 2 minutes. Spoon onions onto plate, top with chicken.

new ways with macaroni & cheese

2006-01-07T08:51:00.000-05:00

One of the "most emailed stories" in the NY Times this week was an article from this past Wednesday's food section, about a quest for the perfect macaroni cheese, one made neither from a box nor with a flour-water white sauce. Like the writer of the article, macaroni and cheese was not around much in my childhood household, either, so when I went away to school and discovered the Kraft stuff, I was hooked. I don't like the Kraft box version much anymore, especially since I learned about how many weird chemicals and preservatives are in it, but it's good to know there are organic box varieties out there that are even better and not much more than $1.50 each (The article also does an extensive review of those, and I can vouch for Annie's being tasty).

But I was most intrigued by the author's search for the perfect recipe, and she included two, one that professed to be creamy, the other crusty. I could hardly see how the creamy recipe would not also be crusty, since it involved uncovered baking time, which is guaranteed to put a crunchy layer of cheese over the top. What I was really curious about was the fact that she baked the uncooked macaroni right there in the pasta, and that it also featured cottage cheese placed in a blender to remove its consistency.

I tried this one the other night, using all the high-fat ingredients required just so I could get the whole effect. Next time I'll try it with lowfat ingredients and see if it works. A colleague of mine made it with low-fat ingredients and commented that the final texture was "grainy." This was a little bit true of this recipe, but it didn't strike me as grainy in a bad way. The entire pound of sharp cheddar was delicious and decadent, it did have a crunchy crust, and the noodles perfectly absorbed all the creamy goodness of the cheeses. I would definitely try to make this again, but my next move will be to tackle the second NY Times recipe, for "crusty macaroni and cheese."

Creamy Macaroni and Cheese

2 T. butter
1 cup cottage cheese (not lowfat)
2 cups milk (not skim)
1 tsp. dried mustard
Pinch cayenne
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1 pound sharp or extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 pound elbow pasta, uncooked

Heat oven to 375. Using one tablespoon of the butter, grease a 9" round or square baking pan, or gratin dish. In a blender, puree cottage cheese, milk & spices. Set aside 1/4 cup grated cheddar. In a large bowl, mix pureed milk mixture with the rest of the cheddar cheese & uncooked pasta. Pour into pan, cover tightly with foil, and bake 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, uncover pan, stir gently, and scatter remaining cheese over all, dotting with another tablespoon of butter. Bake, this time uncovered, for another 30 minutes. Let cool for 15 minutes before serving.

pears poached with mascarpone

2006-01-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

After the gluttony of the holidays, here's a simple dessert recipe that you can make that won't feel excessive... The mascarpone cheese is creamy without being overbearing, almost like a whipped cream or creme fraiche.

Pears poached with mascarpone cheese
2 Bosc pears, peeled, halved, & cored
2 Tblsp. lemon juice
1 cup water
1/2 cup white wine
6 Tblsp. honey
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
2 tsp. sugar

Toss pear halves with lemon juice & set aside. In a saucepan, combine water, wine, & honey, scraping in seeds of vanilla bean. (If you don't have a vanilla bean lying around, add 1 tsp. vanilla.) Heat until honey dissolves, add pears & simmer on medium low until pears are tender, turning halfway through cooking, 15-20 minutes.

Remove pears to a bowl and boil liquid until reduced to 3/4 cup. Cool syrup & pour over pears, cover & refrigerate. The recipe said to refrigerate at least 8 hours but I only did it for three-- it was really good, but perhaps would be even better if I'd waited longer... Remove vanilla bean.

Beat mascrapone cheese & sugar until smooth, add 1/4 cup of the chilled poaching syrup and whisk until soft peaks form. Place pears on plates, pouring syrup over, and add scoop of mascarpone cream into middle of pear half. Serve & enjoy...

spinach & asiago strata

2005-12-22T14:42:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, we went to see the mildly amusing new comedy The Family Stone. In one scene, Sarah Jessica Parker's character was fussily making a strata (one that later ends up on the floor and all over Ms. Parker), and I remembered that strata was something I enjoy that I haven't had for a couple years. Was it one of those trendy dishes that people used to make, or has it always been in style and I just forgot about it? I decided to make one-- my parents had arrived, I'm off from work, and it seemed like a festive thing for the holidays. Strata is a lot like quiche-- you can improvise a great deal around a basic recipe. You could add mushrooms or zucchini to your saute, or use different cheeses. I like it that this version is meatless, and also that it involves spinach, so at least you're doing something to offset all the cheese. It sits in the refrigerator all night, absorbing the eggs and milk, and when you bake it, it puffs up delightfully. I adapted this from a Gourmet recipe to make it, to my mind, slightly healthier.

Spinach & Asiago Cheese Strata
1 10 ounce package frozen chopped spinach
1 1/2 cups finely chopped onion
1 Tblsp. butter
1 Tblsp. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
7-8 cups French bread, chopped into 1 inch cubes
1 1/2 cups coarsely grated asiago cheese (or use whatever cheese you want)
3/4 cup finely grated pecorino romano (or parmesan)
2 1/4 cups lowfat milk
4 eggs
1 cup Egg Beaters egg substitute
2 Tblsp. Dijon mustard

Cook spinach in microwave for five minutes, squeeze out as much water as possible. Finely chop spinach. Meanwhile, saute onions in butter & olive oil mixture until soft. Add 1/2 tsp. of the salt salt, 1/4 of the pepper, and all the nutmeg. Add spinach, mix well, and remove from heat.

Spray a 3 quart gratin dish or casserole with cooking spray; layer 1/3 of the bread cubes on the bottom. (They may not cover the entire area.) Top with 1/3 of spinach mixture. Sprinkle with 1/3 of each cheese. (Strata! The word calls to mind rock layers, and geologic time.) Repeat layers two more times, ending with cheese.

In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, egg substitute, milk, mustard, and remaining 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp. pepper. Pour over strata evenly, cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, remove strata from your refrigerator thirty minutes before you plan to start cooking it. Preheat oven to 350. After 30 minutes, place strata in middle of oven and bake for 45-55 minutes. Mine looked ready at 45 but was still wet in the center, so 55 was more like it. Serves about 8 people, or 6 very hungry ones...

spinach-artichoke dip

2005-12-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

Yay! Exams are finished, grading is done. Grading is the worst part of being a professor. Otherwise, I love teaching, even though it can be exhausting. But now I have some extra time in front of me, and I can work on other projects-- namely research, which is necessary for getting tenure. But hopefully cooking and the reading of lots of good fiction, too.

Spinach-Artichoke Dip is a good one to take to holiday parties, when there are often so many desserts that people need something savory. I've made it twice in the past week. This version has a bit of heat to it, and I like it that it's got both spinach AND artichokes, to make you feel as if you're doing something healthy. I lightened it too, by using fat-free sour cream and light mayonnaise. (There is also a more decadent adaptation, below). I'm sure it's good for you. ;)

Spinach-Artichoke Dip
1 10-ounce package chopped spinach
2 14 ounce cans quartered artichoke hearts, drained
1/2 cup light mayonnaise
1/2 cup fat-free sour cream
1 cup percorino romano cheese, grated
1 cup monterey jack cheese with jalapenos (if you don't like spicy, just use plain monterey jack)
Dash of nutmeg
Dash of red (cayenne) pepper
Dash of black pepper

Preheat oven to 350. Microwave spinach for 5 minutes, then drain well, squeezing out excess water (a salad spinner does a good job of this). In a food processor, chop up the artichoke hearts. In a large bowl, mix artichoke hearts and spinach with all other ingredients except monterey jack. Spread in a 9" baking dish and sprinkle monterey jack cheese on top. Bake at least 30 minutes, or slightly longer so that top is golden brown and bubbly. Serve with tortilla chips or pita chips.

*Slightly more decadent version: add another 3/4 cup monterey jack to the spinach-artichoke mixture itself, keeping the other 1 cup for spreading on top.

back from DC

2005-12-06T08:49:00.000-05:00

My trip to Washington, DC to give a paper at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association started with French ravioli smothered in gruyere (depicted here-- at DuPont Circle's Bistrot du Coin) and ended with a bad cranberry scone in the Washington National airport... In between were many delightful repasts, highlights of which included the Lebanese Taverna (in Woodley Park, where the conference was) and a trip to a new cafe in the neighborhood of Howard University, Busboys and Poets, where I had a tremendous burger with melted havarti and avocado. This was a neat cafe with high ceilings, lots of comfortable lounge chairs, and a bookstore that appeared to specialize in books about African-American history and architecture. There was a trip to the Love Cafe for cake from the Cake Love bakery and Moroccan mint tea. There was also the antipasto platter at Me & You, a Mediterranean-themed place in Georgetown.

There were also some not-so-exciting meals-- forgettable Thai, boring burritos. The Indian restaurants in the neighborhood of the conference (again, Woodley Park metro), were pretty bland affairs, but I was heartened when I returned home with two of my colleagues and, on the way home, had an excellent lunch with Nour & friends at a vegetarian Indian restaurant right here in Orlando called Woodlands. Crisp samosas with perfectly spicy potato and pea filling, creamy malai kofta, potato & cauliflower curry, spinach & paneer, and a luscious eggplant baigun bhartha. Excellent gulab jamun, doughnuts served in a hot syrup, (a contrast to the refrigerated, desiccated nightmare of the gulab jamun I'd had in DC). That had me feeling pretty good about central Florida, in addition to the fact that it was 75 degrees and sunny.

I was amused by the gingerbread house they were building in the lobby of the Marriott where the conference was held. I watched the hotel staff put up a giant plywood house and then glue what looked like cafeteria cookies and graham crackers to it little by little. You can see at the top the half-plywood, half-graham crackered house. The employees looked less-than-thrilled at having to complete this arduous task.

I'm going into exam/grading mode for a few days and there may be no food-related dispatches until I'm finished... but the semester is drawing to a close, which is a great feeling...

what to do with leftover turkey

2005-11-27T13:21:00.000-05:00

I posted the picture of this beautiful pumpkin flan I made purely for the aesthetic value-- it was not a big hit at the Thanksgiving table. From this month's issue of Gourmet magazine, the pumpkin flan had a spicy pumpkin seed topping (which would make a great appetizer on its own), but the final product tasted suspiciously like pumpkin pie filling without the crust. Oh well. I'd wanted to try one challenging new thing, alongside the requisite turkey and stuffing, gravy and mashed potatoes. But although it turned out perfectly well, it wasn't a flavor any of us were crazy about. The picture merely documents the labor-intensive work involved in making this.

Also labor intensive, but well worth the effort, and something you could also do with leftover chicken, is this recipe for turkey croquettes. Crunchy on the outside, creamy on the inside, the consistency of Spanish salty cod croquettes. I think you have to deep fry them, as there's no comparable healthy shortcut. Made with considerable help last night from Nour, who has more skills with deep frying and also did a nice job preparing the final product for its photo shoot.

Turkey Croquettes
6 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup flour
1 cup milk
1 cup chicken broth
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 teaspoons grated onion
1/8 tsp. or more of spicy red pepper
Dash of pepper, paprika, and nutmeg
Salt to taste
4 cups minced leftover turkey
1 cup or more fine bread crumbs
1 beaten egg plus 2 tablespoons water (I had to use double this amount)

In a saucepan, melt butter and mix in flour. Add milk and chicken broth, simmer until thick. Remove from heat, stir in lemon juice, parsley, onion, and spices. Adjust to taste. Place in a large bowl with 4 cups turkey. Cool in refrigerator for one hour.

With wet hands, form croquettes into little balls. Roll in breadcrumbs. Roll into a cone shape, dip in egg, and dip again in breadcrumbs. You may need extra egg or breadcrumbs as necessary. Place on a plate. When ready for frying, heat up enough oil to cover the croquettes. When it's ready, deep fry without crowding, about three minutes each. Drain in a colander and keep warm in the oven.

two novels about friendship

2005-11-27T12:37:00.000-05:00

Just finished Anita Brookner's novel The Rules of Engagement. Didn't love it, although it was well-written and flowed nicely. The entire story is told from the first person perspective of a woman who has lived a timid and rather bleak existence. Most of the story focuses on her lifelong friendship with another woman whose experiences of life are less measured and more adventuresome, but nonetheless the unreliable narrator pities her. Classic case of the camel that can't see its own hump, but it is never clear the camel sees anything at all, which I found both annoying and depressing.

A much better book that I also read over this vacation week, and really enjoyed, was Mary Gaitskill's Veronica. Also told from the perspective of a first person narrator, and also the story about a friendship, Veronica is a novel about beauty and ugliness, and the most unlikely places to find them. This narrator, Alison, in contrast to the Brookner narrator, embraces life to the point of self-destruction, and when the book begins she is already at rock bottom, a former model fallen victim to hepatitis who now cleans houses for a living. How she got there, and the story of a friendship experienced years before that still haunts her (with an AIDS sufferer), is the novel's story. Equal measures of beauty and ugliness, redemption and despair, this was a book that was easy to get lost in, with some particularly stunning moments of writing to alight on for a second before flying on.

swordfish, orzo & chocolate souffles

2005-11-21T17:49:00.001-05:00

I am still "learning" to like fish, something I disliked immensely as a child (with the exception, I'm embarrassed to say, of Mrs. Paul's fish sticks). In college I started liking sushi of all kinds, but I still had issues with cooked fish. Now in addition to sushi, I love shrimp, tuna, salmon, particularly when well prepared. There's a baked Moroccan fish tagine with chermoula marinade, potatoes and peppers that is out-of-this world. But my efforts to prepare fish recipes that rely on the unadulterated flavor of the fish itself never seem to amount to much. I always feel like I'm dutifully eating the final product-- last night, a lackluster swordfish with orzo. I've had wonderful swordfish before, but I can't remember where. I'm wondering if it's the condition I buy the fish in. At the grocery store the swordfish was just sitting there in the case looking kind of pathetic, along with the other bottom dwellers, the obligatory tilapia, and the frozen shrimp. It's all been pre-frozen, even though we live an hour from the ocean. I've been told of a real fish market in town, which I hope to check out, but I haven't been happy with what's on offer at the grocery stores.

At any rate, I baked this with a lemon and olive oil dressing. Eh. The accompaniment was really nice-- I cooked some orzo, sauteed garlic and a few cups of spinach, mixing it with the orzo, some halved cherry tomatoes, feta cheese, and olives. Spicy red pepper to taste. Feeling deprived, I decided to make a chocolate souffle with pistachios, a lightened version that is good if you're trying to be good and not eat too much (Nice with new "lowfat" Haagen Dazs, which is actually delicious). This was on my old website when The Barbecue was at a different address. Now, back by popular demand...

Chocolate Souffles with Pistachios
6 Tablespoons sugar
1 ounce semisweet chocolate
4 1/2 teaspoons butter
2 Tblsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 Tblsp. flour
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup lowfat milk
3 large egg whites
4 teaspoons chopped pistachios

Spray 4 ramekins with cooking spray and scatter a teaspoon of sugar over it lightly. Melt butter and semisweet chocolate over low heat, adding three tablespoons sugar until dissolved. Whisk in cocoa, flour and salt, then add milk little by little until thick, about three minutes, stirring all the time. Remove from heat and cool. I do this by putting the mixture in a metal pan and sticking it in the freezer briefly.

Beat eggwhites over high speed in a mixer until foamy. Add three remaining tablespoons of sugar one by one and beat until eggs form stiff peaks. Fold egg white mixture into chocolate mixture in four equal additions, being careful to blend it without losing the air. Then divide souffles between ramekins, sprinkling pistachios on top. In a 375 degree preheated oven, cook for 20 minutes and remove. Serve with ice cream.

Hemingway's

2005-11-16T15:10:00.000-05:00

My aunt was in town for a conference, down in the "resort area," the area around Disney World/Universal Studios that often seems a world away from where I live a half-hour north. I hadn't seen my aunt in a few years, so it was nice to catch up and hear about how her family was doing. She was staying at the Hyatt Grand Cypress, a huge hotel with a very elaborate network of interconnected swimming pools set into artificial "caves," with cascading waterfalls and jacuzzis tucked away in little nooks. On the other side of the hotel was a lake with a little beach, and if you landed there in a helicopter you would never guess that you were less than a mile away from a sea of neon signs, fast food, and Florida souvenir emporiums. I was very impressed with the hotel, even more impressed at how the tourist industry creates these pockets of unreality.

What was really a treat was that my aunt took us out to dinner in the hotel at one of Orlando's top restaurants, Hemingway's. I would never have been able to go there on my own, and I enjoyed every minute of our dinner. I had a seared tuna entree that was out-of-this-world, accompanied with savory mashed potatoes baked with a crust on top. Seared tuna! Barely done on the outside, rare yet warm on the inside, dipped in a soy-wasabi sauce... mmmm. Nour tried their coconut shrimp, and my aunt had crab cakes. For dessert, we shared an excellent key lime pie with a baked meringue topping.

Living in a general state of American isolation, adrift on a peninsula with no relatives within eight hours of us, it was also nice just to be reminded that I have a family.

Persian Spinach & Yogurt Dip

2005-11-13T18:23:00.000-05:00

It was a particularly good weekend for spinach, which is tied with orange squashes for my favorite good-for-you vegetable. Last night I decided to make an Indian vegetarian dinner, and I tried another Bittman recipe, this time for saag paneer, spinach with cheese. Bittman recommends using tofu in place of the cheese, and since I had some on hand, I followed his advice. I bought some whole milk yogurt at the Indian grocery store that was amazingly good, and this was one of the principal ingredients, along with spices and half-and-half. Really, really good. I also made channa masala, a tomato-chickpea curry, from this Indian-themed food website. I went on a wild goose chase for the channa masala spice, finding it not at the Trinidadian Indian grocery store but at another Indian grocery store that also had the aforementioned succulent yogurt.

Today I made Persian Spinach and Yogurt Dip, from this month's issue of Cooking Light, which has a motherlode of good recipes this month (I have already made the date bars, Lyonnais potatoes, and Chicago-style steak with mushroom sauce, all of which were excellent). Ali Baba, a Middle Eastern/Persian restaurant in Orlando, has a similar spinach dip that I like very much, so I was excited when this recipe yielded similar results.

I need to figure out how to archive recipes by category on Blogger, anybody out there know how?

Persian Spinach and Yogurt Dip
1 10 ounce package fresh spinach, chopped
2 tsp. butter
1/3 cup finely chopped sweet onion
1 minced garlic clove
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup plain, fat-free organic yogurt (I went with the full-fat natural yogurt version)
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/8 tsp. cinnamon

Fill a large saucepan with water and bring to a boil. Cook chopped spinach for one minute, then drain well, squeezing out excess water. In a skillet, melt butter, saute onions and garlic until translucent. Remove from heat, stir in spinach and salt, and cool.

In a medium-sized bowl, mix spinach mixture with yogurt, pepper and cinnamon. Let stand at least 30 minutes before serving, chill afterward. Serve with pita bread, carrots, etc.

B'stilla

2005-11-12T10:49:00.000-05:00

B'stilla is a Moroccan savory-sweet chicken pie. It was once made with pigeon, and my husband claims it as a dish that originated in his hometown of Fes. It is a dish fit for royalty-- crisp layers of phyllo dough, savory chicken slow-cooked in broth and spices and shredded, and a crunchy layer of toasted and ground almonds, cinnamon, and sugar.

In one of the classes I teach about the Middle East, my students wanted to do a potluck supper/movie watching session. Understandably for a class involving food, it was one of the most successful classes all term. The students went all out-- they made feta cheese dip, Middle Eastern carrot cake, tabbouleh, cauliflower-potato curry, hummus and chips, and one student brought samosas and a huge box of baklava. (Not all the dishes were strictly Middle Eastern, but that didn't matter much). We stuffed ourselves and watched a Tunisian film, "A Summer in La Goulette."

For my contribution, I spent the entire evening before making a vegetarian harira (spicy lentil soup) and this chicken b'stilla. I started out following Mark Bittman's version in The Best Recipes in the World, but aside from following the quantities I abandoned much of his technique, since it was different from what my in-laws do. Nour helped me put it all together, because phyllo isn't the easiest thing to work with.

B'stilla
2 Tblsp. canola oil
2 minced garlic cloves
1 finely chopped onion
2 lbs. boneless, skinless thighs (although you can use regular thighs and just de-bone them after they cook-- then use maybe 3 pounds)
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
1 tsp. ground turmeric
1 tsp. ginger
3 cups chicken stock
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup skinless almonds
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1-2 Tblsp. sugar
1/2 pound phyllo (12 sheets)
8 Tblsp. (1 stick) melted butter
Confectioner's sugar

Defrost your phyllo dough. Read the box instructions for how to do this.

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium. Cook garlic and onion until soft, about 3 minutes. Add chicken, parsley, turmeric, saffron, ginger, and stock. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer 20 minutes. Remove chicken from the pot to cool.

While stirring the stock, pour the eggs in slowly. (They will cook, but if you keep stirring they stay pretty separate, which is what you want). Simmer the stock, uncovered, until reduced by half (about 10 minutes). Shred chicken and return to stock, keep simmering until there is no more liquid. Remove from heat.

Here's where Bittman and I part ways. Toast the almonds in hot oil until they turn golden brown, remove to paper towels to drain. Grind in a coffee grinder but leave some chunky almond bits for consistency. Mix with cinnamon and regular sugar. Try one tablespoon first and taste. If you like it sweeter, add another tablespoon.

Preheat your oven to 425.

Get out the phyllo dough, making sure you followed the box instructions for defrosting, otherwise it will crack easily. Unroll phyllo dough carefully and have a damp towel ready to place on top. In a 9" pie pan using a pastry brush, brush butter on the bottom and sides of the pan. Place one sheet of phyllo dough in the pan, brush quickly with a little butter, place another on top, brush again, etc. Dough will be hanging over the sides, brush the sides too. Do 4-5 sheets this way. Cover the extra dough with cloth. Then add the chicken mixture. Cover chicken with the almond-sugar mixture (see photo). Fold the dough layers that were hanging over the side over the top and add a few more sheets, each brushed with butter, if you like. You may have extra butter or dough left at the end. An egg yolk brushed over the top is also optional. Bake 20-30 minutes, keeping an eye on the pie to see when it turns golden brown.

Remove from pan if you like, or if you're concerned about keeping it in one piece, leave it in there. When finished, sift a generous layer of powdered sugar over the top. Tap out cinnamon in a criss-cross pattern, as shown. Slice it up and enjoy. It's very elaborate but it's my favorite Moroccan dish-- very unusual and complex, served generally as a first course at weddings. My students loved it. Colleagues who tried a piece said they'd never tasted anything like it.

Another big success at the potluck class session was the Feta cheese dip some of my students made. I believe the source might be Middle East food expert Claudia Roden. Take 1/2 pound feta, the juice of one lemon, 2 Tblsp. vegetable oil, and 1 Tblsp. olive oil. Mash the feta with everything else using a fork until smooth. I asked for the recipe and will definitely make this dip again as well.

Tasting your way into another culture is one of the best ways to experience it.

Pasta with Winter Squash

2005-11-08T21:28:00.000-05:00

I tried two more recipes from Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World. Pad Thai and Penne with Pumpkin or Squash.

Before I made the Pad Thai, my father was asking me why I liked to attempt ethnic dishes that involve paying for a lot of ingredients you never use again. I disagreed, saying that once you build a repertoire of spices, if you're interested in cooking these types of dishes you'll keep using the ingredients. Things like fish sauce, green curry paste, or cardamom pods, for example. I make some type of curry dish at least once a week, and Bittman is right, once you have the spices (which you can buy cheaply in small quantities at grocery stores like Whole Foods), making almost any Indian dish is usually simple. I also told my father that if the recipes are from a good source, you can guarantee good results most of the time.

Well, although I still stand by this assertion, this didn't happen for me with Bittman's Pad Thai. I have tried countless recipes for Pad Thai and never been able to make it taste like it does in a Thai restaurant. For this one, I bought fish sauce (nam pla), which was no great expense-- a little more than a dollar. I couldn't find the rice noodles at the grocery store. I went home, thought about using fettucine, then actually called up an Asian market several miles away and drove there to buy rice noodles. They were still the wrong shape, but I took them home, only to discover a little later that the bag was filled with insects. Grr... I then drove to Whole Foods and found the right kind of noodles there, but things continued to go downhill. I had every single ingredient required for the dish, but it still lacked those flavors I wanted to recreate. It was good, but it was something else. Won't be making that again.

I have a weakness for any squash with orange flesh. Pumpkins, butternut, acorn, you name it. Last year I discovered my dear friend Amy shared the same obsession for orange foods. We did many a lunch exchange at work of butternut squash lasagnas, soups, etc. Today, thinking of Amy, who no longer lives in Orlando, I decided to try Bittman's "Penne with Pumpkin or Squash" in her honor. I used only the finest ingredients, hoping to convince my husband of the subtle yet undeniable delight one derives from the consumption of orange foods. I grated fresh nutmeg, had a new wedge of Pecorino Romano (the recipe called for Parmesan), and cooked down the butternut squash into a textured, clinging sauce. It was awesome. Nour partook of seconds.

Preparation was very simple. I had a butternut squash that weighed a couple pounds, so I chopped it in half and peeled it, using only a pound of the squash. Then I cut up that one pound of squash in chunks and gave it a workout in the food processor until it looked grated. I put some water on to boil. In a frying pan, I placed a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil, and when the butter melted, I added a minced garlic clove and the squash mixture, stirring it around for a second before adding 1/2 cup water. I cooked it on medium heat for about 10 minutes, continuing to add water as the mixture got dry. I didn't want it to get too watery. In the meantime, I also boiled about 12 ounces of penne pasta.

At the end of the cooking time, I added 1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg, a generous dash of cayenne pepper to make it spicy, and salt to taste. I reserved a half cup of water from the pasta water and drained the rest, then dumped the pasta in with the orange sauce, adding a little of the reserved pasta water to make it just slightly saucy and not too dry (I love that culinary trick). I mixed it all with 1/2 cup Pecorino Romano, and man, was it good. Only differences from Bittman were the cheese and the addition of a minced garlic clove, but I think I managed to convince my husband of the superiority of orange foods. If only Amy were here!

With the other half of my squash, I think I will try a recipe I found here for habanero squash soup...

Pollo con Salsa Verde

2005-11-04T08:50:00.000-05:00

Ramadan ended Wednesday night, so to celebrate I prepared a somewhat unorthodox Mexican dinner of Pollo con Salsa Verde (Chicken in Green Sauce), Mexican rice, and refried beans, all of it from scratch. I was most excited to prepare this because it involved using my new cookbook, Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World, which I'd been eagerly awaiting from Amazon. I am a huge fan of Bittman's Minimalist column in the NY Times, which I've read religiously for years, and his How to Cook Everything, which is an extremely useful cookbook. But this new cookbook promised to be even more thrilling, especially since it has lots of Moroccan recipes and recipes from many of my favorite ethnic cuisines-- Indian, Thai, Japanese, and even old standbys like French and Italian. I trust Bittman implicitly-- I've probably made several hundred of his recipes, 90% of which have turned out to be dishes I'll make again.

So the aforementioned Mexican dinner came entirely from the new cookbook. It involved making refried beans from scratch, doing a quick soak of small red beans and then preparing them with epazote, a Mexican spice that thankfully is sold at a local vegetable stand about a half a mile from my house. Also sold at the local vegetable stand are hulled pumpkin seeds and tomatillos, two essential ingredients in the Mexican chicken dish. The rice involved frying dry rice in oil and then cooking it with broth and a mixture of pureed tomatoes, onions, and garlic. It was pretty delicious too-- had a texture I wasn't used to with rice, but I liked it fine. And the Chicken in Green Sauce was terrific.

I will never forget the first time I had green enchiladas-- in a Mexican restaurant in Madrid called El Cuchi, back in 1995. (The restaurant was very theatrical-- waitresses served tequila shots accompanied by a hard hat to be placed on the customer's head and rapped on after the customer kicked back a shot while the waitress also rang a hand-held siren.) But I loved the enchiladas. The tomatillo-cilantro flavor was so unlike anything I'd ever had before, and it's one of my favorite things to order at Mexican restaurants. Mark Bittman's recipe is more complex and nuanced than any green chicken I've made before, partially because of the addition of pumpkin seeds and scallion. I would definitely make this again, and I plan to continue making and reporting on lots of new recipes from this cookbook.

Pollo con Salsa Verde
1/3 cup hulled pumpkin seeds
1 cup chopped cilantro leaves
1 cup coarsely chopped scallion
1 cup husked, cored, and sliced tomatillos
1 jalapeno, stemmed and seeded
Chicken stock
3 Tblsp. lard or neutral oil (I used canola)
2.5-3 lbs. chicken parts, trimmed of fat (I used legs)
salt & pepper

Toast pumpkin seeds in a dry skillet, stirring frequently, until they begin to brown and pop (less than 5 minutes). In a blender, puree them with cilantro, scallion, tomatillos, and enough stock to make a thin paste.

In a skillet or casserole, brown the chicken in oil on all sides, turning occasionally, about 10-15 minutes.

Add salsa verde to the pan with another 1/2 cup of stock, the pieces may not be quite covered and the mixture will be soupy. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Cook 30 minutes, turning pieces occasionally, making sure sauce reduces and thickens somewhat. Serve with rice and beans.

Lemon Pound Cake

2005-10-26T17:05:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about cake this week. I watched a special on the Food Network about the founder of Cake Love, a bakery in Washington D.C. that my friend Mara introduced me to on my last visit. The owner dropped his law career to create a bakery, one that places more emphasis on taste than looks-- in some of the cakes, the filling is bursting out of its lovable and misshapen contours. But who cares? The desserts are delicious. And there's the name -- Cake Love-- which sounds like some sort of supportive, hippie religion dedicated to the worship of baked goods. I went there more than once on my last visit to DC to sample cupcakes and other delights. When I go back this December for an academic conference, Cake Love will definitely be on my list of places to go, along with Ben's Chili Shop, Lebanese Taverna, and Bistrot du Coin in DuPont Circle...

Although I have a wonderful family recipe for pound cake that is called "Crust Cake," which develops a sweet and crunchy crust, it is somewhat heavy and therefore the kind of thing I only like to make once a year or so. This recipe is a little lighter, brighter, and less heavy. It's from the magazine Cook's Illustrated, which I love for their thorough testing of recipes in search of perfection. I knew this would be a winner, and it was-- sweet yet tart, moist yet not gummy, delicate yet substantial. I will definitely make this again.

Lemon Pound Cake
2 sticks butter
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 Tblsp. grated lemon zest plus 2 tsp. lemon juice
4 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Lemon Glaze
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9 by 5 loaf pan with 1 Tblsp. softened butter, dust with 1 Tblsp. flour and tap out excess.

In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt, set aside.

Melt the butter on the stove and stir it up to make sure it's mixed. In a food processor, process sugar and zest until combined. Add lemon juice, eggs, and vanilla until combined. Keep machine running and add melted butter, remove mixture to large bowl. Sift flour mixture over eggs in three batches, mixing just to combine after each step. Pour into breadloaf pan and bake 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325 and bake until golden brown, about 35 minutes more. When toothpick comes out clean, it's ready. Check after 35 minutes, but I found mine took another 5-7 minutes longer. Cool for 10 minutes, turn out onto wire rack, brush Lemon Glaze onto top and sides with a pastry brush.

Lemon glaze: bring sugar and lemon juice to boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to low, simmer 2 minutes until thick.

Ramadan breakfast

2005-10-23T18:11:00.000-04:00

We had guests over last night for a traditional Moroccan "breaking of the fast." On normal nights, breaking the fast is a much less elaborate affair, though we try to always have one or more of the following elements. We started the meal with a spicy bowl of harira, a hearty soup made with tomatoes, lentils, meat, and chickpeas, hard boiled eggs flavored with cumin, salt and pepper, dates and figs, a banana milkshake, lemon pound cake, and the famous "pancake with a thousand holes," also known as "bghrir." (This intriguing pancake is made with semolina and yeast; the batter rises for two hours and then when it's fried up it gets little bubbles all over the surface-- hence its name). All of these items might be found on a Moroccan table, even the lemon pound cake, known in my husband's family as mskuta although there, not flavored with lemon. After stuffing ourselves full of tasty carbs, we waited for awhile and then served chicken tagine with lemon and olives, along with fresh, round loaves of Moroccan wheat bread.

Nour and I spent almost six hours preparing, although for him the preparation was considerably more difficult because he was fasting AND the air conditioning system was broken (welcome to Florida, 85 degrees yesterday, and a hurricane on the way). I was thrilled with the way everything turned out, and each recipe was a keeper, particularly the chicken and olive tagine and the lemon pound cake. Our guests, one of whom was Moroccan, raved about the tagine. Nour made the harira, which was terrific, although I didn't write down the quantities yet so I can't report how it was made. I will write about the terrific lemon pound cake on another day, but for now, here's how to make an authentic (and easy) Moroccan chicken tagine that will leave your guests fainting with happiness... Moroccans eat tagines with bread-- couscous would not be served with this, although you can really do whatever you want if you feel you need a side carb.

Moroccan Chicken Tagine with Lemon & Olives
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
olive oil
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
3 pounds chicken pieces, cut up
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. pepper
10-14 ounces green olives without pits (with pimiento is fine; although not traditional, it doesn't affect the taste too much)
Juice from 1 lemon
1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro

In a Dutch oven, saute garlic in a generous slug of olive oil over medium heat until beginning to turn golden. Add tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes more, until softening. Add chicken, turmeric, and pepper, and cook uncovered for 15 minutes over low heat, turning occasionally.

Add about a cup of water to almost cover the chicken, then add olives. Cover and simmer 30 minutes, turning occasionally. Add lemon juice and cilantro, uncover and cook 15 minutes more, reducing the sauce so that it thickens slightly. Serve with crusty baguette for dipping.

Chocolate Butter Creams

2005-10-21T08:54:00.001-04:00

It was a fairly forgettable week for cooking, mostly because I was so busy at work I only had one night where I attempted anything dramatic. I made a Pakistani chicken curry and potato-spinach patties, but both turned out to be forgettable and therefore not worth reporting. (I was checking out some sample recipes from a new Indian cookbook, but I probably won't buy it since Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking, along with a few books by Madhur Jaffrey already have me covered...)

Which brings me to the week's one culinary success: butter creams. My mother often made these. She said her favorite way to spend her birthday as a child was to get to eat butter creams all day and read comic books. These are decadent and impressive, rich dark chocolate coating a creamy, buttery center-- it's like making your own chocolates and will impress everyone, though it's not at all difficult. The only drawback is that they stick to the plate, and I haven't figured out a way around that-- I tried putting these on a plate coated with Pam, but to no avail. They have to be pried up with a sharp knife, or if you take them out of the refrigerator for a few minutes, they usually are soft enough to pull off more easily. But they are worth it.

Chocolate Butter Creams

1/2 cup butter (one stick), slightly softened
4 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 Tblsp. Condensed milk
Semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate-- a couple ounces

Cream butter using electric mixer, sift powdered sugar gradually into it, incorporating little by little. Add vanilla, mix everything well and form into balls by rolling in the palm of your hand. Place in the refrigerator on a plate for one hour to harden.

I then took a bar of Ghiradelli's semisweet baking chocolate and melted it over low heat with a couple squares of unsweetened baking chocolate (the bitter contrast is nice with the sweetness of the interior). Once melted, I took out the butter cream balls and used cooking tongs to quickly dip and coat each ball with chocolate, removing and placing on perhaps a greased cookie sheet. Cover and return to refrigerator to chill for another half hour or so, then eat and enjoy, or serve to guests. Decadent.

Egg

2005-10-14T13:07:00.000-04:00

This is really, really exciting-- one of my oldest friends, George, has been written up in the New York Times for his new restaurant,
Egg.

I wish I still lived in New York... If you happen to be there, go check it out. I am certain, from many a fine dinner prepared by George himself, that this place must be good.

Afghani Chicken with Pistachios and Caramelized Onions

2005-10-12T16:04:00.000-04:00

When I used to live in Baltimore, there was a terrific Afghani restaurant called the Helmand. (I believe there is also a branch in San Francisco). I often went there for special occasions and it was wonderful-- unique dishes that reminded me of Turkish and Indian food yet which were very much their own thing. Dumplings stuffed with meat and leeks and drizzled in yogurt sauce, delicate dishes involving spiced pumpkin puree. The Helmand was owned by the Karzai family-- the very same family of the President of Afghanistan.

A few months ago, my friend Delia made this recipe for her book club when they were reading Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novel The Kite Runner. The recipe originally appeared in Cooking Light. At the time she recommended the dish, I filed the recipe away, and last night I finally made it.

It was amazing. Delicate, subtly spiced rice, tender chicken, and the perfect blend of salty and sweet. The rice is not very sweet, despite the orange peel and the sugar. The caramelized onions and saffron make this dish outstanding, and I love the different textures, particularly the crunch of pistachios on top. It's not hard to make, so I'll definitely be making it again.

Afghani Chicken with Pistachios and Caramelized Onions

6 pieces of chicken, bone-in, your call which type (I used legs)
2 cups vertically sliced onions
1/4 tsp. saffron threads, crushed
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
1 Tblsp. sugar
2 tsp. grated orange peel
2 1/4 cups no sodium added chicken broth
1 1/2 cups uncooked basmati or other long grain rice
2 Tblsp. raisins
6 Tblsp. chopped pistachios

Salt and pepper chicken pieces. In a large Dutch oven, melt 1 Tblsp. butter. Brown chicken on all sides over medium-high heat (about 5-7 minutes). Remove chicken from pan.

Melt another tablespoon of butter in same Dutch oven, saute sliced onions over medium heat until golden brown, 10-12 minutes. Add saffron and garlic, cook one minute, stirring constantly. Add orange peel and sugar, stir again for another minute. Add broth, rice, raisins, and salt to taste (1/4 tsp or more). Place chicken pieces back in rice and cover with lid. Cook 25 minutes, turning once, check to make sure the chicken doesn't dry up. You may need to add a bit more broth or water. Taste to see if rice is tender and adjust seasonings. Sprinkle with pistachios and serve. Serves 6. I divided this in half and managed to polish it off with only 2 people.

Sopa (Moroccan Vegetable Soup)

2005-10-08T16:18:00.000-04:00

It's the month of Ramadan now, which means that my husband is fasting during the day. I tried fasting before when we lived in Morocco-- I made it about two weeks before finally giving up. It's incredibly difficult. Now I just like to try preparing nice things for him to break the fast with. The most common breakfast we had back in Fes would be a big bowl of harira-- a tomato-based soup with lentils, chickpeas, meat, and spices-- with dates, lots of honey pancakes and pastries. I made a huge pot of harira last week, but after eating it for a few days my husband gets tired of it and wants something else. So today I made something his mother calls sopa, a vegetable soup that is a lot lighter than harira. (If only the humid 90 degree Florida temperatures would agree with all this soupmaking.)

His family eats sopa as a light meal at night, particularly in the winter, often with a "tortilla"-- actually a Spanish omelette with potatoes. They sometimes make it with leftover chicken and other times with no meat at all-- it really doesn't need it for the flavor. I was looking at Hajar Lahouifi's recipe for chorba, which looks very similar, but this is our version from Fes:

Moroccan Vegetable Sopa (For 2 people-- can be doubled to serve 4)
3 carrots, diced
1 large potato, diced
2 celery sticks, diced (they would use the leaves but I don't find them in supermarkets here)
1-2 large tomatoes, whole (You can use 3 smaller canned whole tomatoes if you like)
1 onion, whole
a handful of parsley, finely chopped
a handful of cilantro, finely chopped
a tiny dash of turmeric
salt and pepper to taste
1 soup spoon olive oil
Green peas, a generous handful
a small bundle of vermicelli noodles
1 beef boullion cube - I like Better than Boullion (Vegetarians could probably use a veggie cube)

Place carrots, potatoes, celery, whole tomatoes, whole onion, parsley and cilantro in a small pot or pressure cooker. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Add turmeric, salt, pepper and oil, then cover. Cook for fifteen minutes in a pressure cooker or one hour in a normal soup pot. Remove tomatoes and onion and blend in a blender or food processor, returning this to the pot. Taste and adjust seasonings, then in last few minutes of cooking time add noodles and green peas (which I don't add until the end because I use frozen ones).

Challah Bread

2005-10-04T08:56:00.000-04:00

Maybe because it’s Rosh Hashanah, maybe because the NY Times had a big article last week about different varieties of kugel, which sounded intriguing though I’ve never tried it, I’ve been curious about the traditional foods eaten at this holiday. My friend Carol is going to bring a kugel her mother used to make into the office on Friday, so I’m looking forward to that. But last night I was having a craving for bread, and remembering how good challah French toast is, I decided to try my hand at the bread itself.

Surprisingly, it is not at all difficult to make, and the results turned out perfectly. The end result is very impressive, with a golden-brown, puffed up loaf, crispy on the outside, soft and dense and fragrant on the inside. For my recipe I chose to follow Mark Bittman’s in How To Cook Everything, which my friend Beth refers to as the “Bittman Bible.” (I refer to it seven to ten times each week). I decided to divide the recipe in half, both because Bittman recommended not keeping it for more than a day and also because my food processor is too small to process five cups of flour, and I love using the food processor to make bread.

2 1/2 cups bread flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. Rapid Rise yeast
1 Tblsp. Honey or sugar
1 1/2 eggs (this was a stretch—I used a single egg and 1/8 cup egg beaters)
Milk, warmed in the microwave, midway between 1/2 and 3/4 of a cup
Coarse salt to taste

First I put the flour, salt, and yeast in a food processor, whirring them to blend. As the machine was running, I added the honey, eggs and milk. I processed the dough for 30 seconds, and its consistency was supposed to be barely sticky and a well-defined ball, so I had to add a few more tablespoons of flour until it came out like this. Then I kneaded it for about thirty seconds on a floured surface and turned it into a mixing bowl coated with cooking oil.

For an hour and a half the bread rose in the inferno that is the Florida garage. By this point I was getting hungry, so I cut short Mark Bittman’s recommended time to do these other steps. I punched the dough down into three equally sized balls, then let them sit five minutes (rather than the recommended fifteen). I rolled them out into three ropes about 10 inches long and placed them on a greased baking sheet, connecting them at the top. I simply braided them and connected the dough again at the bottom, (they were supposed to sit in this state for 30 minutes but I couldn’t wait), brushing it with egg yolk and sprinkling coarse Kosher salt on top. In a preheated 375 degree oven I cooked the small loaf about 30 minutes, until it was golden brown and made a hollow noise when I tapped it on the bottom. Mmm. Great with dinner, can’t wait to have it again for breakfast…

Experimenting with Quinoa

2005-10-01T14:28:00.000-04:00

I was interested to read that quinoa (pronounced "kin-wa"), a grain from Ecuador used since the time of the Incans, was so high in protein-- up to 12 grams in a serving. It also has fiber and vitamins A & C, making it a kind of super-grain. I bought some from Whole Foods and decided to start experimenting with recipes. The first recipe I tried was a slight improvisation based on a recent article in Runner's World. It was kind of a quinoa pilaf that has a lot of vitamins and protein in it. I made it as an accompaniment to London broil, but it could have stood on its own as a filling veggie lunch.

First I heated a bit of olive oil in a saucepan, then sauteed 3/4 cup quinoa until it was golden and toasty. I covered this with 1 1/2 cups chicken broth and cooked it for fifteen minutes, while in another pan I sauteed a few tablespoons of onion and two garlic cloves in olive oil. At the end I added about three cups of fresh spinach and a diced plum tomato, along with a dash of salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. When the spinach had reduced in size and the quinoa was cooked, I mixed everything together along with 1/4 cup pecorino romano cheese.

Results: I really liked the consistency, which was crunchy and fell somewhere between bulgur and couscous in appearance. The quinoa also tasted delicious. BUT-- it had a slightly weird smell to it that reminded me of cauliflower-- not entirely appealing. Sometimes I smell things that aren't there (ancient head injury, long story), so it could have been in my imagination. And my husband loved it. So I will keep experimenting and report tasty quinoa recipes as I find them, since obviously it's really good for you.

Spinach & Gruyere Quiche

2005-09-26T18:42:00.000-04:00

quichefinal
Originally uploaded by rachelita2.

I've been having a craving for quiche lately. I wanted to see if I could make one myself, and despite the potential intimidation factor of producing a successful pie crust, I didn't want to buy one. Not that I have anything against them, but I wanted to try doing everything from scratch before I start adding shortcuts.

I found a recipe on Epicurious for Easy Pie crust, which I made a few hours ahead of time. With the food processor, it was easy: I blended together 1 1/3 cups flour, 6 tablespoons butter, cut up, 2 Tblsp. shortening, a teaspoon of sugar and a half teaspoon of salt. When it formed crumbs, I added three tablespoons of ice water through the feeder until it all clumped together. I then dumped it on a large piece of plastic wrap, flattened it into a disk, and refrigerated it for an hour. It took less than ten minutes to do this.

The trick was rolling it out, and it was a bit unwieldy. I took the dough out first and let it soften for about ten minutes, then rolled it out on a floured surface until it was big enough to fit in a pie dish that I'd coated with cooking spray. I fitted it in, then folded the edges over, pre-baking it for 7 minutes in a 375 degree oven. This is necessary because otherwise the crust might become soggy under the weight of wet ingredients. I tried weighting the empty crust down with a piece of tin foil coated with cooking spray and some rice, then had the mishap of the rice getting stuck in the dough when I tried to remove the foil.

It came out alright, though. You could skip all that and just buy a frozen crust instead.

As for the quiche itself, after reading many, many recipes for quiche, I began to realize that quiche is infinitely variable and that you can substitute at will for whatever ingredients you might want for a weeknight meal. Again following a couple recipes, one from epicurious, I decided upon the following ingredients:

1 tablespoon butter
1 vidalia onion, chopped
1 10 ounce bag fresh spinach
1/2 cup grated gruyere
1/2 cup grated pecorino romano
4 eggs (or 2 eggs and 1/2 cup egg substitute)
1/2 cup lowfat ricotta (could also use cottage cheese)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Melt the butter in a nonstick skillet, saute the onions until translucent. Then add the spinach little by little, until it cooks down and all its water evaporates. Remove from heat and cool slightly, adding spices-- salt, pepper and nutmeg. In a food processor, mix together eggs and ricotta. Add to cooled spinach mixture and mix in cheese. Pour into prepared pie crust, bake 45-50 minutes until set. It will be slightly moist in the middle, but resist the temptation to overcook.

The quiche was really delicious and smelled amazing while in the oven. I think I could accomplish it with a more beautiful crust next time, and I might try some feta for a little more bite, or some artichoke hearts. Or you could make it into a Tex-Mex-style quiche, adding cheeses like cheddar and monterey jack and canned chili peppers. Either way, I don't think it's possible to go wrong.

quiche2

2005-09-26T18:35:00.000-04:00

quiche2
Originally uploaded by rachelita2.

chicken with apple juice

2005-09-20T22:39:00.000-04:00

This summer, while visiting with my friend Jenny in Morocco, she told me about a dish she often makes for her husband and daughter after a long day at work when she wants to pull something together quickly. I was intrigued when she said that apple juice could be a good substitute for wine in cooking, because I like to cook with wine but don't always have it on hand or want to open a bottle (One way around this is to buy those little mini bottles of wine, but this is another solution).

Basically, this recipe is infinitely variable and will turn out well no matter how you adjust it. What I did tonight: I took a rather large, boneless chicken breast and diced it up. Then I dredged it in flour, salt, pepper, and paprika, and sauteed it in a bit of fake butter (Smart Balance- ), browning it on all sides. I took the chicken out, and then in the same pan sauteed mushrooms, chopped onions, and garlic. When those softened, I put the chicken back in, added 3/4 cup apple juice and 3/4 cup chicken broth. I simmered it uncovered for 20 minutes, then added about a half teaspoon of dried tarragon. I let it cook another five minutes (it had cooked down considerably at this point), added salt and pepper to taste, then stirred in two small spoons of plain yogurt. It didn't separate, and my friend said you can use sour cream or cream if you prefer. I brought it to a boil and turned it off, serving it over mashed potatoes. It made a really nice, sweet & savory sauce.

This was comfort food at its best, but the sweet richness was reminiscent of a dish that used wine. I might use slightly less apple juice and slightly more chicken broth if I make it again, but it was still delicious...

I would like to develop an efficient repertoire of recipes that I cook whenever I'm tired from work and can't think of what to cook-- the kinds of recipes that are easy but taste good. The weekends can be for assembling elaborate lasagnas or complex desserts... Last year, while getting used to my first full-time teaching job, I was not very efficient about this-- I tended to get lost in cookbooks and magazines trying to decide what to make at the last minute, picking elaborate, time-consuming dishes, wasting time at the supermarket to get extra ingredients, and going to bed exhausted. This year, I've resolved to cut down on this inefficiency considerably...

new Orlando restaurants

2005-09-18T09:05:00.000-04:00

I've tried two restaurants recently, one new, one new to me. The one that's been around for awhile is Lupita's, which a number of people have mentioned is the closest thing we have here in Central Florida to authentic Mexican. It's in a strip mall, but once you're inside, you forget that fact with the colorful decor of bright primary colors. I tried chicken enchiladas with mole sauce, their signature dish, which was pretty good-- mole sauce is with chocolate*, for those who don't know. The dish was very complex and smoky, with just a hint of sweetness to take away the bitterness of the chocolate. We also had some chicken tamales, which were a good appetizer. It's the type of restaurant where the owner and his wife (wearing a traditional sort of house dress) wander around talking to customers throughout the evening, making sure everything is acceptable. I definitely found myself wanting to go back and try more of their dishes.

The other new place was a chain creation, but it was pretty good. Pei Wei http://www.peiwei.com/is owned by PF Chang's, and they call themselves an Asian diner. This isn't a very descriptive phrase-- it looks nothing like a diner inside, but in fact has a sleek, dark, and modern Asian decor. Unfortunately it's located on a stretch of Colonial Drive that is one of the blights of Central Florida-- close to a Target and a Payless shoe store, in an area characterized by discount furniture shops, auto detailing, car stereo shops, and roads that haven't been repaired since the Eisenhower era. But never mind that fact. Once you're inside, you forget about Colonial. Everything was very clean, and you can see the guys cooking your food in tremendous woks behind the counter. You place your order, sit at a table, and someone brings you the food, which I enjoyed very much. It is a big step up from the cheap Chinese places around here, meaning less greasy, no MSG, and a good ambience, all for about the same price. And they have more than just Chinese food on the menu-- Thai and Japanese cuisines are also represented. We had a terrific lo mein with chicken, with very sticky, slightly sweet noodles, crisp vegetables, and mushrooms. The spring rolls were also excellent-- perfectly fried, not greasy, and with each vegetable inside holding its integrity. Their version of "General Chu's" or General Tso's chicken was just OK-- less greasy than the strip mall version and nicely spicy, but nothing out of this world. I'll definitely go back, though. It's affordable and clean, and they also have beer, which is a nice extra.

*The combination of chocolate with sugar is a Western invention, related to the increased consumption of sugar after the discovery of the New World. Until that point, sugar was a rarity, something only the elites and royals could afford, but plantations and slave labor changed all that. Sugar cane was actually imported to the Caribbean; it wasn't indigenous. Until the late 18th century or so, sugar was used in medicine, in small quantities as a spice, or as a way for the wealthy to show off their wealth in giant sugar models they displayed at parties. All of these facts are courtesy of Sidney Mintz' wonderful study, Sweetness and Power.

Roasted Rock Cornish Game Hens

2005-08-26T08:26:00.000-04:00

A really simple meal that my mother often made when I was a child: cornish game hens roasted in a paper bag. It must be the equivalent of roasting fish in parchment; there's something about the paper bag that allows some of the skin to crisp while the juices keep the bird moist. I found myself craving this the other night and asked her for the recipe. It's a great thing to make when you're tired or short on time:

1 rock cornish game hen
breadcrumbs to coat chicken
3-4 Tblsp. melted butter or margarine
1 brown paper lunch bag

Heat oven to 400. Salt and pepper game hen generously inside, a little outside. Melt butter and rub all over chicken. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over all, pressing in to help adhesion. Then place the game hen in a paper bag and tie with twine at the top (I only had a big paper grocery bag on hand, so I cut it off at the top and folded it over instead). Place in a roasting pan, turn oven down to 375, and roast for one hour. This was nice with chipotle mashed sweet potatoes (sweet potatoes mashed up with a tablespoon of finely minced canned chipotle pepper, butter, and salt) and a salad.