The Teacher Learns to Cook

Veggie Fried Rice With Tofu

2010-08-09T20:11:00.006-04:00

This excellent vegetable fried rice recipe comes from one of the many Moosewood cookbooks, I'm not sure which one though, because it is not one of the ones that I own. The recipe was passed to me from my friend John, who as I may have mentioned before, is no slouch in the kitchen, and is considered (by me) to be one of the most reliable recommenders of recipes (or practically anything else) around these here parts. Red peppers and snow peas provide crunch and color, while a sweet/salty/sour/spicy tofu marinade packs a flavorful punch. Relatively light on the prep, this recipe comes together extremely quickly once the cooking starts, and is substantial enough to stand on its own as a meal.

This recipe calls for 4 cups of cooked brown rice. When making fried rice, it is customary to use day-old or leftover rice, which has had time to shed excess moisture. If you try to make fried rice with fresh rice, you will almost certainly end up with too much moisture in the pan and a mushy result. With a little foresight, this should never be a problem. Cooked brown rice freezes exceptionally well, so next time you make a batch, double it and freeze the leftover in a 4 cup portion. You'll be good to go when the urge for fried rice hits you. Just don't forget to defrost it first. If you don't have any frozen rice, just make a batch the day before you plan on cooking. Check out some other great fried rice tips, and another great recipe, at Simply Recipes.

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First, make the tofu marinade by blending minced ginger root, minced garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar, brown sugar, dark sesame oil, and chili paste/chili oil/chili sauce in a small bowl. Chop the tofu into 1/2 inch cubes and add it to the marinade, stirring gently. Prep the rest of the vegetables before you start cooking.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a large skillet, then add the peppers and cook for a few minutes before adding the snow peas along with some water. This is allowed to cook for a few minutes until the water evaporates and the vegetables are tender, but still retain some crispness.

Remove the tofu from the marinade and add it to the skillet, stirring to combine with the vegetables. Add the rice and heat thoroughly. Last, stir in the leftover marinade along with the scallions and you're all done.

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Veggie Fried Rice With Tofu (adapted from a Moosewood cookbook)
Serves 4 as a small main or 6 as a side - about 30-40 minutes

Marinade

1 Tbsp minced ginger root
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp dark sesame oil
1 tsp chili sauce OR 1/2 tsp chili paste OR a splash of chili oil

1 lb of extra-firm tofu
3 Tbsp peanut or vegetable oil
2 medium red peppers, cut into thin strips
6 ounces snow peas, stemmed
1/4 cup water
4 cups cooked brown rice
2/3 cup chopped scallions
chopped toasted almonds or pecans (optional)

In a small bowl, combine marinade ingredients and mix well
Cut tofu into 1/2 inch cubes and add to marinade, stirring gently
Prepare the remaining ingredients (slice peppers, trim peas, chop scallions, measure rice)
Heat oil in large skillet over medium high heat for 3 to 4 minutes, oil should be shimmering but not smoking
Add the peppers and stir fry for 3 minutes
Add the snow peas and water and continue to cook until water has evaporated, about 3 more minutes - the vegetables should be somewhat tender, but retain some crispness
Remove the tofu from the marinade with a slotted spoon, and stir it into the skillet
Add the rice and heat thoroughly, about 3 minutes
Pour on the leftover marinade, add the scallions, and stir to combine
Serve immediately garnished with the chopped nuts if you choose to use them

What I've Been Doing With Myself Since January

2010-08-01T09:03:00.015-04:00

Well, it's been a while since my last blog update, but that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking, baking, and trying new recipes in the intervening months. I thought it might be a good idea to share a bit of what I've been up to before I start making (potentially false) promises about more regular updates in the future.

During the winter I had an amazing meal of braised short ribs with cheddared spinach on a bed of fresh made pappardelle at Caseus, an excellent fromagerie and bistro style restaurant. It inspired me to finally braise some short ribs of my own, and I settled on this recipe from Simply Recipes, which I've made two times. The resulting meat was so amazingly tender and full of flavor from the wine reduction - the beef literally falls of the bone, cuts like butter, and melts in your mouth.

As Easter approached, and I found out I would be hosting my parents and brother for dinner, I decided to try and recreate my entire dinner from Caseus, substituting lamb shanks for short ribs. Of course this meant making my own fresh pasta, something else I had never done. I followed this tutorial, rolling out the pasta sheets by hand since I didn't have a pasta machine. The dough was easy enough to make, but I just couldn't roll the dough out thin enough, and the resulting noodles cooked up thick tough rather than thin and delicate. I bought a pasta machine, and a few days later, made my first batch of delicious fresh pasta (with an assist from my lovely wife since I couldn't quite seem to crank the dough through the machine and hold it coming out the other end at the same time).

The lamb shanks came out beautifully, as did the fresh fettuccine, and I served it all over my own version of cheddared spinach (steamed baby spinach leaves tossed with microplaned sharp cheddar). I must say that while my recreation didn't quite measure up to the original, it was pretty darn close.

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I have a few more things to share...

This is the simplest and best pasta recipe I've come across in quite a while, thanks to one of my favorite blogs, Smitten Kitchen. Apparently, spaghetti with cheese and black pepper is an Italian pantry cooking staple that I'd somehow missed for my entire life. It's also one of the most beloved dishes at Mario Batali's acclaimed New York restaurant, Lupa. I've probably made this five times since I discovered the recipe, and that's only because I can't justify eating a pound of spaghetti and cheese more than once a week. I want this all the time.

Also from Smitten Kitchen comes the excellent "best cocoa brownies" recipe, which I can't endorse highly enough. Really delicious brownies on the chewy end of the brownie spectrum. I suggest trying peanuts instead of walnuts, for an interesting Snickers-esque quality.

A wonderful guacamole with bacon from Rick Bayless is delicious as a topping for quesadilla, spread on a turkey sandwich, or just eaten with chips. Smoky, spicy chipotle peppers blend nicely with the bacon and tomatoes to make a truly excellent guacamole.

And last but not least, tuna burgers with wasabi mayo. This recipe had been in my "to make" pile for a few years, and I finally decided to make them for a some friends. I would say that these burgers were probably the single best thing I've cooked since January. The comment I left on the blog where I got them pretty much says it all...

I’ve had this recipe in my “to make” pile for 3 years! Well, I finally got around to making it last night, and though I was initially hesitant about doing anything with such beautiful tuna as giving it a light sear and eating it extremely rare, I must say this recipe is amazing!

Without hyperbole, I can honestly say this is the best non-beef burger I’ve ever had, and it’s not even close. Great recipe! Thanks!

Using high quality tuna is a must, so this recipe is not a cheapie, but as an every once and a while splurge, is definitely worth the high price tag. I also baked some pita to stuff these into, and highly recommend you do the same (or at least buy some pita).

So that pretty much brings us up to speed...now, I promise to update more regularly from here on out (heh heh heh).

Curried Squash and Lentil Stew

2010-01-26T17:51:00.013-05:00

I had a beautiful, three pound butternut squash sitting on my counter for about a month. It was the last item we purchased at the local farm before it closed for the winter, and for weeks I never seemed to be able to work it into a meal. I think that my subconscious mind was just in denial that the farm was closed until the spring, and that somehow, by preventing me from using the squash and having it sit on the counter instead, it was almost as if the farm never closed at all. But alas, my conscious mind won out, the farm is indeed closed, and the squash had to be used.

New Year's day provided the perfect opportunity. I was already planning on roasting a pork shoulder (great recipe here), and I had some leftovers from a baked pasta/sausage and peppers combo I had made a few days prior, but was looking for a vegetarian option to round out the menu. Perhaps a soup utilizing squash and lentils? A quick search on the internet yielded this recipe, which seemed to be just what I was looking for. After reading through the comments, I made a few modifications, namely increasing the curry powder and garlic, decreasing the amount of liquid by half, and adding in some chili powder and shredded coconut. Oh, and I left out the ginger, because I really don't like ginger. The finished product was a thick lentil stew, sweetened by the squash, with the the coconut providing a really nice reinforcing accent to the curry flavor. It was definitely a hit, and I've already made it again, although sadly, I had to get the squash at the supermarket.

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This is a very easy recipe. All the work is in the prep. Once everything is chopped, you heat the oil/butter in a large pot until the butter stops foaming, then add the onions, squash, carrots, celery, garlic, and salt then cook for about 15 minutes. Stir in the curry powder and chili powder and stir for a few minutes, then stir in the lentils and coconut.

At this point, add the stock and simmer, covered, until the lentils are cooked. The recipe suggests serving over basmati rice, but I haven't done this yet as the stew is pretty hearty on its own. I also haven't tried the cilantro oil, because I don't like cilantro. The second time I made this recipe, I found it to be at its best on the third day. If you like your stew more like soup, just add more stock (the original recipe calls for twice what I used).

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Curried Squash and Lentil Soup (adapted from Epicurious)
Serves 8 as a main course - 1 1/2 hours start to finish

6 TBS vegetable oil
4 TBS unsalted butter
3 lb butternut squash, peeled and cut in 1/2 inch pieces
2 medium onions, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery ribs, chopped
8 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp salt
3 TBS curry powder
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 cups lentils
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 quart water
1 quart vegetable stock
2 tsp fresh lemon juice

Heat oil with butter in large pot over medium heat until foam subsides
Add squash, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and 2 tsp salt to pot, cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened and beginning to brown, 15 to 20 minutes
Stir in the curry powder, chili powder, 1/2 tsp black pepper, and cook, stirring frequently for 2 minutes
Stir in the lentils and coconut, then add the water/stock and bring to a simmer
Cover pot and cook until lentils are tender, 25 to 40 minutes
Stir in lemon juice and season with salt and pepper

Whole Wheat English Muffins

2010-01-20T18:22:00.019-05:00

Last week, after making a pot of mushroom barley stew, I wanted to bake something to have with it. My first thought was biscuits and then I switched my thinking to corn bread, and finally settled on some whole wheat muffins. I had made some savory whole wheat muffins to have with some dinner at some point in the past, but I couldn't remember what recipe I used. The internet turned up quite a few options, but it was this recipe for whole wheat English Muffins that caught my eye. Having wanted to give English Muffins a go for quite a while, I figured there was no time like the present (which I guess is now the past), and set to work.

About 3 hours later, I was pulling my first muffins off of the griddle and was quite happy with the results. The muffins looked good, tasted even better, and after a quick fork-splitting, had all the requisite nooks and crannies. If you've got a few hours on your hands, give this one a go.

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I did make a few minor alterations to the recipe as written. First and foremost, I substituted instant yeast for the dry yeast called for. Because of the way it's produced, instant yeast can be mixed directly into flour without proofing first in water. I find this to be quite convenient, and I'm sure you will too. If you're going to do any significant amount of bread baking, I highly recommend picking up a pound of SAF Instant Yeast (which can be stored in your freezer, and will last for months). I just made sure to add an extra 1/4 cup of water to the wet ingredients in the recipe (since I didn't have to proof the yeast). Second, I wanted my muffins to be 100% whole wheat, so I subbed 1 cup of white whole wheat flour for the white flour. Third, I added the wet ingredients to the dry all at the same time, mixed until the flour was moistened, and then did the kneading with my Kitchen Aid.

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Start by mixing the dry ingredients, and then the wet, in separate bowls.

As Alton Brown would say, add the wet team to the dry team. Mix everything until the flour is moistened, then knead either by hand or by mixer. I mixed on speed 2 in my Kitchen Aid for 4 minutes, allowed a 5 minute rest, then gave it 4 more minutes. If your kneading by hand, I'd probably go about 10 minutes (and try to resist the urge to add too much extra flour, the dough should be a bit sticky).

Round the dough into a ball, place in a lightly oiled bowl covered with plastic wrap until doubled in size. The tip in this recipe about using the microwave and a cup of water to create a warm, moist place for the dough to rise is an excellent one that I've used many times with great success. Give it a try.

Punch the dough down and roll it out about 1/2 inch thick. Cut into 3 inch rounds.

After all the dough is cut, cover the rounds with a damp cloth and allow them to rest for 20 minutes. Begin preheating a griddle or large nonstick skillet over medium/low heat.

The most interesting aspect of making English muffins is the fact that they are not baked, but cooked on a griddle. This gives a distinctive browned top and bottom with a tender, soft middle to the cooked muffin. The trick is to have the pan just hot enough to brown the top and the bottom in about 8 to 10 minutes (5 minutes on first side, 3-5 on second side), and cook the muffin through the middle. If the heat is too low, they won't cook properly, and if the heat is too high, the top and bottom will brown (and burn) before the middle is cooked through. As the recipe says, you may sacrifice the first few while you get used to the cooking process.

Sprinkle some corn meal on the griddle and place a few rounds on the pan. Cook for 5 minutes then flip and cook for 3 to 5 additional minutes. Remove to a rack and cool completely.

If you want the aforementioned nooks and crannies, split the muffins with a fork. Toast, top as you like and enjoy! These went great with the stew, and the few that I had leftover froze beautifully. Just split them before you freeze them, then just pop one or two in the toaster whenever you need a warm, toasty muffin.

Recipe: Whole Wheat English Muffins

Mushroom Barley Stew

2010-01-13T18:16:00.008-05:00

The frigid heart of winter is a time for stew. Combining the heartiness of a meal, with the warm deliciousness of soup, there's nothing quite like a bowl of stew on a cold day. Just imagine hearty chunks of potato, earthy mushrooms, some carrots for sweetness, the chewy toothsomeness of barley, all in a rich broth with hints of sage...(this is starting to sound like a Chunky Soup commercial)...sounds good, right? This is a great recipe to make on a Sunday afternoon, then stow away in the fridge for easy weeknight meals, or even weekday lunches. As with pretty much all soups and stews, this one is definitely better the next day. Serve with some nice warm crusty bread, or fresh baked biscuits, and you'll want for nothing on those frigid winter nights.

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This recipe really couldn't be easier. Prep all the ingredients then heat the oil in large (at least 5 quart) pot over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, celery, garlic, potatoes, sage, salt and pepper.

Cook until the veggies start to brown, stir in the mushrooms and cook an additional 5 minutes. Add the barley, and cook, stirring frequently for 2 more minutes. Add the stock and/or water, bring to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 more minutes. Salt and pepper to taste and voila! Stew!

Don't like barley? Try brown rice, quinoa, wheat berries, couscous, bulgur, or whatever grain suits your fancy. Feel free to experiment with herbs as well, substituting rosemary or thyme for the sage, or use them in combination. Not a mushroom eater? Leave em' out. Try some butternut squash or sweet potato in there. So many possibilities!

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Mushroom Barley Stew (~1 hour 15 minutes - 6 to 8 large servings)

4 TBS olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
4 medium waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks (cut lengthwise into quarters, cut each quarter into 3 pieces)
4 ribs celery, chopped
4 carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise, and chopped into chunks
8 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tsp dried sage
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
4 cups sliced mushrooms (any type, I like a combo of baby bella and button)
2/3 cup uncooked pearled barley
6 cups vegetable stock (can use water, or a water/stock combo)

Heat oil in large pot over medium heat (pot should be at least 5 quarts)
When oil shimmers, add onion, potato, celery, carrot, garlic, sage, salt, and pepper
Stir to combine and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables start to brown, about 10 minutes
Stir in the mushrooms and cook for 5 more minutes
Stir in the barley and cook, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes
Add the stock/water, raise the heat, and bring to a boil
Lower heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes
Taste then season with additional salt* and pepper to taste

*If you used water or a homemade stock that is low on salt, you might need to add as much as a teaspoon or more of salt (add 1/4 teaspoon at a time, tasting as you go). Store-bought stocks are often quite high in salt, so taste and go from there.

Easter

2009-04-12T11:02:00.006-04:00

Aside from Thanksgiving, Easter is probably my favorite food holiday. Roast lamb, rice pie, ham pie (pizzagain)...all things that I love, made even more special because I only have them once a year on Easter and the fact that they are all expertly made by my mother. Oh yeah, how could I forget the Cadbury Mini Eggs...I really love those too!

Here's my contribution to this years meal, two loaves of french bread and an Easter Rye.

Whether or not you celebrate Easter (you can still have the Mini Eggs at least), have a great day!

Braised Escarole with Garlic and Oil

2009-04-11T12:25:00.007-04:00

The other day I was faced with a head of escarole, a leftover ingredient from a pot of soup that I never made, that I had no idea what to do with. Roasted chicken sandwiches were already on the menu for dinner, so I figured I could easily turn the escarole into a side of some sort. My wife told me that her grandmother likes to saute escarole with a bit of oil and garlic (knowing her grandmother, I'm sure it is actually WAY MORE than a bit) and that it comes out bitter, but that's the way grandma likes it. I was into the oil and garlic, but not so much the bitter. After looking through a few recipes online, I decided that I would go with a quick braise, which hopefully would result in nice soft (but not mushy) greens, without me having to worry about burning garlic over a longer cooking time. Since I was having chicken, I chose chicken broth as a braising liquid. I decided to add some onions for a little sweetness to balance the bitterness of the escarole, and a little crushed red pepper for a touch of heat. It all came together quite nicely. In a moment of inspiration, I did what my dad would probably do, and ended up putting the escarole on the sandwich, which was really nice.

I liked it so much that I bought two more heads the next day and made it to accompany the turkey burgers I was having. I can imagine this would be great stirred into some pasta with a little grated cheese, or with some sausage on a roll, or maybe with some cannellini beans...

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Start by cutting, washing well, and drying the escarole. Heat the oil over medium for a few minutes, then saute the onion, garlic, and red pepper for a few minutes.

Add the escarole and braising liquid, stir to combine, cover and cook for 15 minutes. Give it a stir and it is ready to go.

Makes a great side or sandwich topping.

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Braised Escarole with Oil and Garlic
About 30 minutes - Serves 2 to 4 as a side

1 large head escarole, washed, dried, and cut into 2 inch pieces
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1/2 of a medium red onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 cup chicken broth (or vegetable broth, dry white wine, etc.)
salt to taste

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat for 5 minutes, until it shimmers but is not smoking
Add the onions, garlic, and red pepper and saute for 3 minutes
Add the escarole and chicken broth, stirring to combine ingredients
Cover the pot and cook for 15 minutes
Remove the cover, stir, salt to taste and serve

Use a non-meat based braising liquid for an all-veggie version of this recipe.

If you would like the escarole to be a bit drier, uncover after 10 minutes and cook for the last 5 minutes uncovered to boil off some of the remaining liquid.

Falafel and Pita

2009-03-24T20:00:00.015-04:00

There were three lunch trucks outside the library where I worked in college, one of which was affectionately known as the "Greek Truck." I am pretty sure that this had to do with the fact that they had gyros and a big Greek guy, who whenever you would order anything with the works, would yell into the back of the truck to whomever was working the grill, "Give me a gyro all the way!" From this man I had my first pita with hummus, sprouts, and cucumber and I was hooked right away. Soon after I had my first falafel, and all was right with the world. Now anything on a pita always makes me think of that lunch truck and the man who taught me that it's not pronounced "jahy-ro," but "jeer-oh."

I have made a few pita recipes over the past year or so with pretty good results, but I have tried a different recipe pretty much every time. Recently, when I saw a post about pita on the Smitten Kitchen blog, I knew that I had yet another new recipe to test. Now, what to put in the pita once they were baked? Falafel sounded good to me, so I decided to try my hand at frying some up. Except for one somewhat failed attempt many years ago at one of my first all-veggie meals to try and impress my new fiance (she married me anyway so I guess those falafel couldn't have been too bad), I have never made falafel at home. I perused a few recipes and settled on this one from Mark Bittman.

The pita recipe worked beautifully. The dough was very easy to work with and the pita puffed nicely in the oven.

Now I think I'm finally ready to take the plunge, settle down, and commit to a pita recipe.

The falafel were very good as well. I cut down the cayenne in the recipe by half and forgot to add the onion, although I don't think the falafel were any worse for it. I am definitely going to be making this recipe again as well. I prefer a light, tangy yogurt sauce on my falafel rather than a tahini-based sauce. I just combined some yogurt with a bit of lemon juice, some minced garlic, and a dash of salt, pepper, and cumin. Delicious!

All I can say is, "Give me a falafel, all the way!"

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Pita Bread Recipe from Smitten Kitchen

Falafel Recipe from Mark Bittman's Bitten Blog

Brown Rice and Black Bean Soft Tacos

2009-03-21T08:37:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago I inadvertently recreated one of my old favorite fast food items. I had not eaten anything from any fast food restaurant in at least 5 years, probably even longer, but nonetheless I found myself experiencing a bit of food déjà vu. I was pretty sure I had never made a burrito (actually it was more of a taco due to over-stuffing) with this exact combination of ingredients, but I knew I had eaten it before. Then it struck me, the Seven Layer Burrito from Taco Bell - rice, beans, sour cream, guacamole, cheddar cheese, lettuce, and tomato (I looked it up). Of course, my dinner was slightly different as I had mashed avocado rather than guacamole, crumbled goat cheese instead of cheddar, and salsa instead of tomato, but the essence remained the same. Fond fast food memories came flooding back, making me feel all nostalgic, as well as slightly nauseous, for times spent with good friends driving around and...well, eating at fast food restaurants.

The amazing technique for cooking the brown rice used in this recipe comes from Cook's Illustrated Magazine, and it has been a revelation for me. I know it sounds pathetic, but I have never been able to cook brown rice with any type of consistency. This technique has you bake the rice in the oven, which was completely new to me. I have made brown rice this way at least ten times now, and its always come out exactly the same, that is to say, absolutely perfect. I'll never simmer it on the stove top again. The only down side is that you need to start 1 hour and 20 minutes before you want to use the rice, so some planning ahead is definitely required. Alternatively you can make a large batch of rice in advance, and freeze it in smaller portions to defrost and reheat as needed.

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Start by preheating your oven to 375 degrees. Measure out 1 1/2 cups of brown rice into an 8-inch, oven safe baking dish. Measure out the spices and bring the water and oil to a boil.

Stir the spices into the boiling water and pour it over the rice. Pouring the water into the dish will move the rice around, so just use a spoon to coax it back into a nice even layer.

Cover tightly with a double layer of foil and place into the oven for 1 hour.

While the rice cooks, open up a can of black beans, rinse them and drain them well. When the rice is done, make sure to uncover it carefully or you can get a pretty nasty steam burn.

Fluff the rice with a fork, and place the foil loosely back over the top for 5 minutes.

While you are waiting for the rice, mash the avocado. You don't want to do this too far in advance because the avocado tends to discolor quickly. Stir the beans into the rice and allow it to sit uncovered for a few more minutes.

To assemble your soft tacos, start with a medium size (about 8 inch) flour tortilla. Spread as much sour cream as you like in the middle (I generally use about 1 tablespoon per taco).

Spoon approximately 1/8 of the rice mixture onto the sour cream and top with some goat cheese. I got the idea for goat cheese in tacos from this great recipe by Rick Bayless, the undisputed king of authentic Mexican cuisine in America. I know goat cheese sounds a little weird for tacos, but I think it adds a really nice tangy flavor and creaminess that you don't get from grated cheddar or jack cheese, but you can use whatever you like of course.

Next comes a little of your favorite salsa spooned over the top and a generous dollop of mashed avocado. If tomatoes are in season, I'm sure some fresh, diced tomato would be great, but if they're not in season, skip the tomato and use the salsa.

Top with some nice crispy romaine lettuce and you're ready to eat.

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Brown Rice and Black Bean Soft Tacos
1 hour 30 minutes (about 10 minutes if rice and beans is cooked in advance) Makes 8 to 10 tacos

1 1/2 cups long grain brown rice
2 1/3 cups water
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 15 ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained well
8 to 10 flour tortillas
sour cream
4 ripe avocados
crumbled goat cheese
your favorite salsa
romaine lettuce, washed, dried, and cut into bite size pieces

To make the rice and beans:

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven t0 375 degrees
Place rice in 8-inch square, oven safe baking dish
Place water and oil in small saucepan and bring to a boil
Stir spices into boiling water
Pour boiling water over rice, smooth rice into an even layer with a spoon
Cover tightly with a double layer of foil
Place into oven for 1 hour
Remove from oven and carefully uncover
Fluff rice with fork, then place foil loosely over top and allow rice to sit for 5 minutes
Uncover, mix in beans with fork, and allow the rice to sit uncovered for 5 more minutes

To assemble the tacos:

Prepare flour tortillas according to package directions
Place a tortilla on a plate and spread about 1 tablespoon of sour cream evenly over the middle of the tortilla
Place 1/8 to 1/10 of the rice and beans (about 1/2 cup) onto the tortilla
Top the rice and beans with a few crumbles of goat cheese (about 1 to 2 tablespoons)
Place a few spoons of salsa on top of the cheese (about 1 to 2 tablespoons)
Top the salsa with a generous dollop of mashed avocado (about 1/3 cup or more if you like)
Sprinkle a few pieces of lettuce on top
Repeat as many times as you like

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Brown rice is much healthier for you than white, but it takes considerably longer to prepare. The cooking method in this recipe makes delicious rice, is very simple, and is hands off for almost all of the cooking time leaving you free to prepare the rest of your meal. Use the brown rice cooking technique above whenever you need brown rice, simply omit the chili powder, cumin, oregano, and beans.

Chicken Salad Contessa

2009-03-15T08:44:00.010-04:00

Ever since I was a kid I have always loved turning leftover protein into salads, and then sandwiches. Of course, what I mean by this is chopping whatever chicken, beef, pork, lamb, hard boiled egg, etc., remains from dinner into little bits and mixing it with gobs of mayonnaise, then heaping the mixture onto whatever type of bread was available. Not exactly the most elegant preparation, but it always got the job done. It never actually occurred to me at the time that you did not have to wait for leftovers, you could prepare the meat specifically for this purpose, and that the addition of a few other ingredients could turn ho-hum, overly mayonnaised salads into some truly spectacular sandwich fillings. Hence, over the years my love of mixing meat with mayo has not diminished one bit, but has undergone quite an evolution.

My friend and coworker John has been bringing this chicken salad to work for lunch the last few weeks that intrigued me quite a bit. A slightly modified version of a recipe from the Barefoot Contessa (recipe link at the end of post), it starts with roasted, skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts and combines the meat with mayo, sour cream, some toasted nuts, grapes, and tarragon.

I wanted it immediately the first time I saw him take it out of his lunch bag and heard him describe the recipe. When my other friend and coworker Diana came in last week with some chicken salad of her own, the same recipe, I knew I had to make it as soon as possible (which turned out to be last Friday).

The thing I love about making recipes that others have made is that the recipes have already been tested and any possible trouble spots are thus easier to avoid. This recipe is a good example, as it calls for 2 teaspoons of salt (yes, 2 whole teaspoons) to be added to the dressing, hardly any of which is necessary. I knew this going in, and cut down the salt dramatically. I also knew that the dressing amount could be cut as well, and I used seedless red grapes instead of green. All information gleaned from discussions with my friends. If you don't have your own personal recipe testers, a great thing to do is find a recipe website, like Food Network or Recipezaar, that has user comments along with the recipes. You can pick up many great tips from countless others who have tried the recipe before you.

For this particular recipe I doubled the chicken, halved the mayo and sour cream, reduced the salt to 1/4 teaspoon (and I'm not sure it even needed that), and reduced the nuts by half. Although the recipe was intended to produce a salad eaten on a bed of lettuce, I could never eat chicken salad this way knowing I'm just 2 slices of bread away from sandwich heaven. I found this particular recipe to be quite good, the grapes added a nice refreshing burst of sweet flavor that I found to be a nice accent. And tarragon is fast becoming one of my favorite herbs, as I find it pairs extremely well with poultry. The real keeper though from this recipe is the easy and delicious chicken preparation. The meat came out cooked perfectly, and starting with bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts really kicks up the flavor while reducing the price tag (don't be a boneless/skinless chicken snob). I'll definitely be using this particular prep whenever I make chicken salad from now on.

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Oh yeah, the recipe(s)...

The recipe described above - Chicken Salad Contessa

My favorite chicken salad - Cranberry-Walnut Chicken Salad

My favorite egg salad - Egg Salad Sandwich

Spaghetti with Tuna, Arugula, and Hot Pepper

2009-03-05T18:39:00.003-05:00

Here's a quick pasta dish that can be made with (mostly) pantry ingredients from another great blog, Simply Recipes. Saute some minced garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil, add in some tuna and mix with the spaghetti and arugula, a little salt and pepper and you're done. Once the water boils, this one comes together in about 10 minutes with very little prep.

I'm not always crazy about arugula because I find its bitterness a bit off putting in certain dishes. I was going to swap in baby spinach, but they did not have any at the grocery store when I went shopping, so I ended up using baby arugula. All was well in the end, as I found the slight bitterness added a nice note to the finished dish. When you buy your tuna in oil, make sure it's packed specifically in olive oil (which is what the recipe calls for), not canola or some other oil. I made this mistake and ended up having to make a stop on my way home for the correct product.

Recipe: Spaghetti with Tuna, Arugula, and Hot Pepper

Escarole and Orzo Soup with Turkey Meatballs

2009-02-23T20:12:00.016-05:00

So as I am sure you are all aware, bacterial resistance to antibiotics is starting to become a major issue all over the world. This means that some of our old standby drugs, which are some of the main reasons for our increase in life expectancy over the last 100 years, no longer cure diseases that they used to cure. Medical researchers are constantly having to devise newer, stronger treatments, and then the bacteria continue to evolve resistance. You can imagine the frustration of doctors as they try their reliable fallback treatments to no avail....I'd imagine it's not entirely unlike trying to satisfy the ever developing palate of the 2 year old child. Thankfully for the doctors (and for me), there are some things to fall back on that still work (for now).

I'm sure this is not unusual at all, but as soon as my daughter rejects whatever new menu item I have cooked up that night, we start going through the list...cheese sandwich, Cheerios and milk, peanut butter and jelly, mac and cheese, and we can usually find something that she'll eat. But lo and behold, some of these items just don't cut it anymore, and any or all of them may be rejected. Panic starts to set in as my wife and I realize we're entering a whole new world where past practice does not necessarily indicate future success. Luckily there's one item that so far has always been a hit, always does the trick, and is devoured within minutes, and that's meatball soup (more specifically Escarole and Orzo Soup with Turkey Meatballs). My daughter even eats the escarole AND asks for seconds.

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The recipe for this soup is originally from Bon Appetit but I found it featured on one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen.

Start by beating an egg with a bit of water and soaking the bread crumbs in the egg mixture.

Mix the egg/crumb mixture with the parsley, parmesan cheese, salt, garlic, and ground turkey. Mix until just combined.

Using wet hands (so the mixture does not stick), form the meatballs. They should be about 1 inch in diameter (or smaller). A small scoop works well here for portioning. If making them 1 inch in size, you should be able to get about 40 meatballs*. Once they are all made, cover them and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Bring the chicken stock to a boil in a large pot (at least 4.5 quarts).

Add orzo and chopped carrot, reduce heat and simmer vigorously for 8 minutes. In the meantime, wash, dry, and chop some escarole.

Add the meatballs (turn up the heat a bit as the cold meatballs will bring the temperature way down) and simmer for 10 minutes.

If you have to walk away from the pot, make sure you have somebody to watch it for you.

Add the escarole and simmer for 5 more minutes. Taste the soup and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Don't worry, your kids will eat it (until they won't).

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I've made different minor changes and adjustments each time I've made this recipe, and have a few suggestions:

*I use 1 pound of ground turkey instead of 12 ounces (and I don't use turkey breast meat, but the ground turkey that is a combo of light and dark meat). The seasoning to me is perfect when you make this change, and you get more meatballs!
The taste of this soup is excellent as the Parmesan cheese in the meatballs really infuses the soup with flavor, especially if you make it a day in advance. One (potential) downside to making it in advance is that the orzo sops up quite a bit of the broth, and the once brothy soup becomes more stew-like. Now this is not a problem for my family and I because we like the soup this way. If you want your soup flavorful buy still brothy, either thin it out with a little warm stock or water then next day, or don't add the orzo when you make the soup, instead just boil it when you are reheating the soup and add the cooked orzo before serving.
I've used dried parsley instead of fresh, and the soup has been just as good.
I've made this soup with both homemade and store bought chicken stock, and it's pretty good both ways, most people probably wouldn't even know the difference.

Wilted Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

2009-02-22T19:47:00.016-05:00

I love having people over for dinner because it allows me to indulge in all my chef fantasies. One such fantasy is serving multiple course dinners (3+ courses), which for many practical reasons I never really do. It's an exciting challenge to pick complementary recipes, put them in sequence, and then figure out how to pull off all of the cooking so I can get the food out in a timely fashion (and enjoy the company of friends). I've learned not to be too overly ambitious in recipe choices, and definitely not to try a recipe for the first time during one of these dinners. Good prep work and mise en place is absolutely essential, so any cooking that needs to be done in between courses can be done in a neat and efficient manner. Most important for me is to make a time line of events and follow it closely, this way there is no forgetting to do things like preheat the oven, or start cooking the rice, which can really throw you off your game.

I had a few friends over the other night, and this is what I served:

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Appetizer
Sliced Sourdough French Bread with Seasoned Extra Virgin Olive Oil for Dipping and Provolone Cheese

First Course
Wilted Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

Second Course
Cauliflower Soup with Gorgonzola

Third Course
Prosciutto and Provolone Stuffed Chicken Breast with Risotto Milanese and Roasted Butternut Squash with Red Onions and Balsamic Vinegar

Dessert
Toffee Cake (compliments of my baker extraordinaire mother)
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Soup is a great thing to serve during a dinner like this because it can be made in advance and reheated. This particular soup I had made many times before, and it is always a hit (it's always nice to have a ringer on the team). Good homemade bread is always a standout as well. My third course was a little unwieldy thanks to my choice of risotto (which I cooked part way in advance - an ongoing experiment of mine) and a rather labor intensive (but very good) chicken recipe (this one's not free) from Cook's Illustrated. I will definitely make the chicken again, but probably as a standalone dinner, not as a course in a larger meal. The real standout recipe to me in this bunch was the salad.

I was vaguely aware of the concept of a spinach salad with a warm bacon dressing, but I'd never had it before. Somehow this was the first idea that popped into my head when I went about planning this particular menu, so I first had to find a recipe that sounded good to me and test it out. The basic idea is to make a warm dressing utilizing a little fat from some bacon, then pour the hot dressing over the spinach to wilt it a bit before serving. I thought this particular salad made a perfect first course - something slightly out of the ordinary (although apparently it is a classic American recipe), very good, and relatively simple to prepare. I'll definitely be throwing this one into the fancy dinner rotation.

Here's the recipe: Wilted Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

My changes:

I used apple juice instead of apple cider (hard to find cider all year round)
I used baby spinach instead of regular spinach (I HATE picking spinach leaves off of spinach stems)
I added some crumbled Stilton blue cheese around the edges of the salad (highly recommended)

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As a quick aside, let me just say that I don't think there's any better way to spend an evening than at somebody's house, with good food, good wine, and close friends.

Baked Ziti

2009-02-17T18:47:00.010-05:00

I hate baked ziti. I hate the dried out pasta tubes around the edges, the mush in the middle, the flavorless sauce, all topped with a plastic layer of cheese, that so often grace picnics, potlucks, birthday parties, etc. I've had so many delicious pasta dishes in my life, that I was perfectly willing to never give baked ziti another try. That is until the March 2009 issue of Cook's Illustrated showed up in the mail and I read this. The good people at Cooks promised me "perfectly al dente pasta, a rich and flavorful sauce, and melted cheese in every bite," and so I was willing to give baked ziti one last try. Even though I knew I was in good hands as Cook's meticulously tests their recipes with every possible trick and tweak until they get them just right, all my past ziti experiences cast a doubtful shadow over my mind (which was somewhat lifted with the help of some good red wine).

The verdict? I've spent the last two days trying to think of the next occasion that would give me a reason to make this dish again, it was that good. It was everything Cook's said it would be, and one of the better pasta dishes to ever come out of my kitchen. Sadly, it is both way too rich and unhealthy, and somewhat time consuming to prepare (about 2 1/2 hours from start to finish), to work its way into my regular meal rotation, but it definitely moves to the head of the class on the "special occasion" list.

Cook's requires you to subscribe to their site in order to get the recipes (if you're ever going to subscribe to anything, you really can't go wrong with Cook's Illustrated), but a little poking around and I found that somebody had posted the recipe on Recipezaar. There's just one mistake to note, it should be 4% fat cottage cheese, not 1%. Cook's recommends Hood brand cottage cheese, and whole milk mozzarella as opposed to part-skim (and warns not to use the pre-grated stuff). And just for me, use the ziti with lines (people, it's all about texture). So if you love baked ziti, I imagine you'll love this reworking of the recipe, and if you're a hater like me, then this might be the one that converts you.

Spaghetti alla Boscaiola

2009-02-15T09:35:00.004-05:00

I try a lot of different recipes that I find on the various food blogs that I read. Usually they are very good, but I just don't have time to write long blog posts detailing all of them. In the spirit of efficiency and being concise, I figured I could just past them along here on my blog.

Here's a nice quick pasta dish that I made this past Thursday night. It only involves a few ingredients, and although it's somewhat irritating to have to use 3 separate pots/pans, it's worth it in the end. If you like mushrooms, give this one a try.

Oven Roasted Breakfast Potatoes

2009-02-11T22:27:00.006-05:00

I generally make my menu for the week and go food shopping on Saturday morning. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what I want to eat all week long, and I'm not always crazy about the idea of buying veggies and things on Saturday for a dish I'm not going to prepare until Friday, so I've been making "breakfast for dinner" for the past couple of Fridays. Nothing too fancy, a six-egg mushroom and cheese omelet, some sourdough or whole wheat toast, and some potatoes. I really like being able to come home at the end of the week and make a simple yet satisfying meal, and the thing that's really been making this meal has been the potatoes. Now I've extolled the virtues of potatoes with breakfast before, but I've refined my technique and seasoning a bit after trying many different recipes and cooking methods, and I think I've come up with something pretty good (and really easy).

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Start by preheating the oven to 400 degrees and cutting up some Russet potatoes into 3/4 inch cubes. I like to leave the skin on, but peeling the potatoes would be fine.

Season the potatoes with salt, black pepper, paprika, onion powder, and garlic powder. Mix in a little vegetable oil and spread the potatoes out on a baking sheet that has been generously coated with cooking spray.

Roast the potatoes on the center rack of the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, flip the potatoes, and roast for another 20 minutes until the potatoes are nice and brown and crispy.

Serve immediately with your breakfast item of choice and a little ketchup.

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Oven Roasted Breakfast Potatoes
about 50 minutes - serves 4

3 medium russet potatoes, washed well and dried
3 teaspoons vegetable oil (I use canola)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Cut potatoes into 3/4 inch cubes
In large bowl, mix potatoes with salt, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, and oil until well coated
Generously coat a non-stick sheet pan (1/2 sheet size) with cooking spray
Spread the potatoes evenly on the sheet pan and place the pan on the center rack of the oven
Roast for 20 minutes, flip the potatoes over, roast another 20 minutes until the potatoes are brown and crispy (roasting time may be extended 5 to 10 minutes for darker, crisper potatoes), serve immediately

Christmas Eve Dinner

2008-12-30T13:49:00.013-05:00

I was pretty much raised Italian (even though technically I'm only half) and that meant no meat on Friday's during Lent and fish on Christmas Eve. We never got too fancy with it, maybe we'd have lobster or stuffed clams along with a nice linguine and shrimp dish that my mother had perfected over the years. Three years ago I volunteered to host Christmas Eve at my house so my mother would have a little less to do around the holidays. I knew I wanted to keep the fish tradition going, and had heard quite a bit about the "Feast of the Seven Fishes" that some Italian families partake in, so I decided to give it a go.

A little research revealed that nobody is quite sure why seven fishes is the number, and in some parts of Italy, it's actually nine or eleven or thirteen. The common theme though is fish, and one type that I kept reading about was salt cod, or baccala, although the other six types seemed to vary quite a bit. I love fish, especially in sushi form, but for a number of reasons I don't buy it and cook it very often. Consequently, I'm not super confident when it comes to preparing fish. Not wanting to jump in over my head, I started out three years ago with four fish dishes and upped it to five last year. This year I felt I was ready for seven.

I planned out my menu, which would include seven fishes (scallops, cod, tuna, pollock, sole, shrimp, and crab) spread out through an appetizer and five subsequent courses. I planned on starting appetizers at 7:30, serving the first course at 8:00 and another course every 25 minutes after, finishing around 10. I prepped everything that I could in advance (with a substantial amount of help from my father), and made a timeline that ran from 7:30 to 10:00 so I would know when to preheat ovens, start warming soup, boil water for pasta, start a sauce, etc. The dinner was quite a success, and all the dishes were pretty good to great.

Here's how it went...

The appetizer course was scallop and cod ceviche served with sliced avocado and tortilla. I didn't really want to do shrimp cocktail again because I'd already done it the previous two years and I find it to be a little boring. I had seen ceviche many times on various cooking shows, and decided to give it a try. Ceviche is small pieces of fish marinated in lemon or lime juice. The acid in the juice denatures the proteins in the fish, essentially cooking them without heat. I chose this recipe from the Simply Recipes blog and was quite impressed with the results.

The first course was sesame seared tuna, which my mother and brother really love (as well as myself). The preparation is very simple, as the tuna is rubbed with a little oil, salt, and pepper, then pressed into some toasted sesame seeds. It is placed in a hot pan and cooked for about 2 minutes, then flipped and cooked for about 2 more minutes. The resulting fish nicely seared on the outside, and still cool on the inside. Delicious. High quality tuna is a must for this dish, and I used a recipe from America's Test Kitchen.

The second course was a salt cod cake. This year I went non-traditional and actually used salted pollock instead of cod, and there was no noticeable difference in the result. The recipe comes from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and combines the fish with mashed potato, egg, and bread crumb and formed into little cakes. The recipe has you pan fry the cakes in a oil, butter, or bacon grease, but this year I deep fried them in canola oil which resulted in a much nicer and more uniform golden brown crust. I actually fried these up in the early afternoon, and reheated them just before serving. The real key to this dish was a delicious condiment called remoulade - I used an excellent recipe from Emeril.

The third course was a simple fish stew which was really easy to make and very very good. This is another recipe that came from the Simply Recipes blog. I used cod and sole for the fish. I made the stew in the early afternoon and let it sit all day for the flavors to blend, then reheated it before serving.

The fourth course was penne all vodka with shrimp. This is a slightly modified version of a recipe from the Sopranos Family Cookbook. This is a can't miss recipe. The sauce takes as long to cook as it does to cook the penne, and then you just toss it together and serve. Everybody loves this dish. My slight changes are no prosciutto (wife doesn't do pork), and the addition of a half a pound of shrimp sliced in half lenghtwise (so they curl up), which I add along with the vodka. If you're not much of a cook, but your having somebody over for dinner, make this.

The fifth course was a seafood gratin from Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa). The past 2 years I had made a modified version of Jamie Oliver's Prawn and Pea Risotto with Basil and Mint for the final course, last year even perfecting a method of partially pre-cooking the risotto so I wouldn't have to make the whole thing in between courses. This year I wanted to do something different (and less filling) for my final course. While randomly flipping through the channels a few weeks ago, I landed on the Food Network and Ina was already well into this recipe. I saw her pour a creamy, golden sauce over some combination of seafood and top that with sauteed leeks and carrots, then seasoned, buttered panko crumbs. Then she baked the whole thing. I'd found my final course. The recipe was a bit complex, as you need to make the sauce, cook the fish in it, remove the fish, reduce the sauce, sautee the veggies, put it all together and bake it. This recipe is not a cheap one to make either, as the golden color of the sauce comes from saffron, the world's most expensive spice, and aforementioned "combination of seafood" turned out to be shrimp, lobster, and halibut (I used shrimp, cod, and lump crab meat). I was able to put this dish together in the afternoon, and all I had to do was top it with the breadcrumbs and bake it about a half and hour before serving. Despite the effort and cost, the result was worth it - a sumptuously rich combination of flavors and textures, and a delicious final course.

And for dessert a delicous cookie tray put together by my mother, who makes some of the best cookies (pies, cakes, etc...) that I have ever tasted. All in all, a perfect Christmas Eve dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T08:15:00.003-05:00

Even though things have been a little slow here at The Teacher Learns to Cook, I'd be remiss if I did not acknowledge the most foodie-centric holiday of them all, Thanksgiving. Suffice to say, I love Thanksgiving. It is far and away my favorite holiday and I look forward to it all year. The Thanksgiving leftover sandwich...now that's what I'm talking about.

So if you're cooking today, good luck with everything. I'm still heading to my mom's because she is an amazing cook and an even better baker (I think there's a pumpkin cheesecake on tap along with the mandatory apple and pumpkin pie). My contribution will be some delicious multigrain dinner rolls courtesy of Cook's Illustrated. If you're feeling stressed, at least you're not cooking for 5,000 like The Band decided to do 32 years ago today for their farewell concert "The Last Waltz."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Portobello "Steak" and Cheese Sandwiches

2008-10-19T09:39:00.017-04:00

A few weeks ago a friend of mine was coming over for dinner. When I asked him what he would like, he thought that some type of sandwich would be good. I am up for sandwiches anytime, so I immediately liked the idea. Possibilities began flying through my mind and I began to crave steak and cheese with sauteed peppers and onions (commonly called a "cheesesteak"). The only problem here is that my wife doesn't eat beef, so I would either have to make some chicken as well or convince her to settle for a pepper and onion sandwich. I also remembered that this particular friend is trying to cut down his red meat consumption, so he might not want steak and cheese. As I mentioned these things to him, he reminded me about a portobello mushroom sandwich I had made one time in the past, which was basically a grilled portobello cap with some balsamic vinegar and mozzarella cheese on a nice roll, and the wheels started to turn in my mind. I figured I could replace the steak with thick slices of sauteed portobello mushroom, keep everything else the same, and make everybody happy (except possibly myself). The sandwich would be healthier for certain, and eventhough I was a little skeptical that it would satisfy my craving, I enthusiastically went forward.

I had recently made an Italian bread recipe that was absolutely incredible, and I figured it would make equally incredible sub rolls. Luckily I had the day off from school in observance of Yom Kippur, which gave me some extra time for a little baking (okay, a lot of baking, some sourdough loaves, multigrain bread, and a quadruple batch of brownies in addition to my sub rolls, which are across the bottom of the rack in the picture).

So basically all I did was slice up a few peppers and onions, then saute them in a little oil over pretty high heat until the onions were soft and browned a little bit. Then I sauteed the sliced portobellos until they were tender. I put the veggies in a baking dish and covered it with foil until I was ready to make the sandwiches. In the meantime, I made some oven fries. When I was ready to make the sandwiches, I just heated a nonstick pan, put down some mushrooms, covered them with a generous portion of peppers and onions, and topped that with some provolone cheese. When the cheese melted, I slid the pile of veggies onto a roll, spread a little mayo on the top, and that was it.

The result? An incredibly good veggie version of a steak and cheese sandwich. I was extremely satisfied. The melted cheese mixes with the mayo and juices from the vegetables which begin to soak into the bread creating one of those whole is greater than the sum of the parts experiences. I honestly did not miss the steak at all. I will definitely be making these sandwiches again.

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Portobello "Steak" and Cheese Sandwiches
About 30 minutes - Serves 4

It's my belief that your sandwich is only as good as the bread you put it on, so don't skimp on the rolls. If you're not into baking your own, make sure you get some rolls from a bakery or a good deli that makes their own.

Saute the mushrooms, peppers, and onions in advance and you can then put these sandwiches together in about 5 minutes whenever you're ready to eat.

I love mayo and provolone, but if you don't like one or either of these, of course feel free to substitute cheeses and condiments as you like.

24 ounces of portobello musroom caps (about 10 caps), sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 onions, sliced thin
2 green peppers, cored, seeded and sliced into thin strips
8 slices of provolone cheese
Mayonaise
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
4 sub rolls

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat until the oil starts to shimmer
Saute the onions and peppers, tossing occasionally, until they have softened considerably and the onions start to brown, approximately 6 to 10 minutes, remove them from the pan to a dish and cover
Add 1 tablespoon of oil to the pan, add the mushrooms and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then saute the mushroom slices, tossing occasionally until they become tender, about 5 minutes, remove them from the pan to the dish with the onions and peppers and cover until you are ready to make the sandwiches
When you're ready to make the sandwiches, slice your rolls and spread mayonaise on both sides (as little or as much as you like) and heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat
Place 1/4 of the portobellas in the pan, top with 1/4 of the peppers and onions, salt and pepper to taste, and top all the veggies with 2 slices of provolone cheese
When the cheese melts, use a large spatula to transfer everything to a roll
Repeat with the rest of the ingredients to make 3 more sandwiches

Chick Pea and Artichoke Heart Stew

2008-10-09T11:52:00.021-04:00

Since school started my weekday cooking time has been severely cut down. To compensate, I've been making a double recipe of a different soup or stew every weekend since the beginning of September. The soup gets better and better as the week goes on, and I don't have to worry about cooking dinner when I get home from cross country practice. A nice bowl of soup with a few slices of bread makes a perfect weeknight meal with very little clean up, which is key when the kids need baths, stories, etc...

Chick Pea and Artichoke Heart Stew is one of my (and my wife's) favorites. This is another one of those recipes that was passed my way by my friend John, who got it from the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook. Brimming with chick peas, chunks of potato, and artichoke hearts, this is definitely hearty enough to make a meal. Turmeric gives it a wonderful golden color, and combined with sweet paprika, a deep, earthy taste. A sprig of fresh rosemary and some fresh sage round out the aroma of this stew quite nicely. It's actually quick enough to make on a weeknight, as it only takes about 30 minutes from start to finish, but as with most soups and stews, if you take the time to make it ahead, the flavors have time to meld so the soup tastes even better when reheated. I suggest doubling the recipe so you have plenty of leftovers.

The recipe calls for water or stock, but I prefer the extra flavor you get when you start with stock. I'll still use store bought stock in a pinch, but when I have the time, I like to make my own. There are many advantages to doing this. Here's three: First, it's cheaper than buying ready made, second, you can control the amount of salt (since most prepared stock is absolutely loaded with sodium, even the low sodium varieties), and third, it tastes significantly better. What else do you want? I've included a recipe for a quick vegetable stock that is a slightly modified version of a stock recipe from Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson, creator of the excellent food blog 101 Cookbooks.

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Vegetable stock can be complex or relatively simple. Basically all you need is some aromatic vegetables, some fresh herbs, and some water. This stock is at the very simple end of the spectrum. The only required ingredients are onion, garlic, celery, thyme, water, and salt. In this version I've added some fresh parsley and carrot, but they are by no means required. Start by chopping the vegetables into large chunks and heating a small amount of olive oil in a large pot.

Dump all the vegetables in the pot and stir them around. Let them sit for a minute or two and stir them again, keep doing this until the vegetables look like they are starting to soften.

Once the vegetables are starting to soften, let them sit in the pan without stirring them for about 5 minutes or so. The goal here is to develop some brown bits (kind of faux vegetable fond) on the bottom of the pan that you can scrape up when you add the water. These caramelized bits will give the stock a deeper flavor in addition to a darker color. Once you have some nice brown bits, add the water and salt.

Bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer for one hour.

Strain the stock, pressing down on the vegetables to extract as much fluid as possible. Since this is a meatless stock the only fat is from the olive oil, so you don't have to do any skimming or other type of fat removal. The stock can be used immediately, stored in the fridge for up to a week, or frozen.

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The making of this stew goes quick, so prepping all the ingredients in advance is a good idea. One of the ingredients is pureed squash, and the recipe suggests using a jar of squash baby food which is what I have done every time I have made this recipe. It seems easier to me than cooking and pureeing just 1/2 cup of squash or sweet potato. When you're ready to start, heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat until it shimmers, add the onion and garlic and saute until soft.

While the onions and garlic are cooking, bring the water or stock to a simmer. Add the turmeric and paprika to the softened onions.

Add the potatoes, rosemary, sage and then the simmering water or stock.

Bring the stew to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are soft, about 12 minutes or so. At this point you remove the rosemary sprig, add all the rest of the ingredients (pureed squash, chick peas, artichoke hearts), taste, and season with salt and pepper. Return the soup to a simmer and allow the flavors to mingle for a few minutes and you're done.

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Vegetable Stock (adapted from Super Natural Cooking)
About 1 hour and 30 minutes - makes approximately 8 cups

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 large onions, cut into eighths
1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed
2 ribs of celery, chopped into large pieces
5 sprigs of fresh thyme
8 cups of water
2 teaspoons of table salt (can be reduced or increased to taste)
2 large carrots, chopped into large pieces (optional)
a handful of fresh parsley (optional)

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat until it shimmers
Add all the vegetables and herbs to the pot and stir
Stir every minute or so until the vegetables start to soften, about 6 minutes total
Let the vegetables sit without stirring until brown bits begin to form on the bottom of the pot, about 5 minutes
Add the water and salt, stir and scrape the bottom of the pot to loosen any brown bits
Bring to a boil, lower the heat, cover, and simmer for one hour
Strain the stock pressing down on the vegetables in order to remove as much liquid as possible

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Chick Pea and Artichoke Heart Stew (from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home)
About 30 minutes - serves 4 to 6

4 cups water or vegetable stock
2 medium onions, chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
4 medium waxy skinned potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 sprig fresh rosemary
5 leaves fresh sage, minced
4.5 ounce jar pureed squash baby food or 1/2 cup pureed winter squash or sweet potato
3 cups drained cooked chick peas (two 15 ounce cans)
1 1/2 cups drained quartered artichoke hearts (one 14 ounce can)
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
lemon wedges (optional)
grated Pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese (optional)

Bring the water or vegetable stock to a simmer
Saute the onions and garlic in the oil until soft, about 6 to 8 minutes
Stir in the turmeric and paprika, saute for 1 minute
Add the potatoes, rosemary, sage, and water/stock
Bring to a simmer and cook until potatoes are tender, about 12 minutes
Stir in the pureed squash, add the chick peas and artichoke hearts, remove the rosemary
Season with salt and pepper to taste
Return the stew to a simmer for a few minutes to allow the flavors to meld
Serve with lemon wedges and top with grated cheese if you wish

100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

2008-09-06T14:55:00.021-04:00

I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch pretty much every day (which I believe I've mentioned before). I prefer the kind of peanut butter with nothing but peanuts on the ingredient list. You know, the stuff that you have to stir the oil back into it when you first open it, which I admit is annoying, but well worth it to me. I also prefer strawberry jelly, but will settle for basically anything except goopy grape, as long as it tastes like fruit rather than sugar. My peanut butter and jelly is pretty much the anti-stereotypical soggy grape jelly white bread version that I saw so many of my peers eating on a daily basis all throughout elementary school. Of course the key to this sandwich, as with any sandwich, is the bread.

I want a bread that is substantial enough to maintain its integrity when peanut butter is spread upon it and won't be a soggy mess if I make it at 5:30 am and eat it at lunch time. I want it to be 100% whole wheat, but I don't want it to be dense and dry like so many whole wheat breads. Lastly, I want to make it myself because I like to know what's going into my food, it's cheaper than buying bread and tastes better, and I just like baking bread.

So after trying a few different recipes, most of which were very good, I've settled on the one on the back of the King Arthur Traditional Whole Wheat Flour bag. It's relatively easy to make, stays nice and fresh all week long, freezes well, and meets all of my other requirements listed above. For the past 5 or so months I've been making 2 loaves of this bread a week and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Oh, and it makes the house smell absolutely incredible while it bakes.

And of course, I just could not resist doing this:

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I always double this recipe to make sure I won't run out of bread midweek and have to bake more. Since it freezes so well, I don't have to worry about one loaf going bad. Start by mixing flour, yeast, salt, and non-fat dry milk (which apparently adds vitamins and nutrients, imparts flavor, tenderizes the bread, helps color the crust, AND increases the keeping quality of the bread - wow).

Add honey, vegetable oil (I use canola), and water. Stir until all the flour is hydrated. If you don't feel like stirring, you can have a helper do it for you.

Knead the dough by hand for about 10 minutes until you have a smooth, slightly tacky ball of dough. Or, if you're lazy like me, knead with the dough hook of your mixer for about 5 minutes. You might need to add additional flour at this point if the dough is sticking to the sides/bottom of the bowl. Add just enough so that the flour clears the sides and bottom.

Place the dough into a container that has been lightly sprayed with oil.

Allow the dough to double, which takes about 1 hour.

Dump the dough out onto a cutting board and knead it lightly to degas it. Form the dough into a ball and divide it into two equal pieces.

Spray two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch loaf pans lightly with spray oil. Take one of the dough balls and flatten it out into a rectangle.

Form the dough into a loaf by rolling it up, pushing down on the seam with the side of your hand as you go. Fold the ends under the roll, and pinch all the seams closed. The roll in this picture is actually kind of lopsided, it should look much more even.

Place the roll of dough into the pan and lightly press down (it will spring back a bit). Cover the dough with plastic wrap. I've actually been placing the pans in a large plastic bag lately instead of covering them with plastic wrap, and the results have been better for me. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Allow the dough to rise for approximately one hour, or until the dough crests about 1 inch above the top of the pan. Slash the loaves - I like to them with a long straight slash right down the middle. Bake the loaves for 20 minutes, turn them, and bake another 20 minutes. When the loaves are done, remove them from the pans and allow them to cool completely on a rack. If you're not going to use them right away, wrap them well in plastic wrap and freeze them immediately. When you want to use a loaf, just take it out of the freezer a few hours before you want it.

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100% Whole Wheat Bread (adapted from King Arthur Traditional Whole Wheat Flour bag)
About 3 hours - makes 2 loaves

8 cups of King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 cup of non-fat dry milk
5 teaspoons of instant yeast
2 1/2 teaspoons of salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
2 2/3 cups of room temperature water

Mix the flour, dry milk, instant yeast, and salt in the work bowl of a standing mixer (or a regular mixing bowl)
Add the oil, honey, and water and stir until all the flour is hydrated
Knead with the dough hook on low speed for 5 minutes (or knead by hand for 10 minutes) until a smooth, slightly tacky ball forms. The dough should clear the sides and bottom of the bowl, add flour to achieve this if necessary.
Place the dough in a bowl sprayed lightly with oil, cover with plastic wrap and allow it to rise until doubled, approximately 1 hour
Dump the dough onto a counter and gently knead a few times to degas
Work the dough into a ball and divide it into 2 equal pieces
Spray two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch loaf pans with spray oil
Form each dough ball into a loaf and place into pans
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cover pans with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise until it crests 1 inch above the top of the pan, approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour
Slash the loaves down the middle
Bake on the middle rack for 20 minutes, turn the loaves, and bake another 20 minutes
Remove the loaves from the pans and cool completely on a wire rack

The Caprese Sandwich

2008-08-30T10:25:00.013-04:00

I've been waiting all year for fresh local tomatoes so I could enjoy what has become my absolute, number one favorite sandwich, the caprese. Based on the insalata caprese from the Campania region of Italy, the caprese sandwich is the ultimate example of how a few high quality ingredients can be combined simply to make something truly fantastic. All you need to make this amazing sandwich is a good loaf of crusty, chewy Italian style bread, some tomatoes, fresh mozzarella (preferably mozzarella di bufala), fresh basil leaves, extra virgin olive oil, and some salt and fresh ground pepper.

The key to this sandwich is making sure that you use the best possible ingredients, and that means waiting all year long until the end of summer when you can get the freshest, most delicious tomatoes at the peak of their season. Don't even think about trying to make this with bland, mealy, refrigerated supermarket tomatoes in the middle of winter, you'll regret it. Plus, that extra long wait makes the sandwich that much more special when you finally do have one, and the good thing is, we are in the peak of the tomato season right now! As soon as you're done reading this, I suggest you go get yourself some. Pair the sandwich with a simple salad and a glass of wine and you've got an amazingly light, refreshing, and incredibly tasty summer meal.

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Start with a good loaf of crusty bread, like rustic bread, and cut it in half lengthwise. Ciabatta also works nicely for this sandwich. You don't want to use a narrow loaf here, like a baguette, choose something that is at least 4 to 5 inches wide.

Wash and slice the tomatoes into 1/4 inch thick slices. Slice the mozzarella as well.

Pick some fresh basil leaves off of their stems, rinse and dry them. Get out your best extra virgin olive oil.

Generously drizzle the olive oil over both halves of the bread. Layer the mozzarella slightly overlapping and completely covering one half of the loaf.

Layer the tomatoes over the mozzarella, and sprinkle generously with salt and fresh ground black pepper. Top the tomatoes with a layer of basil leaves.

Top the sandwich with the other half of the bread, slice carefully into pieces, and enjoy!

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Caprese Sandwich
15 minutes - Serves 2 to 4 as a meal depending on appetite

One large loaf of crusty bread (not baguette, something wider)
extra virgin olive oil
about 4 medium size balls of fresh mozzarella, sliced into 1/8 to 1/4 inch slices
2 large, ripe tomatoes (whichever variety you prefer), rinsed and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
10 to 20 leaves of fresh basil, stemmed, rinsed and dried
kosher salt (1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon)
fresh ground black pepper (about 1/4 teaspoon)

Slice the bread in half lengthwise
Generously drizzle olive oil over both halves of the bread
Layer one side of the bread with the mozzarella slices, slightly overlapping and completely covering the bread
Layer the tomatoes over the mozzarella
Sprinkle salt and pepper over the tomatoes, add more or less to taste
Top the tomatoes with a layer of basil
Place the other half of the bread on top, press down slightly and carefully slice the sandwich into as few as 2 or as many as 8 slices (and smaller and it's hard to slice/eat without the sandwich falling apart)

"The Sauce"

2008-08-22T16:40:00.002-04:00

A little over a year ago, my good friend Sal, whom I jokingly refer to as "the most Italian person I know," fondly described to me a yearly activity in which his family used to partake. Every year at the end of the summer, the family would gather together for a weekend, and while the children ran around and played till exhaustion in the August heat, the adults would take perfectly ripe red plum tomatoes and turn them into enough tomato sauce to last the whole year. Throughout the year, whenever his mother wanted to make pasta, Sal was instructed to go to the basement and get a jar of sauce. He lamented that following the death of his paternal grandfather, the yearly tradition of making "the sauce" fell by the wayside.

This story appealed to me for many reasons. I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with tradition. I don't like to do things just because that's the way it has always been done, but on the other hand, I realized that sometimes there is both great wisdom and great satisfaction to be found in "the way it has always been done." In this case, the latter definitely applies. Traditions such as this one go back to a time before highly processed foods, industrial farming, and grocery stores, when it was impossible to have tomatoes in the winter unless you canned them in the summer. I also loved the idea of gathering together and enjoying the company of family and friends centered not around a birthday or holiday, but an activity that directly contributes to the physical sustenance of all involved. We decided to renew this tradition and keep it alive a bit longer. So last August, Sal and I made our first batch of sauce, under the watchful eye of Sal's grandmother. In broken English and perfect Italian, she passed on her years of sauce making wisdom to us (and stopped to make us a huge spaghetti lunch, with bread and salad and everything).

This year we struck out on our own, and despite a few rookie mistakes, turned out a wonderful batch of sauce. I love the idea of starting with whole, fresh ingredients in the peak of their season and turning them into something that can be enjoyed all year long. I enjoy supporting local farms, and knowing that the furthest my tomatoes had to travel was a few miles. Then there is the confidence of knowing exactly what is going into the food as it is processed (whatever I want to be in there). I take pride in the hard day's work and the product we have to show for it. Lastly, and most important to me, is the idea of family and community that is reinforced by an activity such as this one. It is a tradition worth keeping in a time when it seems like all traditions of any worth are quickly being lost, or worse, replaced with cheap, quick, and soulless imitations all for the sake of saving time. Now every time I make a nice tomato sauce this winter, I will think of my friend, the beautiful Saturday we enjoyed, the good conversation we had and the mess we made! And I will dream of the day when our children are reminiscing about the August weekends they enjoyed running around together as their crazy old dads made sauce in the garage. Who knows? Maybe they'll want to learn how to make a few jars for themselves.

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The two stars of this show are mason jars and red plum tomatoes. The jars you can get at most grocery stores, and we picked up the tomatoes at a local farm a few days before making the sauce.

Our equipment consisted of many large pots, a few large plastic buckets, some paring knives, a wooden spoon, a propane tank and burner, and a food mill that Sal's dad had hooked up to an electric motor. We set up everything in my garage and got started around 9 in the morning.

The first step was to wash the tomatoes and cut them into quarters. As we did this we would cut out any rotten spots and tossed any tomatoes that were too far gone.

We put the quartered tomatoes into our pots and plastic containers as we cut them. It took us about 3 hours to quarter our 10 cases (200 pounds) of tomatoes. When we cut them all up, we filled a pot about 3/4 full with tomatoes and then covered them with water. We set the pot on the propane burner to begin stewing the tomatoes.

After about 15 minutes, and a good amount of stirring, the pot came to a boil. At this point we would boil the tomatoes until we determined they were cooked and soft enough to mill.

We took the tomatoes out of the pot with a large strainer basket and placed them in a bowl. We'd let them sit for a few minutes and then pour off some of the excess liquid in order to ensure that our sauce would not be too watery. In the meantime, we'd throw another batch of raw tomatoes into the boiling water. We then used a slotted spoon to feed tomatoes into the hopper of the food mill, straining out even more water.

As the tomatoes passed through the mill, the watery pulp of the tomatoes was pressed into sauce which emptied into another pot. The seeds and peels came out of the end of the augur and we collected those in a bucket.

We then strained the seeds and peels and passed it through the mill three more times to extract the maximum amount of sauce from the tomatoes.

After all the tomatoes were stewed and milled, we had about 12 gallons of sauce in 3 large pots. We added 1/2 cup of salt to each pot and then set one onto the burner, and brought it to a boil. While the sauce was coming to a boil, we set out a bunch of mason jars on a table with some basil which my extremely busy wife so graciously washed. We also finally allowed ourselves a beer at this point.

Into each mason jar we placed about a few leaves of the basil.

Once the sauce came to a boil, we let it boil for 20 minutes, stirring every few minutes to make sure it wouldn't stick and burn on the bottom of the pot.

The boiling sauce was ladled into the jars, which were filled as high as possible, and the tops were screwed on tightly.

We then placed the hot jars into cloth lined boxes to cool, and that was that! We finished around 7 that evening, so the whole process took about 10 hours from start to finish. The sauce (which is really nothing more at this point than crushed tomatoes) is amazingly fresh tasting and bursting with tomato flavor.

It tastes great as is, makes a delicious quick sauce with garlic and oil, works wonderfully in my favorite spaghetti sauce recipe, and is perfect on pizza (see the picture below for a sample of my first use of this year's batch). I use it in any recipe I make that calls for crushed tomatoes, which I don't need to buy in the grocery store anymore.

When it comes down to it, I really enjoy making the sauce as much as eating it. Like making bread, another process I've come to love, I get a profound sense of accomplishment throughout the experience, and feel a deeper connection to, and appreciation for, whole ingredients and how they become the foods and tastes that I love so much.

Spaghetti with Chickpeas and Parmigiano-Reggiano

2008-06-25T09:07:00.016-04:00

Currently, there are two major issues that are affecting my cooking. The first is time, or more specifically, the lack there of, and the second issue is the rising cost of food. Let me tackle these one at a time.

My wife and I had our first child (a lovely daughter) in Fall 2006. By Spring 2007 we had adjusted nicely to having a little person in our midst. I was planning meals and shopping and prepping on the weekend and with little to no real change on my part (other than moving dinnertime up an hour to 5:00). I estimated that I had about 1 hour less to cook and blog on a daily basis, so naturally, I felt that when we had a second child, I could expect a similar reduction in time. Naively, I expected the relationship between children and time to cook to be a linear one.

My wife and I had our second child (a handsome son) two weeks ago, and I've already reassessed my graph (I'm a science teacher, so naturally I love graphs). Unfortunately for my cooking and blogging, the relationship seems to be more of the exponential variety.

So instead of 2 less hours per day to cook and blog, It now seems it will be more like 4 hours less. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I need 4 hours to cook dinner on a daily basis, but I enjoy a leisurely pace when I cook. What does this all mean? Well, since I won't have quite as much time to spend preparing meals, I need to get faster, or find some quicker recipes for those especially tricky nights, or a little bit of both.

That brings me to food prices, which are increasing all over the world. Some basic population ecology applies here. In regards to populations, food is what we call a density dependent resource. Since food production is relatively constant at this point in human history and most arable land is in use, competition for food increases as population increases. In other words, the more members of the population, the harder it is to feed everybody. Well, take a look at what has happened to the world human population over the last 58 years (and projected over the next 42). More people means more food, and with most of our productive land maxed out, and things like the unpredictability of climate affecting farm yields, our world food supply is perilously thin.

Food prices would naturally increase as the population growth out paces production anyway, but it looks even worse due to the relatively recent phenomenon of cheap food. The Green Revolution allowed humans to produce more food than ever before, which drove down prices, enabling rapid population growth. Unfortunately, many of the advances of the Green Revolution (such as heavy use of pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers) are unsustainable. What does it all mean? Basically, the methods by which we cheaply produce mass quantities of food are totally unsustainable and as we revert/convert to other methods of production, there will be inevitable price increases. Yet the world has gotten used to cheap food over the last 60 years, and now access to cheap food is viewed as a natural born right by most, especially Americans (along with cheap energy, cheap water, cheap products, etc.). Well, it appears that the long era of cheap food is over. A major shift in thought along with a deep examination of needs versus wants seems to be in the cards for the human species.

So I have been trying to stock my pantry and come up with some new, quicker meals that might save me a little money as well. An excellent choice to address both of these issues is beans. Beans are a relatively cheap source of protein (especially if you buy them dried, and the soaking is all hands off time) that can be combined with whole grains to provide extremely healthy, fast meals that feature complete proteins. We really like chick peas at my house, so this recipe for linguine with chickpeas and parmesan, with just 5 ingredients and 5 minutes of prep time is a real winner.

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Put a pot of water on to boil. When the water is boiling, add some salt and heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet. Toss the spaghetti in the boiling water and cook until al dente. When the oil is shimmering, add the chickpeas and the crushed red pepper, and toss frequently.

Before you drain the spaghetti, reserve 1/3 cup of the pasta water and add it to the chickpeas. Simmer until the water is just about all evaporated then add the drained pasta and toss to combine everything.

Stir in the Parmigiano and remove the pan from the heat. I like to use Parmigiano-Reggiano (the undisputed king of cheese according to Mario Batali), but it is pretty expensive, so a domestic parmesan cheese is an acceptable alternative in the spirit of thrift (and reducing food miles). Add some black pepper, a little salt, and a little more olive oil. Toss everything together and serve.

Increase the amount of crushed red pepper for a little more kick, or maybe add a minced garlic clove or two with the chick peas for a slightly different take. This dish comes together extremely quickly, and is composed entirely of pantry items, so stock up when the sales are good, and cut back on the weekly grocery bill.

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Spaghetti with Chick Peas and Parmigiano-Reggiano (adapted from cookthink.com)
5 minutes prep - 30 minutes total - Makes 2 large portions

1/2 pound whole wheat spaghetti
3 tablespoons olive oil plus more for drizzling
1 15 ounce can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
salt and fresh ground black pepper
extra cheese for grating at the table (Parm, Romano, Grana Padano, etc)

Fill a large pot with water, bring to a boil, add 2 teaspoons of salt
Heat the oil in a large skilled over medium-high heat
Add the spaghetti to the water and cook until al dente
Add the chickpeas to the skillet with the red pepper and saute tossing frequently for 4 to 6 minutes
Before draining the spaghetti, reserve 1/3 cup of the pasta water, add it to the skillet and simmer until it is just about evaporated
Drain the spaghetti
Add the spaghetti to the skillet, toss to combine everything
Mix in the grated cheese and remove the pan from the heat
Add about 1/4 teaspoon salt and ground black pepper plus a little more olive oil (no more than a tablespoon) to coat the spaghetti, toss to combine everything and serve with extra cheese to grate over the top

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This dish is my second submission to Presto Pasta Nights, a site originally dreamed up by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast, who is again playing host this week. Be sure to check the site on Friday, July 4th for this week's roundup!

Pan-Glazed Chicken with Basil

2008-06-06T06:08:00.012-04:00

Looking for quick, easy, and healthy? Look no further than the Weight Watchers 5 Ingredient 15 Minute Cookbook. Weight Watcher's emphasis on portion control means you can cook the recipe for the desired number of persons (and this recipe is easy to scale up or down depending on your need), and as long as your eating the recommended serving, there's no way you can overdo it. Even if you eat two servings, you're still in pretty good shape. I've tried a few recipes out of this book, and they are all easy (although 15 minutes is a stretch if you're a slow, take-your-time to make sure everything is perfect cook - like me) but this one is my favorite so far. It's amazing how the right combination of ingredients can provide amazing flavor, and this recipe marries balsamic vinegar, honey and basil with outstanding results. The only other things you need are some boneless, skinless, chicken parts, some salt and pepper, and a little olive oil.

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Start with four boneless, skinless chicken breasts, about 6 ounces each (this is pretty small, so you might have to slice 2 large breast pieces in half). I'm sure boneless thighs would be excellent as well, if you don't mind the dark meat, a few extra calories, and a lot more flavor.

I've have to digress a bit here and relate a quick story. Last week when I was shopping for this recipe, I was contemplating my chicken purchase in the store. There was a package of organic boneless, skinless breasts which was a little over 1 1/2 pounds for about $8 and then right next to it there was a 5 lb organic roaster for roughly the same price. Now, the week before when I made barbecued chicken, I bought the parts already cut up to save time since I was making a whole bunch of other stuff (and I felt sufficiently guilty for doing so), but this time I bought the whole bird (much more economical and much less wasteful). I used the breasts to make the pan-glazed chicken, froze the legs and thighs for later use, made 2 quarts of stock from the carcass, and was able to pick enough meat off the boiled carcass to make 3 days worth of chicken salad for my daughter. You hear a lot these days about food prices, and everybody should be concerned about the underlying causes of these problems, but it is possible to get a lot more for your money (and to help the environment too) if you're willing to do a little extra work, and cutting up a whole chicken really isn't THAT hard. Just do it like this:

Okay, digression over (I could go on for another hundred pages about what we're doing to the environment for the sake of "convenience," but I won't - I will show you this though). So where was I? Oh yes, the chicken. In addition to your chicken, you'll need to chop some fresh basil, and mix together the balsamic vinegar and honey in a small bowl.

Heat 2 teaspoons of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Sprinkle the chicken on one side with a little salt and pepper. When the oil is good and hot, it should be shimmering, but not smoking, add the chicken pieces placing the side you salted down in the pan. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the other side of the chicken.

Cook the chicken without moving it for a few minutes, until it begins to become nice and golden brown. Turn the chicken over and cook for a few more minutes. Add the vinegar/honey mixture and the basil, stir it around, and cook for 1 minute, turning the chicken once to coat it in the glaze.

Serve the chicken with some of the glaze drizzled over the top. This chicken goes great over rice, as the glaze mingles nicely with the rice and imparts it's deliciously sweet yet tangy flavor. Bu I'd bet you can serve this chicken with any starch/vegetable combo you can imagine, and you don't really have to worry about flavoring the sides beyond a little seasoning, because the pan glaze from the chicken will do the work for you. This time I served it with some oven-roasted potatoes and some plain steamed broccoli, and it was quite a hit. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go cut up another chicken, because I'm making these for dinner.

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Pan-Glazed Chicken with Basil (adapted from Weight Watchers 5 Ingredient 15 Minute Cookbook)
20 to 30 minutes - makes 4 servings for a light dinner or 2 servings if you're really hungry

About 1 1/2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into 4 pieces about 6 ounces each
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
salt and pepper
2 teaspoons of olive oil

Pat your chicken pieces dry (slice them in half if they are really thick) and place them on a plate
Combine the honey and vinegar in a small bowl, stir well to dissolve the honey
Heat the oil in a large, non-stick skillet over medium heat
Sprinkle the top side of the chicken with salt and pepper
When the oil is hot, place the chicken in the pan salted-side down, sprinkle the other side with salt and pepper
Cook without moving for 5 minutes, or until the chicken is nice and golden brown*
Turn the chicken and cook for 5 additional minutes*
Add the honey/vinegar mixture to the pan along with the basil, stir to combine all ingredients
Cook for 1 minute, turning the chicken to coat it in the glaze
Serve the chicken immediately drizzled with extra glaze

*The cooking time in this recipe is an estimate based on boneless breast pieces about 1/2 to 3/4 inches in thickness and may need to be adjusted for slightly thinner or thicker cuts

Bretzel Rolls (or Bavarian Pretzel Sandwich Rolls)

2008-06-01T09:11:00.021-04:00

Since Memorial Day has become the de facto start of the "summer grilling season," I decided to go with the flow and make barbecued chicken. Almost immediately my mouth began watering as I thought about delicious sandwiches of tangy, warm chicken topped by cool, creamy cole slaw on a nice soft roll. I really love Stop & Shop's Nature's Promise brand whole wheat sandwich rolls for something like this. They're nice and soft, not loaded with all the crap you find in many brands of soft rolls (like high fructose corn syrup, miscellaneous binders, and artificial colors), and are slightly larger than normal burger buns so you can make a nice size sandwich. Unfortunately, many people must not share my love, because the Stop & Shop I regularly shop at usually has only 3 to 4 bags of them at any given time. Sunday morning when I went shopping, they were nowhere to be found in the entire store. Not wanting to settle, I left roll-less with the idea that I'd come back Monday morning and see if some had miraculously appeared overnight.

I guess I should have known that there was no way I'd feel like going back to the store on Monday just to get rolls (when technically, sandwiches were not absolutely essential to the meal, we'd still have the chicken and all the sides), but I really wanted a barbecue sandwich. I believe it was Plato who first described necessity as "the mother of invention" about 2400 years ago, and he was right on the money. Since I was basically too lazy to drive to the store (which is literally 2 miles from my house and takes about 5 minutes to get to), I decided I would bake some rolls. After a few minutes searching on the internet, I settled on an adapted version of this recipe for bretzel rolls, which are basically soft pretzel-like sandwich rolls. I'm not sure what it is that makes somebody too lazy to drive 5 minutes, but willing to enter into a 2 hour roll making process instead, but I'm glad I have that trait because it led to some great rolls (and some great sandwiches too).

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Let me start off by saying that even if you don't bake bread, this recipe is worth a shot. It's not very difficult, doesn't take tons of time, the dough is easy to work with, and you'll be amazed at how deliciously soft and pretzel-ly these rolls come out. You'll be hard pressed not to just keep eating them one after another, trust me. I made my rolls using my Kitchen Aid, but it is by no means necessary, as the mixing and kneading for this recipe is minimal.

Start off by mixing the flour with the yeast (make sure you are using instant yeast, which you can find in the store labeled fast rising, rapid rise, or bread machine yeast, if you use active dry yeast instead you'll have to use a little more than the recipe calls for and proof it first). Combine the melted butter, warmed milk, warm water, and sugar in a bowl and mix until the sugar is dissolved. The recipe calls for 4 cups of all purpose flour, but I substituted 2 cups of bread flour and 1 cup of white whole wheat. I'm sure you could experiment with different types and ratios of flours, but I wouldn't recommend going more than 50 percent whole wheat at first.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until you have a nice, shaggy dough ball.

Using the dough hook, knead for 2 minutes, or alternately, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for 2 minutes. The dough should be smooth, soft, and pliable but not sticky. If it is very sticky, you should knead in some more flour to achieve the proper consistency. Round the dough into a ball.

Using a bench scraper, or a sharp chef knife, cut the dough ball into 2 even pieces. When cutting dough, you want to use downward pressure to cut through the dough, not a back and forth sawing motion. Round the pieces and cut them again. Repeat this process until you have 8 even size dough balls. Cover the balls with a damp towel and allow them to rest for 10 minutes.

Pat the balls into slightly flat rolls about 3 to 4 inches in diameter. Place the rolls on a lightly floured counter, cover them with plastic wrap that has been sprayed lightly with oil, and let them rest for 30 minutes. They will rise a little bit during this time.

While the rolls are resting, preheat the oven, get the baking pans ready, and bring the water to a boil. When the water is boiling, add the baking soda. My advice is to use a deep pan and add the baking soda a little at a time (I used a shallow pan and added it all at once, resulting in an eruption of water all over my stove top and down into my oven, not fun). Boil the rolls two at a time for 30 seconds, turning once. Drain the rolls and place them on the prepared baking sheet (the original recipe said to place them on a lightly oiled baking sheet, but when I make this recipe again, I will use parchment paper sprayed with a bit of oil, as I think this will prevent the bottoms from getting overly browned - I almost burned mine but caught them just in time). Sprinkle the rolls with a bit of kosher salt.

Bake the rolls for 8 to 10 minutes, until they are nicely browned all over. Remove the rolls to a rack and allow them to cool. These rolls are absolutely delicious. They are chewy and slightly sweet, perfect for a sandwich or eating by themselves. I didn't have any leftover, but I've read that you should store them uncovered, for no more than 2 days. If you place them in a covered container, they apparently get soggy (I doubt you'll have leftovers).

You could easily scale this recipe up or down to make more or less, cut the rolls into smaller pieces and use them as dinner rolls, roll the dough into long strips and shape them into pretzels, or anything else you can think of. I bet they would be a huge hit at a children's party. I can't wait to try these out for burgers.

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Bretzel Rolls (adapted from Recipezaar.com)
2 hours start to finish - Makes 8 sandwich size rolls

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast (or 2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast which will need proofing)
1 1/3 cups warm water
2 tablespoons warm milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 quarts of water
1/2 cup baking soda
kosher salt
spray oil (I really like this stuff, the high heat canola is great)

Mix the flour and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer (or a large bowl)
Melt the butter and warm the milk
Combine the butter, milk, water, and brown sugar in a separate bowl and stir until the sugar is dissolved
Add the butter mixture to the flour and stir until all the flour is hydrated and you have a firm, pliable dough ball
Using the dough hook, knead the dough for 2 minutes, or if you're kneading by hand, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 2 minutes
Round the dough into a ball and cut it in half with a bench scraper or chef knife
Continue rounding and cutting 2 more times until you have 8 even dough balls
Arrange the balls on a lightly floured surface, cover with a damp cloth, and allow them to rest for 10 minutes
Pat the dough balls into rolls by slightly flattening them (you should have a semi-flat disc about3 to 4 inches in diameter)
Arrange the rolls on a lightly floured surface about 1 inch apart, cover them with lightly oiled plastic wrap, and allow them to rest for 30 minutes
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees, line one large 3/4 sheet pan, or two 1/2 sheets with parchment paper, spray the paper lightly with oil
In a large stockpot, bring the water to a rolling boil and add the baking soda (make sure the pot is deep enough that it doesn't boil over when you add the baking soda, you may also want to add the baking soda slowly to lessen the chance of boil over)
Drop 2 rolls into the boiling water and boil for 30 seconds, turning once
Remove the rolls from the water with a slotted spoon, drain them, place them on the prepared sheet pans, and sprinkle lightly with salt
Once all the rolls have been boiled, bake on the upper and middle rack of the oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the rolls are nicely browned all over, shifting the pans from top to bottom and front to back halfway through cooking
Remove the rolls and transfer them to a wire rack
Serve warm or at room temperature

Barbecued Chicken and Cole Slaw

2008-05-27T18:44:00.019-04:00

I've eaten a lot of barbecued chicken in my life. I should define terms here - I'm talking about chicken that is grilled over direct heat (be it a propane gas grill or charcoal) and slathered with a tomato-based, sweet and tangy red sauce. I know that barbecue is defined differently by region of the country, but that's what I consider barbecued chicken. Growing up it was a summer staple, eaten at least once a week, with the only change being whatever sauce happened to be en vogue at the moment with my mother and the rest of us. I won't say I don't like barbecued chicken, but I've never been thrilled by barbecued chicken (which didn't stop me from eating 4 or 5 pieces every time I sat down at the dinner table all through my youth).

The problem for me turns out to be one of technique really. As I've found out, there are many ways that barbecued chicken can go wrong, but two main mistakes. First, most people put all their chicken on the grill at the same time and take it off at the same time. If you're cooking both dark and white meat, this almost always results in over-cooked breast meat, and if the white meat was boneless to begin with, as it so often is nowadays, forget about anything resembling juice in the meat. People are so afraid of under cooking chicken that they leave it on the grill way too long. For the chicken's sake people, get an instant read meat thermometer and take the guess work out of it (according to Mark Bittman and the USDA, you can safely remove the chicken from the grill when the internal temp is 165 degrees). Second, most people put the sauce on way too soon resulting in blackened chicken as the sugar in the sauce turns to carbon way before the chicken is done cooking. Unfortunately, continuously bathing the chicken in more sauce does little to combat this error. Dry inside and burned outside, doesn't sound too appealing does it?

Fortunately there is a better way, and I was shown the light once again a few years ago by my friend John. This recipe takes a little more effort than just throwing the chicken on the grill and opening a bottle of sauce, but the effort is well worth it. A spice rub imparts flavor to the chicken without the risk of premature burning, the cooking time is specific by chicken piece, and the sauce goes on right at the end where it caramelizes just every so slightly over low heat. You'll never have to worry about dry, burned chicken again. Cool, creamy, tangy cole slaw provides a perfect counterpoint to the warm, slightly spicy chicken, and if you're so inclined, it makes one heck of a barbecue sandwich condiment. You can make any cole slaw recipe you like, but I like this one from Emeril - Kicked Up Cole Slaw.

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If you're going to make the cole slaw (and I strongly suggest that you do), start with that so it has time to sit in the fridge for a while which allows the flavors to meld. You can even make this a day ahead, just give it a good stir before serving. To make the dressing, whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, brown sugar, cider vinegar, buttermilk, celery seeds, salt, pepper, and cayenne in a bowl.

Shred the cabbage and carrot, dice the green pepper, and grate the onion. Toss the cabbage mixture with the dressing until everything is evenly coated, then cover and place in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Before you make the chicken, you need to make the barbecue sauce, and before you make the barbecue sauce, you need to make the rub, but that's easy. Just combine the following in a mixing bowl and work well to break up any lumps: brown sugar, paprika, black pepper, kosher salt, garlic powder, onion powder, celery seeds, and cayenne pepper. To make the barbecue sauce, combine the following ingredients in a small saucepan: ketchup, cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, molasses, mustard, hot sauce, barbecue rub, liquid smoke, and black pepper (I'm not sure if this is Kansas City or Georgia style sauce).

Bring the sauce to a boil slowly over medium heat then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until the sauce is slightly thickened. Pour the sauce into an empty jar (You do have an empty jar sitting around right?) and store it in the fridge until you need it (since this recipe uses only about a cup of sauce, you'll have leftover sauce that keeps for a few months).

Okay, now you're ready to start the chicken (and of course with chicken make sure you follow all safe handling rules). Rub some spice mixture into each side of each chicken piece (about 1/2 tsp of rub per piece, give or take depending on size). Here I chose to do thighs with the skin removed and boneless, skinless breasts which I had brined. The recipe calls for 1 chicken cut into 8 pieces (legs, thighs, breasts, and wings). Let the chicken sit for 30 minutes. Preheat the grill about 15 minutes before you're ready to cook on medium heat (or start your charcoal long enough ahead to provide a medium-hot fire).

Because I was cooking so many pieces, I decided to do the chicken in batches, first the dark meat, then the white meat. The recipe is written for cooking everything at once, but is easily adapted, just follow the cooking times. Place the dark meat skin side down, cover the grill and allow it to cook for 8 minutes. Do not move the chicken. After 8 minutes, flip the pieces over and cook them for 8 more minutes.

Flip the pieces so they are skin side down again and brush them generously with sauce. Flip them back over and brush the other side with sauce. Move the chicken to a cool part of the grill (I turn off the back burner), cover and let the chicken rest for 2 more minutes.

Take the chicken off the grill (total dark meat cooking time is 18 minutes). The white meat follows the same procedure, but the cooking time is reduced. For bone-in breasts, you would do 6 minutes, flip, 8 minutes, flip, sauce, flip, sauce, 2 minutes, done (total cooking time is 16 minutes). Boneless breasts will cook much quicker (especially if you brine them, which I strongly recommend), something along the lines of about 12 minutes total.

Once the chicken is done, you can eat is as is with whatever sides you like, or you can make barbecue sandwiches! Just slice up some chicken (in this case I just sliced all the white meat) and put some on a nice soft roll (I made some of these).

Top the chicken with a bit of extra sauce and a healthy dollop of cole slaw. I first had cole slaw on a barbecued pulled pork sandwich at Corky's in Memphis and I must say it was nothing short of a revelatory experience for this New England boy.

Mmm...a nice barbecued chicken sandwich with a side of cold whole wheat orzo salad and cold green beans with goat cheese - a perfect summer barbecue menu.

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Barbecued Chicken

1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces
2 tablespoons Basic Barbecue Rub (recipe follows)
1 cup Basis Barbecue Sauce (recipe follows)

Rinse the chicken pieces and pat dry with paper towels
Place the chicken pieces on a large platter, sprinkle rub on both sides (approximately 1/4 tsp per side), and pat the rub into the chicken
Cover the chicken and let it sit for 30 minutes
Prepare a medium-hot fire (coals 2 layers deep or gas grill set to medium)
Place the legs and thighs directly over the fire skin-side down and cook for 2 minutes
Add the breast pieces skin-side down and cook the breasts, legs, and thighs for 6 minutes
Turn all the pieces over and add the wings
Cook all the pieces for 8 more minutes (turning the wings after 4)
Flip all pieces over to original side and baste liberally with sauce
Flip all pieces back over and baste the other side with sauce (the pieces should be skin-side up at this point)
Move the pieces to a cooler area of the grill, put the lid down, and allow the chicken to sit for 2 minutes
Take it off the grill and serve with some extra sauce

Note: Removing the skin from the chicken will help to prevent flare-ups, but if you do keep the skin, you can minimize flare ups by covering your grill or with a spray bottle filled with water

Basic Barbecue Rub

1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup paprika
3 tablespoons black pepper
3 tablespoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons celery seeds
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (1/2 teaspoon if you don't want it too spicy)

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl
Mix with your hands, working to break up any lumps
Store in an airtight container away from heat or light

Basic Barbecue Sauce

2 cups ketchup
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons prepared mustard
1 tablespoon hot sauce
1 tablespoon Basic Barbecue Rub
2 teaspoons liquid smoke
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan
Bring slowly to a boil over medium heat
Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until sauce is slightly thickened
Transfer to a clean glass jar and store in the refrigerator where it will keep for a few months

Chicken Enchiladas

2008-05-19T18:51:00.017-04:00

A few weeks ago my friends Jeff and Becc had a dinner party, which is what my friends and I have instead of plain old parties now that we're all grown up and married and such. The theme was Southwest, Tex-Mex style food, with all it entails. I'm no expert on this particular cuisine, and my restaurant experience in the area is sorely lacking, so I can't speak as to the authenticity of the meal (What is authenticity anyway?), but I can say that everything I ate that night was delicious. There was guacamole, tortilla chips, salsa, cornbread, and two kinds of enchiladas, all homemade (except for the tortilla chips I think), even a chocolate cake with chili pepper for dessert. We made margaritas, drank wine, played Trivial Pursuit (The 16th amendment to the US Constitution gives the Congress the power to "lay and collect taxes on incomes"), and had an all around good time.

One of the enchilada dishes featured chicken, cheese, and onions wrapped in a corn tortilla and smothered in a deliciously not-too-spicy red sauce spiked with generous amounts of chili powder. I thought these were exceptional, and Jeff let me in on his secret recipe (it was Emeril's). I finally got around to making them myself yesterday, and after just finishing the leftovers tonight I can say they were as good as I remembered. Any recipe that comes out this good (not to mention consistent) the first time two different people make it is a keeper in my book.

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This recipe took me about an hour to put together, and then another half hour to bake, so make sure you have some time on your hands before you start. Get all the sauce ingredients together, then heat vegetable oil in a medium saucepan.

Add the flour to the hot oil and stir constantly for one minute, then add the chili powder and cook for another thirty seconds.

Add the tomato puree, chicken stock, oregano, and cumin to the pan. Bring it to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer the sauce for 15 minutes. While the sauce cooks, you can get your filling together, which is a simple mixture of shredded chicken, chopped onion, and grated cheddar cheese. Taste the sauce and season with salt (I added 1/2 teaspoon), then remove it from the heat and whisk it well to make sure the oil is nicely blended. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and heat some more oil in a medium skillet. When the oil is good and hot (not smoking), drop in a tortilla to soften it.

I counted to 10, flipped, counted to 10, then removed the tortilla to a paper towel-lined brown paper bag to drain the excess oil. After softening all the tortillas, you're ready to assemble. Start by dipping a tortilla in the sauce.

Place the dipped tortilla on a plate, top with a generous portion of the chicken filling, then roll it up. Place each enchilada seam-side down in a baking dish. I was able to make 12 enchiladas using small corn tortillas, and fit them all in 9 x 13 baking dish. Top with the remaining sauce and bake for 30 minutes.

When done, carefully remove a few enchiladas (2 or 3 per person should be sufficient unless you're really hungry) with a nice, big spatula and put them on a dish. I'm sure you can come up with some sides on your own, but I went with guacamole and some brown rice that I cooked with chili powder, oil, and a little salt. Garnish with sour cream and you're good to go!

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I followed this recipe exactly as written, so I'm not going to post it here. I couldn't find New Mexico chili powder (to be honest, I didn't really look) so I just used plain old nondescript chili powder - tasted fine to me.

Another satisfied customer...

Sesame Noodles with Stir-fried Tofu and Vegetables

2008-04-26T11:32:00.014-04:00

My friend John recently passed me a wonderful recipe from Cook's Country Magazine for grilled chicken with sesame noodles, which hit the dual bullseye of being both easy to make and extremely good. Cold sesame noodles make a great dinner on a warm spring or summer evening. They can be topped with different meat and veggie combinations, eaten plain as either a main course or a side, and I'm sure leftovers would make and excellent lunch (if you have any leftovers that is - I haven't). This particular recipe gets the flavor just right with a sauce that perfectly blends salty, sweet, spicy, and peanut-y tastes...sounds good right?

The second time I made this recipe, I decided to go the vegetarian route, with excellent results. Topped with stir-fried tofu, and crunchy, colorful red peppers, carrots, and snow peas, this dish is full of healthy fats and protein, and bursting with flavor - a real winner.

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Usually I'm all about mise en place, but I'm comfortable prepping ingredients as I go along with this one, as timing is not too crucial. Just rinse all your veggies before you start and put a large pot of water on to boil and you'll be fine. So go ahead and mince the garlic and ginger, then combine it in a bowl with the soy sauce, rice vinegar, hot sauce, brown sugar, and sesame oil, then whisk everything to combine. Set aside 3 tablespoons of the sauce for later use.

Cut the carrots, red pepper, and tofu, then toss them together with the snow peas and the 3 tablespoons of sauce.

Puree the rest of the sauce with the peanut butter in a blender until smooth.

Put your noodles in the boiling water and slice the scallions while the noodles boil.

Drain the noodles, rinse them with cold water, and then drain them well. Toss the noodles in a large bowl with the pureed sauce and the scallions. If you are not going to be serving for a while, place the noodles in the fridge, just remember to take them out about 15 minutes before you're ready to eat so that they are not ice cold.

Heat the oil over high heat in a wok style pan until it is shimmering. Add the tofu and vegetables and stir-fry for a few minutes, until the vegetables are just tender. Place about 1/4 of the noodles in a bowl and top them with the stir-fried tofu and vegetables.

Here's a picture of the alternative, non-veggie version with chicken. Just marinate some boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1 1/2 pounds) in the separate 3 tablespoons of sauce, then grill them, slice them, and serve them on top of the noodles.

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Sesame Noodles with Stir-fried Tofu and Vegetables (adapted from Cook's Country Magazine)
About 30 minutes - Serves 4

3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons of minced ginger
1/2 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons hot sauce (I use Frank's Red Hot)
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup peanut butter (I suggest a sugar-free, salt-free peanut butter)
1 package of extra-firm tofu (12 to 16 ounces), cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 cups of snow peas
1 large red pepper, cut into matchstick size strips
2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into matchstick size strips
6 scallions (green part only), sliced thin
1 pound Asian noodles (I suggest buckwheat soba noodles)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
salt

Bring a large pot of water to a boil
Whisk the garlic, ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar, hot sauce, brown sugar, and sesame oil in a small bowl, separate 3 tablespoons of sauce and set it aside
Toss the 3 tablespoons of sauce with the tofu, snow peas, red pepper, and carrot
Puree the rest of the sauce with the peanut butter in a blender until smooth
Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt to the boiling water, toss in the noodles, and boil according to package instructions
Slice the scallions
Drain the noodles, rinse them with cold water, and then drain them again
Toss the cooled and drained noodles with the pureed peanut sauce and the scallions (refrigerate if you're not going to serve right away)
Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok-style pan over high heat
When the oil is shimmering, add the tofu and vegetables and stir-fry until just tender, about 4 minutes
Separate the noodles into 4 bowls and top each with 1/4 of the stir-fried tofu and vegetables

Global Warming - It's What's for Dinner

2008-04-22T18:51:00.008-04:00

Happy Earth Day everybody! I wouldn't be much of a biology teacher if I didn't try to make everybody a little more aware of global warming, our looming ecological disaster. What's the problem? Basically, humans have been releasing, and continue to release at ever increasing rates, various greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere. These gases strengthen the natural greenhouse effect responsible for keeping the Earth warm enough to support life. This means that more heat is trapped in the atmosphere which in turn heats the Earth. The consequences of global warming are far reaching and will profoundly affect all human societies over the next 100 years (and beyond). At this point the only thing we can do is reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere and hope it's enough as we've already committed ourselves to at least some degree of warming in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, reducing our emissions is hardly the trend. What's this have to do with food? Check out these tasty articles:

Treading Lighter with Low Carbon Diets - "The global food and agriculture system produces about one-third of humanity's contribution to greenhouse gases. So qu estions about food are shifting from the familiar " Is this good for me?" or "Will it make me fat?" to "Is it good for the planet?""

Killer Cow Emissions - "All told, livestock are responsible for 18% of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, according to the U.N. -- more than all the planes, trains and automobiles on the planet. And it's going to get a lot worse."

Currently, we are all a part of the problem. Will we change our ways before it's too late? We'll see.

Creamy Cheesy Scrambled Eggs

2008-04-18T07:34:00.006-04:00

I was never satisfied with my ability to make scrambled eggs. I tried adding milk or water to the eggs, cooking them in butter or bacon fat, with and without cheese, scrambling them in the pan rather than in a bowl, but the end result was invariably disappointing. If I was making eggs, they were gonna be fried or omelets because I could do those much better. Despite my low scrambled egg self esteem, I'd still try to make a batch every once and a while and with a little inspiration from Alton Brown, finally came up with something pretty good. Alton was making scrambled eggs over a double boiler using very gentle heat and stirring quite a bit resulting in tender, creamy looking eggs. I wasn't ready to go the double boiler route, but I tried lower heat and a bit more stirring than I usually do. The result? My wife regularly asks me for "cheesy scrambles", which has supplanted the omelet as her most requested breakfast.

This technique for making scrambled eggs takes about 10 minutes total and results in eggs that are so tender and creamy that you can literally spread them on toast, which is what I usually do. Scramble the eggs and add them to a cold, nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray. Place the skillet over medium-low heat. Tear a few slices of American cheese into small pieces and scatter the pieces over the egg (I like using Land O Lakes white American cheese, but any white deli-sliced American would probably suffice - just don't use individually wrapped singles which have a weird flavor, a gross plastic texture, and make me nervous just thinking about all that unnecessary packaging). A few grinds of black pepper and you're ready to give the whole thing a stir.

At this point you let them set for a few seconds then give the eggs a good stir. Continue this pattern of setting and stirring until the eggs begin to form small curds. Keep stirring all the eggs to the middle of the pan and chopping them up with the spatula. The eggs are done when they are all pretty much set and just glistening slightly. I suggest spreading them on some good toasted and lightly buttered bread (or english muffins, bagels, etc).

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Creamy Cheesy Scrambled Eggs
About 10 minutes - Serves 2

4 eggs
3 slices white American cheese
fresh ground black pepper
cooking spray

Scramble the eggs in a small bowl
Coat a medium nonstick skillet with cooking spray
Pour the eggs into the skillet and set it over medium-low heat
Tear the cheese into small pieces and scatter it over the egg
Grind pepper over the eggs (I use about 6 twists on my pepper grinder which is a little over 1/8 of a teaspoon)
Stir to combine everything, the cheese should start to melt a bit as you stir
Allow the eggs to set for about 30 seconds, then stir very well, continue this process
As the eggs begin to cook, stir them towards the center of the pan and chop them into bits with your spatula - the idea is to not have any large curds of egg
When the eggs are chopped into uniform consistency and just slightly glistening, they are done, serve immediately

Simple Tomato Sauce

2008-04-12T09:49:00.002-04:00

A nice bowl of spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce, some good quality fresh grated cheese, and a few slices of crusty, chewy Italian bread. Many meals might equal this one, but when properly made, with quality ingredients, none can top it. Making tomato sauce can be a very personal thing, and anybody who has had any experience with Italian cooking (or Italian grandmothers) knows how subjective the business of sauce making can be. Onions or no onions? Meat or no meat? Fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes? Wine? Sugar? Grated carrot? Oregano? Basil? So many options, and everybody has there own definitive rules. My father never put onions in his sauce, so to me, putting onions in sauce seems like heresy and I feel a little guilty whenever I do it (and my brother Dan would scream at me if he saw me). I grew up eating my father's sauce, which almost always contained both meatballs and Italian sausage. His sauce made such a strong impression on me that I still compare all others to it and I've never had another that tastes exactly like it.

My wife doesn't eat meatballs or Italian sausage, and my dad's sauce without the meat just isn't the same. I had to find something else. Most non-meat sauces that I made were either lacking in flavor, too tomato-y, or too sweet. I'd eat them, but I wasn't satisfied. Eventually I found the cure to my meat sauce malady with this Simple Tomato Sauce recipe from A Hunger Artist. There are a few things I really like about this recipe. First is the short list of ingredients. There's nothing fancy here, just a perfect blend of fruity olive oil, good quality tomatoes, pungent garlic, and fresh, fragrant basil. Second is the quick cooking time, only about 20 minutes from start to finish, although you'd never know it from the taste. But the real special trick about this recipe is that you puree the whole thing either in a blender or with an immersion blender. This emulsifies the sauce, so despite the large amount of olive oil, the sauce never separates and does not have that oil slick floating on top of the tomato that an non-emulsified sauce would have. It also has the added effect of turning the sauce a bright reddish-orange color that's sure to elicit oohs (and possibly ahhs as well). To me (highly subjective comment coming), this is the perfect condiment for a bowl of spaghetti. Save the meat sauce for the rigatoni (or the ziti, penne, cavatelli...).

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Start by heating the oil. I add about 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes because I like both the flavor and the little kick that it adds. It's a lot of olive oil, but remember, olive oil is loaded with heart-healthy unsaturated fats, which raise good cholesterol levels. As long as you are not eating this sauce with large amounts of saturated fats (like tons of meat or cheese) you're golden. The overall effect on your cholesterol is even better if the pasta you choose is whole wheat. Okay, I'm off the soapbox now, add the garlic and fry it in the oil for about 2 minutes, until it just begins to lightly brown. If the garlic burns the sauce will be bitter, so be careful here.

Stir in the tomatoes and bring the sauce to a simmer. Simmer it gently for 10 minutes. Remove the sauce from the heat and add the salt and basil.

Using either an immersion blender or a blender, puree the sauce until it is smooth. If you're using a blender, you'll have to do it in batches. And be careful not to overfill the blender when pureeing hot liquids or you may have a mess! As far as saucing the pasta, I think that a ratio of 3 to 1 (cups to pounds) works well. So to sauce 1/2 pound of spaghetti, use 1 1/2 cups of sauce. Drain the spaghetti well then add it back to the pot, add 1/2 cup of sauce and stir. The spaghetti should be very lightly coated with sauce. Separate the spaghetti into 2 bowls and top with the remaining sauce (1/2 cup each). Top with fresh grated cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino Romano are excellent choices) and maybe a little fresh ground black pepper.

Now, Mario Batali would almost certainly disagree with the amount of sauce I've recommended, but I like to have a lot left in the bowl for mopping up with some nice Italian bread. When I don't have any bread to go with the pasta, I would decrease the sauce to pasta ratio to 2 cups to 1 pound.

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Simple Tomato Sauce (adapted from A Hunger Artist)
About 20 minutes - Makes enough sauce for 2 to 4 lbs of pasta depending on how saucy you like it

2 1/2 cans (28 oz each) of whole plum tomatoes (preferably from San Marzano) or 2 cans if you can find 35 oz cans
6 ounces extra virgin olive oil
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
6 cloves garlic, minced
12 leaves of fresh basil, torn into large pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat the oil and the red pepper flakes over medium heat until the oil begins to shimmer, about 4 minutes
Add the garlic and fry for 1 to 2 minutes, until lightly browned and fragrant
Stir in the tomatoes and bring to a simmer
Simmer for 10 minutes
Remove pot from heat and stir in salt and basil
Puree the sauce until smooth

This makes a large pot of sauce. If you are not cooking 2 to 4 pounds of pasta, it freezes beautifully. Just portion it out into individual containers (I like to freeze it in 1 1/2 cup portions) and freeze. When you're ready to use it, defrost it overnight in the refrigerator and reheat gently in a small saucepan. Just don't let the sauce boil when reheating or it might separate.

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Another satisfied customer...

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This dish is my first submission to Presto Pasta Nights, a site run by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast. Check out the awesome blog of June 7 - 12 host Kevin, Closet Cooking.

Tunisian Vegetable Stew

2008-03-29T07:01:00.013-04:00

Until I Googled it a few minutes ago, I had no idea where the country of Tunisia was (turns out it was, and still is, in northern Africa - I was thinking Asia somewhere), and I know pretty much nothing about the country's cuisine. What I do know is that I have a recipe called Tunisian Vegetable Stew, and it's delicious. Whenever I'm in the mood for something that tastes different than pretty much everything else I cook, something that is loaded with interesting flavors and textures, this stew fits the bill. I got this recipe, along with a few others, from my friend John, and I must admit I was skeptical the first time I read it. Cabbage, chick peas, tomatoes, cinnamon, cayenne, currants, lemon, feta, almonds...it sounded like the most outlandish combination to me, but does it ever work.

Among the many qualities of this particular dish, I really appreciate it for both its healthfulness and its ease of preparation. Start to finish it takes only about 30 to 40 minutes, making it perfect for a weeknight meal. Leftovers reheat beautifully for a wonderful lunch, just remember to bring along some extra feta and almonds. Easy, healthy, and delicious, what more do you need?

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Start by heating the olive oil in a large saucepan (at least 3 quart) and cooking the onion until softened, about 5 minutes. You then toss in the cabbage, sprinkle it with salt, and cook it for another 5 minutes.

Add the green peppers, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, and cayenne. Stir to combine and cook for 1 minute. You should smell the cinnamon almost immediately. Stir in the tomatoes, chick peas, and currants. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.

Stir in the lemon juice and season with salt. Serve in bowls topped with feta and toasted almonds.

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Tunisian Vegetable Stew (adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home)
About 40 minutes - Makes 4 servings

1 medium onion, thinly sliced (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cups thinly sliced cabbage
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 large green bell pepper, cut into thin strips
2 teaspoons coriander
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cayenne (1/4 teaspoon if you want a little more heat)
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 16 ounce can chick peas, rinsed and drained
1/3 cup currants
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup feta cheese
1 cup slivered almonds, toasted

Spread 1 cup of slivered almonds on an ungreased cookie sheet and toast in a 350 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes, until almonds are fragrant and slightly browned, set aside
Heat the olive oil over medium heat for 4 minutes
Add the onions and cook until softened, about 5 minutes
Add the cabbage and 1/2 teaspoon salt, cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally
Add the green pepper, coriander, turmeric, cinamon, and cayenne, stir to combine and cook for 1 minute
Stir in the tomatoes, chick peas, and currants
Bring the stew to a simmer, cover and cook for 15 minutes until the vegetables are tender
Stir in the lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon of salt
Ladle stew evenly into 4 bowls and top with 1/4 cup each of feta cheese and toasted almonds

Simmered Brussels Sprouts

2008-03-17T19:35:00.010-04:00

Cruciferous vegetables (family Brassicaceae), more commonly referred as the mustard family of vegetables, or the cabbage family, are somewhat polarizing. People seem to either love broccolis, cabbages, cauliflower, and leafy greens such as kale, or completely hate them, finding them bitter and inedible. Interestingly, cruciferous vegetables contain varying amounts of a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) that can taste anywhere from bland to extremely bitter and vile depending on the genetics of the person eating. I learned about this when my wife (who is also a biology teacher) had a student teacher who brought in some PTC tasting paper during a genetics lesson (see, sometimes you can actually learn something in school). Basically, if you can't stand the bitter taste of these veggies, it might not be your fault, it's in your genes (unless you're just one of those general anti-eat your vegetables people, of course, that attitude is probably in your genes as well - oh determinism!).

The epitome of cruciferous hate seems to be the much maligned Brussels sprout, which is most often portrayed as the evil little veggie that you must eat if you want your dessert. My mother never made them that much, opting for other green vegetables, mainly broccoli and green beans and I developed such a bad opinion of Brussels sprouts that I don't think I actually tried one until sometime in my twenties. When I did I was pleasantly surprised that I liked them, but still failed to incorporate them into my diet. A few weeks back I wanted a side to go with roasted chicken and for some reason Brussels sprouts popped into my head. As I usually do when I choose to prepare an ingredient that I'm not especially familiar with, I turn to my preferred kitchen reference, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. There was the usual excellent reference info, but only one sprout recipe called "Simmered Brussels Sprouts" which admittedly does not sound very exciting, but is really a very good vegetable side, and an excellent accompaniment to any roasted meat, or something like macaroni and cheese. For those of us that are not appalled at the presence of PTC in our food, cruciferous vegetables like Brussels sprouts, aside from being delicious, have a bevy of health benefits.

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Start by bringing a pot of water to a boil. Drop in the sprouts and boil gently until they just begin to soften up, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, peel and crush the garlic, mince the parsley, juice the lemon, and measure out the bread crumbs.

Drain the sprouts. You want to finish this dish just before serving, so if you're not ready to eat, hold the sprouts in some cool water, then drain again before finishing the dish. When you're ready, heat some olive oil in a skillet with the garlic.

Add the sprouts along with the bread crumbs , toss to combine, and warm everything through for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the parsley and lemon juice, season to taste with salt and fresh ground black pepper, and serve immediately.

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Simmered Brussels Sprouts (very slightly adapted from How to Cook Everything)
About 20 minutes - Makes 4 servings

1 to 1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 1/2 tablespoons plain bread crumbs
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of water to boil and salt it
Add the sprouts and cook until just tender, about 10 minutes
Drain and place them in cool water if you're going to hold them for more than 5 minutes before finishing (you can store them in the fridge like this up to 2 days)
Heat the oil and garlic in a large skillet over medium heat
When the oil starts to shimmer and you can smell it (about 3 to 4 minutes), add the sprouts and bread crumbs, toss to mix, and cook, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes
Add the parsley and lemon juice, toss to coat, season with salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately

Rustic Bread

2008-03-08T10:14:00.024-05:00

I have not purchased a loaf of bread (except for a day old ciabatta to make croutons) in three weeks. It's taken me about 2 months of reading and practice, but I can now produce all the bread I need for a week over the weekend. When I decided I wanted to start baking my own bread, this was my only real goal. Now that I've been baking bread though, I must say it's become quite an addictive hobby, and the desire to turn out better and better loaves seems to haunt me lately on a daily basis. The really amazing thing I've learned so far about baking bread is that the most minute changes in ingredients or techniques can have major effects on the finished loaf. It is because of this fact that almost endless experimentation is possible. I can see myself baking the same recipe 20 times in a row, every time changing some little nuance just to try and get the bread to be all it can be.

My bread baking breaks down into 2 basic categories. First, are what I've been referring to as sandwich breads, of which oatmeal bread would be a good example. These breads are usually enriched, deriving some of their flavors from additions like honey or butter, and are baked in loaf pans. Second, are artisanal breads, of which ciabatta would be a good example. Artisanal bread baking basically refers to the idea that the breads are hand crafted, and elevates bread baking almost to an art form. These breads are usually baked on the floor of a stone oven, or stone tiles in a home oven. They typically feature beautiful crusts, a somewhat open, airy, crumb, and derive their flavor from sugars that are the result of fermentation by yeast and bacteria, and from enzyme action. This process takes time, so artisan loaves can't be made extremely quickly. Most involve some type of starter, a long fermentation period, or a combination of both in order to maximize flavor.

My early attempts at artisanal style baking were focused on ciabatta, with mixed results. I definitely need to keep experimenting (and I will). Last week though I decided to try a recipe I found on The Fresh Loaf website for something called rustic bread. The results were my first loaves that I was truly proud of. They looked beautiful and tasted even better. So of course I have a batch in the oven right now as I write this to see if I could repeat my success or if maybe I just got lucky that first time. I'll let you know how it turns out at the end of the post.

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The recipe starts the day before you want to bake the bread with a starter. Mix the bread flour and salt, and stir the yeast into the water.

Add the yeast/water mixture to the flour and stir until all the flour is hydrated. Add a little water if there is still flour on the bottom and sides of the bowl. Cover the starter with plastic wrap and leave it out overnight (up to 16 hours, then refrigerate if you're not ready to continue).

The next day make the main dough by mixing bread flour, whole wheat flour, salt, yeast, and more water until all the ingredients are hydrated.

Dump the starter onto a board and chop it into a bunch of tiny pieces, if it sticks to the board a bit, use your bench scraper, but resist the urge to add extra flour (so far in my limited experience, erring on the slightly wetter side of things makes for better bread).

Add the chopped up starter to the main dough and knead by hand for about 10 minutes or with the dough hook of your mixer for about 5 minutes. Again, this dough is pretty wet (which is referred to in bread baking as "slack dough") and can be hard to knead by hand, but try not to add too much flour.

Put your dough into an oiled bowl and allow it to ferment for 2 1/2 hours. I turn the thermostat in my house up to 70 degrees when I'm fermenting but if it's cooler in your house you might need to let it go a bit longer. According to Peter Reinhart, fermentation time doubles with every 17 degree Fahrenheit decrease (and halves with an equivalent increase). So adjust your fermentation time according to the temperature in your house. After 60 minutes, lightly punch down your dough and flatten it into a large rectangle.

The dough is then folded which helps the gluten to develop. Folding is a great technique for working with slack doughs since they are hard to knead due to their high water content (very sticky). By the end of the second folding, you should be able to feel the development of the dough (it will feel stretchy) and be much easier to handle when its time for shaping.

Cut the dough into two even pieces (I'm still getting the hang of this - I swear I'm always cutting exactly evenly, but it never seems to turn out that way). Shape the pieces (I made batards) and place them on a floured peel or parchment paper on the back of a sheet pan and let them proof for about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. About 45 minutes before baking, preheat the oven (and your baking stone if you have one) to 450 degrees.

The loaves will noticeably swell. Slash them, spritz them with water and put them onto your baking stone. After 30 seconds open the oven and spray the walls, the back of the oven, and the loaves. Be careful not to get any water on the oven glass, as it will shatter (I found this out the hard way and it cost me over $200). You can also put a pan of water on the bottom rack of the oven to create more steam. I used to preheat the oven with the pan inside and throw the water into the pan to create a burst of steam, but this is how I shattered my oven door, so now I heat the water in the pan on the stove top until just about to boil, then I place the pan into the oven. It doesn't create that burst of steam, but it keeps the oven environment a little more humid during the first few minutes of baking which helps promote good crust development. Rotate the loaves after 15 minutes and continue to bake another 10 minutes. The internal temperature of the bread should be 205 to 210 degrees and the bread should be nicely browned. If the bread is browning too quickly, try turning down the oven temperature. Cool the bread completely on a rack.

Once the bread has cooled, slice and enjoy! This bread is fabulous, with a crisp, chewy crust and a terrific crumb.

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So my second batch of rustic bread has long since come out of the oven, cooled, and been eaten (one loaf at least), and I think I can safely say that this recipe is a total winner. The bread was just as delicious as the first time, and baked up beautifully as well. I made 3 smaller loaves instead of 2 larger ones, which would have been fine had I not tried to proof them all on one peel and bake them at the same time. There wasn't quite enough room in my oven to maneuver and the loaves ended up touching each other for the first few minutes of baking until the were set enough that I could open the oven door and separate them with my bench scraper. The end result was pretty much cosmetic only, as some of the crust on the sides of the bread did not properly brown. The loaves also may have been a little higher if I hadn't had to handle them so much on the peel before putting them in the oven (they were a little too close for comfort after proofing and I tried to slide them apart with limited success). I'll make this one again the next 2 weekends just to be sure, but I think this is going to become my first "go to" bread when I need something extra special to put on the table.

Now that I had some great bread, I needed a meal to go with it. I had a few leftover shrimp in the freezer, so I made a modified scampi style dish. Lots of olive oil, garlic, and crushed red pepper over whole wheat sphaghetti.

When I finished my bowlful there was all this garlicky, peppery oil left in at the bottom. The rustic bread performed admirably.

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If you're interested in baking bread, but never have before, it might be best to read through this excellent tutorial before attempting this recipe.

Rustic Bread (slightly adapted from Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes)

2 days (about 1 hour total hands on time)

For the starter:

16 ounces bread flour
9 1/2 ounces of water, room temperature (~70 degrees)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon instant yeast

For the main dough:

10 ounces bread flour
6 ounces whole wheat flour
12 1/2 ounces water, room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
all of the starter

Make the starter the night before you want to bake (or very early in the morning):

Stir the yeast into the water
Mix the flour and the salt
Add the water mixture to the flour mixture and stir until all the flour is hydrated (no loose flour in the bowl). Add a few drops of water to pick up the last bits of flour if necessary
Cover and allow to sit at room temperature for 12 to 16 hours (refrigerate after 16 hours if you're not ready to bake

Make the dough, ferment, shape, proof, and bake the bread:

Combine all of the dough ingredients except the starter in a large bowl (or the bowl of your mixer) and stir until all the flour is hydrated
Cut the starter into small pieces and add it to the dough
Mix the starter into the dough by kneading. If using a mixer, mix with the dough hook on the suggested speed for 5 minutes (I knead on 2 in my Kitchen Aid). If kneading by hand, knead for about 10 minutes. Try keeping your hands wet so the dough doesn't stick, this will also offset any flour you may add while kneading.
Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, and allow it to ferment for 2 1/2 hours
After 1 hour, empty the dough onto a floured surface, gently spread it into a rectangle and fold it in thirds like a letter then rotate the dough 90 degrees and fold again, place the dough back in the bowl. Repeat this process after 2 hours of fermentation.
After the dough has fermented, divide it into 2 equal pieces, shape them into either boules or batards, and place them on a floured peel or an upside down baking sheet with parchment paper and cover them with a towel.
Allow the loaves to proof for 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours
45 minutes before baking, preheat your oven and stone (if you're using one) to 450 degrees
Slash the loaves, spray them with water, and put them into the oven (either directly onto the stone or bake them on the back of an inverted baking sheet). Use whatever method you prefer for creating steam. I suggest placing an oven-safe pan (like cast iron) with about 1 cup of simmering water on the bottom rack of the oven below your stone.
After 30 seconds, open the oven and spray the oven walls, back of the oven, and the loaves themselves with water. Repeat this 2 more times in 30 second intervals.
Allow the bread to bake for 15 minutes then rotate the loaves.
Bake 10 additional minutes (watch the bread at this point to make sure it's not browning too quickly) and check the temperature of the bread, it should be over 200 degrees, ideally 205 to 210. If the loaves are brown but have not reached an ideal internal temperature, lower your oven temperature and try to continue baking (if you think they're about to burn, then remove them). The total baking time for this bread can be anywhere from 20 to 35 minutes depending on the oven (In my oven the bread is almost done after 20 minutes).
Allow the bread to cool completely on a rack.
If you're going to save bread more than 1 day, wrap it in a double layer of plastic wrap upon cooling and freeze. To use, take bread out of the freezer a few hours before you wish to eat it. Just before eating, place unwrapped bread in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes.

Red, Gold, Black, and Green Chili

2008-03-05T09:16:00.017-05:00

I never would have been able to break away from my meat-centric view of dinner if it had not been for some good recipes. When I first started cooking on a regular basis (which not coincidentally, was when I moved out of my parent's house), I had the good fortune of receiving some excellent recipes from my friend John. Many of these recipes introduced me to exotic (at least to me at the time) ingredients like turmeric and bulgur, as well as such cooking concepts as different textures in food and brightening up flavors with acids at the end of cooking. More importantly they broke me out of my narrow cooking frame of reference. Recipes that I would have dismissed out of hand before because I thought they had strange flavor combinations or unfamiliar ingredients I was now ready to accept and try. I was fortunate to have such a good influence during my formative cooking period.

Since that time I've come to know John as a food lover on par with myself (and more so in some respects). Somebody who appreciates well-made food, who really considers ingredients and the effects they have on a finished dish, and who is willing to give almost anything a try. From him I picked up the idea that cooking is much more than simply being able to follow a recipe, that the more command you have over ingredients and techniques, the more likely you are to prepare excellent food to your particular tastes. He also showed me that it is possible to tackle seemingly long or complex preparations at home if you're just willing to try (and that it is often worth the time to do so). John has passed more than a few good recipes my way over the past 7 years, but some of those originals are still staples in my repertoire, and none more so than Red, Gold, Black, and Green Chili.

When it comes to healthy eating, it's tough to beat this chili. It's loaded with vegetables (green peppers, tomatoes, and corn), whole grain (bulgur wheat), and protein (red and black beans), and most importantly, it tastes so good, you won't miss the meat (and neither will your heart). It even looks amazing. This chili is easy enough to make on a weeknight, as it comes together very quickly once the chopping is done and the cooking starts, but why not make it on the weekend so it can sit a few days and get even better? Make it Sunday morning, eat it 2 times for dinner during the week, or take it for lunch. Put leftovers into a tortilla for a quick burrito, or put a little in the middle of an omelet for something different.

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I've adapted this recipe slightly over the years to get it just how I like it, and that's the way I'll present it here, but nothing is set in stone (especially spice types and amounts) so feel free to experiment. The recipe begins with mise en place. Peel, seed, and chop everything, measure out your bulgur, spices, and water, rinse and drain the beans, then get the bulgur cooking.

Heat the oil in a large pot and then add the onions, garlic, and spices. The recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, which gives a mild but noticeable heat that builds as you eat. If you like spicy chili, I would increase it to 1/2 teaspoon. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions begin to soften, about 5 or 6 minutes.

Add the green peppers and cook for 2 minutes then stir in the tomatoes. The original recipe called for a can of chopped tomatoes but I use crushed because I like the chili to be a little more saucy. If you'd prefer less sauce, and more chunks of vegetables, by all means use chopped tomatoes (and if you're making this in the summer, buy some fresh tomatoes and forgo the can altogether).

Stir in the corn and beans, and check the bulgur (which should be cooked but still a bit chewy at this point).

Add the bulgur to the pot, stir and gently heat everything a few minutes to combine all the flavors. Add salt to taste (I usually don't add any, but when I do, I start with 1/2 tsp and go from there).

The chili is good by itself (and healthiest), but it certainly can be dressed up however you like. Cheese, sour cream, chopped fresh jalapenos or onions, or some lime juice would all be good additions. Regardless of what I put on top, I like to serve it with a few tortilla chips.

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Red Gold Black and Green Chili (adapted from Moosewood Cooks at Home)
About 40 minutes - Makes about 10 cups (5 dinner size portions)

1/2 cup bulgur
1 1/2 cups hot water
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 cups chopped onions (about 1 1/2 medium onions)
3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (increase if you want spicy chili, but watch out)
2 green bell peppers, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes
2 cups frozen cut corn
1 14 ounce can of black beans, drained and rinsed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 14 ounce can of red beans, drained and rinsed (about 1 1/2 cups)
salt to taste
OPTIONAL - shredded Monterey Jack or cheddar cheese, sour cream, sliced limes, chopped fresh cilantro, chopped fresh jalapeno peppers, chopped fresh onions, tortilla chips

Place bulgur and hot water in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat
Add the onions, garlic, cumin, chili powder, and cayenne, cook until the onions begin to soften, about 5 minutes
Add the green peppers and cook for 2 minutes (3 if you want the peppers softer)
Add the crushed tomatoes and stir to combine
Stir in the corn and beans
Check the bulgur, it should be cooked but still a bit chewy, add it along with its liquid to the chili
Cover and simmer over low heat for 5 minutes
Add salt to taste (start with 1/2 teaspoon and go up from there in 1/2 teaspoon increments)
Serve plain, or topped with any combination of cheese, sour cream, lime juice, cilantro, jalapenos, onions, and tortilla chips

*This chili is better made in advance and allowed to sit for at least 1 day before gently reheating and serving*

Rigatoni Bolognese

2008-03-01T20:43:00.015-05:00

My wife went away with some friends for the weekend, and well, I'm sure you know the old saying, "while the cat's away, the mouse will play." Of course, playing for me means cooking, and my wife being away means I can indulge all my meatiest kitchen fantasies. You see, my wife is in some state of quasi-vegetarianism (mainly for taste/texture reasons), and as far as meat goes only likes fish (as long as it's relatively mild tasting, with no skin, cooked well, etc.) and chicken (as long as there's no bones, skin, cartilage, the chicken wasn't a jerk while it was alive, you get the idea). Since I do all the cooking and she does just about everything else, and expertly I might add, it's a bit hard for me to justify cooking a meaty meal that she can't eat after a hard day of doing more things than there can possibly be time to do in a 24 hour day, especially one that takes hours on end for me to prepare, meaning I won't be helping with anything else - so suffice to say, I've never made Bolognese sauce (How's that for a run on sentence?).

I'd been fantasizing about a rich, meaty Bolognese ever since I saw my not-so-secret crush, Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, make it on a truly mouth-watering episode of Lidia's Family Table. She then uses her meaty masterpiece to assemble a truly amazing lasagna with homemade spinach noodles. I've seen this episode at least 3 times, and always say at the end of the episode when she plates a humongous piece of lasagna that is oozing not with cheese, but with what appears to be a molten layer of meat, that "I'd pay at least $100 to eat that right now". Yeah, I know, I get a little carried away sometimes.

This weekend provided me the perfect opportunity to indulge myself. I had already planned on making a few loaves of rustic bread which would complement the Bolognese perfectly and I found the recipe from the show I'd seen, all I had to do was get to the store Saturday morning and pick up a few things. I hadn't really considered that it might be difficult to pull off a relatively labor intensive and time consuming recipe, while taking care of a one-year-old girl by myself (which as it happens, is a quite labor intensive and time consuming, but overall very cute, experience). And of course when I woke up Saturday morning, there was 4 inches of snow on my driveway just to make things more interesting. But I was not to be deterred. I was out there clearing the driveway at 5:30 before the baby woke up, and after a changing, a feeding, some grocery-list making, and a story being read, I made it to and home from the grocery store by 9 A.M. The next 7 hours were a flurry of bread baking, sauce babysitting, UConn basketball, and not least of all, baby maintenance (with an assist from my father). But in the end, I had my meat fix, and all the (admittedly minor) hurdles were definitely worth it.

One warning here, while this recipe can be described by many adjectives, quick is not one of them. Get ready to spend about 4 to 5 hours on this one. Lidia's recipe calls for ground beef and pork. I picked up some organic ground beef, but there was no ground pork at the grocery store , and I was informed by the butcher that they would not do any grinding. So I bought some boneless organic pork chops that looked like they had a decent amount of fat, cubed them, and pulsed the cubes in the food processor until they resembled ground pork.

Lidia loves to cook by building flavors, adding ingredients to the pan a few at a time allowing them to caramelize and contribute their own little signature flavors before adding more ingredients. The first layer of her Bolognese recipe is a pestata of pancetta (I used bacon) and garlic. Pestata is an Italian verb that means to crush, grind, or pound. The bacon and garlic cloves are indeed ground into a fine paste in the food processor.

The pork and ground beef get broken up by hand and mixed together, then some dry white wine is added and the meat is mixed again ensuring that all the meat is moistened by the wine.

While the food processor is out, give it a rinse and use it to make quick work of the onion and celery, which need to be minced. Add the olive oil and pestata to a large pot (Lidia recommends a 6-qt capacity dutch oven - I halved the recipe and used a 4-qt which was plenty big) and place it over medium-high heat.

After about 3 minutes, when there is a good amount of fat rendered into the pan, add the onions and saute until they start to wilt, about 3 or 4 minutes.

Add the shredded carrot and celery. Cook, stirring frequently, until everything is wilted and golden, about 5 minutes.

At this point comes another one of Lidia's favorites, the "hot spot." Move all the vegetables to the side of the pan so you can see the bottom, this is the hot spot, then add the meat to the hot spot. Since it is in contact with the bottom of the pan, rather than the vegetables, it can get brown and caramelized a bit (as you can see from my pictures, I didn't do this very well). Mix the meat around and make sure it all gets its turn near the bottom of the pan.

The meat releases quite a bit of juice, and the next 30 minutes of cooking are dedicated to simmering that juice right out of the pan. You should also begin heating the milk at this point if you have not already done so. After most of the juice has evaporated, make another hot spot and add the tomato paste.

Add enough milk to just cover the meat, bring to a simmer, then cover the pan. From this point the sauce simmers for the next 3 hours (yep, 3 hours). Stir every 20 minutes, or more frequently, making sure nothing is sticking to the bottom. Whenever you need to add more milk to bring the liquid level up, do so. The idea here is to continually reduce the liquid concentrating the flavors in the meat more and more. If you run out of milk, Lidia suggests hot water or turkey stock (I used about 1/2 cup of chicken stock instead). The picture on the right shows the sauce after about 1 hour of simmering. I deviated from the recipe here and added about 1 1/4 cup of crushed tomato because I wanted my Bolognese to have just a little more red color and tomato flavor. I think it was a nice addition.

After 3 hours you should have a thick, almost creamy looking, meat sauce. Right before you finish cooking, taste it and add a bit of salt (I added 1 teaspoon) and ground pepper to taste. Serve over pasta. Tagliatelle is the traditional pairing, but I thing any hearty, wide, or ridged pasta will do okay (no angel hair). I obviously went with rigatoni, which is my favorite macaroni shape. Just drain the pasta, add a ladle full of sauce to the empty pot, and stir the drained pasta back in. Serve in bowls with a healthy scoop of Bolognese on top. A little parmigiano reggiano (or whatever grating cheese you like) and you're good to go.

This is really a great sauce. Time consuming yes, but definitely worth it. The meat flavor is intense but not overwhelmingly so, and the sauce is rich, but not so heavy that you start to feel sick after a few bites. I can't even imagine how good a lasagna with this sauce would be. Make sure you have some good bread to mop up any sauce left in the bowl. This isn't a bread post, but the rustic bread that I baked to go with this dinner unbelievably stole the Bolognese's thunder a bit. It was so good, definitely the best I've ever baked, that I didn't even want to wipe sauce all over it, I just wanted to taste the bread. Chewy crust, perfectly tender crumb, a truly great bread (I tossed a picture down below because I'm just so darn proud of this bread). But I digress...I will definitely be making Bolognese again at some point (and until then I have a little stocked away in the freezer to hold me over until the wife's next getaway).

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Bolognese Sauce (adapated from Lidia's Family Table)
About 4 1/2 hours - Makes 1 1/2 to 2 quarts of sauce, enough to dress about 2 to 2 1/2 lbs of pasta for 6 to 8 servings depending on size

1 lb ground beef (Ideally 85% lean)
1 lb ground pork (Ideally 85% lean)
1 cup dry white wine
3 ounces bacon or pancetta
3 large garlic cloves
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 medium onion, minced
1 large rib celery, minced
1 medium carrot, grated
3 tablespoons tomato paste
4 cups hot milk (the more fat, the richer your sauce will be, don't use skim)
About 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, or more to taste if you like nutmeg
1 1/4 cups crushed tomato
1 cup (or more) hot chicken stock, or hot water
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put all the meat in a large mixing bowl and crumble/mix with your hands
Pour the wine over the meat and mix until it's evenly moistened
To make the pestata, cut the bacon into one inch pieces and combine in a food processor with the garlic then pulse until you have a fine paste
Add the olive oil and pestata to the pan
Put the pan over medium-high heat and stir to break up the pestata, cook until a good amount of fat has rendered and everything is sizzling and fragrant, about 4 minutes
Stir in the onions and cook until they begin to sweat, about 3 minutes
Stir in the celery and carrot and cook the vegetables until wilted and golden, stirring frequently for about 5 minutes or more
Raise the heat a bit, create a hot spot by clearing some space on the bottom of the pan, and place all the meat in the hot spot
Brown the meat in the hot spot then stir it in with the vegetables
The meat liquid will almost cover the meat, cook at high heat, stirring often, until all the liquid has evaporated, about 30 minutes (lower the heat as the liquid diminishes so as not to burn the meat)
Slowly heat the milk and stock in separate pans
When the meat liquid is gone, create a hot spot and add the tomato paste, cook it in the spot for a minute, then blend it with the meat and cook for 2 minutes
Stir in the crushed tomato and cook for 1 minute
Add the hot milk until it just covers the meat
Stir in the nutmeg
Stir extremely well, making sure to scrape all caramelized bits from the bottom of the pan (this will be the generally rule for stirring from now until the end of the recipe)
Bring to a lively simmer, cover, reduce the heat and simmer for 3 hours
Check the sauce every 20 minutes, give it a good stir, and add milk to cover the meat if necessary (The sauce should be reducing by about a cup between each addition of milk, if this is happening very slowly, increase the heat, if it's happening very quickly, lower the heat)
About 5 minutes before the end of cooking, taste and season with salt and pepper (about 1 teaspoon of salt and 10 to 15 grinds of pepper should do it, add more to taste)
Stir well and serve over pasta of your choice (a wide noodle or hearty, ridged macaroni shape is recommended)

*Note* The amounts given in this recipe have been halved from the original recipe

Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry

2008-02-26T16:09:00.010-05:00

As far as quick cooking goes, it is tough to beat stir-frying. Heat your wok or wok-style pan as hot as you can get it, add some peanut oil (or some other oil with a high smoke point) throw in some meat (if you want) and veggies, cook until everything is slightly soft, add your sauce and stir until it thickens and that's it. Usually this takes about 10 minutes from start of cooking to finish, give or take a few minutes depending on what it is exactly that you are stir-frying (meats and soft vegetables go quickly, hard veggies like broccoli take a bit longer).

There are many benefits to stir-fry cooking. Stir frying is an excellent way to work a variety of vegetables into a meal (and to use up any extra veggies you may have hanging around), and more vegetables is never a bad thing. While the word fry conjures thoughts of fat-laden, greasy fare, stir fried food is anything but fatty and greasy. Aside from the fact that the amount of oil used is minimal (usually just a few teaspoons or tablespoons for the entire meal), peanut oil is high in monounsaturated fats which have been shown to lower blood LDL (the "bad" cholesterol) while increasing blood HDL (the "good" cholesterol). Serve over a whole grain rice and help that heart even more. Lastly, stir frying is a fast and easy dinner that can be made even more convenient with some advance preparation.

To keep your stir-frying healthy you definitely want to avoid most of the prefabricated stir-fry sauces available in the grocery store, as they are usually loaded with tons of sodium and other undesirables. Stir-fry sauce is quick and easy to make at home (and has a much cleaner flavor). Most sauces are a combination of soy sauce, garlic, vinegar, sugar, and salt with other options like ginger and various spicy elements often playing a role. You can use pretty much whatever meats, vegetables, or combinations of both that you like. Generally, you want to cook the meats first to sear the outside, then add the vegetables (harder vegetables go in before softer vegetables). Sometimes you may want to remove the partly cooked meat from the pan before adding the veggies and then adding it back in before the sauce so as not to overcook the meat. Play around with different combinations and sauce ingredients until you find something that you really love.

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If you know you're making this stir-fry during the week, you can chop the vegetables ahead of time (except for the onion), that way when you're ready to cook all you'll have to do is chop the onion and make the sauce. You can go start to finish in under 30 minutes (take that Rachael Ray), just don't forget to start the rice!

Mise en place is essential with stir-fry as the cooking goes extremely fast and you won't have time to chop or make the sauce once you start cooking. Begin by chopping everything into bite size pieces and making the sauce. Heat your pan over high heat and add the peanut oil.

Add the onion and a pinch of salt, fry for about 1 minute then add the chicken.

Once the chicken is no longer pink on the outside (about 2 minutes), add the broccoli. After about 3 minutes, toss in the rest of the veggies.

When all the veggies are slightly softened (they should be tender, but NOT mushy), add the sauce. Stir constantly until the sauce thickens and nicely coats all the vegetables and the chicken. This will take 2 to 3 minutes.

Put some rice in a bowl, top with some of your chicken and veggies and serve.

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Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry (adapted from The New Moosewood Cookbook)
About 30 minutes - Serves 4

For the sauce:

1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
1 1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon grated ginger
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cider vinegar
2 tablespoons dry sherry or rice wine
3 tablespoons cornstarch

2 medium heads of broccoli, cut into bite-size florets
2 red peppers, chopped into 1 inch pieces
2 cups of snow peas
2 cups of baby corn, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
2 chicken breasts, skin and bones removed, chopped into 1 inch cubes
2 tablespoons peanut oil
About 3 cups of cooked rice

To make sauce: combine all ingredients except cornstarch in a small bowl
Place the cornstarch in a separate small bowl, and whisk in the mixture from step 1, set the sauce aside until needed (you may need to re-whisk before adding to the pan)
Heat a large wok or wok-pan (or a deep skillet) over high heat for 1 minute
Add the oil, then the onion and about 1/2 teaspoon of salt, stir fry for one minute
Add the chicken, stir-fry until no longer pink, about 2 minutes
Add the broccoli, stir-fry for 3 minutes
Add the rest of the vegetables, stir-fry until everything is tender (but not mushy) about 3 to 4 additional minutes
Whisk the sauce and add it to the pan, stirring constantly until sauce thickens and all the vegetables are shiny, about 2 to 3 minutes
Remove from heat and serve over prepared rice

Oatmeal Bread

2008-02-23T16:56:00.017-05:00

When it comes to lunch, I'm a sandwich guy. I eat a sandwich for lunch almost every day, and it's to the point where if I don't eat a sandwich, I feel like I'm missing something. It doesn't matter how delicious the leftovers are from last night's dinner, when it comes to lunch today, I'd rather have a peanut butter and jelly (which is pretty much what I eat every weekday - not that soggy jelly on wonder bread kind of sandwich though, I never did dig that). If there is bread available at any meal, I pretty much always make a sandwich. My perfect eating day begins with an egg sandwich, continues with a fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil sandwich on fresh ciabatta, and ends with a burger (which may or may not be a sandwich, but it's close). I've eaten sandwiches from tons of different restaurants, delis, lunch trucks...you get the idea, and there's invariably one thing that sets apart a good sandwich from a great sandwich, no matter what the filling, and that of course is the bread.

When it comes to my weekday sandwich, which as I said is usually PB & J, but occasionally could be something like egg salad, leftover chicken, or other leftover meats, I'm looking for a bread that is whole grain and nutritious without being overly dense and dry. I've been eating Stop & Shop's Nature's Promise Whole Wheat Bread pretty consistently for about a year now, and while it's very good bread, I still have that feeling that I could be doing better. One of my goals when I got into bread baking a few months ago was to one day be baking my sandwich bread on a weekly basis. Towards that end I've begun trying out some enriched dough, loaf bread recipes. Enriched means that the dough is made richer and more flavorful by the addition of milk, eggs, butter, fruit, etc. as opposed to just using flour, yeast, and salt and relying on fermentation and enzyme action to coax sugars out of the wheat for flavor. I started last week with the whole wheat bread recipe on the back of the King Arthur Flour bag. It had a very noticeable wheat flavor that's almost completely absent from the bread I'd been eating, which I enjoyed immensely. The bread was a bit on the dense side, but not dry at all and still in the acceptable part of the denseness spectrum (which only exists in my mind). I will be making it again in the future. Today I tried another recipe, Oatmeal Bread.

I got the recipe for this bread on a site called The Fresh Loaf where is was posted by another site user who got it originally from The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. When reading over the recipe I noticed that it called for oatmeal made with steel cut oats rather than rolled oats. No problem there, as steel cut oats are a frequent Saturday morning breakfast at my house. So about 6:30 this morning I got up and made a batch of oatmeal (which takes about 45 minutes), reserved a cup for the bread, mixed the rest with some bananas and maple syrup and gave it to my wife and daughter (none for me because I'm still eating bagels from the batch I made on Thursday).

Mix the dry ingredients (whole wheat flour, dried milk, salt, yeast) in one bowl and the wet ingredients (oatmeal, water, oil, honey) in another.

Combine the wet with the dry (the recipe said to add the dry to the wet, but I had already mixed the dry in the larger bowl, so I did the opposite - I don't think it made a difference) and stir to loosely combine all the ingredients. This makes quite a crumbly mixture that doesn't really resemble dough yet.

Dump the flour mixture onto the counter and knead. The dough begins to come together after a few minutes and after about 10 minutes of kneading, form the dough into a ball.

Place the ball of dough in a bowl, cover it and allow it to rise in a warm spot for about 2 and 1/2 hours.

Test the dough by poking it . If the depression does not spring back quickly, the dough is good to go. Put it on the counter and prepare to fold it by giving it a stretch into a rough rectangle shape. Try not to handle the dough to roughly.

Fold the dough down and then up, from the left to the right and finally from the right to the left. There are some good videos and written instructions showing and describing the stretch and fold method at the Sourdough Home Website.

Form the dough back into a ball, put it back in a bowl, cover and allow it to rise for another hour.

Form the dough into a bread pan loaf. I used the technique described in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice. Basically you stretch the dough into a rectangle and roll it up from one of the narrow ends. Roll the top of the bread in some rolled oats soaked in milk, then place it in an oiled 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch loaf pan. As you can see, I rolled my loaf a bit small. It should be touching both ends of the pan to ensure a more even rise, but I didn't re-roll it.

Once again cover the dough and allow it to rise one final time until the dough crests about 1 inch above the pan. For me, this took about 2 additional hours.

At least 1/2 hour before baking, you want to preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Put the bread in the oven and bake it for 45 to 55 minutes. An amazing aroma will begin to permeate your house almost immediately, which is one of the great joys of making bread at home. The best way to tell when it's done is with a digital, instant-read thermometer. You're looking for 190 degrees in the center of the bread. For me this took 45 minutes. Remove the bread and cool completely on a rack (at least 1 hour) before slicing.

This bread smelled great when it was baking, looked great when it came out of the oven, and tasted wonderful upon slicing. The flavor of the oats really adds an interesting dynamic that was absent in the straight whole wheat bread I'd made before. The honey does not dominate, but provides a subtle hint of sweetness in the background. I can't wait to make a sandwich.

Smashed Breakfast Potatoes

2008-02-22T08:41:00.011-05:00

Like many other teachers, I'm on February break from school this week, so when I woke up this morning to a blanket of snow the first thing I thought of was breakfast instead of possible school cancellations. I came downstairs and put on the TV to see what the weather situation was going to be for the rest of the day, but I never made it to the local news, no big deal there (as Bob Dylan says, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", or in this case, the snow). I got stuck on channel 185, which is Create on my cable system, and an episode of Lidia's Italy. I caught it in the middle, but just in time to see Lidia throw some onions and bacon into a large saute pan with some oil which eventually turned out to be a potato side dish for the feature recipe of the show, Italian goulash. The goulash looked amazing, but at 7:00 this morning it was the potatoes that stuck with me. Instead of leaving the potatoes in chunks, Lidia smashed them up and then cooked them over high enough heat to get good caramelization on the bottom of the potatoes. Then she stirred them up and repeated the process. The resulting potatoes were nicely brown all over, but somewhat smashed like extremely lumpy mashed potatoes.

A nice hearty breakfast is a wonderful thing on a cold, snowy morning and in my opinion, breakfast is elevated to another level by the presence of some form of potatoes, be they home fries, hash browns or whatever. The fact that potatoes take just a bit longer to prepare, so you can't really make them unless you have some extra time in the morning allows them to retain their special quality. Lidia was all the inspiration I needed this morning, as my mind was now set on potatoes and a slightly more "special" breakfast than usual. I went into the kitchen and heated a bit of oil in a saute pan, chopped half an onion and threw it in the oil with a few drops of liquid smoke. My wife doesn't eat pork, so I often use a few drops of liquid smoke (very few drops because the stuff is potent), some butter, and some salt as a substitute for bacon in most recipes that call for it. It's not the same, but it works pretty well. Anyway, when the onion had softened a bit, I added one russet potato that was peeled, chopped, and sliced into pieces about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. I let this sit untouched for about 4 minutes, then stirred it up a bit. I also added a little bit more oil (about 1 teaspoon) and a pinch of salt.

After about 8 minutes, the potatoes had softened a bit and I smashed them up with a fork. I added another teaspoon of oil, another pinch of salt and continued to cook them for about 8 more minutes (repeating the stirring, oiling, and salting, after 4 more minutes).

When the potatoes were done, I moved them to another burner on low to keep them warm, and got going with the rest of breakfast. My wife requested an omelet (which she pretty much always does when she knows I have time to make breakfast) and I went with my standard Friday morning egg sandwich. I had baked some bagels yesterday morning, which made for an excellent sandwich, if I do say so myself. The potatoes didn't look quite like what Lidia had produced, but they were an excellent compliment to the breakfast. If you like your potatoes and onions at the absolute limits of caramelization, just sort of burned (like I do), then this is a recipe for you. If you like a bit more flavor, some garlic powder, paprika, chili powder, or really any spice that you like will definitely work here.

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Smashed Breakfast Potatoes
About 25 minutes - Serves 2

1/2 of a medium onion, chopped
Olive oil
1 large russet potato, peeled, chopped into quarters, and sliced into 1/4 inch pieces
Salt

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a medium skillet (preferably nonstick) over medium heat
Add the onion and cook until just softened, about 4 minutes
Add the potato and 1 teaspoon of olive oil, a pinch of salt, stir and then let the potatoes sit untouched for 4 minutes
Stir the potatoes, if they look a little dry, add another teaspoon of oil, another pinch of salt, and let them sit untouched for 4 minutes.
Smash the potatoes with a fork.
Continue to cook for about 8 more minutes (make sure you let the potatoes cook in undisturbed 4 minute intervals to get nice caramelization on the bottom) adding additional oil if the potatoes look too dry or the onions seem like they are going to burn.
Add salt to taste, keep warm over low heat until ready to serve

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Last night I made Braised Greens Tacos for dinner and they were awesome. Totally different than any taco I'd ever had, almost certainly healthier. Braised collard greens and onions on a corn tortilla, topped with crumbled goat cheese, and a fresh salsa made from pureed cherry tomatoes and jalapenos - brightly flavored and delicious. I couldn't find chipotles in adobo, so I used a fresh jalapeno pepper that I halved, seeded and tossed in the pan with the tomatoes. I added a little ketchup, cider vinegar, salt, cumin, garlic powder to simulate adobo sauce. I served it all with some lightly buttered quinoa. Give them a try.

Two Quick Ones

2008-02-20T07:47:00.007-05:00

I look to other food blogs for inspiration quite a bit. One difficult thing about food blogs is that there is really no way to see what each one is doing at any given time without actually going and reading them (which can be a chore since there are literally thousands of food blogs). So I check the ones that I know I like frequently and every once and a while I try a random link to another one. Then I found the Tastespotting site. This site is great because it allows people to post links to blog recipes that they have tried and loved. The links show up as big photos with a small description of the dish and the blog that posted it underneath. You basically look through the pictures and click on what you like or what looks good to you. It's a great way to find new recipes and quality food blogs. For these reasons, Tastespotting has become one of my daily go-to sites on the web.

Here are 2 recipes I made this week that I found on Tastespotting. First up is a wilted greens and goat cheese sandwich from Dinners for a Year and Beyond. I used collard greens and some whole wheat ciabatta that I had made earlier that day and pressed the sandwiches under a cast iron pan to make panini. Other than that, I made the recipe as written. I served one sandwich with a bowl of pasta e fagioli as dinner and got rave reviews. The goat cheese and greens spread could easily be used on crackers or toasted baguette as an appetizer.

Second is a warm butternut squash and chickpea salad with tahini dressing from Orangette. This salad was both extremely easy to make, and very tasty. The salad is loaded with healthy fats, proteins, and vitamins and is a perfect amount for a dinner for 2 or a salad course for 4.

Just roast some butternut squash

Chop the other ingredients, open a can of chickpeas, make the dressing, and toss it all together

My Favorite Oatmeal Cookies

2008-02-19T17:41:00.013-05:00

About a year ago I had never made oatmeal cookies before. I had nothing against them per se, and would always eat them when available (as long as they were homemade), but never really had the urge to make a batch of my own. One night I had a craving for some oatmeal cookies so I went to the Food Network website and searched. I ended up slightly modifying a recipe that was sent in to Emeril called "Twisted Oatmeal Raisin Cookies" which turned out to be a great choice. I've probably made these cookies at least 6 or 7 times since then, and they always turn out excellent.

The original recipe called for 1 cup of raisins, which I replaced with 3/4 cup of currants. The currants give the same taste to the cookies as raisins would, without having big chunks of fruit in the cookie (which I personally never liked about oatmeal raisin cookies). A few other changes I made include substituting 1 cup of whole wheat flour for 1 cup of white flour (sneaking in a little whole grain is never a bad thing), cane sugar instead of white sugar, and making the cookies as rounds instead of long "snakes" as the original recipe suggests. The whole wheat flour does make the cookies a tad bit heavier and drier, but it's hardly a noticeable difference. You could probably cook them a minute or two less to compensate for this.

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Start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter with the sugar, then add the egg and mix well, incorporating all the ingredients. To the butter mixture, add the flour, salt, cinnamon, baking soda, and oatmeal.

Mix by hand with a wooden spoon until the ingredients are well combined. The dough will be extremely stiff and is kind of hard to mix, this is okay. Add the hot water, currants, and vanilla and once again stir to combine all the ingredients completely.

Scoop the dough onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. I use a number 30 ice cream scoop (30 scoops per quart) which makes a nice medium-sized cookie (about 2 to 3 inches circumference depending on the cookie type), but you could use a tablespoon or a soup spoon if you don't have a small scoop. Don't use a regular ice cream scoop (unless you want HUGE cookies)!

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes until the cookies just begin to noticeably brown (exactly 17 minutes in my oven). Cool the cookies on the pan for 5 minutes, then move to a wire rack. Once they are cool you'll have perfectly chewy oatmeal cookies that have just the right amount of sweetness and raisin flavor from the currants. Store in a covered container and you'll have cookies for a few days.

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Chewy Oatmeal Currant Cookies (adapted from Emeril Live)
About 45 minutes - Makes 2 to 3 dozen cookies depending on size

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup cane sugar or white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (use 2 cups all-purpose if you don't want/have wheat flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups oatmeal (not instant oatmeal)
1 teaspoon hot water
3/4 cup currants (or 1 cup raisins if you prefer)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Add the butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and cream with a mixer
Add the eggs and mix until well combined
Add the flour, salt, cinnamon, baking soda, and the oatmeal, stir with a wooden spoon until well combined
Add the water, currants, and vanilla, stir until well combined
Place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet (or spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray)
Scoop the cookies onto the sheet, about 1 1/2 inch ball size scoops placed about 3 inches apart
Bake 15 to 18 minutes, until the cookies just begin to noticeably brown
Cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes then move to a rack to finish cooling

Crispy Roast Chicken with Potatoes

2008-02-16T12:31:00.011-05:00

I recently Googled "chicken recipe" and came up with 2,050,000 results (in .12 seconds no less). The sheer volume of different preparations for chicken is nothing short of amazing and really goes to show how versatile an ingredient chicken is. If you're not sure what you want when you go to find a chicken dish, it can be quite overwhelming because practically everything sounds delicious. When I make chicken it's usually something quick, either a stir-fry, chicken piccata, or an amazingly simple and flavorful saute dish with a pan sauce of balsamic vinegar, honey, and fresh chopped basil (which will definitely appear on this blog at some point).

It's easy to become lost in all the possible flavors and ingredients that can go into a dish, but the funny thing about chicken is that it really doesn't need anything else to help it along, it can stand on its own quite well. One of the best ways to cook a chicken is roasting a whole bird in your oven. If you really enjoy chicken, the flavors brought about by roasting are incomparable. Just carve it up and serve it with any type of potato you like, any veggie side you like, and you have a wonderful meal. Aside from being delicious, whole birds are cheaper per pound, which makes organic chicken more affordable (you are buying organic chicken right?). While there are many approaches to roasting a chicken, you can get away with simply seasoning the skin with salt and pepper and putting in the oven at 350 degrees until the thigh registers about 170 degrees. I've had a good roast chicken that was half frozen at the start of cooking (due to an oversight by 4 guys hanging out in a cabin for a few days) and cooked sitting in its own grease on the tiny metal tray from a toaster oven. Seriously, it was amazingly succulent (and completely devoured in about 30 minutes).

Of course, you need to take a little more care if you want to ensure crispy skin and white meat that is not desert-dry. For things like this, I always turn first to Cook's Illustrated. Since I have a subscription to their original magazine, they've been sending me free copies of their new magazine, Cook's Country. I would describe the recipes it features as traditional, regional, home-cooked comfort food. The last issue I received had a roast chicken recipe that promised crispy skin and delicious potatoes in one roasting pan. Sounded good to me.

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Like most things from the people at Cook's Illustrated, this roast chicken is a bit more hands on than traditional throw-it-in the-oven-and-forget-about-it-until-it-is-done type recipes, but as usual, the extra steps are well worth it. Start by lining your roasting pan with tin foil then placing the pan on the middle rack of an oven set to 475 degrees. You rinse the chicken and pat it dry, use a skewer or fork to poke small holes all over the skin, then rub it with a mixture of corn starch and salt. As the chicken cooks, the fat comes through the holes and mixes with the corn starch creating a nice, crisp coating on the skin.

Spray your roasting rack with oil and place the chicken on the rack, wing-side down (on its side). Carefully remove the hot roasting pan from the oven and place the rack with the chicken in the pan. Roast for 15 minutes, then remove the roasting pan from the oven, flip the chicken onto its other wing and roast for 15 minutes. In the meantime, scrub your potatoes, halve them, and coat them with oil and a bit of salt.

After the chicken has roasted for 30 minutes, you take the pan out of the oven again, remove the rack with the chicken and place it on a baking sheet. Gather up the foil with all the drippings and remove it from the roasting pan. Arrange all the potatoes cut side down, and place the rack with the chicken back in the pan over the potatoes. Flip the bird so it is breast side up and put it back in the oven to roast for about 20 more minutes, until a thermometer in the thigh reads 170 degrees. Please don't trust the pop-up timer, get yourself a digital, instant-read thermometer (this way you'll stop wondering when things are done and actually know).

When the chicken is done, pour any juices that have collected in the cavity into the pan with the potatoes, and rest the chicken standing up on either the insert from an angel food cake pan or an empty soda/beer can. The chicken should rest 10 to 15 minutes before carving. Stir the potatoes up a bit and put them back in the oven to finish cooking. Basically you cook them until they're as brown as you like them. For me this took about 20 minutes (and I cranked the oven up to 525 for the last 5 minutes to really get them brown and crispy). Now all that's left is to carve and serve.

I invited my parents over for dinner, made some some Brussels sprouts as a second side, and served the whole thing on one dish, family style. The chicken was incredibly good, and perfectly cooked, with moist, flavorful white meat (this is the true test, because the dark meat is pretty much always moist and delicious). The skin was not as crisp as I had hoped, but I think this was largely due to my manhandling it rather awkwardly as I flipped it around. It tasted good though. The potatoes were great as well. Not adding them until the middle of cooking and after the chicken grease was discarded ensured that they were neither mushy nor greasy, but slightly crisp and tender. My 1 year old daughter thought the chicken was just about the best thing she's ever eaten, and continuously chose more chicken over bread even (which is a small miracle, believe me).

As my dad would say, this chicken did not die in vain.
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Crispy Roast Chicken and Potatoes (adapted from Cook's Country)
About an hour and a half - Serves 4

1 whole roaster chicken (3 1/2 to 4 1/2 pounds), rinsed and patted dry
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons salt
2 pounds small potatoes, scrubbed and halved (I used Yukon Gold)
2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Line roasting pan with foil
Adjust oven rack to middle, place roasting pan on rack, and heat oven to 475 degrees
Combine cornstarch and salt in a small bowl
Using a skewer or the tines of a fork, poke small holes all over the chicken skin
Rub the cornstarch mixture evenly over the entire skin
Place the chicken wing-side up on the roasting rack, remove the roasting pan from the oven, place the rack with the chicken in the pan and roast for 15 minutes
Carefully remove the pan and turn the chicken onto its other side (try using oven mitts, or wadded up towels to gently handle the chicken and turn it) and roast for 15 more minutes
While the chicken roasts, toss the potatoes with the vegetable oil and a few pinches of salt
Remove the roasting pan from the oven after 30 minutes, take the rack with the chicken out of the pan and place it on a cookie sheet nearby
Gather the tin foil by the corners and lift it out of the pan with all the grease and throw it away
Arrange the potatoes, cut-side down, in the pan
Flip the chicken breast-side up and put it back in the roasting pan over the potatoes
Place the roasting pan back into the oven and roast for about 20 more minutes, until a thermometer in the deepest part of the thigh registers 170 degrees
Remove the chicken, pour any juices in the cavity over the potatoes, and rest the chicken upright on an angel-food cake pan insert or an empty soda can for about 15 minutes
Toss the potatoes with the chicken juices (you may have to scrape a bit off the bottom of the pan if they are sticking and you may want to add some salt to taste if you like salty potatoes) and roast for an additional 20 minutes or longer until they are as crisp and brown as you like them
Carve the chicken and serve with the potatoes

Shrimp and Scallop Risotto

2008-02-09T13:08:00.000-05:00

If pressed I would have to say that rice is my starch of choice (why I'd ever be "pressed" about that I'm not really sure). When faced with a choice between pasta, potato, corn, or rice, I will almost invariably choose the rice dish. I even love eating the plain white rice that comes with an order of Chinese take out - nothing else really tastes quite like it. The many varieties of rice make it an extremely versatile ingredient. It can be a side dish or the dish itself. Savory or sweet, rice can pretty much do it all. And then there is risotto.

Risotto to me is the ultimate expression of what rice can be. Rich and luscious without being too heavy, it is an extremely satisfying meal. A simple risotto makes a great side dish for virtually any meat or fish, and a more dressed up risotto makes an amazing meal on its own. The best thing about risotto though is that it can be made, and made excellently, at home. Once the basic technique is mastered, you can turn out better-than-restaurant quality risotto with no problem whatsoever. Risotto is both delicious and impressive, and should be a part of any home cook's repertoire.

There are tons of different risotto recipes out there, but practically all of them are variations on the same theme: saute the aromatics in oil or butter, add the rice to coat, then slowly ladle in a small amount of stock and stir until it is absorbed, repeating until the rice is cooked and attains its full creaminess. A few things are essential here, first the rice should be a medium-grain rice, preferably Arborio, which is easy to find in most grocery stores. Arborio rice has a higher starch content than regular long-grain white rice, which is what gives the risotto its creaminess. Second, the stock must be added slowly, about 1/2 cup at a time and stirred until it is absorbed. This is what allows the creaminess of the starches to develop. Great risotto is not hard to make, but you must have all your ingredients ready to go before you start (good mise en place is always a good idea when cooking!), and you also have to be ready to stand at the stove for about 30 minutes. The effort is definitely worth it.

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Shrimp and Scallop Risotto is a recipe I adapted from Jamie Oliver's Prawn and Pea Risotto with Basil and Mint as a final course for my Christmas Eve dinner the past two years (an extremely filling final course). The first year I cooked the whole thing from start to finish between courses, which was a little slow, so this past year I looked into precooking as an alternative. With a little research I uncovered a technique which I have incorporated into this recipe that allows for partial precooking. If you choose this option and make the risotto ahead of time, you can finish the dish later that day or the next day in about 10 minutes and nobody will be the wiser because it comes out just as good as if you cooked it all in one go. This particular recipe is loaded with shrimp and scallops and has been a huge hit every time I have made it. If you want the fish to take more of a back seat to the rice, cut the amounts of shrimp and scallops in half.

Prep all the ingredients then heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Bring the stock to a simmer in another pot. When the oil is warm, saute the onions, celery, and garlic until just soft, about 6 minutes.

Add the rice, season with a little salt and freshly ground black pepper, and stir to combine. Raise the heat to medium-high and stir the rice around for 1 minute. Add the wine and keep stirring until it is all absorbed, about 3 minutes.

One of the things you need to know when making risotto is when to add more liquid to the pot. A good rule of thumb is to drag the spoon down the middle of the pot making a divide in the rice and see how long it takes the rice to fill it in. If the rice flows immediately into the space left in the wake of the spoon, it needs more stirring. If you can see the metal bottom of the pan (see the picture below) then its ready for more liquid. Once the wine is absorbed, add about 1/2 cup of hot stock and stir until it is absorbed, again about 3 minutes. As you continue to add stock and stir, you will notice the rice grains beginning to swell, and see the creaminess developing.

After about 20 minutes of adding stock and stirring, taste the rice. It should be soft but have a slight bite, but it should not be hard or feel gritty between your teeth. If this is the case, continue adding stock and stirring for a few more minutes. It usually takes me about 25 to 30 minutes to cook the risotto the way I like it once I begin adding liquid. When the rice is done, stir in the shrimp, scallops, and peas. Simmer for 1 minute (2 if you like your shrimp and scallops a little more well done).

At this point remove the risotto from the heat and gently stir in the butter, basil, and lemon juice. Immediately cover the pot and let it sit for 3 minutes. Jamie Oliver says this stop gives the risotto a chance to achieve its maximum creaminess, and I'm inclined to agree with him. As soon as the time is up, place the risotto into bowls and serve immediately.

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Shrimp & Scallop Risotto
About 30 minutes prep and 40 minutes to cook - Makes 4 dinner-size portions

Ingredients:

6 cups of stock (fish, chicken, or veggie)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped (between a mince and a dice)
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 ribs of celery, finely chopped
14 ounces Arborio rice
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup white wine
1 cup frozen green peas
1 lb peeled, uncooked shrimp cut in half lengthwise
1 lb sea scallops cut into quarters
12 fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 lemon, juiced
4 tablespoons butter

Heat stock (reserve 1 1/2 cup for finishing risotto if you're precooking)
Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat
Add onion, garlic, celery and saute until just soft, about 6 minutes
Add the rice, season with salt and pepper (about 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper or to taste), raise heat to medium-high, and stir for 1 minute
Add the wine and keep stirring until it is all absorbed, about 3 minutes
Add about 1/2 cup of hot stock and a bit of salt (1/4 tsp), lower the heat back to medium, and stir until liquid is absorbed...continue for about 20 to 25 minutes until the rice is soft with just the slightest bite to it
Stir in the shrimp, scallops, and peas and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes
Remove from heat, gently stir in the butter, basil, and lemon juice
Place lid on pan and allow it to sit for 3 minutes
Give one final stir, place into bowls and serve immediately

If you're precooking the risotto, stop cooking during step 6 when the rice is not quite done, remove the risotto from the pan, spread it in a thin layer on a cold cookie sheet, cover and refrigerate. When ready to continue cooking, place a cup of stock in a pan and bring to a simmer, add the risotto and stir until the liquid is absorbed (3 to 5 minutes). If the rice is still not quite done, add the rest of the stock and finish cooking. Continue on to step 7.

The Superbowl

2008-02-03T23:45:00.000-05:00

It began with a delicious pregame meal. Some fresh ground organic beef, perfectly grilled, on homemade burger buns, and some surprisingly crispy oven-baked fries. A truly perfect beginning to what would turn out to be a perfect evening (though not so perfect for some).

With full stomachs we were ready to go. No parties here, it was all business.

Four hours later it was all over. Storybook style. The G-Men are champions once again!

Creamy Garlic Soup

2008-02-02T19:22:00.000-05:00

I have a few friends (and family members) that I can really discuss food with. I'm talking about the kind of people who don't just like eating, but really love getting down to the finer points of food. Quality ingredients, cooking techniques, new recipes, old recipes, favorite places and things to eat or cook...these are frequent topics of conversation. The best thing about these kinds of people is that you can really trust their recommendations. Food is an extremely an subjective thing. Everybody has their own ideas of what is good and what is not. How do you know who to trust? Should I trust somebody's recommendation of a new pizza place if their favorite pie is made by Domino's? I don't think so. Every meal is an event for me, and few things make me more upset than eating a meal that I don't enjoy, or falls short of expectations. Having had extensive discourse with certain friends about food, I know that I can take recommendations from them and never be let down (or at least know pretty much what to expect).

I don't want to sound like a snob, but my time and money are valuable to me, and I hate wasting the former on a so-so recipe or the latter on a so-so restaurant. I pretty much apply this same line of thinking to all subjective matters, be it music, movies, books, or food. You cannot develop these kinds of relationships with people without frequent conversation and a real passion for the topic from both parties. I talk about food a lot, with friends who are lovers of food, and I have learned to trust their opinions, suggestions, and judgments. So recently when one of my co-workers gave me a recipe for garlic soup, I had no doubt that it would be worth my time. Thanks Blando (and all my other food-loving friends and family members as well)!

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Start by blanching a cup and half of peeled garlic cloves (which turned out to be about 2 1/2 bulbs of garlic for me). All you have to do is just drop them in boiling water for 2 minutes to soften them, then remove them. Chop your leeks, peel and chop the potato, and measure out your stock.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the leeks and cook until wilted, but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another 5 minutes.

Add the stock and potato, bring to a boil, cover, lower heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the garlic and potato are softened. Remove the pot from the heat and puree with an immersion blender. If you don't have an immersion blender then you can puree the soup a bit at a time in a blender or food processor (and then go out and get an immersion blender so you have one for next time, it's worth it). Stir in the cream and add salt and pepper to taste. The amount of salt you add will depend greatly on your stock. I made stock which had very little salt, so I added about a teaspoon. Most stock you buy at the store, be it in liquid or bouillon form, already has A LOT of salt in it, even if it's low sodium, so you might not need to add any salt at all. Let your taste be your guide, but remember, once you put it in, you can't take it out so salt and taste a little at a time. Add the lemon juice and give everything one last blend (or stir).

This soup would make a great first or second course with almost any winter meal, or accompanying a grilled cheese sandwich. I took the recipe's suggestion and added a piece of ciabatta toast topped with an egg. The recipe suggests a poached egg, but I'm not the best egg poacher, so I went with a modified sunny side-up egg. It is modified because I cover the pan when I'm frying the egg so that the top white solidifies, since I love runny yolk, but can't stand runny white. You'll probably want to have some more bread for dipping (and wiping the bowl) once you eat that first piece.

Creamy Garlic Soup alla Blando (modified by Darron)
About 1 hour and 15 minutes - Makes 4 medium sized bowls of soup

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of garlic cloves, peeled and blanched for 2 minutes in boiling water
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped leeks (light green and white parts only)
1 small potato, peeled and cubed
4 cups of vegetable stock
1/2 cup light cream
salt and pepper to taste
juice of 1/2 lemon
toasted slices of Italian bread (optional)
poached eggs (optional)

Heat oil in pot over medium heat
Saute leeks for 5 minutes until wilted but not browned, stirring occasionally
Add garlic and saute for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally
Stir in the stock and potato, raise heat and bring to a boil
Cover pot, lower heat, and simmer for 30 minutes or until garlic and potato are soft
Remove pot from heat and puree with immersion blender, blender, or food processor
Stir in cream, add salt and pepper to taste, stir in lemon juice
Serve in bowls topped with toasted slice of bread and a poached egg

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Superbowl Update: I decided not to go to crazy with food, since I need to be able to focus all my attention on the Giants. I'm making burgers before the game, and trying my hand at some homemade buns. I'll serve that with some oven-baked fries and green beans. For dessert, I baked some chocolate chip cookies which I then turned into either coffee or vanilla ice cream sandwiches. They are in the freezer as I write this, and it's taking quite a bit of willpower on my part to leave them there.

Wacky Cake

2008-01-30T19:04:00.001-05:00

I don't bake cakes. I have never really tried, or had the inclination to try, because my mother makes some of the best cakes I have ever tasted. Ever. It has gotten to the point with me that I won't usually have a piece of cake that she has not baked, because I am invariably disappointed. And forget about those sheet cakes from a grocery store that show up at work whenever something needs celebrating, I can barely look at them. I'll bake cookies or brownies, I've even tried a few pies, but no cake for me. That is until Wacky Cake.

I saw this recipe for the first time in an email from Cook's Country (an offshoot of America's Test Kitchens and Cook's Illustrated) and it became my first cake from scratch later that day. What is so wacky about it? Well it is a cake that is made without milk, eggs, or butter. Why? Apparently wacky cake has it roots in wartime rationing. During the world wars, ingredients like milk, eggs, butter, and sugar were scarce and this recipe was developed more out of necessity than any desire to be wacky. Like I said, I don't bake cakes, but I wanted to try this because it looked really easy and well, it's called wacky cake. Do you really need more of a reason than that?

There are two really cool things about this recipe. First, you mix all the ingredients in the dish that you bake the cake in, so clean up is a snap. Second, you can throw this together just about as quickly as a box cake mix, which means you get the idea to make it, and less than an hour later you have cake all baked and ready to go. Oh yeah, it tastes really good too. Not too sweet, just the right amount of chocolate flavor, nice and moist, a perfectly acceptable dessert considering the effort that goes into it.

Start by spraying an 8 x 8 inch glass baking dish with cooking spray. You mix all the dry ingredients in the dish, then make two small depressions and one large depression in the dry mix. Place 5 tablespoons of vegetable oil in the large depression, 1 teaspoon of vanilla in one of the small depressions, and 1 tablespoon of white vinegar in the other small depression.

You dump 1 cup of water over all the ingredients and stir until everything is just combined. A few streaks of flour should remain.

Bake the cake for about 30 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached. If you want, sprinkle a little confectioners sugar over the top of the cake when you serve it. I'm sure it would be good with some ice cream as well. If you've never baked a cake, try this one, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Ultimate Veggie Patties

2008-01-28T13:04:00.001-05:00

There is really no way around it anymore. Unless you are one of those bury your head in the sand types, we are all being forced to accept the fact that too much meat just is not good for u s. I emphasize "too much" because I still believe that human meat eating can be sustained into the future, just not at our current consumption levels and not with our current production methods. It really is not even just a matter of personal health anymore, but the health of the environment. The fact of the matter is that modern meat production methods are really beginning to take their toll.

If you love eating meat like I do, this can become a huge personal dilemma. I have compensated by replacing much of the meat in my diet with whole grains, beans, and vegetables. When I do eat meat, I am willing to spend more money to buy products that are raised in a healthful and ethical way. Yes it costs a lot more, usually about double, but I'm eating it a lot less, so overall there really is no increase in cost. I find that now when I do eat meat, I appreciate and enjoy it more than I ever have before.

So this brings me, in a somewhat roundabout way, to the real subject of today's post: the now ubiquitous veggie burger. Again, the emphasis is mine. Why focus on the word burger? Because for most meat eaters, the word burger sends the brain into a frenzy of juicy, beefy images that quickly set the mouth watering. I believe that well-meaning meat eaters looking for healthier alternatives to their couple-of-times-a-week burger habit have turned to the veggie burger and invariably been disappointed. This should not be the case. I feel that the meat eater looking to enjoy the veggie burger has two hurdles to clear. First, the fact that most veggie burgers are trying in vain to imitate beef burgers, instead of emphasizing their own unique attributes. Second, the word burger itself. If you love beef burgers, you are bound to be disappointed on a subconscious level when you bite into a "burger" and there's no meat. I know it is just semantics, but I believe words are extremely important precursors to perception. So I propose that the burger lover begin thinking of the veggie burger as the veggie patty. The veggie patty should not imitate meat (I abhor the whole imitation meat veggie product trend) and should not be thought of as a substitute for the hamburger, but as something that stands on its own. If you're craving a burger, and you're settling for a veggie patty, the battle is already lost. You need to find a recipe that you love, so eventually, you'll crave a veggie patty. I've tried a bunch of veggie patty recipes (and there are lots of them), some good, some not so good. After some effort, I can now say that I enjoy, look forward to, and actually get cravings for veggie patties.

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Most veggie patty recipes have a base that consists of either beans or grains and bread crumb, or some combination of the two. I've found that one difficulty with making veggie patties is decreasing the moisture in the patty so you can form them without having dry, dusty tasting patties. This issue is adequately addressed in good recipes. Beware of the recipes that have tons of veggies that are shredded in large pieces, they will contain a lot of water, and make very moist patties that are hard to form and cook in one piece. Also beware of cooking homemade veggie patties on the grill, as most won't be able maintain their form on the grate and will fall apart when flipped. I've had much more success cooking in a pan on the stove top or in the oven on a baking sheet.

This has been my standby recipe, which is satisfying, and relatively easy to make. It is bean-based, a bit on the dry side, but good nonetheless. A good thing about veggie patties is that you can freeze them for months. So make a huge batch and you'll have them whenever you want them. I usually get at least 4 dinners out of 1 batch. In the spring and summer I usually eat veggie patties for dinner twice a week, but during the fall and winter, I replace that with lentil soup. This past weekend I had a craving for veggie patties, and having not made them since the end of the summer, I had to make a new batch. I decided to try a new recipe as well, from Cook's Illustrated, which was somewhat complex and time consuming, but definitely worth the effort.

This is a long one, here goes...

You don't really have to get everything together before you begin this one, as there are many points where you have to wait for things to happen which gives you plenty of time to prep other parts of the recipe. Timing is not really important here. Start by cooking the lentils and the bulgur. While they cook, you can chop the veggies.

This recipe yields an easy to shape mix largely due to the extra lengths required to get excess moisture out of the ingredients. When the lentils are done you drain them and spread them on a triple layer of paper towel. You then press lightly with more towel to get as much water as possible. Drain the bulgur and press in a fine mesh strainer to remove as much liquid as possible.

Cook the veggies in a medium-hot skillet for about 12 minutes, just until they begin to brown.

Spread the cooked vegetables on a cookie sheet to cool and add the mushrooms to the now empty pan to begin browning.

Once the mushrooms are brown, take them out of the pan and put them on the sheet with the other cooling vegetables.

Now the food processor comes into play. Put the cashews in the bowl and pulse about 15 to 20 times.

In a large bowl, you combine the lentils, bulgur, vegetables, cashews, and mayonnaise. Stir well to combine all the ingredients.

Place half of the mixture back into the food processor and pulse about 20 times. Return the pasty mixture to yet another large bowl and process the other half of the mixture.

Combine the mixture with panko breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper. Stir it up.

Measure out the mixture into 1/2 cup portions and shape them into patties that are about 1/2 inch thick and 4 inches wide. You should be able to get about 12 patties. Place the patties on a cookie sheet lined with paper towel to suck out that last bit of water and put them in the fridge until you are ready to cook. Cook the patties in some vegetable oil over medium heat until they are nice and brown. If the pan is good and warm this should take about 5 minutes per side. Be careful not to burn them.

Serve on some nice whole wheat buns with whatever condiments you prefer. These patties have a nice texture, and a pleasant, mild flavor. Definitely my favorite veggie patty recipe that I've tried so far. I have seven more in the freezer right now and can't wait to eat them again next week!

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My oven door is fixed! I celebrated with a batch of bagels and a third attempt at ciabatta with a new recipe. Success again with the bagels and success at last with the ciabatta! It came out amazing, with an incredibly tender open crumb, the hallmark of good ciabatta.