Klosekraft

Because I'll forget about it otherwise...

I don't like posting recipes without photos, but this salad I made yesterday was so good and so easy and fresh and summery that I want to make sure I get it up here.

Mediterranean-ish Pasta Salad
8 oz. whole wheat pasta (I used corkscrews)
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 pkg grape tomatoes, halved
1 large cucumber, cubed
1 pkg feta, cut into 1/2" cubes (4 oz? I used some really strong sheep's milk feta from Greece that was beyond awesome)
handful each chopped fresh parsley and mint (didn't actually have either of these, but the whole time I was eating, I kept thinking how good they'd be and resolved to add them the next time I make this*)
1 lemon
olive oil

While the pasta is cooking, prep the tomatoes, cucumbers, chickpeas, feta and herbs.  Mix the first three together in a large bowl. When pasta is done, drain and rinse with cold water until cool. Add to the bowl. Add the juice of the lemon and olive oil to taste. Mix in the feta and herbs.

*I actually resolved to buy parsley and mint plants and make them thrive so that I will always have fresh herbs on hand. We'll see how that goes.

Weekend randomness

1. Sunday, Anna and I went to the Brooklyn Flea and wandered around, marveling at all of the pretty, pretty people and the fact that neither of us were at all tempted to buy anything. The only thing that really stood out to me was this fantastic vanity from RePop made from old steamer trunks (check out our yin/yang trenchcoats in the mirror):

I like the idea of unabashed girliness that goes along with a vanity table, but most of the examples I've seen don't do anything for me. This is the first one I've ever seen that I really coveted.

2. I got to the waist on my handspun raglan.

I'm thinking that I'm going to have to redo the neck to put some front and back shaping in. Originally, I chose to do a reversible boatneck to, I don't know, save wear on the elbows or something, but I'm finding myself tugging at it just to take these pictures. Actually wearing it like this would be kind of a drag. I'll go back after I finish the body and sleeves, snip off a couple of inches and add the shaping then.

3. I made a batch of brownies on Saturday. I had excellent intentions of making a fancy scallop and mushroom soup from one of the Jean-Georges cookbooks, but couldn't be bothered to go anywhere that sold good scallops. I'll do it some other time. In the meantime though, here's the recipe I use for a small batch of brownies, which is from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. If you need a 9x13 pan's worth, the recipe on the back of the Baker's chocolate box is great. I'm doing this from memory, so I can't swear absolutely that it's right, but I'll check tonight and correct if need be.

Brownies
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 scant c. sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1 t. instant espresso powder (not in the original recipe, but it's a nice addition)
1/2 c. flour
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350. Butter an 8x8 pan. Melt chocolate and mix with butter until smooth. Add sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and espresso powder. Add flour and salt. Bake 20-25 minutes.

They're especially good with ice cream.

Fried macaroni and cheese: not a great idea

Yesterday, for some reason, I decided to make fried macaroni and cheese.

I had some leftover mac and cheese from a buffy-a-thon with Zoe Sunday night (recipe here; I added a pinch of cayenne to this batch). I love homemade mac and cheese but it doesn't reheat particularly well and apparently I thought that the way to treat a dish that becomes unpleasantly oily upon reheating was to actually reheat the food in oil. It's like a double negative, right?

Sometimes I can't believe that I've managed to keep myself alive this long. I mean, I read sentences like that and just have visions of myself, like, petting an angry bear on the nose and saying "nice doggie."

I absolutely drew the line at deep frying because A: gross and B: scary, so that eliminated most the recipes I found online right off the bat. I used this as my technique guideline. I totally missed the part about dredging in flour though, so consider that step optional. I sent the link to Liz and told her that's what I was making for dinner and she wrote back that if she ever wanted to break up with her boyfriend but didn't feel like telling him, she would just make that exact thing for dinner and he would leave an Otto-shaped hole in the door in his haste to get home to his barley.

Here's the set-up:

Cubed mac and cheese, beaten egg, bread crumbs.

In progress:

It was kind of fun to see it work the way it was supposed to, I have to say. Applying heat makes food brown!

Dinner:

That's more than one serving, obviously. I made more than I wanted because I'm new to this frying thing and wanted to be prepared in case I ruined some.

A close up:

I have to say, after all that, they were just okay. Nothing special. They weren't particularly greasy and had a nice, crunchy coating. But they didn't really taste like mac and cheese anymore; they just tasted like fried. And since I'm not used to eating fried food, I felt kind of sick for hours afterward. The novelty value was reasonably high though, so that's something.

Unrecipes

I really haven't felt like cooking lately.

I mean really. Just thinking about cooking for the last couple of weeks has made me want to take a nap.

But right before this cooking ennui hit, I had bought a fairly ridiculous amount of vegetables and fruit and so I've been trying to prepare them in ways that require the absolute bare minimum of work. Case in point, these roasted green beans.

These were just tossed with a little olive oil and roasted at 400* until they browned.

And I made the absolute easiest blood orange sorbet EVER the other night.

I started with blood orange nectar. Since it's already sweetened, you can dump it right in the ice cream maker without all of those pesky heat juice, add sugar, cool down steps.

I got the whole thing together while the water for my pasta was coming to a boil and it was done by time I finished eating.

This is optional, but makes a big difference in the texture. I find that sorbet gets too icy if there isn't any alcohol in there to keep it from freezing solid.

I used maybe half of that. And about two-thirds of the juice. But whatever. I'm sure more or less of either would work just as well. This isn't exactly complicated.

Then I took a bunch of pictures of the sorbet freezing because I was kind of bored while the pasta cooked and I was worried that it wasn't going to work. I'd had the ice cream canister in the freezer for a while and must have stored a bag of coffee in it at some point because it had some coffee grounds in the bottom. So, like a complete idiot, I tried to wipe them out with a damp paper towel. The towel, of course, shredded and froze to the inside of the canister. I tried picking the shreds off; they wouldn't budge. I swirled a little hot water around inside it, which did work to to unfreeze the paper and rinse out the grounds, but I had to do a couple of rounds of it and was afraid that I had defrosted the canister to the point where it wasn't going to freeze the juice.

It's awfully difficult being me sometimes. Though I think the comments are fixed now. I made a point of talking about Joe Bruno in public yesterday: how he subverts the Peter Principle and that I actually really like how deliciously evil he is. And now my email works. Coincidence?

And the sorbet froze just fine after all. It was great on its own, but even better with a scoop of Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Honey Bee — like a grown-up creamsicle.

Vegetable soup

No recipe for this one — it was a real clean-out-Liz's-fridge soup, with bits and bobs of the following:
onion
garlic
leek
carrots
celery
turnip
winter squash
white potatoes
purple potatoes
frozen spinach
homemade chicken or turkey stock
fresh dill, parsley and thyme
tomato paste
lemon juice
bay leaf

Everything just got chopped up and simmered together until the vegetables were tender. Then we hunkered down with Russian grey bread and cheese in one hand and soup spoons in the other, listening to some David Lee Roth a cappella rarities on FMU, and my little peasant heart sang to have  been party to making this feast from the scrapings of, if not a literal barrel, then the closest modern, urban approximation thereof.

Kitty's not too sure about David Lee Roth though.

I forgot about the Oscars, but have cauliflower!

I really did mean to track down somewhere to go watch the Oscars tonight, but I was still hiding out at my friend's place until early afternoon, then had an appointment to see an apartment in Brooklyn Heights and then had to scoot home and get over to yoga, which included an interesting meditation on the phrase "come to your senses" and how often we're separated from our senses and don't listen to our body wisdom and how to be more mindful of that. So I was mulling that all over and listening to Tom Waits as I walked home and I didn't even think about the Oscars until my shoes were off and I was chopping vegetables. And then I weighed the pleasures of an evening at home after a night away — taking a shower, putting on pajamas and eating a delicious bowl of curried cauliflower — against inviting myself somewhere to watch the Oscars, knowing that it would come with the non-pleasures of putting on real clothes and rushing and then having to get home again, probably later than I'd really like. And obviously, I chose the more leisurely, cauliflowered route.

I ended up undersalting this because I cooked the rice in some beef broth that I had left over from making carbonnade and figured that would make the whole dish salty enough, forgetting that I used some groovy low-salt organic broth and the rice isn't salty at all. Nor is it particularly beefy. It is darker than it started out though, so that's something. The original recipe is here, though I played with it a little, adding peas and some additional spices. I had meant to get a sweet potato to add too, but my blood sugar was kind of low when I went into the grocery store and I was a little confounded by the layout — it's on my way home from class and not one I go to very often — and it took me so long to find the cauliflower and coconut milk that I totally forgot to get anything else. I had peas in the freezer at home though and they were really good in this. This is a great quick dinner that could incorporate a lot of different vegetables and proteins. Even though I was pretty ravenous, I was satisfied after one bowl, so I have plenty of leftovers for lunches this week.

("I have plenty of leftovers for lunches this week" is one of happiest-making sentences in my vocabulary.)

Curried Cauliflower
adapted from A Veggie Venture

1 medium onion, chopped
olive oil
1 t. curry powder
1 t. cumin
1/2 t. turmeric
1/2 t. cardamom
pinch of allspice
pinch of cayenne
1 15-oz. can low-fat coconut milk
1 t. kosher salt
1 head cauliflower, chopped
1 c. frozen peas

Saute the onion in olive oil until soft and slightly browned. Add spices and cook for 1 minute. Add coconut milk and salt and stir to incorporate spice/onion mixture. Add cauliflower and simmer over med-low heat until tender, 15-20 min. Add peas and simmer for a minute or two, until they're warm. Serve over rice.

Carbonnade

I'm moving a little slowly this morning. (Or afternoon. Whichever.) A friend took me to a benefit for the Women's Expressive Theater last night for my birthday (great plays! great venue! great food! great people-watching! great music! great gift bags!) and I went to bed late.

I don't want to wait any longer to post this recipe though, because it was so fantastically delicious that any beef-eaters out there should make it immediately, if not sooner. Imagine: a panful of jammy caramelized onions cooked for hours with beef, broth, beer and herbs...

I followed Elise's recipe here, a printout of which has been on my fridge for months now. The only things I changed were to to use all beef broth instead of half beef/half chicken and only make about 2/3 of the stated amount. I don't know, three and a half pounds seemed like an awful lot of meat so I only bought two pounds. Whole Foods didn't have anything called blade steaks, so I got boneless chuck roast. And I didn't tie my thyme sprigs together. That kind of behavior smacks of fussiness. I don't cook a lot of meat, but I've been feeling like pushing myself lately and it's a challenge that I'm interested in playing with more.

Before:

After:

To go with it, I boiled two sweet potatoes and three regular potatoes and mashed them together.

Carbonnade
adapted from Simply Recipes

2 lbs boneless chuck roast, trimmed of fat and cut into 1" cubes
salt and pepper
olive oil
2 lbs yellow onions, halved and sliced
1 T. tomato paste
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 T. flour
1 c. beef broth
1 c. dark beer (I used Ommegang)
4 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
1 T. cider vinegar

Adjust oven rack to lower middle postion; preheat oven to 300°F. Dry beef thoroughly with paper towels, then season generously with salt and pepper. On the stove top, heat 2 teaspoons of olive oil in a large heavy bottomed dutch oven over medium-high heat until beginning to smoke; add 1/3 of the beef to the pot. Cook without moving the pieces until well browned, 2 to 3 minutes; using tongs, turn each piece and continue cooking until second side is well browned, about 5 minutes longer. Transfer browned beef to a separate bowl. Repeat with second third of the beef and an additional 2 teaspoons of oil. (If the drippings in the bottom of the pot are very dark, add half a cup of the chicken or beef broth and scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen the browned bits; pour liquid into the bowl with the browned beef and continue.) Repeat again with 2 more teaspoons of oil and the remaining beef. Remove beef from the dutch oven.

Add 1 T oil to dutch oven; reduce heat to medium low. Add the onions, 1/2 t of salt, and tomato paste; cook, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon, until onions have released some moisture, about 5 minutes. Increase heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are lightly browned, 12 to 14 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add flour and stir until onions are evenly coated and flour is lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Stir in broths, scraping pan bottom to loosen browned bits; stir in beer, thyme, bay, vinegar, browned beef with any of the accumulated juices, and salt and pepper to taste. Increase heat to medium-high and bring to a full simmer, stirring occasionally; cover partially, then place pot in oven. Cook until fork inserted into beef meets little resistance, about 2 hours.

Discard thyme and bay. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper to taste and serve. Can serve plain or over egg noodles, rice or potatoes.

Oatmeal: it's what's for dinner

Last night, I was all set to make a big pot of greens and pasta. I haven't had any in at least a week and I've been craving it. I bought broccoli raab and kale yesterday, had nice fresh garlic on hand, a brand-new bottle of balsamic vinegar, plenty of my current favorite multigrain pasta from Trader Joe's that actually tastes like regular pasta... But by the time I got home from work, went for a run, stretched, showered and finally wandered into the kitchen, I just couldn't be bothered. I didn't want to wash greens, I didn't want to chop anything, I didn't want to have to use two pots. No.

Laziness is also why I didn't make crepes, which I had briefly considered, since it was Pancake Day and all and I have some sour cream in the fridge that needs to be used soon. I kind of wish I had now. It's my favorite kind of holiday: The Day We Eat Pancakes for Some Reason. And, of course, now that it's lunchtime I'm wishing I had made the pasta, since I don't have any leftovers to eat. Maybe someday I'll learn.

But anyway, last night. Me, kitchen, pajamas, about to have a bowl of honey-nut Cheerios with a sliced banana. Then I remembered a recipe I had bookmarked a few days before, realizing that I already had everything I needed to make it when the mood struck: FatFree Vegan Kitchen's Cherry Pie Oatmeal. (Definitely check out her post — her picture is much prettier than mine and she gives interesting info on steel-cut v. rolled oats.) It seemed like a good compromise between For Reals cooking and cold cereal. I followed the recipe as given, except that I added a pat of butter and some half and half to the bowl along with a spoonful of brown sugar, rendering it neither fat free nor vegan.

The verdict: it tasted pretty good, but I doubt that I'll make it again. It turns out that I have very catholic tastes when it comes to oatmeal. I like a little butter, some brown sugar, milk or cream and a sprinkle of salt. Nothing more, nothing less. Although, now that I think about it, very occasionally I'll make savory oatmeal with grated cheese. Regardless, the cherries struck a weird note with me, like chocolate with peaches. Love both components, but together: not for me. That subtle oat flavor was lost and I really like that flavor. But that's not to say that I wouldn't recommend it for people with more adventuresome oatmeal palates than mine.

Cherry Pie Oatmeal

1/2 c. steel-cut oats
2 c. water
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. cinnamon
1 c. frozen cherries, unsweetened
1/2 t. vanilla

Put the oats, water, salt, and cinnamon in a medium-sized saucepan. Bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to very low. Cover and cook for 25 min, stirring occasionally.

While oats are cooking, remove cherries from freezer and cut each in half while frozen. Allow them to thaw a little on the counter until oats have cooked for 25 min. Stir in the cherries and vanilla extract. Cover and cook until oats are tender and thick, about 10 min. more. Serve with your favorite sweetener.

Thufferin' thuccotash

Yesterday, Liz-of-the-barley and I were talking about what we were going to be making for our respective dinners last night. (Food is a popular topic of conversation around these parts.) We were both thinking something in the vegetable soup vein, IMing links to promising  recipes back and forth to each other, I was expressing proper (and entirely sincere) envy at her stash of dried porcinis from the Carpathian Mountains, sent by Otto's (her Ukrainian boyfriend, original instigator of all things barley) father, when I suddenly remembered lima beans.

I really like lima beans.  And I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten any.

So I decided that whatever I made, lima beans would be involved. And where thoughts of lima beans go, ideas of succotash generally follow. (yes? too much of a stretch?) Since I had some running around to do after work and knew I wouldn't get home until 8:30 or so, I wanted to keep it simple. The recipe could stand a little tweaking, but it was quick to make and tasty, a very easy weeknight dinner that provided enough left over for several days' lunches.

A note about the tomatoes: my grocery store, for whatever reason, hates me and refuses to offer me options for unadulterated canned tomatoes. It was extremely difficult to find them free of chilis or basil or other weirdness. And even harder to find them in juice instead of puree. I was limited to small cans of an off brand. If your grocery store loves you and stocks diced tomatoes in juice without schmutz, that'll save you a step. Instead of chopping whole tomatoes, I just squish them through my fingers into the pot. It's faster and kind of fun, plus you don't lose any juice.

Also, I abandoned my usual MO and cooked the pasta in the broth because I was too lazy to get out another pot. Which would eventually have to be washed! The horror! It's a false economy though, because this morning when I dished out a portion to bring for lunch, the pasta had absorbed most of the broth and were softer than I'd like. Still, if you just can't be arsed to cook the pasta separately, don't worry about it. I wrote up the recipe for the way I did it, not the way I'd suggest you'd do it. And if you're cooking for more than one person, you probably won't have enough left over to worry about.

FYI, that beer, while very delicious, is less of a beverage and more of a side dish.

Succotash Soup

1 T. butter
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 small cans (or one large) whole tomatoes in juice
1 pkg. frozen corn
1 pkg. frozen lima beans
6 c. broth
1 c. elbows or other small pasta
half and half or cream

Saute the onion in butter on medium heat until softened. Add garlic and cook for two minutes or so. Squish the tomatoes through your fingers into the pan to crush them and add the juice from the cans. Add the lima beans, corn and broth. When soup is boiling, turn down heat and add the pasta. When pasta is cooked, you're done. Salt to taste and add a splash of half and half or cream to the bowl if you like.

Barley-chorizo skillet pie

So, there's a bit of backstory and an insider-y joke behind the making of this dish.

Over the last month or so, when we've been having that what-are-you-having-for-lunch? conversation around the office, my co-worker Liz has frequently answered, "Oh, I brought barley." Eventually, the rest of us were like, "hey, Barley Lady, what's up with all the barley?" And she said that her boyfriend had been buying it in bulk, cooking it at home and bringing over big bags of it to her apartment to eat as cereal and since it's there, she's been eating it too.

So the barley has become a bit of a running joke around the office (like, whichever member of the editorial staff needs a stage name first gets to be Pearl Barley), and when I saw this recipe for barley-chorizo skillet pie on Serious Eats, I sent it to her, because, really, what fun is a joke if you don't beat it completely into the ground? And, after a little banter, we decided that we should probably make it and that it would be the perfect dinner for this week's Project Runway viewing, which happens at her place every week since I don't have a tv.

Anyway.

'Skillet pie' sounds very Hamburger Helper, but really this is just a frittata. Instead of chorizo, we used some long, skinny Hungarian sausages.

You saute a chopped onion, red bell pepper and the meat in the eponymous skillet.


Then add eggs and herbs and cooked barley, let it set, throw some cheese on top and run it under the broiler.

Mmm, skillet pie! Best served with steamed green beans and deliciously sour Russian bread.