jhp64

Livejournal

Thu, 18 May 06 22:37:00 UT

It turns out that I know at least a few people who use Livejournal instead of Journalscape, so I'm going to try that out. So go here for a new cooking journal entry.

Lasagna

Sun, 14 May 06 21:55:00 UT

Since it was Mother's Day today, I offered to make dinner and do the dishes. Of course, I pretty much always make dinner and do the dishes, but anyway...

A few weeks ago, Rose mentioned wanting to try lasagna, so I decided to make that. (Actually, I was planning to get help from Rose, but she was too busy when the time actually came.) So I cooked a bunch of rice lasagna noodles, which were a real pain to work with: they stuck together, and even though I undercooked them, they fell apart pretty easily. So I made a 9"x9" lasagna instead of a larger one, because I estimated that that was the right size for the amount of viable noodles I had. Even though it looked small, it was still substantial, because the tradition in my family is to have lots of layers of noodles. I used some tomato sauce that I had made a few months earlier that we keep in the freezer for use on pizza. Even though I didn't expect Rose to actually eat this (see below), I made this quite plain: just noodles, tomato sauce, and cheese (ricotta, romano, and mozzarella). No meat, no mushrooms or other vegetables.

I did have some noodles left over, mostly bits and pieces. At some point, Rose had voiced some concerns about the presence of tomato sauce in the lasagna, so I made a second mini lasagna (in a loaf pan, and just a few layers), with ricotta, mozzarella, and romano cheese.

I put a bit of water in the smaller pan, hoping that the noodles (some of which were quite undercooked) would absorb some of it while in the oven. I hoped the tomato sauce would play a similar role in the other lasagna. To encourage this, I covered both pans with foil to trap the steam. After about half an hour, I uncovered the pans, then baked for another half an hour.

Meanwhile, I cooked some Italian (chicken) sausage on the stove top. I served a salad. I also tried making gluten-free rolls, using the French Bread and Pizza Crust mix from the Gluten Free Pantry. Miriam, Ariana, Julia, Dan, and Grandma Ruth came over for dinner. The rolls were sort of boring, but Julia hit on the idea of making a little sandwich with the sausage, and that was pretty tasty.

Oh, and while Rose did not even try the tomato sauce lasagna, she liked the all-cheese one. She also liked the rolls.

Coconut tofu

Tue, 9 May 06 18:27:00 UT

Debby found a recipe in the latest edition of Eating Well: coconut tofu (I forget the exact name): take a 14 ounce block of tofu, cut it lengthwise into 8 "steaks". Pat each dry with paper towels. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, 2 tablespoons of flour, and 1/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut. Salt the tofu, then dredge in the coconut mixture. Pan fry until golden brown and delicious.

The Eating Well recipe also included peach salsa, but we can't get good peaches yet, so I bought a jar of peach salsa instead. The tofu was okay, a little boring, but it was good with the salsa. We also had salad and carrot sticks.

Rose wanted pancakes for dinner, so she and I also made that. Rose ate 5 pancakes, including one which had dried cranberries in it.

Party

Sat, 6 May 06 17:38:00 UT

I was helping to host a conference this weekend, and we had about 25 conference attendees over for dinner. I bought large containers of pre-washed salad, and made a vinaigrette for it (as I described before, but with some apricot nectar thrown in, since I had some left over from the stew — see below).

Also made broiled salmon (3 large fillets, about 11 pounds total). I had intended to grill it on our gas grill, but as one might expect before a party with 25 people, the grill ran out of gas. So I broiled it instead. Mixed together equal parts dry mustard and brown sugar, added a little kosher salt, and spread over the flesh of the fish (after seasoning the skin side with salt and pepper). Broiled until just barely cooked through.

Also made rice in our fabulous rice cooker.

The day before, I did most of the work on a vegetarian stew, and I finished cooking it today. The recipe:

Groundnut Stew

from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant

2 cups chopped onions
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon crushed garlic
2 cups chopped cabbage
3 cups cubed sweet potatoes
3 cups tomato juice
1 cup apple or apricot juice
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon minced ginger
1 tablespoon cilantro
2 chopped tomatoes
1 1/2 - 2 cups chopped okra
1/2 cup peanut butter

Saute the onions in the oil for about 10 minutes. Stir in the cayenne and garlic and saute for a couple more minutes. Add the cabbage and sweet potatoes and saute, covered, for a few minutes. Mix in the juices, salt, ginger, cilantro, tomatoes, and orange oil. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the sweet potatoes are tender. Add the okra (spinach) and simmer for 5 minutes more. Stir in the peanut butter, place the pan on a heat diffuser, and simmer gently until ready to serve.

I quadrupled this recipe. I used apricot nectar, not apple juice. I also used frozen spinach instead of okra.

Also made brownies: Maida Heatter's "Palm Beach Brownies". I don't have the energy to type in the recipe right now, but as I've said before about this recipe, you can get good results by searching the internet. I just made a single recipe, but that makes a pretty substantial pan of brownies.

The whole thing was a success; there was plenty of salad left over, basically no rice left, about a pound of salmon, about 6 servings of stew, and a dozen brownies. Enough so that I wasn't worried that people went away hungry, but not too much.

Broiled chicken again

Sat, 6 May 06 17:36:00 UT

Rose tried the leftover broiled chicken from last night, and she liked it!

Broiled chicken

Fri, 5 May 06 17:35:00 UT

Julia, Dan, etc. came over today, and we had broiled chicken thighs with a garlic-rosemary paste stuffed under the skin. Yummy. I also made a few plain ones in case the girls wanted to try it, but they didn't.

The difference between organic and inorganic chicken

Wed, 3 May 06 19:19:00 UT

When I buy chicken, I usually buy organic, or at least free-range, chicken. The other day, some "regular" chicken was on sale at a very good price, so I bought it. I was planning to make chicken curry with it, and since Rose wasn't going to eat it, a little non-organic chicken seemed like not so bad an idea. (I'm mainly concerned about buying organic so the kids don't get things like extra anti-biotics in their diet.) Anyway, so I bought this chicken, stuck it in the fridge, and promptly forgot about it. Now, there have been times when I've bought the free range stuff and not used it right away, and after 3 or 4 days it starts to smell not so fresh. This inorganic chicken, on the other hand, sat around for six days, and it smelled just fine.

So I made the following "stir fry" (meaning something cooked in the wok — this was more of a stew...). This is in the style of some of the recipes in Henry Chung's Hunan Style Chinese Cookbook.

Chicken stir fry with zucchini

Cut up some boneless skinless chicken breast (maybe 3/4 pound), and put in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1-2 tablespoons of white wine. Cut up 2-3 medium zucchini. Mince some garlic and ginger, and put on a small plate with maybe 1/2 a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Have 2 cups of chicken broth ready, with maybe 1 or 2 teaspoons of soy sauce. In this case I also put in a bit of tamarind paste, but not enough (it turns out) to actually taste it. Have a box of cornstarch open.

When all of that is ready, heat up the wok. Add some oil and brown the chicken; drain on paper towels. Clean out the wok if necessary and heat up again. Add a little oil, and then stir-fry the garlic, ginger, and hot pepper, for maybe 30 seconds. Then add the chicken and stir to combine. Add the zucchini, and stir some more: you want to get everything coated with the oil, garlic, ginger, and hot pepper. Then add the broth, bring to a boil, and stew for about 10 minutes, at which point the chicken should be cooked all the way through. Mix 1-2 tablespoons of cornstarch with a little cold water; when well-mixed, add to the stew. Serve with rice.

Chicken soup with rice

Fri, 28 Apr 06 18:23:00 UT

This recipe is from a cookbook called Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. It's a beautiful book, basically a coffee table book. We haven't made very many of the recipes from it; I'm not quite sure why.

The recipe calls for one 3-pound chicken, but I used about 3 or 3 1/2 pounds of chicken thighs and breasts (on the bone) instead: the smallest chicken I could find was about 4 pounds, and also it's easier to pick the meat off of thighs and breasts than at least some of the other parts of the chicken.

Hearty chicken soup with onions and garlic

Put in a large pot: one 3-pound chicken (or whatever), 3 to 4 scallions, 5 "whole coriander plants, including roots" plus 1/2 cup packed cilantro leaves (I used most of a well-rinsed bunch of cilantro, which included a tiny bit of th roots), 8 black peppercorns, 3 quarts of water. Bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer gently for 1 1/2 hours or so.

Remove chicken from soup; let it cool and then pick the meat off of the bones. Discard the bones. Strain the soup; let it cool, then refrigerate and skim off the fat after it hardens. (I started the soup on Wednesday, took out the chicken and strained the stock, and then stuck everything in the fridge until the next day.)

About half an hour before serving, put stock in a pot with 1 teaspoon salt and 3 tablespoons of fish sauce. Bring to a boil. Then add 1 large onion, finely chopped (I actually used a few leeks, since they needed to be used up), 8 small shallots, peeled, 1 head of garlic, cloves separated and peeled. Cook four about 15 minutes, until the shallots are tender. Add the chicken and cook for a minute or two to heat it through. Serve. (The recipe says to add 1 1/2 cups of the chicken and serve the rest on a platter to be added by each person.) Garnish with black pepper and cilantro (I forgot this part. I served it with rice, which added more body to the soup.)

Very yummy!

Brownies

Mon, 24 Apr 06 18:22:00 UT

I forgot: the same day that I made the stew, Rose and I also made brownies. I have two favorite brownie recipes: the quick one, and the industrial strength one which makes a huge batch of brownies (and which I insist on letting cool overnight before even cutting).

We made the quick ones: get yourself some Ghirardelli's "Sweet Ground Chocolate and Cocoa". This comes in a sort of cardboard can, 5" high and 3 1/2" in diameter. Follow the recipe for Ghirardelli Award Winning Chocolate Brownies, except that their baking time of 20-30 minutes is way too short. I keep them in the oven until a toothpick comes out almost clean. (I also would have hyphenated "Award Winning"...)

The slow ones: Maida Heatter's Palm Beach Brownies. One of her variants: spread out half of the batter in the pan, then put a layer of York peppermint patties, then put the other half of the batter. I've also done this with Reese's peanut butter cups. I'm too lazy to type the recipe in right now, but it's in at least two of her books: check your local library. Or try searching the internet for "Maida Heatter palm beach brownies" and you'll probably come up with something helpful.

More stew

Sat, 22 Apr 06 11:42:00 UT

Made a vegetarian version of the Brazlian fish stew that I've mentioned before: I used vegetable broth instead of chicken broth, and used carrots and potatoes instead of fish and seafood. The carrots took a long time to cook: it must have simmered for an hour or more.

Some people we know just had a baby, and we were on the list of people to bring food to them. They're vegetarian but I felt like making this recipe; hence the modification.

Creole black beans

Wed, 19 Apr 06 09:50:00 UT

David woke up early today, and I eventually strapped him into the front pack and got him to sleep while I made creole black beans (recipe below). It's a slow cooker recipe, so getting it done by 8:00 in the morning was actually a fine thing to do. Also, as long as you're willing to eat legumes and pork, it's kosher for Passover...

Oh, we didn't have any green peppers, so I used carrots instead, going for the classic French mirepoix of carrots, celery, and onions, instead of the Creole "trinity" of bell pepper, celery, and onions.

Creole black beans from Fix-it & Forget-it Lightly

3/4 lb. lean smoked sausage (like andouille), sliced 1/4 inch thick and browned
3 15-ounce cans black beans, drained
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
1 1/2 cups chopped bell pepper
1 1/2 cups chopped celery
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
1 chicken bouillion cube
3 bay leaves
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce (or 14 1/2-ounce can stewed tomatoes)
1 cup water

Combine all ingredients in slow cooker. Cook for 8 hours on low or 4 hours on high.

Fallen soufflé

Mon, 17 Apr 06 18:26:00 UT

I've fallen a bit behind. Let's see: last Wednesday was the first night of Passover, and as I mentioned before, Rose and I made chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons. Those were yummy. I also made oven-roasted potatoes (like the ones I made before, but without the rosemary and garlic). They didn't work as well as before for two reasons: I cut the potatoes well in advance, and then some water leaked out, and they got sort of soggy. If they had been stored in a bag with paper towels or something, maybe that would have helped. Second, I used someone else's oven to bake them, not our nice convection oven, so roasting two pans at a time didn't work as well. They still came out okay, but not as good as the first time.

I also made matzoh for Rose, since of course she can't eat ordinary matzoh. The recipe: 1 cup of GF flour substitute, 1 egg, and the recipe says "4 tablespoons of water". Why they can't just say "1/4 cup of water", I don't know. Mix everything together, roll out (which is a bit tricky, since the dough is sticky), prick with a fork to make it look like matzoh, and bake for 18 minutes at 440 degrees (F). (Why 440 and not 450 or 425? Is it some kosher thing? It's a little irrelevant since the recommended GF flour has corn and rice in it, neither of which is considered appropriate for Passover, at least by some Jews.)

It tasted pretty much like regular matzoh: dry and tasteless. It's good with peanut butter and jelly (because if you're willing to eat corn and rice, you're probably willing to eat peanuts (not that I care, since I'm not Jewish, but other people in the family are)).

What with Passover and Easter and tax season and everything, we've been eating at other people's houses a lot, and when we weren't doing that, we were having leftovers. That was until last night. Last night, Dan, Julia, Miriam, and Ariana came over, and we had a vegetable cornucopia: green salad with vinaigrette (is wine vinegar kosher for Passover?), sautéed mushrooms, sautéed zucchini with a little curry powder, a bowl of snap peas, steamed broccoli, and carrot soufflé.

For the zucchini: I sliced them and then sprinkled on kosher salt and let them sit in the basket of the salad spinner. After about 20 minutes, some water had come out of them, and I rinsed them off and spun them in the spinner. Meanwhile, I melted a little butter with a little oil in a large skillet, and then added curry powder. Then I put in the zucchini, tossed to coat with the oil and curry powder, and put on the lid. The idea was to steam them and also maybe get a little browning on the ones at the bottom, and this worked pretty well. There also wasn't a puddle in the bottom of the skillet at the end, perhaps because of the salting trick. The verdict: pretty good, but the dish actually needed salt.

The carrot soufflé: carrot soufflé is a standard Passover dish in the family. The usual recipe (using cut & paste):

3 cups sliced carrots
1 bay leaf
1 onion
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ginger
salt and pepper
5 eggs, separated
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup matzo meal
1 cup ground walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a souffle dish

Boil carrots, bay leaf, and onion until carrots are soft, and then remove the bay leaf and puree the carrots and onions. Add the cinnamon, ginger, salt, and pepper. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, and add to the carrots. Beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold together the whites with the carrots, alternately with the matzo meal and ground walnuts. Bake in greased dish for 40 minutes, or until set.

The "40 minutes" is actually nowhere near correct; "until set" really takes 1 hour 40 minutes, maybe.

I didn't make this version, though: I experimented, combining techniques from this recipe with the one for cheese soufflé from a few weeks ago: boil the carrots and onion and then whir in the food processor. In a saucepan, make a roux (with potato and tapioca starch, so it's kosher for Passover). Add some of the carrot-cooking water, and then mix with the pureed carrots. Mix with the egg yolks, tempering so as not to scramble the eggs. In another bowl, beat the egg whites and sugar to make a meringue; then fold the meringue into the carrot mixture. Bake. (Notice: there are no nuts in this version.)

I think there was too much liquid in it (what with the water and the liquid in the carrots), because after it had baked for a while, it collapsed. Even after baking for a good while, it was still wet in the bottom. It tasted okay, but it wasn't light and fluffy and pretty the way a soufflé is supposed to be. Oh well, failure is part of experimentation.

Macaroons

Tue, 11 Apr 06 16:31:00 UT

In preparation for Passover, Rose and I are making macaroons today. I saw a recipe on America's Test Kitchen, and it looked yummy, so I thought we would make it. There were a few problems, though. First, the recipe calls for corn syrup, which is not kosher for Passover. The recipe calls for sweetened flaked coconut and also unsweetened flaked coconut, but there was a note saying that if you can't find the unsweetened stuff, you can use all sweetened, but skip the corn syrup. This is good. You should instead add some cake flour to help bind everything together. This is bad — not only is it not kosher for Passover, but it is also not gluten-free. So I used tapioca starch instead; I supposed you could use potato startch (or matzoh meal) instead. The macaroons are baking as I write this; we'll see how they come out.

The modified recipe: preheat oven to 375 degrees (F). In a small bowl, whisk together 4 egg whites, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons vanilla, and 1 cup of cream of coconut (which is typically used to make pina coladas and things like that, so I found it in the beverage aisle of my grocery store). In a large bowl, put 6 cups of sweetened shredded coconut and 2 tablespoons of tapioca starch. Toss with your hands, breaking up any clumps with your fingers. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and mix with a rubber spatula. Chill in fridge for 15 minutes.

Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper, and spray the paper lightly with non-stick spray (GF and kosher for Passover, please). Put heaping tablespoonfuls of the "dough" on the cookie sheet, one inch apart. Then with moistened fingers, form each cookie into a loose pyramid. ("Haystack" they call it in the recipe on the website, but on the TV show, they were pyramids.) Bake for about 15 minutes, until light golden brown. Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Let cool for about 30 minutes, and then dip in semisweet chocolate. Refrigerate until the chocolate sets.

Commentary: the original recipe had 3 cups of sweetened coconut, 3 cups of unsweetened, and 2 tablespoons of corn syrup. No flour. It's a bit weird that a recipe for a traditional Passover dish contains ingredients you're not supposed to eat during Passover. It's also a bit weird that for a tradional Passover dish, since in Passover you celebrate the Jews exodus from Egypt, the recipe suggests making the cookies into little pyramids. Oh well...

Cheese soufflé

Sun, 9 Apr 06 19:14:00 UT

Rose likes eating carrot soufflé — I'll include the recipe maybe on Wednesday, since it's one of our standard Passover dishes. She also eats cheese; in fact it's one of her staples. So she was interested in cheese soufflé. I made Alton Brown's recipe for it, using a GF flour instead of all-purpose flour: the flour is only used to make a roux, and the starch is important there, not the protein. Actually, the recipe is a little odd in one way: I thought that when you made a roux and added liquid to it, in order to avoid lumps, the roux and the liquid were supposed to be at different temperatures. So with a hot roux, you should add cold milk. His recipe says to heat the milk. I didn't. In any case, with cold milk and GF flour, it worked fine, looked very impressive, and was delicious.

Rose didn't like it (although she did try it).

Stew or soup or something

Sat, 8 Apr 06 12:49:00 UT

Live! As it happens! (Almost.) I just started cooking tonight's dinner: more experimentation in the crockpot. First about half a dozen baby eggplants (cut into 1 inch pieces) went into the pot, followed by some red potatoes and some tofu. Next, I browned some Italian sausage (chicken sausage, actually, about 3/4 of a pound), added some leeks and sautéed it. I added the leeks and sausage to the crockpot. I deglazed the pan with some wine and put that in the pot, and added some water to try to get enough liquid until the eggplant surrenders its juices. Here's the odd part: I also added some fish sauce and some green curry paste. We'll see how the Thai flavors go with the Italian sausage flavors. I'm holding off on salt because the sausage, the fish sauce, and the curry paste probably all have salt already; I'll test for seasoning toward the end. I may add coconut milk toward the end, too.

Right now the crockpot is set to low, and I'll let it go for 4 or 5 hours. I plan to serve it with rice.