November 11, 2007

Chilly Sunday Cooking Projects

Sorry I've been AWOL. Marriage is lovely, and things are nearly back to normal, which is nice. If you haven't seen them, there are wedding photos on Flickr (email me for more URLs, but here's one link), but I don't have the photographer's set yet.

As expected, I've reverted to spending my Sunday entirely in the kitchen, and the blog, as of this post, will revert to the subject of food. It's cold outside, and I'm not ready for the cold, so baking and cooking seem like the best coping strategy. We also have some swank new kitchen things, which are making cooking a little more fun.

I recently saw quince for sale both at the greenmarket and the co-op, and Elise of Simply Recipes happened to post an article about making membrillo (quince paste) at nearly the same time, so I thought I'd have a go at it.

It took over four hours to finish, but came out beautifully. I thought about taking pictures, but Elise has some nice ones, so go there for a look. The fruit smelled wonderful while it was simmering in water, so when the recipe called for draining the fruit, I saved the water it was cooking in and made that into a syrup. It has a lovely flavor and I made it less sweet than the membrillo. It's tempting to drink the stuff straight out of a mug. I'm not exactly sure what to use it for, but it went great with futsu squash we had for dinner.

I also made muffins, which will probably become a weekly event until I gain my winter weight and go back to yogurt in the morning. I wanted to make banana muffins, and thought about using our usual banana bread recipe, but settled on adding some oats and chocolate and trying this recipe with chocolate chips, butter instead of oil, and yogurt instead of milk.

I LOVE how recipes on the Internet include both a rating and comments about substitutions. Yesterday, I had a craving for oatmeal cookie batter dough. I had seen a recipe on Chocolate and Zucchini, so I forged ahead with that. The batter wasn't good, though -- wheat flour doesn't make for the kind of cookie dough that you can snack on very well, and I might have done something wrong with the recipe. I decided to alter the batter myself by adding an egg and some all purpose flour, knowing all along that this was not a good idea, and the results were disastrous (I hadn't had my coffee yet).

Today, I read a bunch of the comments on the muffin recipe before attempting anything to make sure that the recipe was tried and true and to understand acceptable substitutions. Having 210 comments is somewhat like having an entire squadron of church ladies helping you understand a recipe. The resulting muffins are wonderful. I've also been able to share my quince syrup brainstorm with people through comments on Simply Recipes. Web 2.0 is doing wonders for my culinary education.

Since it's fall and D's always reminding me to cook more than one thing in the oven if I'm going to go to the trouble to heat the thing up, I usually throw in whatever colorful and interesting squash I find at the co-op (halved, brushed with olive oil, and upside down on a cookie sheet). I should have taken a picture of the futsu squash we made today -- it reminded me of the New Yorker cartoonist with the very wrinkled characters. Lately, I've been saving the seeds of each squash and toasting those in the oven at the same time -- it makes a great snack.

Posted by csageday at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2007

Green Chile Heaven

Hello. I'm back, with my riveting tales of frying eggs and altering basic recipes.

I will spare you a moment-by-moment description of making the 1-2-3-4 Yellow Cake from Joy of Cooking (which should really be called 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-wtf Yellow Cake). I made it in a last-ditch attempt to make D a Valentine's Day present, and it was damned complicated. It resulted in bits of cake batter on the floor and cabinets due to several accidents with the rubber spatula and the mixer. At least it was rubber this time -- I remember an early incident involving a horrible metal-on-metal grinding sound and a mutilated metal implement. The resulting cupcakes and lemon icing were really good, although I'm still curious about why they shrank during cooking (something to do with the folded in egg white mixture, perhaps). It was certainly better than boxed yellow cake mix, but you need to have a good deal of patience and time on your hands to make the real thing.

D is on a serious green chile kick. This is good, because I've been overscheduled and too exhausted to cook meals. I spent part of this week in Boston and have also started taking an early morning marketing class on Saturdays, so I was completely beat last night and slept until nearly 1 p.m. today. When I finally dragged myself to the kitchen, coffee was made (!), and all of the ingredients for New Mexican-style huevos rancheros were ready to go. D had made a pinto bean side dish, the green chile sauce, and had corn tortillas ready to heat up in butter (I really don't deserve to be spoiled in this way). We got the eggs going, and then assembled each dish with all of the above plus some cheese, and had a decadent breakfast.

Tonight, in keeping with the green chile theme, D is made wonderful green chile hamburgers with some sort of Mexican cheese. The flavor of the chiles was really nice and they weren't too spicy for me at all. Now he is scouring the internet in the hope of finding a source of frozen green chiles in the city, as our imported tub is half gone. Whole Foods is a potential source.

Which reminds me: For my marketing class, I've picked Whole Foods as the company to study for a final report (I figured something food-related could hold my interest). They have built a great brand, so it should be interesting to take a closer look at how they did it.

Update: No photo yet, but a friend of D's who grew up in New Mexico has graciously given us canned green chiles that relatives brought to her recently. (Thanks, Adrian!) I see more green chiles in my future.

Posted by csageday at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2007

Sunday Dinner

We rarely cook meat at home. First, I was a vegetarian for a year or so, primarily for environmental reasons. I wanted to become more conscious of how much meat I regularly ate, and how much of a strain that put on natural resources (an exorbitant amount of energy and water goes into raising an animal, and American practices of raising meat en masse are disturbing). As expected, the experiment was an eye opener, and D and I have been much more conscious of our eating habits since.

When I finally returned to eating meat, we didn't introduce it back into the kitchen right away. Instead, it remained a special-occasion item. Inevitably, though, I became intrigued by the many possibilities of pork on a grill, and then pork in the oven, or bacon in or wrapped around anything, and now meat (of the sustainable, free range variety) is making an appearance in our refrigerator more often.

I still haven't made many classic dishes -- meatloaf, stew, steak, meat lasagna, meatballs, etc. -- and a roasted chicken is one of them. A few months back, a friend said something about how easy it was to roast a chicken -- just put a half a lemon in the cavity, rub salt and pepper and olive oil or butter on the outside, and stick it in the oven. It did sound easy, but if I was going to roast a chicken, I wanted it to be a bit more exciting. When I saw this lovely-looking recipe on Simply Recipes (a web site I love and trust), I decided to give it a try. (My mother also assured me that I really couldn't ruin a roasted chicken).

There's something festive about roasting an entire bird. There are various awkward limbs, innards, and wings to deal with, and you might come across a remnant of a feather. If you don't regularly roast chickens, you'll be reminded of Thanksgiving. You'll also be reminded in the process of handling the beast that an animal has lived its entire life to become a meal. For you.

I enjoyed roasting and eating this chicken so much more than I've enjoyed other recent cooking projects. While cleaning the chicken, I discovered the neck (great for gravy and stock!) and livers inside the cavity. I LOVE chicken livers, so I gleefully threw them in the skillet with some butter and onions and had a damned fine snack. (Despite loving to eat chicken livers, cooking them was also a first for me, though I grew up in a liver-loving household). Derek did NOT enjoy the miniscule, teeny tiny piece of liver I forced him to eat.

True to form, I couldn't follow the recipe exactly as it was written. Instead of stuffing the chicken with lemon and thyme (such a waste!), I made a proper batch of stuffing out of celery, cubed bread, marjoram (& sage & thyme), and onions sauteed in lots of butter. Otherwise, I did what Elise said: rub bird with salt & pepper and olive oil, place in cast iron pan and surround with carrots, garlic cloves, and a cup of chicken broth, bake for 1 1/4 hour. Plus, I remembered toward the end that Mom had (in her infinite wisdom, knowing that I was nearing the chicken-roasting phase of my cooking education) given me a fancy meat thermometer for Christmas. I dug it out, stuck it in, and it promptly announced (it has a voice feature), that my chicken would be done, "in eight minutes." It even counted down from ten toward the end, and reminded me to baste the bird (the recipe calls for regular basting).

The chicken tasted fabulous. The carrots were even better -- really sweet and fortified with the flavor of the chicken broth and not a small amount of chicken fat. I made no-knead bread alongside the chicken and the pair made for a decadent Sunday dinner. Tonight, I embellished the leftovers with gravy and currant jelly.

Posted by csageday at 10:32 PM | Comments (3)

January 21, 2007

2007: Year of the Muffin

Santa gave me a muffin tin this Christmas. I asked for it with the idea that I could make cupcakes and maybe make something that could serve as breakfast on the way to work. I've never been a huge fan of muffins, since they can be dry and too heavy in the morning (and perhaps a bit too close to cake to be healthy). But I figured that if I were in charge of the recipe, I might be able to make something acceptable.

Before I continue, though: What is the difference between a muffin and a cupcake? The latter is cake poured into a muffin tin, and is more likely to contain frosting, but if I make little lemon-frosted cakes...are they cupcakes or muffins? I did that with a meyer lemon cake mix from Williams Sonoma first (good, better with icing, but not fabulous), and wasn't sure which category they belonged to.

Regardless, I tried to make carrot apple muffins last week. I started with a Martha Stewart Applesauce Muffin recipe, since we had a good deal of applesauce to get rid of. Various things went wrong. First, creaming butter and brown sugar until it's "light and creamy" is difficult. My new mixer is rather excitable--it sends bits of batter flying upward and outward before it manages to mix things together.

Still, the major problem was my impulsive recipe altering. First, I decided that I wanted carrot-apple muffins, so I pulverized some carrots and added them. That probably didn't do too much damage. Next, I decided that I really wanted an apple cider flavor, since the applesauce wasn't going to add anything really intensely apple-y. So in went a little bit of cider. I got carried away, though, and thought that what I _really_ should do is cook the cider down so the flavor would be more intense. I should have know that I lack patience for that sort of project. By the time the cider started bubbling in a pot, I was getting antsy. And then it dawned on me that not only would that take a while, but I would have to cool down the liquid before adding it to batter. So, in my haste to get the muffins in the oven, the barely-reduced cider went into the freezer, and then into an ice bath....but it still wasn't exactly cool when I poured it into the batter. In a final flourish of culinary brilliance, I threw in a bunch of oats.

I'm never going to learn the basics of cooking if I pay so little heed to recipes: especially when it comes to the chemistry of baking. The muffins came out with a great flavor, but a rather dense, heavy texture. We ate them all anyway (the ground cloves in the recipe worked well). Going forward, I think I need to understand what proportions of sugar, egg, butter, and flour are needed to make a light, fluffy muffin. I probably don't have the patience to actually do that, though. My next muffin project will be blueberry sour cream muffins from the nostalgia-inducing Rectory Recipes cookbook from St. Paul's (more on that later).

Posted by csageday at 03:37 PM | Comments (2)

Making Soup = Not Cooking

D informed me last week, in so many words, that he didn't really enjoy cooking. I think he did this more for shock value than anything else. Yesterday, I came home to a fabulous pea soup D had made. I reminded him that he didn't enjoy cooking, and he said, "It's not cooking. It's making soup." Can someone explain this logic to me?

Posted by csageday at 02:58 PM | Comments (2)

January 20, 2007

Cheese Puffs

While I was growing up, my parents would occasionally host large parties at our house in New Jersey. The parties filled the house with murmuring adults and filled the kitchen with activity, and I was usually tapped to do an awkward gymnastics demonstration in the guest room at some point.

I have one very clear memory of walking through a suit and dress-clad crowd in our living room while trays of hors d'oeuvres were being passed overhead. I must have been small, because my visual memory of the crowd consists mainly of dark pant legs; the adults' heads were towering above me.

A wonderful woman named Betty would always come to help in the kitchen, and she or my mother would always, always make cheese puffs. One clear food memory of mine involves stepping through the kitchen door and seeing her take a tray of them out of the oven. I remember being delighted to see and smell the little squares with mounds of white on top, since they only appeared on special occasions.

These cheese puffs fall squarely into the tradition of easy to make 50s style cocktail party food, along with roll-ups and onion dip. They're about an inch square, with a white mound of cheesy goodness on top. When they're fresh, biting into one is like biting into a cloud. The flavor isn't just of cheese -- it's more complex, and the texture is very light.

Last year, I remembered cheese puffs and felt I had to make them. I had no idea what the ingredients might be, but guessed that cream cheese might be involved. Mom consulted a well worn recipe box and pulled out a card, and I copied it down. The main ingredient turned out to be mayonnaise instead of cream cheese, which explains the complexity of the flavor. It's ridiculously simple, and makes use of regular household items as many 50s recipes do.

Ingredients
Several slices firm white bread (Pepperidge Farm or Arnold's), crusts removed
1/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese (or cheddar)
1/3 cup mayonnaise

One recipe for cheese puffs in the box called for equal parts of each, and one called for more mayonnaise, so this is a flexible guide to quantities. Combine all three ingredients, top bread squares with the mixture, and pop into the broiler for 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

I just made some this afternoon, since I am leisurely spending my Saturday in my parent's house and have access to their large kitchen. They weren't quite as heavenly as I remember (and my brother made a face upon trying one), but the flavor was familiar and the texture was pretty light (mayonnaise does interesting things when cooked). They also came out a bit charred and oniony due to my less-than-perfect understanding of the recipe. I ate a bunch straight out of the oven. This was not good for my waistline, but good for the cheese puffs, since they didn't taste half as good when they'd cooled down. Can't say I'll make this again unless I decide to host a retro 50s party--with 50s drinks, outfits, and hors d'oeuvres--for kicks.

I just did some research and found some similar recipes online. They seem to include parsley and salt and pepper. One is called Italian Cheese Puffs, and another is Onion Cheese Puffs.

Posted by csageday at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

January 01, 2007

New Year's Beets

I'm ambivalent about New Year's. I think it's my least favorite holiday. I dislike the New Year's Eve part for some reason, so I was a bit mopey and pathetic yesterday. Still, champagne and company cheered me up and we had a good time celebrating. Today, we rang in the new year with a great deal of cooking, which put me in a better mood.

We pickled beets! They look lovely, and the pickling liquid smelled quite potent, so I can't wait to try them. We have to let them do their thing in the jars for three weeks. I have a good emergency backup pickle fix, though. If I put freshly cooked beets in the pickling liquid left over from the Wheelhouse jar and leave it in the fridge for a few hours, the beets pick up enough of the flavor to be good pickle stand-ins.

I also finally managed to make good meringues, now that I have an electric mixer. They came out like Mom's, which is a great improvement over my sad experiments with the whisk. It's amazing what a little power can do to a recipe. What's wonderful about this batch of meringues is that I made them from the egg whites left over from hollandaise we made yesterday (I was trying to improve my mood with extravagant side dishes -- we had it over broccolini). I hate throwing out egg whites.

We took Jeff's cue and made corned beef a few days ago (it was really wonderful with cabbage) and then made it into Red Flannel Hash today. I couldn't resist the addition of a poached egg on top, although I'm not sure poaching it in the purple water left over from boiling many beets was a great idea (it made them a sort of pink, but it was hard to see what was going on in the dark liquid). I'd post a picture, but I know runny eggs are a bit scandalous and I don't want any runny-egg-phobes to get queasy.

Finally, I made two loaves of Anadama bread from the bread book I discovered upstate this summer: Bread in Time: Breadbaking Without Angst. I like the approach used by the author, Stuart Silverstein. He coaches you along, explaining that it's not an exact science, and peppers his advice with stories about bread gone awry. The recipes produce a denser bread than what I was going for, but the flavor is good and it works well for sandwiches.

On a more general note, this blog seems to have morphed into a food blog again. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Any opinions?

I also haven't been too excited about posting lately. It hasn't seemed as fun, and I can't think of funny things to post, so I feel like I'm in a safer, regurgitate-the-day mode, which can't be fun for y'all. Sorry. Hopefully I'll discover some better blogging karma in 2007.

Posted by csageday at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2006

YouTube Cooking School?

I knew there had to be good instructional cooking videos on YouTube. Last time I looked, though, I was looking for Spanish dishes and all that came up were lame videos about cooking done by high school students for their Spanish language class (my online searching skills are abysmal). They were mildly entertaining -- there were some silent bits and confusing bits when the kids didn't have the language skills to explain the recipe. Example of what this would sound like in English: "Here we chop tomatoes and onions. [Extended silence while vegetables are chopped.] The tomatoes and onions have been chopped. Here we add them to the stove. Done! Fantastic! Delicious!"

Anyway, I'm finally reading the book that emerged from The Julie/Julia Project (a very entertaining book, btw, especially since JP is a food-obsessed blogger living in the city), and one of the YouTube links on her newer blog led me to better cooking videos. I have just learned to cook a shoulder of lamb and sole "dore" and Lemon Caper Butter Sauce. Maybe this is how I will finally learn to be a decent cook? Without the Food Network to give me regular Lidia and Alton and Ina installments, I have to get my culinary education somewhere.

Posted by csageday at 01:32 AM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2006

Pickles and Pickling

Derek likes things with sharp flavors -- tart things, sour things, pickled things. Especially pickled things. He goes on about the kind that have that extra fizziness, and he always eats my pickles at Souen.

When I read this article about Wheelhouse Pickles in Gothamist, I dropped everything and ordered some (I was in my pre-Christmas panic buying stage). I started with pickled green beans (a fave of D's), but then I saw the beets (I LOVE beets) and the special-of-the-month mystery pickle, and I had to pick up the pears mentioned in the article, so I ended up with four jars.

They arrived, I hid them in the Christmas Pile, and then I forgot all about them. I discovered them later, when I was thinking I didn't really have an exciting gift for D, and something dawned on me. I should give D a picking KIT. Not just pickles, but tools to enable actual PICKLING, so D will never be without a jar of some odd preserved vegetable.

I spent the Friday before Christmas doing nearly all my shopping on 7th Ave in Park Slope (yay! I think it's the first year I've avoided a last-minute trip to a Jersey mall, or even a trip to Soho or Macy's -- very happy about this.). In B&N, I was very happy to find a book called The Joy of Pickling (especially since the whole gift idea would have fallen apart without it), and at Tarzian, a salesperson was actually HELPFUL and located two pickling Ball jars for me.

I spoiled the surprise a little by asking D if we had a relative who might be interested in pickled pears (we don't), but D was pleased anyway. We have since tried the beets and beans (I ate all of the beets in one sitting), and they're wonderful. No pickling yet, but D has been reading the book and I'm dying to borrow it for some pickled beets, and then pickled eggs in beet juice.

Posted by csageday at 08:18 PM | Comments (2)

December 19, 2006

Other Cookies and Datiles con Bacon

Since I wasn't able to point you toward a good cookie recipe this week, here's C&Z with many suggestions. I'm done. C'est fini with the baking.

If you are interested in bacon, however, I have useful information. Direct yourself to The Spotted Pig, where I hear the bar serves pears and prunes wrapped in bacon. Also, if you missed it in Flickr, we stumbled across bacon-wrapped dates in various SUPERMARKETS in Spain. So, I am not crazy, I was just experiencing some nostalgia last summer.

Supermarkets in Spain are really such wonderful places. Part of the reason we rented an apartment instead of a hotel room was so that I could let loose at the market and buy all of the perishable things -- meats, vegetables, fish, cheese, and bring it home. Since our many social activities got in the way, I ended up carrying most of it from place to place until I decided in Hondarribia that my bag wasn't masking the anchovy smell so well anymore. Next time, we need a month in Spain so I can buy more stuff -- like the cheap olive oil for cooking, or all of the different kinds of yogurt we don't have here, etc. I wanted so badly to buy the larger items during our last supermarket visit there... at least Despaña had a good sized tub of Cola Cao.

Posted by csageday at 11:42 PM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2006

Holiday Baking, Take 2

We had a very small gathering to show off our tree last night. To make the occasion properly festive, I figured some homemade holiday cookies should be present. I should know better than to find recipes at the last minute and expect to emerge from the kitchen with a gorgeous holiday platter of baked goods, but last year's fudge fiasco did little to deter me. I found a recipe online for spiced sugar cookies, and the reviews were good, so I charged ahead. (Note: Normal recipe sources, like Epicurious, also have this recipe, but they all use vegetable shortening).

I made the dough early because, uncharacteristically, I read the recipe ahead of time and saw the note about refrigerating the dough for "a few hours." (Why is this necessary, anyway?) This represents considerable progress in my recipe-reading skills -- not only did I pick up ingredients ahead of time because I read the ingredients list, but I read the directions as well. Only I didn't exactly read the whole thing because I didn't realize a cookie cutter was required until I had already rolled out the dough (you'd think the rolling of the dough would have been a good clue, no? I suppose I was expecting to be told to slice it into squares with dental floss, or some such ingenious non-cookie-cutter-requiring solution).

So, at about the time that someone was buzzing our buzzer, I was rolling little balls of dough, smashing them into discs (which probably negated the chilling effects of the refrigerator), and madly shaking sugar crystals all over the counter. I made two batches, and I managed to forget completely, each time, that I was baking cookies at all until they were rather brown (mostly dark brown). We ate them anyway, but I knew I could probably coax a better cookie out of the dough. And finally, tonight, I did. I used a knife to make rounds and then popped them in the oven for 6 minutes (during which time I forbade myself the use of the internet, for fear of overbaking whilst reading bloggish drivel). The cookies are good -- not as spicy as hoped (the recipe calls for cinnamon, ground cloves, and allspice), but very good anyway. I am curious to know if I can skip the whole regfrigeration and rolling and shaping steps ... might have to try that. Or not. They taste similar to the snickerdoodles I made from my chilren's cookbook as a kid, and I don't remember any rolling for them...

Update: Nevermind. The cookies were good right out of the oven, but they're sort of blah today. Anyone have a great cookie recipe?

I actually got one for ginger cookies from the pastry chef at Stone Park Cafe a while back -- I would make them, but the measurements are all metric (argh).

Posted by csageday at 11:27 PM | Comments (3)

Plain Vanilla

Well, I was going to write a post extolling the merits of the Orlando vanilla pictured below, but the damned Internet has me all confused on the subject now. Is it real vanilla, or some sort of yummy synthetic? I don't know, but it's really, really good.

We bought the below vanilla in Mexico last winter (Derek's aunt had given it rave reviews) and have been enjoying it ever since -- it doesn't have the harsh flavor that our regular vanilla does, and it has been fabulous in baking and on ice cream. It says "Pure Natural Blended Vanilla" and refers to aged vanilla, soaking in rum, etc. Perhaps this means it's authentic? Either way, our bottle just ran out, so I'm on a mission (that will most likely involve grocers in Sunset Park) to find some more.

Posted by csageday at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2006

Sahadi's, Stinky, and Despaña

Mom put us in charge of hors d'oeuvres for Thanksgiving, so we got to visit Sahadi's and Stinky and buy our hearts out. We stuck to the usual olives, feta, hummus and babaganoush at Sahadi's, but I'm new to Stinky so I asked for suggestions. We took home a wonderfully, powerfully stinky hard cheese and I'm sorry to say I didn't write down what it was. I do, however, have the label for another cheese we loved -- a soft cheese that comes in a plastic bag since there's no rind -- crescenza (ours was from Bellwether Farms in CA). You expect it to have a standard camembert flavor, but it's got an extra kick. We were also surprised to find many Spanish food items at Stinky, including jamon serrano still on the bone and ready to be sliced.

Which reminds me -- we finally made it to Despaña -- the Spanish food importer at Lafayette and Broome. When we got back from Spain, we headed over there as soon as we could to see how closely we could replicate Spanish meals we'd had. I was very happy with what we found -- Cola Cao (like Quik, but Spanish), white anchovies, lomo, good cheeses, blood sausage (morcilla), and good roasted peppers. What made my day, though, was that at some point, my conversation with the sales people switched to Spanish -- it was just easier to talk about Spanish food that way. It felt so good -- like we went back to Spain for ten minutes.

As far as replicating Spanish dishes, some worked and some didn't, but I think Derek should get some sort of prize for the clams he made. They tasted just like the ones with had over there.

The recipe is simple. You soak the clams in salt water for half an hour to get the sand out. Then you cook them, covered, until they open. In another pan, you sautee a few minced cloves of garlic, then add the clam broth with a teaspoon of flour to thicken it, and a bunch of chopped parsley, and then add the clams back in and mix it all together. Derek made this all one evening before I got home, so I might be forgetting something, but that's the basic idea. It makes for a great communal bowl of finger food.

Posted by csageday at 12:10 AM | Comments (0)

Still Here

The problem with blogs and blogging is that you can't exactly drop it like a cable-knitting or sardine-eating phase. You can feel like dropping it for a while in favor of, say, going outside on nice weekend days or getting sleep of weeknights, and this may seem like the right thing to do, but there is this nagging GUILT. Guilt which really shouldn't be all too terrible given that few people read this and I, in turn, guilt them into doing so.

So, there are blog-worthy topics, I suppose. We've been eating lots of good things. For no apparent reason, we went to Al Di La Friday night (beet ricotta ravioli, calves liver, dessert wine), the very good, newish Fifth Ave. BBQ place Saturday afternoon(fabulous biscuit with sausage gravy, an egg, and cheddar grits), and Rosewater Sunday afternoon (sweet pork ribs over grits topped with a poached egg, side of kale, pear ginger juice). I think we did this to avoid real Christmas shopping.

Derek is, as usual, ordering gifts well in advance from various websites. I, on the other hand, feel like it should still be October, or January. I'm not ready for this gift-giving business. WHY do we have to do this, anyway? For a the past couple of years, I've gotten an early start, and I've had some sort of new Christmas theme to keep me interested. One year, I exchanged stockings with a friend so we'd both have an excuse to buy lots of cute pointless things. Then, I started doing a stocking for D because we spend Christmas morning together. And then there was the whole find-gifts-that-don't-create-more-trash thing, where I stopped buying things people won't wear and bought museum memberships instead. So this year I'm out of ideas. I'm pretending it's not a big deal and hoping that my Christmas spirit/consumerist panic sets in soon.

We did manage to find a nice tree and decorate it, and we've been moving through the collection of holiday CDs (does Jesus Christ Superstar count?). Hopefully this will induce me to get my gifting in order.

On the food front, I made that no-knead bread all of the food bloggers were making back when they were blogging and I was, ahem, not. It is the recipe "a six year old could make," so I figured I couldn't mess it up too much. I only let it rise 12 or so hours (not the recommended 19), but it seemed ready, so I went ahead with the rest of the recipe. I folded it and let it rest while I went with my family to see the Ron Mueck and Annie Leibovitz shows at the Brooklyn Museum (and visited the cafe there for the first time -- good stuff), then baked it when I got home. I messed something up, but I'm not sure what, because it was a little too moist for my taste (took it out too soon, maybe? bottom was pretty dark, though), but Mom and Derek loved it and ate it all up, so it wasn't too bad. Will have to try again. I was happy to have kept some leftover cornmeal around for ages -- it was perfect for the crust.

Also on the food front -- you know how you have a few things that you know how to make well? I think I have a new thing (which brings my total up to something like a lofty four). It's another Lidia Bastianich recipe, and it involves broccoli rabe, bacon or pancetta, and chic peas. The bacon makes a mostly vegetable dish taste nice and meaty, and the beans and greens are comforting. It needs some tweaking (I think I'll try kale), but it's getting there.

Posted by csageday at 12:09 AM | Comments (1)

September 12, 2006

Beware the Peppercorn, uh, I mean, Pepper

About ten minutes ago, I was grinding pepper over a bunch of destined-to-be-grilled vegetables. I may have been generous with the pepper. Then, I thought for a moment that something nearby smelled awfully bad, so I leaned over and smelled the veggies to make sure it wasn't one of them. It didn't seem to be, so I put them in the oven and went off to unpack the laundry. A few minutes into it, my right nostril felt a little...twinge. I rubbed my nose. The twinge turned into a boiling furnace, and I realize that when I got a good whiff of the vegetables, I must also have inhaled a good bit of ground pepper, and it must now be lodged in some inaccessible place up my nose. I've since tried to clean out my nose with water and a tissue, and I've tried to blow my nose many times, but my entire nose now feels like it's been rubbed with the seeds of a jalapeno pepper. It's burning. My snot is hotter than tabasco. I'm sure things will drain out eventually -- hopefully my nose will return to a normal color tomorrow -- but I wanted to warn any fresh-pepper-using cooking people to BEWARE THE PEPPERCORN. It's dangerous, people.

Update: Ignore me. I'm feeling just a tiny bit dumb now. It wasn't the peppercorn (didn't that seem far fetched, anyway?). It was a spicy red pepper. In the roasted vegetable mix were red peppers deemed "SWEET red peppers" by the sign in above them in the co-op. Some brilliant co-op member must have stocked the wrong peppers, or thrown a hot pepper in with the sweet ones for kicks. I know this because I just tried to eat the roasted vegetable mix and my mouth feels like my nose. Oh -- and I wasn't far off with the jalapeno analogy, no? I must have had pepper oil on my hands. So, uh, beware spotty stocking of peppers at the co-op. Really.

Posted by csageday at 09:34 PM | Comments (1)

September 11, 2006

It's probably related to all the good eating I've been doing...

Sorry, sorry sorry. I do want to share blog-worthy anecdotes and such, but I'm not feeling very bloggish. I've also developed a physical ailment, so I'll use that as an excuse -- it's some sort of jaw or tooth or ear problem (possibly TMJ, which I've just read is "the most vague area in dentistry," hurrah!). I'm supposed to avoid bagels (oops) and yawning (how?) and press warm compresses on my face and eat half a bottle of Advil a day (since Advil tastes like candy, this last bit isn't hard at all). I hope this goes away soon.

Despite my ailing jaw or head or tooth or ear, we rode the G and 7 trains for five hours today to get ourselves to the U.S. Open, so we could meet up with my brother and take advantage of the $5 grounds passes. The only remaining tennis events included in the pass were the juniors and wheelchair finals (the main event, the men's final, was not included and is astronomically priced, but with this pass you can pretend that you're going). We mainly went so we could enjoy the day, watch any tennis we could, and picnic outside while watching the men's final on the big screens. D and I amused ourselves by counting brand-name polo shirts and sweaters tied at the neck. We also rooted for juniors doubles teams with slightly mismatched outfits. I'm actually very glad we went, since I enjoy watching tennis and the atmosphere at the Open is pleasant. I usually miss it every year because it coincides with trips upstate. I was glad to learn about this pseudo-attendance option (thanks, Nick!) -- the Tennis Center grounds are really nice, the tennis was good, and the preppiness of the scene is quite entertaining.

Since posting may continue to be lame and sporadic, here is a food-related offering. While eating at Little D last night (Little Dishes renamed because somebody owns the trademark for "Dishes"(!)), we had a lovely chocolate cake. I recognized it as very similar to something I made years ago -- Asian Five Spice Chocolate Cake from Epicurious. It's wonderfully dense and chocolatey and decadent. And if I can make it, anyone can. So go click on that and try it the next time you need a kitchen project.

(By they way, we had a lovely dinner at Little D. The specials -- a fresh pea soup and an heirloom tomato salad -- were lovely, and I liked the scallops. It's becoming a regular dinner spot of ours, despite my earlier doubts.)

Finally, I thought I probably wouldn't ever use the Honeydew Melon Lime Popsicle recipe that came in my Gourmet swag bag, but I had a super-ripe melon sitting on the counter the other day and some spare time, so I did. Pushing the blended melon, lime, and simple syrup mixture through a sieve wasn't fun, but the resulting pops were great (and really, that was the only annoying part of a pretty simple recipe). Since I ran out of popsicle holders (only four in the free mold), I poured the rest in an ice cube tray. When they were slightly frozen, I stick toothpicks in to make mini-melon-pops, and these have made great little snacks.

Posted by csageday at 12:04 AM | Comments (5)

August 27, 2006

Bacon-Wrapped Anything is Good, Really

...At least the bacon part is. One of our upstate activities involved grilling outdoors, naturally, and because we had fantastic local peaches and untold amounts of bacon in the house (my family is addicted), I decided that we really needed to try bacon-wrapped peaches. I announced this to guests and family members and got disgusted looks in return. Fine, I said, I'll just make a few and you don't have to have any. Derek says he supported me all along, but I don't believe him. I also don't know what the problem is -- bacon-wrapped fruit is not a foreign concept -- bacon-wrapped dates, after all, are not unheard of. Peaches are also sweet and delicious, so isn't this a natural progression? I have a friend who believes that you can throw just about anything in some bacon and it'll work out. And really, doesn't there seem an urgent need for bacon-wrapped things in today's culinary scene?

So I packed a bunch of peach halves with strips of bacon wrapped around them and secured with toothpicks. Then, at the lean-to where our friend John had built a banquet-worthy fire, I quietly slipped in a rack of the bacon-wrapped peaches. Actually, I don't think it was quiet -- I think someone said, "What is that, anyway, and why is it near the steak?" I had a little trouble getting prime space, but the things got cooked, and eventually I took one specimen over to the picnic table to cool off so I could try it.

Five minutes later, it was nowhere to be found, and my previously-disgusted-by-the-concept mother announced that it was delicious. A protracted discussion about who ate what and who was entitled to the small number of remaining peaches ensued. I was inclined to favor those who gave pre-dinner endorsement to the project. Suffice it to say that they were goooood. And because we still had about three pounds of bacon in the house, I got to experiment indoors, too -- I tried again with peaches, but unless you have really ripe, sweet peaches, it's not as good. We had "donut" or "saturn" peaches the first time. Those are the flat-looking peaches that are wonderfully sweet and usually horrendously overpriced in the city. I also tried it with dates, and was hooked. The salty-sweet, cripsy-soft combination is heavenly.

Posted by csageday at 04:47 PM | Comments (2)

August 10, 2006

Food Finds

This is likely my last entry for a while, as we're headed to the land-of-no-internet shortly. I have been cooking away, and thought I'd share my latest acceptable-to-the-public dishes. I'm beginning to feel more comfortable in the kitchen. A year ago, I was not all that confident about whipping up a presentable dinner for more than two with whatever was in the fridge, but I feel like I have more options now. Experimenting is coming a little easier.

First, since it's hot and nobody should be eating anything warm, I made tabbouleh. I used the recipe from Joy of Cooking, thinking it would be standard enough, and was surprised at how easy it was. Aside from soaking the bulgar wheat in boiling water, there's no cooking. There is lots of chopping, but that I can handle. I wasn't happy with the excess of onions and parsley in the recipe, but it taught me the basics, so I made it again last night with some variations (less parsley, no mint (none left), cucumbers instead of onion), and was very pleased with the result. It's a great summer picnicking extra or a take-to-work lunch.

Here's the basic idea, for the uninitiated. Take a cup or so of bulgar wheat and put it in a bowl. Pour in twice as much boiling water, cover with a plate, and soak for half an hour. Then chop parsley, tomato, scallions, and cucumbers to taste. When the wheat is soaked, strain it in a sieve, pushing out the excess water with a spoon. Put it a clean bowl and add the chopped ingredients. Whisk together 1/3 a cup of lemon juice with 1/3 cup olive oil and add that. Add salt and pepper and mix and refrigerate. Voila. If you're not satisfied, there are ten billion variations of this online.

I also picked up Israeli couscous at the co-op recently, mainly because of the colorful label on the bulk bin. I thought it might make a nice alternative to bigger pasta. In a rush to make something with it later, I went to one web site, read that it can be cooked like risotto, and proceeded to use it that way. Since my risotto-making habits are extravagant, this involved lots of good ingredients and lots of stirring. The result was decadent -- a lot like risotto, but not great as leftovers (it congealed quite a bit). The site I checked said that it could be simply boiled as well, so I might try something simpler next time.

I've been making this banana bread at every available opportunity, since I love the recipe and have felt compelled to be a good hostess and make it for house guests. Last weekend, since we had some perfectly ripe plums on hand and only 3 bananas, I added two of those, and they added an extra bit of moisture and subtle fruity sweetness. Still, the recipe is fine (and impressive) all on its own, as long as you use four ripe (not overripe) bananas.

The plums came from a farmer's market in Warrensburg, NY, which is only open for three hours a week. Still, we happened to be driving through just as it opened, and we made out like bandits. We got great sweet corn (picked that morning), plums, peaches, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, etc. It's worth seeking out these places during summer trips. We got some donut peaches (also known as saturn peaches), which we'd seen at the co-op for exorbitant prices. We weren't sure if they'd live up to their promise, since they were hard as a rock, but when they ripened OH MY GOD they were good. Like peaches, but ... better. Try some if you get the chance.

Posted by csageday at 01:40 AM | Comments (2)

May 08, 2006

Rhubarb

Jeff brought us some amazing rhubarb pie last weekend and informed us that rhubarb is in season. The pie was so good that we vowed to pick up some rhubarb and make some sort of crisp (read: something easier than pie) before the season ends.

We managed to throw together a rhubarb crisp tonight and it was wonderfully tart and sweet. It's so easy to make -- just chop up the rhubarb in half-inch pieces and toss it with a good amount of sugar (a lot of sugar is good if you're sensitive to tart things). Then put some sort of crisp topping on top (we used the apple oatmeal crisp topping from the NYTimes cookbook), cook for half an hour and serve with ice cream. It wasn't quite as dreamy as the homemade pie, but it was damn good.

Posted by csageday at 01:01 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2006

Meringues: Take II

I woke up obscenely early (for a Saturday) this morning. And in my morning stupor, I decided that the three leftover egg whites in the fridge could best be used to make a proper batch of meringues, baked at the proper temperature and not made into dry little caramelized bits.

So I poured the whites into the bowl and, because I am still without an electric beater (I know, I know, I'll buy one soon), I set about whisking whilst reading food blogs. I whisked and whisked. My arm got sore. I stopped to type in a URL. Derek woke up, and I was still whisking. I considered passing off the task, but was too proud of the whisking I'd done so far to forego the glory of attaining soft peaks. I moved to the living room with my soft hills and valleys and continued to whisk, but never quite got to the peak stage. I'm not sure why. Maybe the whites were old? Maybe I stopped for too long in the middle of whisking?

At some point, I stopped and decided to proceed with the addition of sugar. Since I'm still not clear on what superfine sugar is (one recipe calls for some granulated and some superfine sugar, so I know it's different), I went with a mix of half confectioner's and half regular. By the time I had finished incorporating it, I definitely no longer had peaks of any sort. I had suggestions of waveforms, but really I was working with marshmallow fluff. Not even -- it was like marshmallow fluff soup.

Determined to get something edible out of this, I lined a sheet with foil and poured a bit of the mixture on it. It spread out like maple syrup. Fine, I'll have flat meringue-like cookies, I thought. When I poured the third puddle, it ran into the second one and I ended up with a huge meringue lake. Still determined, I threw the whole thing into the oven -- at the right temperature this time, at least. What emerged much later was a very large, thin, toffee-like meringue, if you can even call it that. I was too embarrassed to take a picture of it. I broke it into bits and have been eating it stubbornly.

Note to self: No baking of any kind before coffee.

Posted by csageday at 09:44 PM | Comments (4)

May 02, 2006

Tie Racks Make Great Pasta-Drying Racks

...and while I'm offering budget kitchen tips, wine bottles make great rolling pins, too.

At least a decade ago, I helped a friend make pasta with her pasta maker, and I remembered it being so ridiculously easy. You just put the dough through this metal thing with rollers a few times, then you put it through a thing that slices it into strips, throw it in some boiling water and poof, you have spaghetti.

Obviously my memory is selective. We invited some pasta-maker-savvy people over for dinner on Saturday to help us not screw things up (thank goodness), but I vastly underestimated the time it takes to process flour and eggs into something edible and cooked. I somehow entirely blocked out the part where dough must be made and then must be kneaded (so demanding, this dough) and then must "rest" (comfortably, undisturbed, and presumable quite content to be holding up dinner while it gets beauty sleep under a dishtowel in its own private bowl).

While I felt a bit guilty about making them wait for hours for dinner, it's a good thing we had six people in our apartment, since it took four to run the pasta-making operation. First, I assembled dough (using the crowd-pleasing flour-volcano mixing method). Then, the dough got quality time in the bowl, resting. Then I rolled the dough out into 10" x 20" strips with a wine bottle because I had forgotten about the pasta-dough rolling part and didn't imaging myself needing a rolling pin until my pie-making retirement years.

At some point during the dough-making operation, we realized we didn't have any sort of rack to dry the pasta on (I had forgotten about that, too). We don't own a dish drying rack because we are lucky enough to have a dishwasher (and thank god for that, given all of the cooking experiments going on around here). So Derek disappeared and then reappeared a few minutes later with something that looked absolutely perfect: his empty tie rack. Rigged to hang from a cabinet door, it worked nicely.

So while I was rolling away, a friend anchored the pasta machine to our wine cabinet and supervised the dough-lengthening operation. One person would load the strip of dough into the top of the machine and crank it through and another would catch it. When the dough made it to the linguine stage, it was transfered (with a good deal of fanfare) to the pasta drying-tie-rack, where someone separated the pieces so they wouldn't stick.

For anyone not familiar with pasta machines: Here's a primer. A pasta maker has two parts. One is made of two smooth metal rods which can be adjusted to be closer and closer together. You start on a wide setting and keep feeding the dough through on narrower settings until it's good and long. when you're happy with the thickness of the dough, you move your sheet of pasta dough (which, miraculously, does not tear easily) to the second part of the machine. This part can split your sheet into linguine-sized noodles (or maybe it's tagliatelle?) or spaghetti-sized ones. We went with linguine, since that works well for carbonara.

The finished product was good, though a bit mushy for my taste (possibly because they were too thin or not dry enough?). And we made twice as much as we needed. But at least I know how the thing works now, and I'm very grateful for the help in figuring it out (and the patience of people who kept hearing about yummy food but didn't see anything edible materialize for quite some time). I think I'd like to try pappardelle or lasagna next time, since I love wide fresh pasta in restaurants.

Posted by csageday at 11:58 PM | Comments (1)

April 18, 2006

Jeff and Amber Can Cook

If you love food and cooking, then please, for the love of all things culinary, go and visit Amber and Jeff's new blog: The Jeff Next Door. These people, unlike some other bloggers we know, actually know how to cook. They are Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home devotees -- it's their "base cookbook," so you know there is great cooking going on in that apartment. Amber has posted the recipe for her acclaimed gingerbread (omigoditssogood), and they have graciously posted one of their favorite recipes from Moosewood: Gingered Greens and Tofu. I expect great things from this blog. The secrets of the kitchen that can produce a guinness cake and homemade flan will finally be revealed!

Posted by csageday at 09:59 PM | Comments (1)

April 17, 2006

The Meringue Project

It's been whole days since I wrote a cooking post, so here's the meringue story. Encouraged by my whipped-cream success, I decided to make meringues for Francis' birthday party. Meringues with hand-whipped egg whites, no less. Yes, I realize that I'm somewhat of a holdout with my whisk and sore elbow, and an electric mixer can probably be bought for next to nothing at the corner deli. I just can't stand to buy another kitchen item at this point, when there's a gorgeous new pasta maker (a Christmas present -- thanks Jo!) that I haven't used yet, and I haven't gotten rid of my four non-whistling teapots (what do you do with those? I would feel terrible about giving them to Goodwill -- what if someone's house burns down? They're perfectly good otherwise. Anyone know a whistle mechanic?).

So I skimmed over the recipe and saved some eggs and eventually got around to separating them a couple of hours before the party. Then I whisked. And whisked. There is much more whisking involved than with cream. It's a slow process, and at the beginning it looks extremely unlikely that the bubbly clear goo will ever turn into anything fluffy and white. When your arm is about to start shaking, though, it starts to firm up, and if you keep going you eventually get those fabled "stiff peaks". Amazing.

Once I had the egg whites whipped, I checked to see what other ingredients I might need (I do not recommend this sequence of activities). The recipe called for "superfine" sugar. My sugar box says nothing about being superfine. It's just brand-name white sugar. I thought for a minute that "superfine" might just be an extra marketing thing, like "extra fancy." Not likely. I had confectioner's sugar, so I thought about using that, but the recipe that uses that in Joy is the "alternative" recipe, and it calls for half superfine sugar and half confectioner's. This being my virgin experience with meringues, I wasn't going for anything "alternative," so I carefully incorporated my sugar and vanilla and cream of tartar (or maybe that was there from the beginning) and hoped everything would be okay.

Next, I got out three cookie sheets and started making little mounds (these were going to be mini meringues) with a spoon. Not satisfied with their looks, I switched to squeezing the fluff out of a corner of a zip lock back. Then, still not satisfied that I was being creative enough, I dyed the rest of the batch purple (festive, no?).

It's been a week since this happened, so I'm not sure how I did this, but when it was time to put the meringues in, the oven was too hot. Joy talks about how "cooking" meringues really only involves drying them out sufficiently to make the outsides crunchy, so you cook them on really low heat. For some reason (probably because I didn't check the heat in the recipe until later and over-pre-heated it), I had the oven set for higher than it should be (can you sense impending doom?). I left the door open for a while to let it cool down, and then put the meringues in for their allotted 2 hours.

One hour into this experiment, I turned on the oven light and saw two sad things:

1. Non-superfine size sugar crystals were popping up like chicken pox on my meringues.

2. The meringues were all brown. No purple or white in sight.

In other words, they looking NOTHING like the bright white mounds of sugar my mother made when I was little. Not light, not white, and certainly not fluffy. The sugar must have caramelized a little in the heat. When we finally got them out of the oven, I broke about a third of them just trying to unstick them from the pan.

The best of the batch were still brought to the party, where brave (drunk) souls took cautious bites. I stuck to Derek's white bean dip (blend white beans and pesto sauce and, poof!, better party food than mine). Sigh.

Posted by csageday at 11:43 PM | Comments (1)

March 20, 2006

Black Bean Soup with Chorizo (A Work in Progress)

Here's another recipe (a somewhat more original one, thank you, but note the disclaimer above and proceed with caution). I think I've just stepped over some sort of blog boundary by posting a recipe. Also, eight of the last ten posts are about food. Is this a food blog now? I hope not, because I don't think I'm quite qualified to be dispensing food advice. Information about forays into new food territory, yes, but recipes ... well, just take everything with a grain of salt (pardon the pun).

We just finished making this and the apartment smells wonderful. The chorizo has enough flavor to transform a regular black bean soup into something really good.

Start with a regular black bean soup recipe -- we adapted the Cuban one in Joy. At some point, add chorizo. Here's what we did.

We sauteed the following in a soup pot until it was soft:
1 yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
12-15 half-inch slices of good chorizo
salt and pepper

Then we added 2 cups of black beans that we'd soaked overnight and then simmered in water for an hour, along with a cup or two of vegetable broth (I'm thinking canned beans would work fine, too). We mashed up the beans some and then simmered it for another hour. The beans still aren't quite as soft as we'd like, but the flavor, thanks to the chorizo, is great.

I think some sort of green topping might be appropriate -- scallions or chopped cilantro, maybe? Joy suggests Cuban-style toppings like onions and chopped hard boiled eggs. I tend to like yogurt or sour cream on top, too. Sherry is good (oops, forgot to add that). We have enough soup to feed ourselves for a week, so we'll play around and see what works.

Posted by csageday at 09:47 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2006

Fresh Sardines

Remeber how I really like sardines? Well I bought some fresh ones yesterday for kicks. (Sorry if my less-than-appetizing photos induce queasiness.)

Joy of Cooking (which I've come to use more and more, since it just has everything you might possibly be looking for) had a section on what to do with them. According to Joy, it's "easy" to remove the spine and bones. This is a lie. If I had followed the book's helpful little illustrated instructions, I would have pulled out half of the flesh as well. I managed to get the spine out of one but gave up after that. Then I added things from the fridge that seemed appropriate: lemon, cilantro, scallions. Per Joy, I dutifully dredged them in peppered flour, sprinkled the herbs on top, and fried them.

They weren't bad -- the flavor was quite good, actually -- but I had quite a time getting the bones out of the one I was too lazy to debone before cooking. I ate a bunch of them, and I'm pretty sure my liver (or some other vital internal organ) currently looks like a porcupine.

Posted by csageday at 10:33 PM | Comments (1)

The Dumpling Factory

One of the cooking magazines I subscribe to, Cuisine at Home, often has recipes for homemade dumplings. I've always been intrigued, but I haven't came across the dumping wrappers at the Co-op yet. When we found some in Sunset Park the other day, it seemed like fate. We ran home and bought some stuffing ingredients (based on what we thought should go in a good vegetarian dumpling), and made them the next day. The stuffing took a bit of patience -- we didn't get the crimping aroung the edges to work quite right, and it gets boring. We were wondering if this becomes the kids' job in households with children (like shucking corn or peeling carrots). The novelty wears off pretty quickly. We made enough for dinner, ate, and then moved the assembly line to the living room to finish up the job and freeze the rest. The stuffing goes like this: grab a wrapper, put a teaspoon of stuffing on it, wet the enges, seal it, make some effort to crimp something, give up, dip in flour, set aside. Repeat. They cook quickly, so it'll be nice to have a supply in the freezer, but this is not going to be one of our regular staples, I don't think. We got so bored with the stuffing that we started talking about starting a company with both our initials in the name: CDDC. It's lame, and it's short the Cindy Derek Dumpling Company.

Posted by csageday at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2006

Whipped Cream

I have many interesting things to report on the cooking front. Lately we've made dumplings (complete with an assembly line for stuffing and sealing them), broccoli with udon noodles (I hated it, Derek loved it), an amazing shrimp with lime and cilantro recipe (from the Gourmet Cookbook), and whipped cream. The most fascinating item was the whipped cream. Have you ever whipped cream by hand? I hadn't. I've seen it done on countless cooking shows, though. It usually goes like this: Expert chef assures amateur chef that cream/egg whites can be hand whipped. Expert hands amateur the whisk. Amateur happily starts whisking. The show cuts to a shot showing the amateur with transformed egg whites or cream. I have always been curious to know exactly how much whipping was needed. Was the amateur's arm about to fall off? Did they slip it in a Cuisinart off camera?

Here's why we needed whipped cream. Derek cleaned out our kitchen cabinets yesterday in search of insects (he is at war with the mini-roaches we keep seeing). In doing so he found some Jello mix. To avoid putting quite so many sugary, insect-attracting things back in the cabinet, he made Jello. Then, at the Coop today, I decided that we needed to have whipped cream with the Jello, so we bought some heavy cream. Then, during some NCAA baskeball time-out or something this evening (D's the basketball fan, I barely understand the rules), D said "I'm getting the Jello. What do I do, just whip the cream?" I panicked, since I wanted to be the cream-whipper, said I'd do it, and ran off to the kitchen. Finally, the mystery of whipping cream would be revealed. The glass bowl I wanted was in the dishwasher, still warm from the cycle. I worried that this might possibly make whipping difficult, so I had the brilliant idea of putting the bowl briefly in the freezer. It didn't really fit, so I shoved it in and slammed the door shut. I had planned to wait there for a minute and take it out, but I got antsy and decided to get the cream out instead. I closed the refrigerator door, turned around, put it on the counter, and then heard the most distubing sound. The freezer door was opening. The bowl was moving. I couldn't quite turn around fast enough to catch it, so the bowl crashed dramatically to the floor and broke into at least a thousand pieces. Pyrex, when it breaks, is a bit like that glass they use in car windshields. Only sharper. I spent at least 15 minutes cleaning things up and cursing myself for my stupid cool-down-the-bowl plan. How did I get to be such a braindead idiot? Who DOES things like that, anyway? I can't quite bring myself to tell Derek exactly how I broke the bowl (and I know he's a sporadic blog reader, so maybe he'll never find out). But I'm getting off topic.

I found another bowl and poured in half the cream, so I'd have some left if I dramatically screwed up the whipping somehow. I started whipping. After only a few seconds I could feel it get a little thicker, and it stayed that way for a while. The consistency was a bit like chocolate syrup. I looked around for something to read while I whipped. I grabbed a cookbook while whipping (can you see how this constant urge to multitask might be disastrous?). I whipped some more. I opened up the the index of the book to look for chocolate mousse, and then, all of the sudden, this dramatic change in consistency took place in the bowl and I was whipping something that looked exactly like Readi Whip. I don't think I'd been whipping more than 3 minutes. I was amazed. It's so easy! It's a little bland without something in it -- I guess I should add some sugar or something at the beginning? -- but it's the real thing. I think it's magic.

Posted by csageday at 11:10 PM | Comments (5)

March 12, 2006

Thank You, Craig School Auction

Last weekend, we attended the swanky suburban extravaganza of school spirit and upscale New Jersey fundraising known as the annual Craig School auction. "Tuscan Splendor" was the theme, and I am now the proud owner of not one, but two artfully assembled bunches of plastic grapes, which I developed quite an affinity for at the event.

Mom works at Craig, my brother went there, and I am the deliquent website designer. It's a great, close-knit school that has been steadily growing over the past few years. I was blown away by the scale of the auction this year. There's a silent auction, a live auction, a cash raffle, and gift baskets that you can buy raffle tickets for. We usually bid on things just for the fun of it and end up taking things home that we may or may not need (the coffee mug I'm drinking is from a Craig auction in the 90s and I love it, but I think the accompanying items went to a stoop sale). In this year's live auction, trips to exotic places, opera tickets, and a guitar signed by Bon Jovi were highlights.

I was woefully underdressed, failing to have purchased a dress with a lacy shawl and high heels at the Short Hills mall ahead of time (the outfit of choice in Morristown, NJ these days). My turtleneck, skirt, and glasses look (a la Velma from Scooby Doo) didn't quite make it. (Side note: In my rush to Century 21 on the way to the train to pick up tights, I also picked up leg warmers and discovered that they actually work. If you're wearing a skirt and it's freezing out -- and you don't mind looking like an extra on Flashdance -- they're perfect.)

Anyway, we lucked out at the auction this year, thanks to Derek's strategic placement of raffle tickets in baskets.

Remember how I mentioned that we don't own a teapot that whistles? This has been an ongoing saga. First, I burned out a saucepan numerous times while boiling water for tea. This made Derek a little nuts. Mom bought be a nice teapot but it seemed to leave mineral deposits in the water. So I bought a different type of teapot but lost the whistler in the move and burned it to a crisp. I bought a replacement at Pearl River, but the handle got boiling hot and the whistler didn't work. Mom gave me ANOTHER teapot for Christmas, but that also had a whistler that didn't work, so I reverted to the saucepan method. That's four faulty teapots in the space of a year.

I've had similar luck with coffee makers -- I broke a college roomate's coffee maker and I can't seem to make coffee that tastes good. I own an espresso maker and a coffee maker but have never gotten decent coffee out of either (they both years of dust caked on them and live in boxes). I finally switched to using one of those filter holders that you postion over a mug and pour water into. It's really all I can handle.

So, I was absolutely thrilled to win a huge gift basket with a fancy coffee maker, a beautiful, whistling teapot (!), lots of coffee, and two travel mugs which will come in handy when the cops start enforcing that new law about coffee on the subway (until we won the basket I was considering a career as a coffee-on-the-train activist). The coffee maker has a timer and a water filter and a clock and is amazing. We just made our first pot and it, miraculously, tastes fine. The basket even came with a little coffee-measuring spoon. And the coffee maker stops brewing if you take the pot out in the middle to pour yourself some coffee. Thanks, Craig, for giving a long-suffering coffee and tea addict some decent tools to work with.

Posted by csageday at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2006

Valentine's Day

We decided against reservations for Valentine's Day dinner and did it ourselves. We kept it simple: asparagus and artichokes with hollandaise, wine, and some good bread and cheese. With candlelight and flowers and good music, this feels really cozy and special. I highly recommend it.

The only down side was that once I've made hollandaise, I can't leave the room without finishing every last drop of it, so I felt a little quesy later on. The hollandaise recipe we use is the "quick" one in the New York Times Cookbook -- Mom has been using if for years (most notably for the eggs benedict we have for Christmas brunch). It's very easy and quite good -- put a melted stick of butter, salt, juice of half a lemon, and three egg yolks in a blender and blend. That's it. It's on the lemony side, which we like. It is nothing like the yellow muck you tend to get in restaurants.

Personally, while I really like it on asparagus, I think I'll stick to melted butter for the artichokes. I like their flavor too much as is. I don't think my body can handle that much hollandaise, anyway.

Posted by csageday at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2006

Spanish Comfort Food

This is awesome: a gourmet food store devoted entirely to Spanish food. All my favorite things are there. Despaña Brand Foods

Posted by csageday at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2006

Churros and Yonkers

Work and cooking experiments have been interfering with blogging time lately -- this always seems to happen right when my traffic spikes. Sorry to disappoint you, potiential Blue Sage addicts: it's for your own good.

Anyway, because I may not get around to decent descriptions of recent escapades, here's a recap:

We went to YONKERS. Have you been to Yonkers? The whole town (is it a town?) is built on a cliff. You look up, and there's another house 100 feet up above the one you're next to, and both houses have turrets and stone walls and look a bit like suburban castles. It was quite an adventure just to drive up there (thanks, Nick, for the ride).

We made CHURROS. It was very spontaneous. I became addicted to churros con chocolate on a foreign exchange program in 7th grade that made me a pathetic blob of homesickness. I don't think I quite appreciated the weight of culture shock before I signed up, but the churros saved me. My God, the churros on the corner were good. My Spanish family -- desperate to bring normalcy back to their household -- bought me plenty and joked for years about how I was a blubbering mess but I loved the churros. Anyway, Derek picked up some spanish hot chocolate mix for me for Christmas, and it tasted EXACTLY like the churro chocolate. I mentioned this and poof, Derek found a churros recipe online and dug out the cookie press and we made them. We only had olive oil, and the cookie press didn't have quite the right tip so they were a bit oily, but we ate them anyway. It's funny, when my Spanish sister came over to the U.S. one time, she came equipped with the churro maker and recipe and we tried to make them, but to no avail. The batter just turned into liquid in the oil. I never thought I'd be able to make the real thing -- I kind of assumed I'd have to go back to Santander, but no! Anything is possible with the internet.

Now I feel better. I may be silent for a while more since we're heading to Boston (what do people do in Boston, anway?) for work and a long weekend.

Posted by csageday at 11:04 PM | Comments (3)

Scheherazade Casserole

The original Moosewood Cookbook (1977) has mythic stature in my mind as far as vegetarian cookbooks are concerned. It is entirely handwritten and gets rave reviews from everyone I know who uses it. Since it wasn't readily available (stores sell various iterations, but I don't think the original, handwritten version is being printed anymore), even at the Coop, it became one of those things I always wanted to find but never got around to tracking down. Finally, I passed the grunt work on to Derek and asked for it for Christmas. It worked: I now own the 15th Anniversary reprint (1992), which sticks to the original but is revised to be a bit healther. Now, if I were still a vegetarian (and as much as I say I try to be, I just caved and had a turkey sandwich today so I'm hardly sticking to it), I could join the ranks of serious vegetarians by cooking lentil bulgar and stuffed squash and samosas from scratch.

I spent an afternoon flipping through it just to get a feel for what the signature dishes are. Odessa beets seem like a favorite, though I'm not big on shredded vegetables. A lot of recipes in the book seem like the classic vegetarian dishes that I love -- possibly because this book was a trailblazer. Many have roots in middle eastern food -- there's eggplant dip, cucumber yogurt sauce, spanakopita, stuffed grape leaves. There are also Asian-style peanut sauces and stir frys, and standard Italian dishes. A lot of my favorite things are in here: ricotta gnocchi, eggplant parmesan, banana bread, carrot bread, vegetarian chili.

To kick off my Moosewood cooking career with a bang, I made Scheherazade Casserole first, even though I didn't have a really firm idea about what the final product might look or taste like. The introduction starts with this: "This is one of my favorite recipes, and I strongly recommend it: ground soybeans baked with bulgar, vegetables, garlic, tomatoes, feta cheese. The texture is deeply satisfying, and the seasonings are bold. It tastes great!" It also has a completely insane list of ingredients, one of which involves prepping the night before (soaking the soybeans, something I'd never done before). Here's a simplified list:

• soaked soybeans
• bulgar
• feta cheese
• tomatoes
• peppers, garlic and lots of onions
• cumin and cayenne

These were gradually rendered into a huge reddish pile of mush which barely fit into our largest bowl. I was a little skeptical, but I just had a bite and it's wonderful. It tastes like a hearty Italian dish -- the feta really pulls it together and makes it seem decadent. I almost wish I weren't heading to Boston Thursday -- there's not way we'll finish it by then -- maybe I'll freeze half of it now. The recipe made enough for several weeks.

By the way, anyone know the origin of "scheherazade"? I could Google it, but I'm lazy.

Posted by csageday at 10:41 PM | Comments (2)

January 17, 2006

Adventures in Food, Continued

Did you know that you can make lentil soup exactly the same way you make pea soup? I used the leftover carrots and slightly-limp celery and non-homemade vegetable stock and substituted whole lentils for split peas and came up with passable lentil soup in about an hour. It wasn't fabulous, though. It needed something. So I added a can of tomatoes, per Joy. Eh. Perfectly edible soup, yet, but nothing to write home about. I think I need a spice. I love the lentil soup you get in mediterranean restaurants -- slightly spicy, smooth, somewhat pureed, with a lighter color? I have to pull out the mediterranean cookbook...(hold please)...okay, the mediterranean cookbook doesn't even have lentil soup, but the slow cooker book has Moroccan Style Lentil and Chic Pea soup - that involves similar ingredients plus turmeric and cardamon and cinnamon and a bunch of other spices. Might be worth a try.

Next adventure: Fish. I like fish stores. They're so retro. Fishmonger is a great word. I just don't know what to do with fish. I can handle shrimp (with Dad on the phone coaching), and I can get sardines out of a can, but that's where it ends. I've tried tuna -- I think it was okay, but now I'm afraid of all the mercury so I reserve my tuna binges for New York Rolls at Yamato once in a while (ooohsogoood). Right, so, the other night I was walking past the fish store (which is half a block away from the other fish store in the neighborhood -- which one should I go to??) and I decided that it would be really cool if I just walked in and ordered a fillet of something, like a grown-up.

So I walk in and am confronted with 100 different kinds of fish. There's trout, bluefish, halibut, tuna, gray sole, lemon sole, cod, etc. All of my fish knowledge leaves me. Five store people ask if I need help and I have to pretend I'm still thinking. There's a beautiful red snapper, but it's expensive and a whole fish seems like a bit of a challenge. I suddenly can't remember whether my Spanish Mom always made haddock or halibut. Finally, the only thing in my head is: Mom gets sole, just get the sole. Only there are two kinds of sole, gray and lemon. I hope that maybe the lemon sole is pre-flavored or something. I ask. The fish guy is not so good with English, so I repeat myself and realize at the same time that this is a neophyte kind of question. The fish guy smiles. No. Lemon sole has nothing to do with lemon. Oy. So how is it different, I ask. Less expensive, he says. Okay, whatever, I've had enough fish store embarrassment for a day. I get a fillet.

At home, Joy really doesn't have much advice for me. Sautéeing is good for sole. Grill is best. Ugh. So I sautée, but I do it in the Le Creuset, which is really not the best pan because it's for evenly distributed heat, not high, fish-browning heat. I cook the fish in olive oil, slather it with lemon, salt, pepper, and parsley, and it is edible. Derek said it wasn't bad. I was not impressed. I really should have consulted the internet or Mom -- here's a decent recipe that I could have tried. Anyway, to summarize, it has not been a successful week in Blue Sage Food. Not as bad as the Failed Fudge, but not up to my foodie wannabe standards.

Update: The Amateur Gourmet has done an anniversary food post and it's full of things to try.

Posted by csageday at 10:51 PM | Comments (1)