Weblog
Making pizza
A few days ago, I made a luscious homemade pizza. I cheated a bit, though. The Italian deli down the street makes and sells dough balls, so this is what I used for the crust. I also picked up some of their fresh mozzarella (didn’t feel like making my own). I sliced some roma tomatoes that I picked up from the farmer’s market, harvested and washed some of the basils that we’ve been growing in the Aerogarden, and grated some Parmasean. I brushed the crust down with some good olive oil, sprinkled some oregano over it, spread the tomatoes and basil all over, and then heaped mozzarella and parmasean on top and basked it on Lex’s pizza stone.
It was soooo good! We gobbled it right down.
Drunken Noodles
It’s no secret that I love exploring the worlds of Asian cooking, especially Thai and Vietnamese. One of my favorite Thai dishes to make is Drunken Noodles. I’ve ordered it many times at different restaurants, and always found that the sauce was too thick, heavy, and gravy like, and this took away from the whole dish in general. After searching through some Thai cooking websites I was inspired to try and make the dish at home, minus the icky thickness of the sauce. I’m a regular reader of The Jungle Prince’s Desert Modernism website (though he generally focuses on Korean cooking, he delves into other countries as well.) He makes gorgeous looking food, but after following a few of his recipes, even the one he has for Drunken Noodles, I find that he likes his food about a zillion times spicier than I can handle, and believe me, I can handle pretty spicy food. Below is HIS recipe, minus a whole lot of the hot peppers, and plus a few hints that I found usefull when making this dish.
Ok, on to the cooking. First thing you should know about me, is I rarely measure ingredients. Actually, I usually only measure when baking, because I consider baking more of a science, and cooking more of an experience. When I say a “few” of something, think 3 or 4, a pinch fits in the crook of the palm of your hand. A dash of a liquid is a two second quick pour. Also know that in a star rating, I consider this particular recipe about a 2.5 star in heat. Meaning, it won’t make steam come out of your ears but your lips will have a nice tingle to them after a few bites. Adjust accordingly to your taste by reducing both the fresh and dried chili. Ok. Here we go. Most of these ingredients will be found at any respectable Asian market. Ask for help if you need it – most proprietors will be very very happy to see you. You will need:
1/2 block of extra firm tofu, pressed dry (till it no longer wets a paper towel) and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
About 3/4 pound of shrimp (or cubed chicken if you don’t like shrimp. Or just stick with tofu. It’s not a hard and fast recipe.
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small white onion, minced
Rice vinegar
Fish sauce
Oyster sauce
Soy sauce
Palm Sugar
Juice of one small lime
Small bunch of coriander/cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
Small bunch of Thai basil leaves (no, you can not use Italian basil) roughly chopped
Small bunch of chopped green onion/scallions (green part only)
Ground pepper
Dried red chili flake
1 hot pepper (I like using the long hot orange/red ones) minced very very fine
One package of the wide rice stick noodles (1/2 inch across work best)
Step One: Prepare marinade:
In a bowl combine a few tablespoons of palm sugar, lime juice, two pinches of dried chili flake, a pinch of ground pepper, and about 1/4 cup each of fish sauce and rice vinegar.
Stir mixture together, and then add tofu.
Step Two: Start the noodles:
Put noodles (as they are out of the package, in a “block” do not separate) in big pot. Cover with cold water. Set aside for about 10-15 minutes, letting the noodles soak. Now is a good time to enjoy a cocktail and some appetizers. Really. You’ve got about 10 minutes or so. After your drink, and the noodle soak, put noodles on burner, and bring to a boil. Keep an eye on your noodles, tasting frequently. You want them very al dente, and not “done” or mushy. If you do not pay attention to your noodles, I guarantee that the mush will happen. When they are al dente, drain, and immediately rinse with cold water. Let them drain, sitting in the colander.
Step 3: Wok n Roll
Heat a small amount (barely coat the bottom) oil in a wok (I like chili oil, but feel free to use whatever light oil you like, if not chili, I’d probably go with safflower oil)
Start cooking the onion, garlic, and hot pepper. Do NOT let them brown.
Toss in shrimp, cooking until just starting to turn pink (should happen pretty quick)
Add tofu and marinade, as well as a few tablespoons of oyster sauce. Cook for just a minute or two, liquid will start to thicken a bit.
Add noodles, and carefully toss them about in the wok, coating them all. Now toss in your basil leaves and green onion. Remove from heat.
Serve with a generous amount of chopped coriander on top. I also top mine with some extra sliced hot pepper.
Voila. This recipe can be made kosher by removing the oyster sauce (add more fish sauce) and the shrimp. Enjoy!
Shrimp Ceviche
Tomorrow we go to Alexis’ Aunt Michelle’s house for Thanksgiving. Alexis is making this awesome German chocolate cake, so I decided I should probably take something, too. I decided I really wanted some ceviche, so I figured I’d share the wealth. I made some pico de gallo, tossed in some garden shrimp, and sliced up some avocado. There’s lots and lots of lime juice squeezed in. I put some plastic film over the top so the ceviche could marinate overnight in the fridge. Tomorrow it will sit over some ice and get served with tortilla chips.
Here it is:
In addition to the ceviche, I made 18 mini pineapple upside down cakes. I figured there should be at least one non-chocolate dessert. I’m sure there will be other desserts, but hey, you never know! The little cakes are cute. They turned out better than I expected.
Lex’s cake smells REALLY good!
Oh, and it’s snowing outside. Snowing…on Thanksgiving!
A Texan's First Maryland Crabcakes!
Unlike Alexis, I never think to photograph what I cook, but tonight I made my first crabcakes. I’d eaten them before, of course, but I thought it was time I made the effort. It didn’t seem like it’d be so hard. I bought a pound of Maryland backfin crabmeat at a seafood Market down the street. They put the container on ice in a bag, and the guy rings me up and says, “Here you go, hon.” Heh. How Baltimore.
Anyway, I used the recipe located on this site. The only difference is that I did not deep-fry the cakes. Instead, I took Patti LaBelle’s advice and put a bit of butter on each cake and broiled them for four minutes on each side. Perfect! Nice and golden brown. Food Safety Queen, Alexis Brown, broke out the meat thermometer and required me to test the temp of the food before allowing me to remove it from the broiler. The center temp of the cakes needed to be 145 degrees. No problem. They were well over that.
They were mighty tasty. The only problem we had is that I need to learn to clean the meat better. This was my first time picking cartilage out of crabmeat, and I didn’t get it all, so we had to chew and spit, chew and spit. Other than they, they went down smooth.
One lb. of crab makes six cakes, btw, and it cost me about $15. The lump crab (the really primo stuff) would have run about $23. I wasn’t prepared to plop down that kind of cash for an experiment. Maybe next time.
Comforting casserole
Taco casserole
Brown a pound of ground beef or ground turkey. Drain the grease. Add taco seasoning. I refuse to buy the prepackaged crap because we all know that taco seasoning is simply chili powder, comino, garlick, onion, salt, pepper, and, if you like, a dash of something spicier like Bufalo Chipotle Sauce.
Grate a pound of cheddar or monterrey jack cheese or some combination of both.
Chop up a large onion and quarter about a fifteen flour or corn tortillas, depending on your preference.
Other ingredients may be added according to your taste: chopped jalapenos or bell pepper, green onions, black olives, refried beans.
Spray a lasagne pan with PAM and line the bottom of the pan with the tortilla quarters. Start layering the ingredients, starting with the beans or meat, then adding the vegetables, and finally adding the cheese. Repeat the layers until the pan is filled. The top of the casserole should be covered in tortilla quarters, sprinkled with cheese, onions, and a bit of chili powder.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes or until the tortillas are golden brown on top and all the cheese appears to be melted.
Serve casserole with garnishes of sour cream, pico de gallo, and guacamole.
simple, yet delicious!
a few weeks ago while visiting my relatives in california, i got sucked into watching food network’s show called “Everyday Italian”. the show is pretty good, but the hostess… there something about her that i can’t explain yet find a bit annoying.
but she did have a great recipe that everyone should try. it’s called spaghettini with checca sauce.
it’s so nice and fresh, great for summer. i hightly recommend everyone try this one, at least once!
loretta lynn's pasta?
for dinner tonight we made pasta à la carbonara, which roughly translates to coal miner’s pasta. no, that’s “the coal miner’s daughter”! this dish is actually a very simple dish to make, very tasty, but definitely not something carbophobes would enjoy since it’s pasta. it’s also not very kosher since it’s got dairy and meats and a form of pork.
the recipe is quite simple. boil enough water to cook a pound of pasta, with a pinch of salt. you then finely grate two ounces, by weight, of romano cheese and 3/4 ounce, again by weight, of parmesano regianno cheese. you mix these two cheeses and set them aside.
you then take half a pound of bacon and cut it into strips and then into little squares, but i’ve accidently used prosciutto which worked well. the first variation we make is we strip most of the excess fat, render it in a frying pan, and use it instead of the olive oil that the recipe calls for.. besides, it’s baconier this way. we also chop up a few cloves of garlick for our second variation, which is that we fry the garlick in with the bacon. the recipe we found says to add it at the end, but we’ve found that the garlick is a bit too overpowering for the rest of the pasta, so we fry it with the bacon. the bacon and the garlick are fried until they’re nice and brown.
once the bacon and garlick are nice and browned, add half a cup of dry white wine. basically you want enough wine to deglaze the pan. this is where variation number three comes in, we have used other forms of wine like portuguese vihno verde or madeira or italian marsala wines. we haven’t really used other cooking wines, but feel free to try any other white wine if you wish. you then let this reduce down by half the volume. after it has reduced, go ahead and strain the bacon and garlicky bits, leaving only the oil and wine deglaze for use on the pasta.
once the pasta is cooked, drain it and set it aside.
in a medium sized bowl, mix in three eggs into the cheeses and get the mixture to a nice consistency. since this egg/cheese mixture is going to be added into the pasta, you want to get the pasta and bacony/garlick mixture very hot so it can cook thoroughly. if you feel that the pasta and bacony/garlick mixture isn’t enough to coat the pasta, feel free to add some extra virgin olive oil, just to coat it evenly. once you add the egg/cheese mixture, toss until the egg is cooked thoroughly, add the fried bacon and garlick. add some fresh ground pepper and salt to taste. mangia!
enjoy!
(oh yeah, since i’m too lazy to go look for the cookbook we used to make this, i’m only retracing the steps in my head. if there are any comments, questions, concerns, please leave me a comment here so i can address it here)
corned beef a la i-slept-in-late
on friday night i decided to make something to help me with this cold weather. while at the grocery store i decided to make some corned beef and cabbage.
according to wikipedia, corned beef is:
Corned beef is beef that is first pickled in brine and then cooked by boiling. Usually, cuts of meat are used that feature long muscle grain, such as the brisket.
The name corned beef is due to a coarse salt being used in the pickling. Corn originally meant grain, as in a small particle of something, and referred to the corns of salt.
Corned beef is often purchased at delicatessens. Perhaps the most famous sandwich made with it is the Reuben sandwich, consisting of corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing on rye bread and served hot.
so at the store i bought a 3.5lb chunk of grey corned beef (now, before people start making icky sounds, grey corned beef just means that the meat keeps its natural color after being in the salt and isn’t red with the addition of nitrates). i also got some carrots, onions, garlick, and a small head of cabbage. when i got home, i got the ingredients together and got the crockpot ready as well.
most of the websites i had seen said that you had to cook the corned beef at low for at least 12 hours, halfway through the cooking time one would have to add the cabbage. the vegetables that could be added varied on each website, so i just took the average of them all. also, the websites all said to use 3lbs or so of corned beef, but i only added half of that amount since i’m the only who is going to eat the dish.
i cut three carrots into 2” segments, quartered the onions, smashed the garlick cloves, and a teaspoon or so of peppercorns. about 2 cups of water were also added. and they were ignored for many hours.
i woke up pretty late the next morning and had to improvise with the cabbage. i cut the head into quarters, put three of those quarters into a pan with a cup of the broth from the crockpot. i then let it simmer for 30 minutes, until the cabbage was nice and soft. after that was done, i then added all of that to the crockpot and served myself.
next time i will NOT sleep in.
Basmati con pollo?
Earlier today I fired up the rice cooker and made a simple batch of basmati. The only “twist” was a usual one—I made the rice with chicken broth instead of water. The result is always yummy! I add a drizzle of olive oil and some kosher salt to the rice before cooking, too.
I had some boneless, skinless chicken thighs thawed in the fridge, so I figured I’d best do something with them. There was half an onion in the fridge, a few Serrano peppers, and plenty of garlick on the countertop. I had some canned, stewed tomatoes, too.
I sliced the onions and the garlic and chopped a Serrano pepper, and tossed these into a skillet with some olive oil. I caramelized the veggies and then added the chicken which had been cut into bite-sized pieces. I browned the chicken and then added just a little wine. I reduced this down and then added the tomatoes. To this I added salt, pepper, chili powder, and comino. I stirred it all up, and I let it simmer until the chicken was nice and tender.
While the mixture was simmering, I made some guacamole with my remaining avocadoes and broke out a can (yes a CAN) of salsa. I heated some remaining tortilla chips and put out the appetizers. Leftover central, I tell you!
When the chicken was done, I served it over the basmati and put a dollop of sour cream on top. We had a big glass of passion tea lemonade with our rather late lunch.
This is how you can tell it’s grocery shopping time. I start digging through the pantry, breaking open the canned goods, and getting inventive. The irony is that we eat better when there are fewer choices and less food in the house. We tend to eat crap when the food is easy to come by.
Lex and I made a grocery list today. She’s actually categorizing and typing it! Hopefully we’ll get around to shopping. We’re rapidly getting down to NO choices!
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