Vinegar

Lorien gave me some vinegar in my stocking this year and I just wanted to share its awesomeness with everyone:

Pompeiian Pommegranate Red Wine Vinegar.

So far I have only eaten this on veggies but it is just awesome. Scott and I enjoyed it over canned green beans (We share a profound love of canned green beans. Don't ask, I can't explain it.) with a little salt. I tried it by myself on a big bowl of frozen peas and it was such a good match that I had a whole second bowl :)

So yes, pommegranate red wine vinegar is the bee's knees.

Apple Cinnamon Waffles

A neighbor gave us some apple juice for Christmas, which has been going fast, but not fast enough to miss the day that I got around to making waffles. (There was a tantrum over the confusion between "waffle" and "falafel" but even that didn't stop me.) That made this recipe, which came with the waffle iron, even more appealing.

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2½ tsp. baking powder
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 3 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• ½ cup butter, melted
• 1 cup apple sauce
• 1 cup apple juice
• 1 medium apple, peeled and diced
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

The recipe calls for separating the eggs, beating the whites stiff and saving them to fold in at the end. I was using egg replacer, though, so I used a simple muffin method: Mix the dry ingredients (flour through sugar) in a large bowl, mix the wet ingredients (eggs through apple) in a medium bowl, and stir together just until moistened. Bake in a lightly greased waffle iron to desired crispness. Makes several large servings.

This batter was very thick and sticky, almost doughy; it came out in large clumps instead of pouring, and the waffle iron had trouble closing over it. However, it spread well while baking, and plenty of steam poured out. Having so much moisture trapped in the diced apple would account for that.

The cinnamon smells wonderful during cooking. The apple flavor is more subtle; a berry syrup highlights it well.

Cry for Help--Fish Edition

So we had a Jesus dinner for Christmas Eve and the kids got their hearts set on fish. They were still set on it even after I said it would be real fish, not fish sticks, so I got some frozen tilapia and Eric grilled it with some lemon pepper. And the kids actually ate some and Emmy was really into it.

But here's my (Eric's) problem. We have several more fish fillets and pretty much zero fish recipes because of that thing where I do all the cooking and I don't eat fish. So I'm hoping you guys will have some nice ideas for sauces or spices to go with fish so Eric (and maybe the kids) can eat them up without getting bored. Thanks. :)

Orange-maple glazed ham

I can't remember where I first found this recipe, and I've modified it quite a bit over the years. This is what I usually make for Christmas; we're going over to friends' tomorrow, so I made it tonight instead, and I thought I'd write it down finally.

Ingredients:
1 ham
1 can frozen orange juice concentrate
12-oz bottle real maple syrup
powdered mustard
powdered ginger root
black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Empty the can of o.j. concentrate into a saucepan, and melt it over medium-low heat.

3. While you're thawing the o.j., add maple syrup to taste. I use 8-10 ounces.

4. When the o.j. is fully melted, and it and the maple syrup are blended nicely (don't let it boil), add about a tablespoon of mustard and a tablespoon of ginger. Mix well. Add pepper to taste.

5. Place the ham in a glass baking dish. With a sharp knife, score the surface of the ham. I usually take a fork and poke a bunch of holes in the surface after scoring it with the knife. The idea is to make it really easy for the glaze to sink into the meat. Poke a meat thermometer in so that the tip is in the middle of the ham.

6. Pour the orange juice-maple syrup mixture over the ham, making sure the surface is entirely coated. Depending on how big your baking pan is, you could have as much as an inch of glaze pooling around the base of the ham. That's okay.

7. Bake the ham until it reaches an internal temperature of at least 145 degrees. Depending on how big the ham is this could take anywhere from an hour to two hours. I bake the ham uncovered because this helps the glaze condense and concentrate; the glaze, in turn, keeps the ham from drying out, so you don't need the foil that some recipes call for. At least in my experience.

8. Every half hour or so during baking I take the ham out and spoon more of the mixture from the bottom of the pan over the ham.

9. When the ham is done, transfer it to a serving dish, spoon as much of the glaze over it as you like, and pour the rest into a bowl to use as a sauce as needed. The maple, o.j., and spices will be enriched with ham drippings, and the result will be awesome.

Pork-ginger miso stew

You may have noticed that most of the recipes I post here are things I'm trying for the first time. I'm kind of using this blog as my recipe book. Sorry. Here's one, for a change, that I've actually made enough times to swear by. An honest-to-goodness tried-and-true go-to recipe, and I sort of even invented it. I first tasted it in Hokkaido when I was on my mission, and tried to re-create it on my own.

Ingredients:
Potatoes - 2 big ones, cut into large pieces
Carrots - handful of baby carrots, cut into small pieces
Green onions - 1 bunch, chopped, including as much of the green parts as look edible
Boneless pork chop(s) - cut into big chunks
Shiitake, fresh - 2 handsful, sliced
Dashi (bonito soup stock) - 2 tbsp or so
Miso (if you have a choice in the store, go for "awase" miso - pure white will be a little bland and pure red will be a little salty, but "awase," which is a blend, will be just right)
Ginger root, grated - maybe 2 tbsp

1. Cook some rice in your rice cooker.

2. Cut all your veggies and the pork.

3. Put some water in a big stewpot - maybe four or five cups? Add a couple of tablespoons of dashi powder, stir, and bring to a boil. I never measure the dashi, just add to taste.

4. Sear the pork in a frying pan until the outside is white, but the inside is still pink. Put it in the boiling water. (Searing it first helps keep the pork from drying out while it boils, which sounds paradoxical, but happens.)

5. Add the potatoes and carrots. (Cutting the potatoes in big chunks and the carrots in small chunks helps them to get done at the same time.)

6. A few minutes later add the onions and shiitake.

7. While everything is boiling, peel and grate your ginger. In Asian groceries you can get grated ginger in tubes, and I used to use that, but now I realize fresh is better. Grate a lot of ginger.

8. When everything's tender (the potatoes should be almost crumbling), turn the heat down so that the water is almost boiling, but not quite.

9. Add miso, a little bit at a time, to taste. What I usually do is scoop a big spoonful into a ladle, then dip some of the broth into the ladle, and start smashing and stirring the miso in the ladle to dissolve it. Do this a few times until all the miso in the ladle is dissolved, and then repeat. This helps dissolve all the miso without having to stir the soup energetically and crush the potatoes. I usually use maybe four tablespoons of miso, but I never measure. Use more than you would for a proper miso soup: for this stew it's better if you can really taste the saltiness. Don't let the soup boil after you've added the miso. You're not supposed to boil miso.

10. Add your grated ginger. The ginger taste should almost be strong enough to overpower the saltiness of the miso.

11. Your rice should be done by now. Scoop some into a bowl, and ladle some of the soup over it. And there you are.

The point here is the combination of the salty-sweet miso and the ginger: the taste goes incredibly well with pork, and the whole thing is a really warming, soothing winter dish. Especially over the rice. We make it when one of us has a cold. And it's really easy to make, as you can tell.

Of course it could be made vegetarian. You can find a shiitake-based dashi (I think I've mentioned it before), and tofu is a good substitute for pork. Use soft tofu (silken tofu). Tofu goes really well with grated ginger anyway. Sometimes I even add it when I'm using pork.

Tomato Cilantro Chutney Cheese Dip

Eric had a workplace Christmas party today and his friend Avishek brought this great curry cheese dip stuff, so I made Eric get the recipe. Yum!

- Very finely chop and saute one yellow onion in ghee till golden brown.
- Add 3 cloves of finely diced garlic.
- Add 1 teaspoon of cumin powder, 3 to 4 tablespoon of garam masala (depending on the potency) and 1 teaspoon of ground up chilli powder.
- Add 5 chopped tomatoes and saute till soft. If the masala has stuck to the bottom of the pan, use a few tablespoon of water to dissolve the masala out.
- Puree the mixture with a handful of cilantro leaves, and 2 tablespoon of lemon juice.
- Break about 24 oz of cream cheese and beat it in with puree with a whisk until its all mixed in uniformly and is fluffy.
- Add salt according to taste and beat some more. And its done.

P.S. Eric brought jam-in-the-middle muffins with Glynne and Akiko's jam from Oregon. They turned out pretty nice, I should have him blog them sometime soon.

Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff-ish Stew

This is adapted from this slow cooker beef stroganoff recipe and its comments. It came out a little more soupy than would have been quite proper for beef stroganoff, but that was fine because we were looking for a stew, rather than something to serve over noodles, anyway. And that's what this is.

Ingredients:
1 pound beef for stew
1 red onion, chopped
1 (10.5 oz) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
8 oz fresh chanterelle mushrooms
5-6 small new potatoes, unpeeled, cut into chunks
salt and pepper
1 tbsp dried chives
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 cube beef bouillon
1/2 cup red cooking wine
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp flour
16 oz sour cream (could do with less)
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1. Put the beef in the bottom of the slow cooker. Salt and pepper to taste.

2. Add the potatoes, onion, and mushrooms.

3. Add the mushroom soup, water, chives, garlic, W-shire sauce.

4. In a bowl or measuring cup, whisk the flour together with the cooking wine. Add to the pot.

5. Cover, cook on low for 5-6 hours.

6. Add sour cream and parsley, stir. Cook for another 45 min. to an hour.

7. Serve with rice.

Note on sour cream: The original recipe calls for 16 oz sour cream. That's what we did, and it tasted great. That much sour cream did, however, kind of dilute the awesome beef-mushroom taste that was going on before I added the sour cream. Next time I'll try only using half to two-thirds as much sour cream.

In any case, it's hardly a healthy meal, but it was really good. Especially with the fresh chanterelles. I'm sure other mushrooms would be good, too, but the chanterelles really hold their flavor nicely.

Holiday Rolls

This recipe descends from my Grandmother, and has become a holiday tradition in our family. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, I bake at least one batch; usually two or three, particularly for large gatherings. The recipe can be halved for smaller occasions, but make sure you have enough time: Starting at six or seven in the morning ensures enough rise time as long as you don't need them before two in the afternoon.

2 Tbsp. (or 2 packets) dry yeast
2 Cups warm water (warmer than room temperature, but not too hot for the inner wrist)
2 sticks butter (¼ cup each)
1 Cup sugar
½ Tbsp. salt
6 eggs, beaten
7 - 8 Cups white flour (optionally, one cup can be wheat)

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Melt one of the sticks of butter; mix the melted butter, the sugar, the salt, and the eggs into the yeast water. Add 7 cups of flour (including all of the wheat flour, if any) all at once, and mix to make a soft dough. Knead, adding flour as needed, until it holds together and isn't sticky. Let rise, covered, for 2½ to 3 hours.

Melt the other stick of butter. Lightly brush the counter top, rolling pin, pizza cutter, baking sheets, and your hands with butter. Divide dough into fourths. For each piece in turn:

1. Form into a ball.
2. Roll out into a circle the size of a small pizza.
3. Brush the top with butter.
4. Cut into sixteen pizza slices.
5. Roll each triangle from large end to small, placing it on a baking sheet with the small end underneath.

With remaining melted butter, brush the top of each roll. Let rise for 2½ to 3 hours.

Bake at 350°F for 11 minutes or until golden brown. Serve in a cloth-lined basket. Makes 64 rolls.

Notes and Hints

• Forgetting the salt is not a tragedy, but don't omit it intentionally.
• Softer dough needs less rising time, and results in a fluffier roll, but firmer dough holds its shape better. If the rolls unroll themselves while rising, the dough is too firm.
• Allow an hour for rolling time. It never seems like it should take that long, but it does.
• Place the rolls diagonally on the baking sheet, with larger ones in the corners and smaller ones in the center.
• A single recipe typically requires three half-size baking sheets, or four smaller ones. A double batch can be crammed onto five.
• Allow enough space between the rolls on the baking sheets for expansion. They should be just touching when they come out of the oven, but pull apart easily.
• Resist the temptation to bake two sheets at once.
• If you have a convection oven, turn on the convection for the first few minutes, but not the entire baking time.
• For best results, serve immediately. Once cool, they store well in a plastic bag until the next day.
• These rolls don't really need to be served with butter or jelly. Honey is interesting, but also unnecessary.
• The recipe can be adapted to cinnamon-walnut pull-aparts, but I keep failing to do so successfully.
• Feel free to experiment.

Chicken and Dumplings

Tis the season for comfort food. This recipe for Chicken and Dumplings isn't some great culinary masterpiece but it's delicious and cheap. Like six servings for about $15 cheap. It'll also leave you with a decent amount of broth, so if you line up something that requires chicken broth for the next night, you'll save yourself a couple bucks and end up with superior broth to boot. It takes a lot of time but it isn't particularly labor intensive. Have a book or magazine handy.

Thankful for...a new cheese?

We went over to friends' for T-day, meaning that for what must be the fourth straight year we didn't have to do any cooking. Well, Akiko made a pie, but I'll let her write about that if she feels like it.

Which meant no new recipes tried out. We ate a lot of things that I want to try someday, though, so blogwise there might have been something in it. In the meantime, we did discover an awesome cheese that somebody brought to the party.

It's a Spanish cheese called Idiazabal. Made from sheep's milk, although I don't think it tastes sheepy at all. In fact the person who brought it said it was cow's milk (or I misremembered), and I believed it until we bought some tonight.

The only Spanish cheese I knew about previously was manchego, and I'm wild about that. This is maybe a little milder, and the variety we have is smoked, so it almost tastes like a gouda, but without the gouda flavor. Like, it's sharp and dry but not nutty. Buttery? I need to develop a pretentious cheese vocabulary, obviously. In any case, it's real good. A new fave.

Chicken Marsala

Hey everyone! I am sorry that I haven't been doing anything on here in a while. I haven't been cooking much lately with school and stuff. I know everyone knows about this recipe but I have never made it before so I decided to take a little time for myself away from homework today to make a real meal.

This recipe is originally from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. I had to make some changes and I included those.

1lb chicken breasts (I bought purdue ones that were already really really thin so I didn't have to pound them myself)
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. dry marjoram
salt to taste
pepper
2 cups sliced mushrooms (I used a carton of sliced baby bellas from the store)
2 small spring onions chopped finely
butter/margarine/cooking oil (this is where I had issues)
1/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup Marsala wine

Mix flour, marjoram, some pepper, and a little salt on a plate. Dredge your flattened chicken breasts and set aside. In a non-stick pan melt (med/low heat) about 2 tbs butter/margarine and add a tiny bit of cooking oil (The cookbook called for so much less and left me with sticking sad mushrooms until i added more lipids!!). Sautee your onion and mushrooms until the mushrooms are tender and browned. Remove the mushrooms/onions from the pan. DON'T RINSE/WASH/WIPE the pan - you need the good browned stuff on the bottom for later. Add more butter and oil (the same amount) and brown your chickens over high heat. This should go really quickly (about 4 minutes to cook a breast). Turn them over as they cook to ensure they brown on both sides. Remove from pan and set aside when they're done. Put your mushroom stuff back in the pan (low heat now) and add your chicken stock and Marsala. Add a pinch of salt to taste here (not much, the sauce is nice a little sweet in my opinion). Turn up the heat and proceed to deglaze the pan while reducing the sauce. This is where all the crusty junk from the bottom of the pan becomes magical :) All that stuff = Flava! But I digress. When your sauce is at a consistency you approve of, pour the sauce and mushrooms over the chicken breast. Enjoy. This serves 4 technically. I say 3 without a side dish if you are lazy like me.

Black Bean Enchiladas

I know this is two posts in one day, but I actually had a few minutes to think about stuff and get around to writing it. We made enchiladas today and this is one of our favorite recipes. I've made them for other people a bunch of times and it always goes over well. I cobbled it together starting with a soft taco recipe and it's kind of morphed over time, so feel free to tweak it as you like.

Filling:
one 15-oz can black beans
1 cup frozen corn (don't bother to unfreeze it)
1 medium zucchini, chopped to bite-size
some mushrooms--one small can or a handful of fresh

1. Heat oven to 375F
2. Mix up some filling--feel free to substitute veggies and whatnot
3. Get a 9x13 pan and spread some enchilada sauce on the bottom and sides (keeps the tortillas from sticking so much).
4. Fill some tortillas with filling--three or four tablespoons each--roll them up and put them in the pan.
5. Pour the rest of the enchilada sauce over the top, cover with foil, and cook 30 minutes.
6. When the enchiladas come out, spread some grated cheese on top and place the foil back loosely. Just leave it on top of the stove and the cheese will melt great.

Not that you needed instructions on how to fill some enchiladas, but there they are. If you put the cheese on before baking it'll kind of overmelt and disappear. These enchiladas will be messy but tasty, and when I have sour cream around I put a little dollop on top before eating.

As for enchilada sauce just use your favorite if you have one. If not, I'm partial to La Victoria (hot or mild, they both work fine) and Rosarita will do fine, too.

New Food November

So I've eaten new foods in the last while but I didn't write them all down. Sadness, truly. But here are a few for November:

1. Brianna's Chipotle Cheddar dressing, which is pretty interesting. The chipotle gives it a nice kick and the cheddar part is a little weird for me but good. I mean, it actually has a slighly cheddary taste, and I've never experienced that in a dressing. I was expecting a little more ranch-like, I guess.

2. Leicester red cheese--the particular one I bought was Kerrygold but I've seen a couple different brands around. It pretty much tastes like cheddar (medium sharpness, I'd say) but it's definitely more red. If you something exciting for a cheese platter or garnish this would be cool.

3. Bundaberg root beer from Australia, which is pretty good. Definitely on the sharp and gingery side, but that's not a bad thing in my opinion. Root beer is pretty much the only soda Eric really loves, so when I spot an exciting one I bring it home to try.

4. Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce--this isn't exactly a new food, but it's become my favorite barbecue sauce. I like the hot and spicy one, but Eric's partial to the hickory and brown sugar, which I must say is quite nice. The flavors I've tried have been more sweet than smoky, though, so it depends on your taste.

Tofu Potato Scramble

This is one of my favorite cold weather comfort foods, one of my only breakfast-for-dinner type recipes. This recipe makes enough for two with probably some leftovers.

2 Tbs olive oil
One 16-oz bag frozen O'Brien potatoes
6 veggie sausage links, cut into 1/2-inch rounds (I'm sure this would work with real sausage)
1 tsp hot pepper sauce, plus more to taste
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
one 14-oz package firm tofu, drained
1 tsp creole or cajun seasoning
1/3 cup cream cheese (I just eyeball it)
2 green onions, white and green parts, chopped (about 1/4 cup)

1. Heat your oil in a large skillet on medium-high or so. Cook the sausage until golden brown and set aside, then cook the potatoes 8 to 10 minutes until they're hot and starting to brown.
2. Combine the hot sauce, turmeric, and one Tbs water in a small bowl. Crumble the tofu over the potatoes and add the sausage back in, then pour your hot sauce mixture on top. Sprinkle the creole seasoning, stir, and cook about 3 minutes until it's heated through.
3. Season with salt and pepper and take it off the heat. Stir in some dollops of cream cheese and sprinkle the green onions on top.

Borscht

This is another recipe I got from allrecipes, modified a bit according to the comments, and will probably modify a bit more next time I make it. Here's what I think needs to happen.

Ingredients:
*2/3 pound beef stew meat, cut into 1/2 inch or 1 inch cubes
*3-4 beets, peeled and chopped (see #1 below)
*1 large or 2 smallish potatoes, peeled and chopped
*1/2 cup baby carrots, chopped
*1/2 white onion, chopped
*3 cloves garlic or to taste, minced
*4 cups beef broth (may not use all)
*1 6-oz can tomato paste
*1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
*4 tbsp red wine vinegar
*3 tbsp brown sugar
*1 1/2 tsp dried dill weed
*1 tbsp dried parsley
*1 bay leaf
*1 tsp salt
*1/2 tsp ground black pepper, or to taste
*2 cups shredded green cabbage
*sour cream

1. Chop the beets. Supposedly beets are hard to peel unless you boil them for about 10 minutes first. I did this, and that did make them pretty easy to peel. I chopped them into cubes of no bigger than 1 cm, and smaller might even be better.

2. Chop the carrots, potato, and onion. The potato(es), too, should be chopped rather small. I chopped it large, because that's how we like it in curry and stuff, but it didn't get as soft as we would have liked: small is better here.

3. Put beef, beets, carrots, potato, garlic, and onion into slow cooker. Open diced tomatoes and put them into the slow cooker without draining.

4. In a bowl, whisk together the tomato paste, vinegar, brown sugar, dill, parsley, salt, and pepper with 2 cups of the beef broth. Pour into slow cooker. Add more beef broth if needed until everything is covered and there's as much liquid as you'd like. Put the bay leaf in.

5. Cook on low for 7 hours.

6. Add the cabbage and cook on high for an hour.

7. Serve with plenty of sour cream and some good hard crusty bread.

Notes: The amounts given in the original version of this recipe were too much for our 5-qt cooker - I ended up having to discard some potato and beet and carrot just to be able to fit the tomatoes in. And in the end there was no room for the cabbage, either, so we actually skipped that. According to the comments the directed half hour on high for the cabbage isn't long enough, so I'm guessing an hour might be, but that's just a guess. ...If you've never used them, everything you've heard about beets is true: they make an amazing mess. Their juice looks just like blood. But cleanup was easier than I'd expected, and my hands aren't pink, even though I didn't wear gloves. I think next time I might use canned (non-pickled) beets, to see if they work as well. I had a hard time judging how much beet to use, too: the recipe called for 4, but didn't say what size. I used five, because the ones I got seemed a little small to me, but further research makes me think maybe they weren't, so I think next time I'll use 4 or maybe only 3, if they're medium size. ...Obviously a lot of what we liked about this was the beef, but I'm sure it would be just as good without it, and with veggie broth instead of beef. The essence of it is the beet/tomato/dill soup, with the sour cream as a garnish.

Anyway, all those caveats noted, this came out pretty satisfying. I've only had borscht in restaurants a couple of times, so I don't have too much to compare it to, but it was a nice warm way to end a rainy day (you'll read those words many times between now and next May, I'm sure!).

cowboy spaghetti

Hi all. We tried this Rachel Ray recipe this week. It was fantastic.

Ingredients

* 1 pound spaghetti
* Salt
* 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 turn of the pan
* 3 slices smoky bacon, chopped
* 1 pound ground sirloin
* 1 medium onion, chopped
* 3 to 4 cloves garlic, chopped
* Ground black pepper
* 2 teaspoons hot sauce, eyeball it
* 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, eyeball it
* 1/2 cup beer
* 1 (14-ounce) can, chopped or crushed fire roasted tomatoes
* 1 (8-ounces) can, tomato sauce
* 8 ounces sharp Cheddar
* 4 scallions, chopped

Directions

Heat a pot of water to a boil. Add spaghetti and salt the water. Cook to al dente or with a bite to it.

Heat a deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add extra-virgin olive oil and bacon. Brown and crisp bacon, 5 minutes, remove with a slotted spoon. Drain off a little excess fat if necessary. Leave just enough to coat the bottom of the skillet. Add beef and crumble it as it browns, 3 to 4 minutes. Add onions, garlic and stir into meat. Season the meat with salt and pepper, hot sauce and Worcestershire. Add 1/2 cup beer and deglaze the pan. Cook 5 to 6 minutes more then stir in tomatoes and tomato sauce.

Add hot spaghetti to meat and sauce and combine. Adjust seasonings and serve up pasta in shallow bowls. Grate some cheese over the pasta and sprinkle with scallions. Garnish with crisp bacon.

Taco soup

We just got a slow cooker the other day (Crock-Pot, 5-quart: is that good? I dunno: it's just what BB&B had), and this was the first thing we tried. I got the recipe here, but modified it, partially according to the comments on the recipe, and partially according to what we had.

Taco Soup

Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
1 orange bell pepper, chopped
1 can chili beans (15 oz), with liquid
1 can black beans (15 oz), with liquid
1 can whole kernel corn (15 oz), drained
1 can tomato sauce (8 oz) (update 2/13/11: 8-oz can tomato paste works better)
12 oz or so chicken broth
2 cans diced tomatoes with green chilies (14.5 oz), with liquid
2 tbsp or so of taco or similar seasoning (we had a bottle of Paul Prudhomme's Fajita Magic, so that's what I used)
3 skinless boneless chicken breasts, whole
shredded Mexican cheese blend
sour cream
tortilla chips (we like blue corn, Garden of Eatin' brand, unsalted)

1. Open all the cans and pour them into the cooker. Chop the onion and pepper (not too fine) and put them in. Stir in the seasoning. Put the chicken breasts in and press them down so they're just barely covered by the other things.

2. Cover, turn slow cooker on "low," and cook for 5 hours.

3. Remove chicken breasts and shred them with knife and fork. Return the chicken to the soup, cover, and cook for another 2 hours.

4. Serve topped with sour cream, cheese, and/or crumbled tortilla chips to taste.

Next time I might increase the amount of corn, and maybe even use two onions and/or peppers: more veggies might be good. As for the ways our version diverged from what's on allrecipes: we used more diced tomatoes because our market only had 14.5-oz cans, instead of the 10-oz cans the recipe called for, so it was either have a half a can left over or use it all. We also took a commenter's advice and substituted chicken broth (storebought) for the bottle of beer the recipe originally called for. Also I threw in 1/2 a can of chopped olives because we had an open can in the fridge - but to tell the truth I didn't notice them at all in the finished dish, so next time I'll either skip them or use more or maybe use sliced olives instead of chopped.

We loved this. A perfect hot spicy meal for a cold and wet autumn evening, easy to make, and really convinced us that the slow cooker was worth it. The chicken got incredibly tender. And it made way more than enough for two people: we're looking forward to leftovers tomorrow night.

I'm sure this would be just as good without the chicken and with veggie broth instead of chicken broth. In that case, maybe it wouldn't even need to be made in the slow cooker, just done on the stove in much less time.

snack of the moment

Trader Joe's sells dried mango strips with chile spice on them. They are a nice firm texture and delicious. Best way to eat them: dip them in a little salt and munch away!

Go do this now.
Seriously.

Artichoke and Sun-Dried Tomato Stuffed Chicken Breast

I just finished reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, so I'm in a rare mood for cooking. Lorien does an admirable job for us of managing every night, without fail, for the past three or four years, of putting something together for us that is tasty, healthy, and minimally fattening. But since cooking is rare for me and thus less of a chore and more of a treat, I decided to focus just on tasty.

I found this recipe on the food network site by searching for "chicken breast" (because we had some in the freezer). I was surprised it was from Guy Fieri because I didn't know he cooked--I only know him from Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

Anyway, here's the recipe. It was delicious. I didn't change anything. We served it with some brown rice with rosemary and parsley. I liked it just as well two days later for lunch, so I recommend cooking all four servings and enjoying the leftovers.

More cheeses

We had a party this past weekend, and at it we tried a couple more cheeses.

1. Beemster. I think it was Beemster "Classic." This is a gouda (but from a different region of Holland, thus the different name). It's a really, really strong gouda, very cheddary. Akiko thought it was too strong to eat straight, but I couldn't stop eating it. It has that nice faint crunch a gouda can get from the salt crystals.

2. Morbier. This is weird but good. It's a soft cow's milk cheese - not soft like brie, but soft like Velveeta. It has a streak of vegetable ash running down the center, which I think is responsible for the slightly bitter aftertaste. That's not a bad thing, because it lends a little complexity to the otherwise very straightforwardly creamy flavor. I'm not as wild about this one, probably because it reminds me too much, again, of Velveeta, but it tastes much better, and Akiko and our guests really liked it.

sandwich = awesome

It seems that I have lately been inventing AWESOME sandwiches. Today I used random leftovers and created this:

two slices of whole wheat bread spread lightly with sun dried tomato cream cheese,
one slice of hard white cheddar cheese, leftover turkey pepperoni arranged in a single layer. close sandwich, cream cheese side in. heat up a drizzle of olive oil in a pan, and sprinkle the pan generously with pepper. grill the sandwich in the oil. my cheese didn't melt before the sandwich was properly grilled, so i microwaved it for 15ish seconds.

This was a super super super delicious sandwich. amen.

Acorn squash suggestions?

Two questions.

1) Does anybody else get a funny message when they try to use the search function in the top left of the screen? O webmaster, is there a setting that can be toggled so that we could search by keyword?

2) Does anybody have any suggestions for acorn squash? I usually smear it with butter, sprinkle some brown sugar and cinnamon on it, and bake it, which seems to be the most basic recipe, but I was wondering if anybody had anything unusual they did with it.

Cauliflower Cheese

We saw this on nami-nami and had some extra cauliflower this week so we tried it and really liked it.

1 large head of cauliflower
salted water, for boiling

butter, for greasing

Topping:
200 ml whipping cream or double cream
2 Tbsp grainy mustard (I like Maille's Moutarde à l'Ancienne)
150 g grated cheese (Cheddar, Havarti, Eesti juust - it's your call)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
some fresh herbs (I like dill here)

Cut the cauliflower into florets. Put the florets into lightly salted boiling water and boil for about 10 minutes, until cauliflower is cooked. Drain thoroughly, then place into a lightly buttered medium-sized shallow oven dish.
Mix cream, mustard and most of the cheese in a bowl, season with salt, pepper and herbs. Spoon the cheese mixture over the cauliflower florets and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese.
Bake in a preheated 200 C / 400 F oven for about 10-15 minutes, until the cheese has melted and the topping is lovely golden.
Serve.

We did it pretty much as written with a super mild havarti and a little smoked gouda, with dill and Inglehoffer mustard. It was really easy to make and pretty darn tasty. I could hardly taste the havarti, though. I think next time I'll stick with the more flavorful cheeses, because the gouda was great in it and I bet a nice cheddar with some Italian herbs would be great.

Cheese reviews

We tried a couple of new cheese today, and here's what they were and what we thought.

1. Maidservant of the Monster was in the mood for some brie, and we found some called Coulommiers that looked good. It turns out it's a "cousin of brie" and I don't know exactly what that means, whether it's just a geographical distinction or if there's something about the way it's made. And I'd want to sample this side by side with some brie in order to tell the difference. Anyway, it's good: a good basic brie, nuthin' fancy (if brie can be described that way), creamy and salty.

2. Black Mountain. This is a Welsh cheddar; it looks like they sell it in small packs, but we got a wedge, complete with the black wax rind. It's flavored with garlic and herbs and white wine, and it's really good. Quite soft for a cheddar - almost creamy - and very, very flavorful. We just had it plain with crackers; I'd love to try it in other ways. Highly recommended if you're into cheddars.

Hard Rock Munchies

On our way home from a California vacation, we stopped at a Hard Rock Cafe, partly because the one closest to our home has now been closed. I wasn't feeling up to a full meal, so I ordered a couple of sides, and am glad I did.

Fruitapalooza

I have a soft spot for fruit, particularly real fruit juices. This one promised strawberry puree, bananas, and enough other fruits to tempt me. As good as it sounded? Absolutely, particularly with the slice of pineapple on the rim. Worth the price? Perhaps not, but at least the hurricane glass gives us a matched set.

White Cheddar Smashed Potatoes

The menu listing reminded me of other mashed potato variants I've tried and enjoyed. This scoop was tasty and filling, but lacked the real punch that I was expecting; perhaps I should have tried some pepper on it. It was also interesting to feel the texture change as it cooled; the cheese makes it set harder than potatoes do on their own.

Santa Fe Spring Rolls

The absolute star of the show. From their menu:

Stuffed with spinach, black beans, cilantro, corn, jalapeños, diced red peppers and Jack cheese. Served with fresh homemade Hard Rock Salsa and guacamole Chipotle Ranch dressing.

The best of southwestern flavors, but in a smaller wrapper. Of the five spring rolls, I finished all but about two bites before my stomach couldn't take any more, most of them taken with a forkful of the shredded lettuce, olives, and dressing.

Compared with the burger and fries across the table, this meal was light, but it was still more than enough for a lunch. I'll have to consider the sides and appetizers more often in the future.

Pictures!!!

SPAGHETTI SQUASH

Spaghetti Squash!! :)

Lorien, Mike, and I went apple picking yesterday at a farm. It was my first time picking apples and it was a lot of fun! I also picked beets and spinach. I did not, however, pick my own spaghetti squash. Rather, I picked out my own spaghetti squash from among the ones pre-cut in the barn store thing.

Out of all the new things I have tried in the last few months (drangonfruit etc) THIS IS THE BEST!!!! Seriously, I think spaghetti squash is one of my new favorite foods. K, eat it like this:

Cut your squash in half and scoop out the seeds.
Poke the skin with a fork or knife in a few places
Place face down in a baking dish and bake in a 350 degree oven for 30-40 min.

When it is done (pokeable) scoop out the flesh with a fork. It actually comes out stringy like spaghetti!! I threw it in a bowl with a little olive oil, some parmesan, a touch of garlic and salt, and about a tablespoon of tomato paste. AWESOME AND DELICIOUS! I really haven't felt this enthusiastic about a vegetable in a long time :) Enjoy!

Chanterelle bruschetta

So I tried out the chanterelle bruschetta recipe that Lemon Verbena-san pointed me to. Here's the link, in link format. I'll go ahead and run it down here, with apologies to Nami Nami from Estonia, because this place has already become my go-to recipe box.

Ingredients:
Chanterelle mushrooms, the more the better (I used golden chanterelles; I see white ones at the market, but I haven't tried them yet)
1 red onion
garlic (I used the minced garlic you get in a jar, maybe a couple of teaspoons)
butter
olive oil
fresh dill (how much? the original recipe doesn't say; I used maybe a half cup, loosely packed, and I think I'll use maybe twice that next time)
good bread (I used a potato rustica, and it was a good choice, if I do say so myself: the potato-flour was a perfect match for the chanterelles and the dill)

1. Cut up the mushrooms into bite-size pieces.

2. Chop the onion. I chopped it in the food processor, thinking the finer the better, but it came out too fine and sort of turned into a glop when I put it in to sautee it. It was still awesome, but I think I should have chopped it by hand, and just tried to get it as small as I could that way.

3. Chop the dill. I also found that the dill tended to clump together when sauteeing, and maybe dried dill wouldn't have done that, but the flavor of the fresh dill was so good that I'd hesitate to substitute. Maybe chop finer?

4. Melt a little butter in a frying pan with a little olive oil (possibly the clumping of the onion and dill came from too much butter and oil: try it with just a little).

5. Sautee the mushrooms with the garlic, then add the onion and dill in that order.

6. Toast the bread in the oven as per normal bruschetta (the original recipe asks you to pan-fry it in butter, which sounded like just too much butter for me). I.e., brush one side with olive oil, put the bread oil side down on a foil-lined baking sheet, bake at 350 until it gets nice and toasty.

7. Spoon on the mushroom mixture, grind a little salt over everything, and you're done.

As you can tell, I did a lot of things wrong when I made it, but it still came out amazingly good. This shows off the true flavor of a chanterelle.

We paired the bruschetta with steamed asparagus topped with shavings of aged gouda. Yummy.

Baking

Does anyone make pies/tarts? Apple season is coming up and my local farmer's market is going to be overflowing with apples that are tempting on, like, Old Testament levels :) Ideas? Tried and true recipes? Mind you, I don't generally bake. I don't generally do dessert so I have very little experience in this way.

Help!

yay Trader Joe's

So I got some exciting things at Trader Joe's last week and I used two of those exciting things in my dinner last night. I got a bag of tiny tiny tiny potatoes (each one is like half a ping-pong ball) with thin skins and a package of fully cooked andouille style chicken sausages. SO this is what I did

1 bag tiny potatoes
2 chicken sausages
extra virgin olive oil for drizzling
fresh rosemary leaves (off the stems)
salt
garlic powder (I used a salt/garlic/pepper seasoning thing)

throw your potatoes into a baking dish (small enough to have them all touching and layered and stuff) and slice your sausage into rounds over top. Drizzle the oil. Sprinkle the seasonings and the rosemary and stir it all a little folding the sausage in with the potatoes. Cover it with tin foil and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour or until the potatoes are the desired tenderness.

You could totally use some small-chunked larger potatoes like red skins or some other kind that you don't have to peel. The best part about this dinner is that it took about 5 minutes to throwq together and then I just did homework while I waited and then got to enjoy a nice hearty dinner :)

Chanterelles

Speaking of mushrooms, we've got chanterelles in season here, big golden things. I made a sort of scrambly omelet with them tonight: sauteed the chopped chanterelles in butter and pepper, then cooked them in eggs with sour cream. Real good. I can't wait to get more of these beauties, but I realized that beyond omelets I really don't know what to do with them. I seem to remember trying a couple of things last fall, but I don't remember what worked besides the eggs. With most mushrooms I tend to like just sauteeing them with salt and pepper, but people say chanterelles need a little more work to bring out their best flavor. Any suggestions?

Waldorf salad variations?

We had some apples that were getting old, and some silverberries that we'd gotten at the farmer's market that we wanted to use, so I decided to try a Waldorf salad - sort of a commonplace, but I don't think I've ever made it before. Unfortunately we didn't have all the right ingredients, so I ended up making something that didn't much resemble a real Waldorf salad, but ended up working out pretty well anyway.

Ingredients:
3 apples (I don't remember what kind they were - red, sweet, and very ripe)
1 cup or so silverberries
a couple handfuls of raisins
mayonnaise
lime juice
1/3 cup or so of creamy/crumbly chevre (we had some fig-walnut chevre that was hitting its expiration date, so I threw it in)

1. Peel, core, and cut up the apples into bite-size chunks.

2. Mix them with the berries and raisins.

3. Mix together 6 tablespoons of mayo and 2 tablespoons of lime juice. In a real Waldorf salad this is supposed to be lemon juice, but we were out, and lime juice worked well.

4. Mix the dressing and the fruit.

5. Add the crumbled chevre, mix. (A real Waldorf salad is evidently supposed to have walnuts, and we didn't have any, but that's what gave me the idea to use the cheese.)

6. Chill for a couple of hours. We had some of this right after making it, and it wasn't as good as it was when it had chilled for a while. Warm, the mayo tasted like mayo. Chilled and given time for the flavors to mingle, the mayo taste receded and we had a nice mingling of fruit flavors.

Note: have you ever had/seen/heard of silverberries? I hadn't until we got them at the market, but they're pretty good. They evidently come from this tree, and I can't seem to find much about them on the web, which makes me wonder if they go by another name; anyway, I'd never heard of them. They're quite small, not much bigger than pomegranate seeds, and bright red with kind of a silver spot on them. They have seeds, but the ones we got were edible with the seeds - once in a while you get a berry where the seed's a little chewy, but it's still edible. The berries have a nice tartness, not as strong as huckleberries, and a nice sweet aftertaste.

Anyway: this salad was kind of an accident, but it turned out well. Does anybody else have any recommendable variations on the Waldorf-type fruit salad?

Rosemary Mushroom Risotto

I was determined to get good at risotto, and I'm pretty decent at it now. This is our main recipe:

1 cup mushroom broth
2 cups vegetable broth
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp crumbled rosemary
1/4 tsp thyme
2 Tbs olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped mushrooms (any kind)
2 Tbs minced shallots (white onion will do fine)
1 cup arborio rice
1/3 cup shredded Parmesan
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 tsp salt, to taste
1/8 tsp pepper

1. In a smallish saucepan, heat broth, water, rosemary and thyme until simmering. Keep on med-low to keep it warm throughout cooking time.
2. When broth is ready, heat oil in 3-quart saucepan on medium. Add the mushrooms and shallots and cook, stirring, until mushrooms soften (a couple of minutes). Add rice and cook, stirring, until rice is coated with oil (a minute or so).
3. Add broth to rice mixture 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until rice has absorbed the liquid. (You should make the next addition of liquid when you can draw a clear path on the bottom of the pot as you scrape through the rice.) This process should take about half an hour.
4. Add parsley, pepper and salt with the last bit of broth and stir in well. Serve topped with parmesan.

A couple of notes: I live at high altitude so I have to use more broth/water. Also, the first couple of broth additions should be closer to a cup--adding broth a little fast in the beginning helps the rice cook. Last, if you taste as you go the risotto will taste really bland until it's almost done because the broth/water is still reducing, so don't worry about adding salt unless it still taste bland at the end.

You can use any mushrooms, obviously. I've done this with baby bellas, shiitakes, and chantarelles and they've all turned out great.

using my last tomatoes

The larger of my two tomato plants is reaching its limit in my yard. The fruit is really not ripening any more so I have a great deal of green tomatoes. SO I decided to try to make fried green tomatoes. I sliced a firm green tomato into roughly 1/2" rounds, dipped it in a milk and egg mixture, and dredged them in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. I pan fried them in a shallow puddle of hot canola oil until they were a nice brown and no longer really hard. Then I laid them on a plate with paper towels to soak up some of the oil.

Results: Not that exciting. I really kinda felt cheated by the flavor of these. I just really wanted them to be better. I ate them with some cholula hot sauce and that perked them up but overall, they were kinda disappointing.

Ideas: I also read about dredging them in cornmeal instead of flour. So my idea is maybe using cornmeal and some more spices would jazz them up. I am unwilling to totally give up on fried green tomatoes.

Does anyone else have any uses/ideas for green tomatoes?

Pearl couscous fruit salad

I got this recipe from a colleague of Akiko's. I've only made it once, but I think it's a winner.

Ingredients:
pearl couscous (a.k.a. Israeli couscous)
1 pomegranate
1 can mandarin orange slices
dried currants
vegetable oil

1. Split open the pomegranate and remove the seeds. I found cool directions for this on-line. As you're separating the seeds from the fibers inside the pomegranate shell, drop the seeds into a bowl of water. The fibers will float, while the seeds will sink. Then you can skim the fibers off and drain the water and you'll have mostly fiber-free seeds.

2. Make 1 cup of pearl couscous as per the directions. The stuff I had said: bring 1 and 1/4 cup water to a boil, add 1 cup couscous, simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Optionally, add a little butter when you add the couscous. I didn't add butter, but maybe I should have.

3. When the couscous is done, transfer it to a bowl and stir it until it cools off. The idea here is to keep it from glopping up. The recipe says that when it starts to cool off add a little veggie oil; this is where I think cooking it with butter or oil might have helped, because no matter what I did it still ended up kind of sticky. The good news is, it was still good.

4. Stir in the pomegranate seeds.

5. Open the can of mandarin orange slices, drain, and stir in the slices. (Of course you could use fresh tangerine slices, too, if they're in season.)

6. Stir in a handful of dried currants. (Raisins are a good substitute if you can't find dried currants, but if you can, I think the currants match the pomegranate and mandarin orange a little better.)

7. Voila. You're done.

Apple Cider Vinegar

My Vegetarian Times finally started coming again (there was a crazy address problem after we moved) and it has a tiny article on apple cider vinegar in it. Only one recipe (for salad with vinaigrette) but several general food suggestions. Since Taryn was asking about cooking with cider vinegar, I thought I'd post them.

It says and I quote: Apple cider vinegar's bright, crisp taste and more-than-a-hint-of-tart flavor work well with lentil soups, slaws, baked beans, braised cabbage, and roasted winter squash. Bean salads and cooked whole grains also take well to apple cider vinegar's tang.

Brother Momonjii's Japanese Curry, Variation #2 (Summer, again)

This is very similar to the previous one, but with a few differences.

1. Use S&B Tasty Curry sauce, medium-hot. (Japanese name is Torokeru curry, which means "melt-in-your-mouth." It's a little milder than Java.)

2. Cut up a chicken breast, a couple of yellow summer squash, and some carrots.

3. In your kettle, sautee the chicken in butter with some ground sage and thyme.

4. Add the carrots and sear.

5. Add water.

6. When the carrots are starting to get soft, add the squash and some frozen corn kernels.

7. When everything's soft, add the curry.

8. When the curry is dissolved, while you're simmering it, add lemon pepper to taste. Make sure it's salt-free lemon pepper; additional salt at this point would not be a good idea. (BTW, Spice Hunter brand Lemon Pepper is pretty awesome - like, zowie-strength lemon flavor.)

9. Add unsalted sunflower seeds, and simmer until they begin to get soft.

This one, too, is good with parmesan cheese, or with hard-boiled egg (either shredded or just cut in half).

This is, I'll admit, pretty close to Variation #1, but different enough to be worth repeating, for us at least.

PS: If you like J. curry as much as we do, it's worth making a whole box at once, even if you're only cooking for two, because, as every Japanese cook knows, it's better the second day. Something about the way the flavors seep into the ingredients overnight. In fact I think one reason so many households there have Curry Night once every other week or so is because it means you don't have to cook the next night. Bonus.

The contents of our dry goods cabinet (well, the main one). We have one of those corner cabinets with lazy susans in it, and it's a little busted. So Eric took all the stuff out to look at it but it's not fixed yet. All stacked up like that it's sucking up counter space and blocking the microwave, but it looks cool, so I took a picture, which I'm following up with my top ten dry staples.

1. basic short rice, of course. I'm lumping white and brown together as number one. It's a rare week that we don't eat this, usually several times. Plus I think it's better the next day than basmati, which gets dry really fast.
2. other rice--basmati, arborio, wild rice, jasmine. I once did a presentation for Relief Society on vegetarian cooking and food storage, and when I said I had several kinds of rice, several ladies were surprised there even were several kinds. *sigh*
3. wheat--I don't actually use the wheat, but Eric makes bread with it every couple of weeks, so I reap the benefits of his wheat usage, mostly in the form of toast.
4. quinoa--when I feel like we've eaten nothing but rice all week, I make quinoa instead. It's cute and round, so you've gotta love that.
5. pasta--I like different shapes because they fool me into thinking I'm eating different foods. Yay!
6. lentils--these are pretty much the only 'beans' I cook from their dry state because I am too lazy for other beans. Lentils usually means green lentils to me (or cute French blue ones) but I also use red lentils sometimes. I make a pretty tasty lentil salad, maybe I'll post the recipe later on.
7.peanuts, for cooking and snacking.
8. millet--I only have one recipe for this, but it's got a great, nutty flavor so I'd love to expand my millet use.
9. split mung beans (moong dal)--I also only have one recipe for these, but I also throw them into soups.
10. barley--you can cook this up like rice and put stuff on it, but I rarely do that. But I throw it in crockpot soup to add texture. It keeps its chewiness even with long cooking.

Brownie mix

I don't bake very much. Only when I can't avoid it. Recently it became unavoidable to make brownies: our local supermarket back in Somerville carried some brownies we were addicted to, and our local supermarket here doesn't have anything to compare, so we finally started looking at brownie mixes to see if anything would fill the void, since making brownies from scratch wasn't in the cards.

The upshot: we like Ghirardelli's Dark Chocolate brownie mix. Rich, even gooey, but still with a cake-like fluffiness, and a firm, almost crisp surface. And of course like the other brands it takes like two minutes to mix it up.

So there you have it.

Recipe Generator

I discovered this a few weeks ago and thought it was funny, and I just remembered it again now. It's a recipe generator with a junior high sense of humor. The recipes don't look like links, but they are.

Warning, this website contains foul language and may literally insult you. ;)

What the fuck should I make for dinner?

Vegetarian Chili

This is what we had for dinner tonight. We've had it a few times and every time it's super awesome.

ingredients:
1 tbsp canola oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
2 (15.5 oz) cans red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
2 (15.5 oz) cans fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 10 oz package frozen corn
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1 oz semi-sweet chocolate

directions:
heat the oil in a large saucepan over med-high heat. add the garlic, onion, bell pepper, and jalapeno pepper; cook, stirring often, until veggies begin to soften (4-5 min). add the beans, tomatoes, corn, chili powder, cocoa powder, oregano, salt, and black pepper. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring often to prevent scorching, until beginning to thicken slightly, about 15 minutes. remove from heat and add the chocolate, stirring until melted.

Mattar Paneer

We made Taryn's mushroom and peas masala and it reminded us of this. And a while ago Taryn was experimenting with tofu (which we usually use instead of paneer) so we figured we'd post it for inspiration and contrast. :) This has a lot of spices, clearly, but it's not spicy.

1 large onion
1 1/2 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic
1 15-oz can tomato sauce (the super plain kind) or crushed tomatoes
2 tap ground coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
10 ounces frozen peas
3 Tbs sour cream (optional)
1/4 tsp sugar
8 ounces paneer or firm tofu, cut into bite-sized cubes

1. Puree onion and garlic in food processor
2. Heat oil in large-ish pot on medium and add oil. Add mustard seeds, cumin and bay leaf and cook about 1 minute, until they start smelling good and/or the mustard seeds start jumping.
3. Add onion and garlic and saute 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in tomato sauce and all other spices except the sugar and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the sauce gets too thick add up to 1/2 cup water.
4. Stir in peas, sour cream, and sugar. Simmer 5 minutes or so until peas are hot.
5. Fold in paneer or tofu and cook 3 more minutes. Remove bay leaf and serve hot with rice or bread.


We generally use tofu because it's cheaper and easier to find around here and it still tastes fine, if not super authentic. Eric likes the sour cream in the sauce but I like it with or without.

Cuban pork chops

At least that's what the Betty Crocker cookbook I got this from says. I've made them four or five times now, and I've worked it out the way I like it. It's a good recipe.

Ingredients:
boneless pork chops (the amounts below make enough rub for five or six)
3 limes' worth of grated lime peel
1 tbsp cracked pepper
1 tbsp cumin seeds
half teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp olive oil

1. Grate your lime peel. I tried it with a zester, but found it works better just to rub the limes against a cheese-grater (the smaller holes); it's much quicker than a zester, if you're going to do 3 limes. BTW, the recipe calls for 2 tbsp grated lime peel, and 3 medium limes makes more than that, but I think the more lime peel the better for this recipe.

2. Crack your pepper. The first few times I made this I cheated and used ground pepper, but now I know that the cracked pepper makes all the difference. Put your peppercorns in a ziploc bag (squeeze all the air out) and pound on them with a mallet until they're cracked. If you don't have a mallet the bottom of a saucepan or skillet will work just as well. It's tastier if you don't crack them all the way to dust - the crunch of the pepper is important.

3. Mix the pepper, lime peel, olive oil, salt, garlic, and cumin seed together.

4. Rub this mixture into both sides of your pork chops.

5. Grill or broil the pork chops until done. We don't have a barbecue grill, so we broil them in the oven; takes about 5-6 minutes per side, depending on thickness.

We served these with Taryn's Hopi corn salad and some wild rice, and it was a hit with our guests.

Mushroom rice (a.k.a. kinoko gohan)

Ingredients (makes enough for 4 people):
rice, 3 cups
dashi liquid, 540 ml
mirin, 2 tbsp
cooking sake, 3 tbsp
soy sauce 3 tbsp
mushrooms of your choice (this evening I used shiitake, maitake, lion's mane; if you can find matsutake that's the best; fresh mushrooms are better than dried, but if you use dried reconstitute them first), however much you like (I used maybe 3 handfuls tonight)
vegetable oil
green onions

1. Make the dashi: this is the bonito-based soup stock. You can find shiitake-based dashi sometimes now, which would probably be really good with this. Anyway, make 540 ml of it.

2. Wash the rice and put it in your rice cooker, then instead of filling it with water up to the 3-cup mark, use the dashi liquid. Let it sit (don't turn it on yet) while you do the next couple of steps.

3. Mix the mirin, cooking sake, and soy sauce together and put aside. If you don't cook with alcohol, you can skip the sake and buy non-alcoholic mirin.

4. Cut your mushrooms into bite-size pieces (with shiitake and other large-cap mushrooms it works best to cut them into strips, like you see with dried shiitake).

5. Sautee the mushrooms in the oil until they get tender.

6. Add the mirin/sake/soy sauce to the rice and dashi and stir.

7. Put sauteed mushrooms on top of the rice. Make sure they're submerged in the liquid, but don't mix into the rice.

8. Turn on your rice cooker and cook normally.

9. When it's done, mix the mushrooms into the rice.

10. Serve with chopped green onions to taste.

Cry for Mushroom Suggestions

Our local Harmon's sells a wide variety of fancy fresh mushrooms and I really want to try them. When I cook with mushrooms I usually use cremini/baby bellas or shiitake, but the store often has enoki, blue foot, maitake, or oyster mushrooms (as well as various fancy dried types). Has anyone used these? What are they good in? I know enoki mushrooms are used in Japanese stuff but I don't know how. I usually use mushrooms in risotto or soup, or as burrito filler (sounds crazy but it really works), but I'd like to branch out. Ideas? Experiences?

Cry for suggestions more than help

Hey everyone! I was wondering...does anyone have any awesome recipes using cider vinegar? I like cider vinegar a lot but am at a loss for really good hot dishes using it. I think cider vinegar really says fall and I was thinking it might be nice to start thinking about fall recipes. Anyways, lemme know :)

new food?

so, taryn discovered this and i thought i would share... i'm not normally a huge candy person, but these are amazing.

http://www.wonka.com/Sugar.aspx (sorry, you'll have to cut and paste the link...for some reason it's not working)

so far i've tried the clementine fruit marvels, the red apple fruit jellies and the goji berry fruit jellies. the clementine marvels are AMAZING. they also make pomegranate and white grape flavor marvels, but i haven't seen them yet. and i haven't tried the grapefruit jellies. you can, and should, go get these at walmart or target.

Poaching eggs

Oh, oh, oh: here's something I can contribute. Have you seen these? PoachPods. They're a little expensive, but we got some and they're awesome. They're incredibly easy to use, easy to clean, and make perfect poached eggs every time. (This morning, for example, we had poached eggs on toast with cream cheese and a little Pickapeppa Sauce. Mmmmmm.)

Pork chops with applesauce?

So I realize I've been contributing more questions than useful suggestions lately. I'll try to rectify that with an upcoming post. But in the meantime I want to describe what I made last night, and see if anybody has any suggestions.

So at the farmer's market we finally saw some decent corn (wet spring=not a good summer for corn in Lane County, I guess), and so we had corn on the cob and pork chops last night (and caprese salad with fresh basil, but I imagine you all know how to do that). We had some local-made blackberry applesauce in the fridge that we'd bought at the farmer's market a few weeks ago and never did much with, so I decided to make pork chops with applesauce, which I'd never done before. I searched a few recipes and didn't find one that particularly excited me (plus they mostly told you how to make applesauce, when the whole point was to use this yummy applesauce we already had).

So what I ended up doing was this: I browned the pork chops a little bit on each side, then put them in a baking dish and baked them at 350 for about 40 minutes, turning them once (this much all the recipes seemed to agree on). What I did with the applesauce was mix in a little bit of Worcestershire sauce and then just pour the mix onto the chops when I put them in the baking dish. I poured more on when I turned them.

This came out alright. Akiko said she really liked it. But I felt like it could have been improved on. Any suggestions?

I made this!

The Facebook '15 albums' meme made me want a place to make non-food posts and record recommendation-y things I might want to remember later, so I made this: http://walleyslovetheworld.blogspot.com/

Right now it's pretty much me doing what Glynne does except not as smart. And it might just stay that way forever, but if anyone ever wants to post I'll send you an invite. The title mostly says 'Walleys' 'cause I didn't want to think of anything clever and because mostly just family will probably read it and stuff.

Plus, while I'm making such a random post, I'm really glad everyone seems to be liking and using our food blog. I think it's working out really well, so thanks everyone! Someday I'll invite Mom and Dad in, I just haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I'll make it a Christmas thing.

Garam Masala Green Beans

This is one of my go-to recipes, especially good when I feel like eating real food without putting a lot of effort into it:

1 or 2 Tbs vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
3/4 lb green beans trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces
3/4 tsp salt
1 Tbs fresh lemon juice

1. Heat a large pan on medium-low. Add everything EXCEPT the lemon juice and add 1/4 cup of water. Cover and simmer 5 minutes, until beans are just getting tender.
2. Uncover pan and raise heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring often, 5 minutes or so until liquid evaporates. Remove from heat, stir in lemon juice, and serve.

You can use this by itself as a side dish, but if you put it on rice it makes a decent dinner for two people. And it's totally not spicy. Plus, if you like bigger veggies or don't want to chop you can just trim the green beans and cut them in half.

Mushroom and Peas Masala

I made this for the first time today as a necessary break from my now endless mountain of reading for grad school :) It turned out really really good and it was easy but challenging enough to make to be a fun event-like cooking experience.

What you need:
1 1/2 cups fresh shelled peas (you can do frozen just adjust the cooking time so they don't get gross)
2 medium onions (white or yellow. I don't think red would work so well here)
2 1/2 cups sliced or quartered white mushrooms
5-6 cloves of garlic
2 inch piece of fresh ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tbsp garam masala (I like MGH brand the best)
5-6 little green cardamom pods
3 fresh red chilies (careful! this recipe is for MY palate, adjust for yours)
Salt to taste
2 cans of tomato paste
2 cups of water
1 tbs cooking oil (like light olive, canola, or vegetable)
2 tbs butter

TOOLS:
Deep non-stick frying pan with a lid
blender

What to do:
Prep work- Peel and quarter your onions and remove the tops of your chilies and throw them into the blender. Grind them up until they are a mushy,pasty,pink looking mess. Put them in a bowl (cover your eyes! Stinky onions!!) and set aside with a dish towel over top to preserve your eyeballs. Rinse the blender and then throw in your ginger and your peeled garlic cloves. I had trouble getting these to be pasty, they ended up more chopped. Maybe a food processor is in order (I lack one). Anyways, just make them small somehow. Set them aside. Make sure your mushrooms are cleaned and chopped and your peas are ready to go.

Cooking work- Put the oil and the butter into the pan and heat until butter is melted over a low heat. Add your cardamomos, coriander, garam masala, and cinnamon and sautee them until everything smells awesome and looks brown (don't burn anything, just make it look a nice nut brown). Add the onion and chili paste stuff and make sure your extractor fan is on or your window is open (the chilies hitting the heat can get your eyes and lungs if you aren't careful). Brown the mixture over low heat still for about 2 or 3 minutes. Add your ginger and garlic stuff and your two cans of tomato paste. Add the water and mix well. Turn the heat up to medium so it is all simmering but not ruining your stove with hot tomato splatter and add your mushrooms and peas. Stir them in, cover, and simmer until the peas are tender (about 20 min. if the peas are fresh). Stir occasionally to make sure the sauce isn't burning on the bottom. If the sauce is too runny, remove the lid and allow to thicken. Serve hot over rice :)

Bruschetta as requested

Bruschetta!!!

what you need:
2 large tomatoes
1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes
5 cloves of garlic
pinch of salt
fresh cracked black pepper
3 green onions
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
about 20 leaves of fresh basil

Chop your tomatoes into manageable chunks (don't discard any of the liquid) and slice your green onions into nice rounds. Mince the garlic, julienne your basil. Put everything into a bowl, mix well and let sit for an hour at room temp OR in the fridge over night (or during the day until dinner). Some recipes call for a little balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar and if you are using hot house tomatoes you may want that boost of acidity. With good fresh tomatoes in season I really don't think it is necessary. Slice a loaf of crusty Italian bread into nice 1 inch slices and brush them with olive oil on one side. With the oiled side face down on a foil coated baking sheet, bake until golden brown in a 350 degree oven. In the last couple of minutes you can add a little Parmesan or mozzarella to the bread and let it get brown. I like an "Italian blend" with mozz and parm all in the mix. Kraft makes a very affordable and decent one but if you want it more tangy, got for like Sargento or something (they put asiago in theirs if I remember). Yay!! Eat bruschetta and enjoy.

*note: I did this from memory and I suggest tweaking to your own specifications
*kalamata olives might be a nice addition.....hmmm......

Question re white bean salad with pita crisps

I have a question regarding this recipe that Lorien posted a while back. We've made this twice now, and it's come out awesome both times, but I noticed that the list of ingredients calls for olive oil, while the directions don't explain how to use it. Is this for brushing on the pita before toasting them, or is it supposed to be mixed in with the salad? We've been making the salad without olive oil, and it's delicious, but I wonder if we've been making it right...

Thai Eggplant

2 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 to 1 tsp crushed red pepper
3 baby eggplants or about 1/2 a big one, cubed into bite-sized chunks
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium bell pepper, diced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 Tbs rice vinegar
3 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs dark brown sugar
20 leaves fresh basil, shredded or torn

1. Heat large skillet or wok on med-high. Add oil and crushed pepper and let sizzle 10 to 15 seconds.
2. Add eggplant and stir-fry 2 or 3 minutes.
3. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic and stir-fry 3 more minutes.
4. Add vinegar and soy sauce and sprinkle with sugar. Toss for 1 or 2 minutes until liquid thickens slightly.
5. Remove pan from heat and add basil. Toss to combine and serve over rice.

The red pepper flakes make it pretty spicy, so cut down or leave them out if you're not into that. Also, you might want to hold your breath when you first throw them in--they always make me cough.
You can also cheat and use dried basil--I don't measure, I just sprinkle a generous amount and it seems to work.

Bruschetta

This is actually a place-holding post. I can't seem to access the greenonioneater blog at the moment, and I'm hoping greenonioneater-san will be kind enough to post here her recipe for bruschetta. Thanks in advance.

New Foods (left coast edition)

Lemon Verbena-san had a good idea there, so since I haven't had the energy to make any reportable recipes lately, I'm going to steal it. Here are three things we've tried recently:

1) Brianna's Champagne Caper Vinaigrette salad dressing. Brianna's and Newman's are the two brands of dressing we favor; Brianna's because they're all excellent, and Newman's because they make some standard flavors that Brianna's doesn't. This flavor seems to be new, or at least we hadn't seen it before. It's creamier than most vinaigrettes, with a nice spicy kick. A winner.

2) Sierra Nevada Porter & Spicy Brown Mustard. Inspired by Greenonioneater-san, I think, raving about brown mustards, I picked this one up. This makes it sound like it was Cooking with Booze week at our house, which it wasn't... Anyway, this is pretty good. I haven't been into brown mustards for quite a while, but this has a more interesting, complex taste than I remember Gulden's having. I'd be curious to hear from a connoisseur.

3) Sun-dried tomatoes, bottled. This was kind of a bust, not because they don't taste good, but because I don't know what to do with them. I like sun-dried tomato alfredo pasta sauce, the kind that comes ready made in a jar, and I figured maybe putting actual sun-dried etc in a straight alfredo sauce would be tastier, but what I did wasn't. I think it's because I just don't know what I'm doing with them. Anybody have any suggestions as to how to actually use a jar of sun-dried tomatoes?

New Food! Yay! (second installment)

I've had five new foods recently, some of which were pretty interesting:

1. Masa's miso sesame dressing (Glynne's recommendation), which I had on Glynne's cabbage salad. I highly recommend both the salad recipe and the dressing.
2. Sylvia's honey mustard--not my favorite, to be honest. I like my honey mustard on the spicy side, and this one is fairly sweet and a bit vinegary for me.
3. Beecher's Marco Polo cheese (tastes like a jack with peppercorns). This is by the same people who make that No Woman jerk cheese Glynne recommended, and I like this one, too. The peppercorns are good without overwhelming the cheese.
4. Black spaghetti from Target. It's black because it's made with squid ink (which I realized later is probably not very vegetarian, oops). To me, it tastes like regular white spaghetti, but it stays totally black even when you cook it so it looks really dramatic.

5. Mahjoub family harissa sauce, which I ordered from http://www.thespicehouse.com
I have this one Moroccan-style soup recipe (which I will post sometime) which uses harissa, but there's no good place to get it around here. Many Lands down in Provo has had one brand in the past that I didn't like much, and when I made my own it didn't turn out that great. But this stuff is really good, though fairly spicy. The main spices in harissa, from what I can tell, are garlic, coriander, and caraway, and this brand has those in a base of olive oil, pimentos, and sundried tomatoes. So it has this great sweet-and-spicy thing going on that makes me want to experiment with it in other recipes. I think I'll try adding it to bruschetta one of these days. Yum.

hoisin beef with soybeans and noodles

i randomly got this recipe from eatingwell.com. we had it for dinner tonight and it was AWESOME.

ingredients:
8 oz. noodles (i used buckwheat noodles, but whole wheat spaghetti would do)
3 tbs lime juice
3 tbs hoisin sauce
2 tsp chili-garlic sauce
1 tsp cornstarch
2 tsp sesame oil
8 oz. flank steak, thinly sliced (trim the fat off)
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
10 oz. frozen shelled soybeans, thawed
1 tbs fresh minced ginger (or not fresh as the case may be)
cilantro

preparation:
prepare noodles according to package directions. drain.

whisk together lime juice, hoisin sauce, chili-garlic sauce, and cornstarch. save.

heat oil over med-high heat. add steak and cook until just cooked through. transfer steak to a plate. add bell pepper to the meat juices and cook, stirring, for about a minute. add soybeans and cook through, about 2 minutes. (in my case, the soybeans were still frozen, so i did them first and then the pepper) stir in the sauce, and the beef. cook, stirring, about 1 minute. add noodles, toss. sprinkle cilantro on top.


vegetarian note: i think this would taste equally good sans beef, but with more peppers...also seems like it would be a good candidate for tempeh or seitan.

Chili

This is one of our favorite recipes. Its official title is Chili Sin Carne, but we usually call it chili stew because of all the veggies. As you can see, it makes a lot of soup, enough for a solid dinner for two and lunch for two the next day. It takes a little while because of all the chopping, but in my world, it's totally worth the effort. It's slightly-but-not-too-spicy the way it's written, but if you want to unspice it just leave out the red pepper flakes.

Chili Stew

2 Tbs olive oil
1 medium onion, diced (1 ½ cups)
2 carrots, diced (1 cup)
1 small bell pepper, diced (1 cup)
4 cloves garlic, minced (4 tsp)
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes (not drained)
1 15-oz can black beans, drained
1 15-oz can kidney beans, drained
1 12-oz package Morningstar soy crumbles (or cook up the same amount of real meat)
2 Tbs chili powder
1 Tbs plus 1 tsp cumin
1 Tbs brown sugar
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp red pepper flakes (to taste)
10 ounces frozen corn

1.Heat oil in large pot on medium-high. Add onion and saute 2 minutes. Add carrots and bell pepper and saute 2 more minutes. Add garlic and saute 1 more minute.
2.Add everything else except corn, add a cup or so of water, and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3.Add corn, add a little water if the chili is too thick for you, and simmer 10 more minutes.

The results of the new foods

Squash Blossoms: They are incredible. The flavor is best described as delicately zucchini-like. Since they are flowers, they have a nice, thin texture that really works well fried. I looked up a lot a recipes and tried to figure out the easiest way to deal with them and get a good concept of their taste. This is what I did:

9 whole squash blossoms, rinsed and patted dry
corn starch for dredging
1/2 cup olive oil
salt
garlic powder

I dredged the blossoms in the corn starch and just pan fried them until they got a light golden brown (and crisped up). I sprinkled a little salt and later a tiny bit of garlic powder. THEY WERE AWESOME!!!! Why can't I eat these forever? Seriously, why?!?!

DRAGON FRUIT: Ummmmm, yeah it doesn't taste like anything. It's beautiful and had the texture of a soft kiwi but it really just didn't taste like anything. It didn't even really smell like anything.

TOFU: I made fried tofu (with a cornstarch coating) and dipped them in a hoisin/soy sauce. Pretty good :) Not my new favorite food ever but pretty good.

Cactus Pears are yet to come.... Also to come, pictures!

Fennel

Fennel is something that I have come to be quite fond of over the course of the last year. Scott is the one who got me into it and this is our favorite way to make it:

2-3 fennel bulbs sliced 1/2 inch thick
extra virgin olive oil for drizzling
salt
fresh cracked pepper
1/4 to 1/2 cup grated parmesan (preferably the real kind as opposed to the stuff in the green plastic shaker)
the fennel leaves, shredded (the stuff that looks like fresh dill)

Make sure you cut off all the green stalk stuff from the fennel bulbs. Layer the slices in a baking dish and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the cheese and the fennel leaves (the dill stuff) and put it back into the oven until the cheese browns a little (about 5 min.). Allow to cool a bit and serve!

I fed this to Cherilyn, Lorien, and Mike before and they all seemed to think it was alright :)

Dhal

Okay here is the deal with dhal. I looked for a really long time to find a decent recipe a few years ago. What I came up with and what I generally use is a really pared down and decent yellow dhal recipe.

what you need:
-yellow dal (split channa/dried tiny little chickpeas split)
-salt
-chilies
-onion of some kind
-garlic
-various spices to your liking
-a little oil
~I recommend a little garam masala and maybe some coriander
-A BLENDER this is really important
-A MESH COLANDER equally important. It doesn't have to be mesh but the holes need to be tiny

Ok. Soak your channa for like 2 hours so it gets a lot softer. Throw it in a pot with enough water to cover it and all the spices you are going to use (including the onion etc) and bring it to a boil. Simmer it until the channa will smoosh on the side of the pot when pressed gently with a spoon. Drain your channa with the colander and transfer it directly into the blender. Blend it and add a little oil to your liking. Adjust the spices at this point. You can make it as utterly bland or as overwhelmingly spicy as you like. The main point of this recipe is that it gives you the right consistency for dhal without a pressure cooker. Anyways. This is what I do when I want dhal. It is decent, basic, and reliable. The alternative recipes out there seem to involve pressure cookers and they take forever.

Dhal Recipes

So, Taryn's probably the Indian food expert here so this question might be just for her, but I'd love to hear from anyone:

I like dhal, but I only have one recipe (for red lentil dhal) and I'd love more. So if anyone has good recipes or tips I would love to try them. I googled for recipes, of course, but if anyone has recipes they've already tried that's always better. Bonus points for crockpot recipes.

Crazy New Food

Partially because Joanna inspired me and partly because when opportunitty knocks, you have to answer, I got a few crazy new food items this weekend!

1st weird item: fresh squash blossoms from the farmer's market. I have wanted to try these for years but have never found them. So, here goes!

2nd weird item: A dragon fruit. I have never eaten dragon fruit and I am going to when I get home from work today. Who knows? Maybe it is my super-favorite food that I don't even know I love yet!

3rd weird item: Cactus pears. I bought two fresh cactus pears. I have had prickly pear jam and camdy and I really quite like pickled nopales, but a fresh prickly pear will be a new experience.

4th weird item: Tofu. I know this is really not a weird one for most people but it is for me. I have texture issues with it but really feel like I need to experiement and open the door to new and healthier proteins in my diet :) Fried tofu will hopefully be awesome (albeit not that healthy).

Pictures of my culinary adventures will follow...

New Food! Yay!

So normally we're pretty thrifty at our house, but there are two things I can't resist: new and exciting books and new and exciting food. I've curbed the book problem by (mostly) staying out of bookstores unless I'm really out of new books, but I still go grocery shopping once or twice a week. (Once if I remember everything the first time, twice if I don't). So while walking the aisles picking up things I actually need, I usually find one or two things I don't need but suddenly really want.

I've decided to justify my zest for new flavors by starting a semi-regular feature based on what I buy and whether it tastes good. Everyone else is welcome to record their new and exciting purchases in the comments or as totally separate posts or features. Obviously. ;)

This first “New Food! Yay!” will be mostly inspired by the excellent cheese suggestions and my resulting indulgences, but I don't really buy new and exciting cheese every week. It just seems like that lately.

I actually bought seven new things this week and last, but I've only tried six so far. Here they are:
1.Beehive Cheese Cajun Cheddar—this is now hands-down my favorite Beehive cheese. The cheddar flavor really works with the cajun spices to give you a nice rich flavor with a nice heat left behind. But if you're not into spicy I'd skip this one.

2.No Woman jerk cheese. This was Glynne's recommendation, and Harmon's had a nice little piece for sale. He's spot on about the complex flavor. There's definitely a strong jack vibe with a smoky and surprisingly sweet taste to it. Very enjoyable.

3.Da Vinci Goa from Holland (this is what is says on the package), a nice mild cheese with tomato, olives, and herbs mixed into it. It's got a nice savory flavor without being spicy.

4.Havarti Cream Dill from Denmark. This is exactly what it sounds like—some bites seem a little overwhelmed by dill, and some bites seem like the perfect blend of mild, slightly acid havarti with bright dill flavor.

5.Private Selection Arrabiata pasta sauce—I mostly hate jarred/canned pasta sauces because they're way too sweet for me, but for various reasons I've been looking for a jarred sauce I can agree with. I think this one might be it—it's nice and spicy and thin-enough-but-not-too-thin, and even though we had it more or less plain this time I think it would be great for adding my own veggies and such. Private Selection is actually Kroger, so I don't know where-all sells Kroger stuff where any of you live (if anyone does), but that's where you'd find this.

6.Archer Farms (Target) sesame orange dressing—we actually bought this because I'm going to make Glynne's cabbage salad thing and we didn't have any real sesame dressing on hand. I had some on regular salad last night and it was quite nice. Sometimes I find sesame stuff too bitter, but the orange sweetness offsets that nicely. We actually found the Masa's brand that Glynne recommended but I haven't tried it yet, so I can't tell you if I like it better than the Target one. So I'll have to save that one for next time.

So this is a lot more new stuff than I get in a normal week. This is even slightly much for the two weeks I'm covering here. But the bigness of the list probably makes it a good kick-off for a semi-regular but much shorter feature.

Instant Ramen

So I am more than likely the only family member who still eats instant ramen but I am posting this anyway. For me, Maruchan ramen is a major comfort food. With Scott having just moved to Texas and also having just taken on a lot more debt since I bought a car, I have definitely been on a ramen kick. The soup form is my fave-y but with no additives I think it is really boring. This is what I have been throwing in recently (as with seemingly everything I cook, the ingredients change dramatically based on what I have on hand)

To one package Maruchan Beef Flavor or Oriental Flavor Ramen:
-2 or 3 red radishes, sliced
-3 white mushrooms, sliced
-2 green onions, cliced into rounds (whites and tops)
-1 inch piece of fresh ginger grated or sliced finely
-1/2 to 1 tsp garlic powder
-1 tsp sriracha
-1 tsp soy sauce
-1 good grind of pepper

I cook the noodles to an al dente consistency with the seasoning packet in the water so the noodles absorb the flavor. I put all the other ingredients at the bottom of a bowl and pour the cooked noodles and broth over top.

*last night I also put in some cubed ham. It totally worked.

other favorite additives: Furikake, sesame seeds, crushed coriander seed, dried red chilies, mung bean sprouts, red onion, fresh sliced garlic, white vinegar or rice vinegar.

Hot and Sour Soup

This one's a slow cooker recipe. I think our crockpot is five or six quarts, but the recipe would probably fit in a 4-quart cooker.

1/3 cup dried shiitake or cloud ear mushrooms
One 6-oz can bamboo shoots, drained, rinsed, cut into thin strips
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 Tbsp. peeled and minced fresh ginger (dried will work in a pinch, though)
4 cups vegetable stock
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. Thai chile paste (the red stuff)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
4 oz. firm tofu
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
3 Tbsp. minced scallions
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil

1. Soak mushrooms in hot water about twenty minutes, then cut into strips and add to slow cooker. Add bamboo shoots, garlic, ginger, stock, vinegar, soy sauce, and chile paste. Season with salt and pepper, cover, cook on low 6 to 8 hours.
2. Just before serving, stir in the peas, scallions, and sesame oil and tofu and let cook about 10 minutes more. Serve hot.

If you make it according to the recipe this is more of a side dish, but if you add a generous scoop of brown rice into your bowl it works as a main dish.

Also, fresh shiitakes work great when you can get them. And if you're using dried you don't really have to soak them first--you can just crumble them right into the pot and they soften up just fine.

You can also use water chestnuts instead of bamboo, or if I double the recipe I like to add one can of water chestnuts (sliced) and one can of bamboo.

Cabbage salad with sesame dressing

We've got a pretty good Asian market near us, so there's not much in the way of Japanese foodstuffs that I really miss, but shredded cabbage is one. You can get shredded cabbage here for cole slaw, but that tends to be fairly short pieces. In Japan, it's common to slice cabbage in long, thread-thin ribbons for a garnish on various meat dishes, or just for use as a salad. I'm working my way up to being able to slice it that thin, but it isn't easy. Akiko says it's the kind of job apprentice chefs in Japan are given when they're new on the job.

Still, I can just about get it, so I can make my favorite variation on the basic green salad. To wit:

1. Shred your cabbage. About a third of a small cabbage will make enough for two medium-sized bowls of salad.

2. Peel a section of daikon and cut off enough to make a cube of about an inch on the long sides and half an inch or so on the short sides. Run this through a mandoline so you have a bunch of thin sheets of daikon.

3. Take about a half cup of frozen corn and thaw it in the microwave.

4. Chop a handful of peanuts in the food processor.

5. Toss the cabbage, corn, and daikon together and put in bowls.

6. Top with sesame dressing (there's a brand called Masa's sesame miso dressing that's widely available in this country).

7. Garnish with the chopped peanuts.

If you can get the cabbage right you'll have all the crunchiness of raw cabbage but it'll be cut so thin that there won't be any bitterness. Very refreshing in the summer.

Gjetost cheese

On the left is brie, on the right is gjetost cheese. I got this on cheese clearance at Smiths because I'd never tried it before. The picture doesn't really do justice to the surprising (alarming) brownness of this cheese. In its native Norway it's apparently called brunost, meaning brown cheese. It's made by boiling down milk products until they turn into what essentially is a block of caramel cheese, and that's pretty much what it tastes like. Sweetest. Cheese. Ever. I don't see it becoming my favoritest cheese ever, but it's pretty darn interesting.

My favorite cheese right now is Kerrygold aged cheddar, by the way. Best sharp cheddar I've ever had. A little expensive to cook with, but great for shredding on top of stuff or just eating on crackers. Yum.