Quinoa Bean Stew

This was another successful cleaning-out-the-fridge stew, and also a success for cooking improvisation. I typed up the general procedure I followed, but it's very flexible to anyone else's modification. Epic win!

Quinoa Bean Stew

1. Saute lots (2 tbsp) minced garlic in ample olive oil
2. Add 2-3 c total chopped onion, carrots, celery, and potato, with a pinch of salt.
3. Add 3 roma tomatoes, chopped and 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
4. Add 3 c water
5. Add 1 c rinsed quinoa and 2 c cooked white beans and the corn cut off an ear of corn (next time I'm using more because I love corn so much)
6. Add 2 chicken bullion cubes, 1 tsp basil, 1 tsp oregano, 3/4 tsp thyme, 1/2 tsp rosemary, 1 large bay leaf
7. Simmer for a long time, blend at some point if you want. Taste and adjust spices if necessary.
8. Reheating is best done on the stove, on low heat to avoid burning things, with extra water if it gets too thick.

(Guys, seriously, this is why I need a digital SLR. Giovanni is fantastic but I really need to be able to focus things myself, cuz zoom + flash + macro mode = tearing hair out. And last I checked, hair isn't something you want in stew.)

Frenchish Bread Roll

This was this, take 2, and without the heat, because it was super nice out and the heroic air circulator fan managed to not fall off the window sill enough to keep the kitchen cool despite having the oven on 425 for a loooong time.

Since last time the second rise was mostly a sideways instead of lengthwise expansion, this loaf got rolled out and rolled up, in an attempt to prevent a reoccurrence of the Big Sideways Blob Problem. It didn't rise as much as it needed to have to not look silly, but BOY you should have tasted it! Giovanni's batteries died before I could get a picture of the crumb, but the rolling that created the silly flap in the picture above was actually visible in the crumb of the bread, and for many slices, you could actually unroll it! The crust, due to the special treatment discussed here, was nice and hard, and the middle felt like a pillow. If only we could have a bathtub full of bread insides to sleep on!

Tomato Basil Soup

All the tomato basil soup recipes I found online involved more complication than I felt like dealing with, so I did what I always do and made it up. It ended up being sauted garlic, boiled tomatoes, lots and lots of fresh basil leaves, and 1/2-3/4 c (I didn't measure) half and half.

I ate it with a piece of Italian bread at the bottom of the bowl, soggified and tomato-basilified by the soup. Delizoso!

Super Crispy Tortilla Pizza

Pita bread doesn't like me: when I try to make it poof up, it just sits there; when I try to make the tortillas crispy by baking them at 450 for a few minutes before adding pizza-y toppings, the tortillas fill up their lungs to sing. Molto strano.

They got what they were asking for: a violent and crunchy punching down. Then they got a liberal covering with tomato slices, basil leaves, cheese, lots and lots of dried basil and dried oregano on top, and a spoon-controlled drizzling of olive oil.

Back in at 450 for 10-15 minutes, and devoured. Delicious!

P.S. I also roasted the tomatoes before hand, which I think helped. The cookie sheet wasn't too happy though...

The Hunt Continues...

The hunt continues for the perfect super basil-y tomato sauce. Breakspear made a huge donation, but it was ultimately somewhat disappointing, though beautiful.

This was store-bought tomato sauce heated on the stove with a small mountain of fresh basil leaves (torn, I think). I need a way to blenderize the basil better; I think liquid nitrogen would help. :)

Roasted Tomato Sauce!

Here's one good reason to be crazy about taking pictures of the food you're cooking: when you forget what time something went in the oven, the camera can tell you. Thanks, Giovanni!

So the cool thing about this sauce, with helpful hints from teh interwebs, is that the entire sauce is roasted (meaning you don't roast just the tomatoes, but everything). Normal tomato sauce involves sauteing garlic and onion then adding tomatoes and spices. Normal tomato sauce with roasted tomatoes involves using roasted tomatoes instead of fresh or canned ones. When the whole sauce is roasted, magic happens.

Spread halved tomatoes (romas are best) cut side up in a pan with fairly high sides and cover with a generous sprinkling of minced fresh garlic, dried basil and oregano, salt and pepper to taste, and a drizzle of olive oil (the easiest way not to spill is to pour a bit of olive oil in a spoon and use that to drizzle; even if you dump the whole thing out on accident it's still less than a slip of the bottle).

Roast at 450 for 30-45 minutes (take them out before you see signs of burnage). Blend, either in the blender or in a pot with the imersion blender. Boil some water off it's too thick (mine ended up the perfect sauce consistency).

Mix pasta into sauce over low to medium heat to warm; garnish with fresh basil to serve.

Moosewood Tomato Wine Sauce with Fennel

Tonight's experiment was another miracle in actually following recipes. I couldn't taste the wine at all, though I might not have recognized it anyway. The fennel makes it slightly interesting, but otherwise it's a gentle tomato sauce.

The Moosewood cookbook says to saute 1 c chopped onion, 2 minced garlic cloves, and a sprinkle of salt in warm olive oil for 5-7 minutes, then add 2 tsp ground fennel, 1 tsp dried oregano, and 1 tsp dried basil and cook for another minute. Then you add 1/3 c red wine and boil everything. Add a 28 oz. can of tomatoes pureed (you can buy tomato puree or buy whole tomatoes and dirty your blender) and simmer the sauce for about 20 minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

Bruschetta & Roasted Zucchini (& Heavy Pasta Estate)

Lesson learned: bell pepper has a nasty way of taking over everything. And unless you're prepared to use too much oil and salt, let the zucchini stay out of pasta. Actually, I think tonight taught me that I should stop trying to put things in pasta besides spices. (I was pretty disappointed with the pasta, so someone please come eat the leftovers for me! If you want to know what I did, leave a comment.) At least I can make food look dang good!

The proper way to prepare zucchini (imho) is as follows: wash zucchini, slice 1/4 slices, place in bowl big enough you can comfortably stir them, with olive oil, salt, and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Put on greased cookie sheet and roast at 450-475 for 10-15 minutes (but watch them in case your oven is different). Devour.

The tomatoes in the photo are the only decent store-bought tomatoes around. They come from Arizona but somehow taste exactly like they're freshly picked from the backyard. They're absolutely mind-blowing. So was the bruschetta I made with them, superfruity olive oil, fresh garlic, and the basil my plant donated:

(I dried out my leftover Italian bread with the zucchini I roasted, it got reaaally dry. The tomatoes softened it up perfectly however, and it was interesting rubbing the garlic cloves (I cut them in half first to use the inside of the cloves) on the very dry bread because the bread was so hard it was like rubbing garlic on a cheese grater. Now I know the best way to make really legit garlic bread!

Bruschetta recipe:
Slice bread, put plain bread on ungreased cookie sheet and bake/roast at 450ish for 10-15ish minutes. When cool enough to touch, paint with superfruity olive oil with a pastry brush (or your fingers). I put the olive oil in a small dish to make it more accessible and to avoid having to pour it (because I would accidentally pour too much). Then scrap bread to taste with the cut side of a (crushed) garlic clove, and top with tomato basil mixture. (Tomato basil mixture = roughly chopped tomatoes, torn fresh basil leaves, s&p&olive oil to taste, refridgerated for a while to marry flavors (I actually used the the freezer to cool it faster). Keep away from you roommates unless you want it all gone very quickly!

One Hot Night (Part 2 - Pasta & Successful Sauce)

 (Isn't it cute! And the knife is my one and only - it can do anything!)

I caught another culprit. (The onion has been behind bars in the sauce-making sense, so we needed some excitement.) The culprit this time is the tomatoes. I am sadly resolving to stop making pasta with fresh tomatoes, because the tomatoes aren't near flavorfull enough. This time I just sauted a bunch of minced garlic in olive oil and dumped in a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes (I was expecting crushed tomatoes to be analogous to crushed garlic, and was wrong. Now what I need is someone to explain the difference between crushed and purred tomatoes). I added about 2 tbsp of dried basil and 1/2 tbsp dried oregano. Finally my faith in my ability to make Italian food was restored.

And the leftover bread I made last week? Perfetto per facendo la scarpetta!

Fatto!

One Hot Night (Part 1 - Bread)

They say it tastes better if you have to fight for it. Let's add, or sweat your brains out for it. I was perfectly justified in skipping the gym the next day (especially after biking 40 miles over the course of the weekend, getting happily soaked)!

Even though the temperature outside was having a race with the temperature in the oven (thankfully it never quite caught up!), not having sandwich bread is not really acceptable. While I was at it, I decided to make a loaf of white Italian bread to eat with pasta. It took a lot of self-restraint to not put in all sorts of extra healthy stuff like I do for the "normal" bread. I found a very simple recipe (2.33 c flour, 1 c water, 1 tsp yeast, 1 tsp salt, 0.25 tsp sugar) online and added a few tablespoons of dried basil to the dough. Here it is being slathered with olive oil before the first rise:

It rose like crazy. Here's before and after being punched down:

It went crazy again during the second rise:

(It rises under a wet towel so the outside doesn't dry out. The oil on the pan is to keep it from sticking and to give it a golden bottom.)

(It also sprouted dried basil on top! How did that happen!?)

One of the great things about finding recipes online is you get the added wisdom of the commenters. I learned this way to take the bread out of the oven (no happy feat, considering it was 450!) every two minutes for the first 10 minutes of cooking to add water. This colors the crust and also keeps it from forming too soon, and reducing oven spring. At first I didn't think it was working and almost gave up, but the crust came out beautifully rustic.

I was even more speechless tasting it than looking at it!

P.S. I also made a loaf of my hearty whole wheat bread for sandwiches. After kneading it, the Italian bread was practically zero effort to knead; I had never kneaded bread so white so I didn't know what a big difference all the whole wheat flour, bran, flaxseed, etc. has on the toughness of the dough. I love the smell, color, and texture of the dough ball.

(In the lower left corner, you can see the strands of gluten. The finished bread was full of them. Anyone know what that means? I'm wondering if it could have risen more - it was extremely dense, but yummy and filling!

Triple-Type Pizza

It looked better than it tasted. It was a lesson in why not to put raw tomatoes directly on the crust: sog city (the drizzled olive oil didn't help either). The olive oil I used to grease the pan, since I didn't have cornmeal, did however make the crust nicely crispy. It was still too thick, despite the absence of leavening.

The crust was simply 1.5 c whole wheat flour, maybe 1/2 (unmeasured) salt, a generous (maybe 1 tbsp) honey, and about 0.75 c water. I kneaded it just to mix it more easily and to work in a bit more flour.

Then I slathered the cookie sheet with olive oil, spread the crust, and slathered it with oil. Then on went a layer of tomatoes (part of the problem with this pizza was also that the tomatoes hardly tasted like anything; thank goodness my flight for Italy leaves tomorrow!), three columns of toppings: basil, broccoli, and diced yellow pepper (see top picture), and about seven cloves of garlic, minced (I really prefer garlic powder but I refuse to use the garlic salt thingy in the cabinet). Then knife-shredded Cheddar and Romano cheeses, a hearty dose of freshly ground black pepper, oregano, and dried basil, and finally another (bad idea) drizzle of olive oil. I baked it at maybe 450 for about 15 minutes.

At least it was pretty.

Friday Night Experiments

What are weekends for? Extra time for kitchen experiments! I'm still in search of the perfect pasta sauce. Tonight it might have happened if someone had reminded me to buy dry basil. The other reason I have to go shopping again is that somehow I bought CRAP olive oil - I tasted a small spoon of it and then a bit of another bottle's oil and the one I bought today (because it was cheaper...) tasted relatively tasteless. Very sad. Horray for more shopping! If only I were in Italy and could buy olive oil at the farmers' market tomorrow!!!

In happier news, the tomatoes were the best store-bought tomatoes I've ever had. I was skeptical at first because the package said they'd been packaged more than a week ago, and they came from Arizona. Tomatoes from Arizona? I stand corrected. They tasted like I had actually picked them off the vine in my backyard!

Experiments today involved sherry for the first time. I took a tiny spoonful of it too and found it surprisingly strong and sweet; moreover I wished I had white wine because my extreme lack of knowledge about wine says white wine would be better.

The tomato sauce ended up being very light - good for summer but disappointing (everyone else who tasted it was impressed) because of the lack of spices. There was a blending basil win, however. And I am getting better at mincing garlic :). I had to suck it up and buy a $4 pound of peeled garlic because peeling garlic requires turning off the fan (or the paper blows everywhere) and turning off the fan isn't really an option.

Recipes:

Nice light summery tomato sauce: Saute minced garlic (I think I used seven cloves) in extra virgin olive oil for a few minutes, then add half a medium-sized onion. Cook for a few minutes and then add the tomatoes. Cook for 5-10 minutes then turn off the heat, put about half the tomatoes in the blender, and add the tomato puree back to the pan. Turn the heat back on and add 1/4 tsp oregano, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, and a few turns of the black pepper grinder. I made the mistake of dumping in a bit of cooking sherry which made the sauce too sweet in my opinion (a friend said she one of the the things she liked about it was that it wasn't too sweet, so just adjust to you taste). After a few minutes of heavy boiling to reduce the sauce, I put a bunch back in the blender on a higher speed because the sauce was still too thin. (In the end it was always too thin; I think tomato paste intervention might be necessary.) During the second blending, I added five large (as in 4"!) fresh basil leaves to the tomato sauce in the blender. Next time: No onion, more garlic, loooooots more basil, no sherry, and back to the tried and true 3 tbsp. dried basil and 1 tbsp. dried oregano.

QuinoaSherryBroccoli Experiment: Saute minced garlic in extra virgin olive oil, then add small pieces of cooked (or almost cooked) broccoli florets (you get to eat the stems while you cook - don't throw them out!) and a generous unmeasured amount of cooking sherry. Watch sadly as it immediately evaporates. Add more sherry, turn off the heat, and continue talking with hungry friend while sherry soaks in. Turn heat back on, on LOW, and stir while everything gently cooks. When the voices in your head say so, add cooked quinoa. I probably used about 1.5 cups, but I didn't measure. Use however much is appropriate for the amount of broccoli you used slash however much is appropriate for the number of people you are trying to feed slash however much is appropriate for how hungry people are. Stir and cook for a few minutes to let the flavors marry and get nice and warm and happy. Feed to your hungry friend. Hungry friend will be impressed. :) Kudos to my sleepy brain for this fantastic idea. Next time: use another kind of wine. Donors, anyone?

P.S. While you cook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ige8G7qpEF8

Legitissimo Tortilla Pizza

Legitissimo Tortilla Pizza- Preheat oven. Slather tortillas with olive oil. Add chopped tomato, cheese, and ripped fresh basil leaves. Add plenty of oregano and a generous drizzle of olive oil. Bake for 10 minutes at 450. The tortillas were too thick to get properly crispy. More oil next time?