Zebra Beans #2

It worked!

While the black beans faded somewhat in soaking and cooking, they were not allowed to tarnish the white beans as both were cooked separately. Also, being impatient, I simply boiled the hard dry beans, changing the water after an hour. Next time I'll change the water sooner, to mimic the soaking water, and add salt for the last 45 minutes. It's nice to know that instead of making cooking dried beans a 16+ hour process, you can do the whole thing in two hours, if you're willing to have the stove on the whole time and supervise things. There's no big difference in taste between the colors of beans; but since the white beans are much bigger than the black, they take longer. (Note to self: This means that if you cook the black beans for as long as you cook the white beans, you'll overcook them and that's no fun.) Then you add the beans to the sofrito, and viola, zebra beans! The sofrito is the most fun when you use four colors of peppers. :)

Zebra Beans #1

The plan was to use some of the super pretty bell peppers (I bought a bunch on sale, chopped, and froze them to simplify things in the future :) ) to make zebra beans - white and black beans mixed. The first lesson was that when you soak black beans with white beans, the color that comes out of the black beans and otherwise ends up down the drain, gets adopted by the white beans and makes super ugly gray beans. The second was that (probably because of a size difference) white and black beans take different times to cook. They still made good Cuban beans, but don't ask for a picture. Since they weren't heavenly as Cuban beans usually are, I'm wondering if there's something about the white beans that doesn't work so well. Anyone can has informations?

Stay tuned for experiment take two!

Hummus Quesadilla

The pinto beans were a bit elderly and not quite feeling up to being eaten, so the hummus bravely offered up itself. The result was so delicious I couldn't do anything else while I ate but taste.

Spread a generous layer of hummus on a (whole wheat, what else?) tortilla, then cover with lots of (red leaf) lettuce, tomato slices, carrot slivers (when this guy isn't busy trying to kill me, it does a great job with the carrots), and hunks of sharp cheddar. You gently fold it in half and microwave until the cheese is quite melty.

Devour distractionless. :)

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.

Untitled Improvisations

Here are two delicious fast things to do with a saute pan. They're somewhere between risotto and stir-fry, and have infinite flexibility. The 28th and 29th saw improvisational cooking at its best.

Day 1:

Saute some of the minced garlic in olive oil until fragrant, then add chicken. Cook until just brown on the outside and set aside. Saute more minced garlic, then chopped onion, carrot, and celery (about a cup each?) and saute some moe. Without adding water, add about 1 c chopped tomatoes and boil with 1 tsp oregano, dried basil, rosemary, thyme, and a bit of black pepper.

Add chicken and rice (how much depends on how many veggies you use). Cook, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and everything is nice and hot and well blended. Serve with heavy whole wheat bread. :)

(Sorry it's a crappy picture; the flash was misbehaving and I was hungry!)

Day 2:

Brown the chicken in sauted minced garlic like day 1, but with the addition of Famous Dave's Country Roast Chicken Seasoning. Remove, add more olive oil and minced garlic to the pan, and saute the already cooked broccoli for a minute, then add cooked brown rice and browned chicken to the pan. In lieu of canned cream of whatever soup, I added a 1/4 c (skim) milk and about 3/4 c grated cheese (mostly cheddar, but also some romano to use it up), and lots more of the chicken seasoning.

(Easy, efficient way to grate cheese. These guys are infinity times better than the box kind.)

(This guy reminds me of  Gavroche singing "Little People" from Les Mis)

Cook, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and everything is nice and hot and well blended to creamy deliciousness.

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!

Hummus & Veggie Sandwhich

It was the perfect Sunday lunch. It was also the messiest sandwich I have eaten in my entire life. (Not that I let that keep me from reading while I ate it!) It also reaffirmed my belief that the key to the perfect hummus & veggie sandwich is hot hummus on crusty bread. If your bread isn't crusty and your hummus isn't hot, just put the whole thing in a panini press, which will make it also compressed enough to not break your jaw eating it.

I used the Italian bread because I was out of wheat (I'm supposed to make more this afternoon but am getting tired of being sweaty...) and stuck it in a 500 degree oven for 5-7 minutes to try to toast a bit. Next time I'm toasting it with olive oil in a frying pan (like how you make grilled cheese) and hopefully that'll work better. In assembly, you use the hummus to hold down the garlic sprouts and shredded (I gleefully recently discovered how well the big round holes on the cheese grater work for shredding baby carrots!) carrots. Then you sandwich the tomato slices in the lettuce to keep them from soggifying the bread. I recommend making this kind over overstuffed un-panini-pressed sandwich with fresh, strong bread that won't fall apart.

Just like I wanted to say last week that there's nothing like cleaning up the homemade sauce on your plate with homemade bread, there's REALLY nothing like a hummus and veggie sandwich on homemade bread, with homemade hummus, and homegrown veggies. Someone please make my tomato plants hurry up!

Taco Salad

In some ways, taco salad is even more fabulous than stir fry. Unless you make your own refried beans, which is easy and fast, it involves only a bit of knife work and some washing of vegetables. Tonight's included red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, scallions, corn off the cob, onion sprouts, cheddar cheese, refried beans, and a small handful of tortilla chips. It was definitely fit for a payday celebration!

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!

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.

Lentil Tomato Soup

it was really cool to get to see the quinoa half-cooked like this

Lentil Tomato Soup

(adapted from Italicious, who has the nerve to have prettier pictures than me...)

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a heavy soup pot or Dutch oven, and add a chopped onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about five minutes. Add the two crushed but not chopped garlic cloves, diced carrot and a diced celery stalk, and a generous pinch of salt, and continue to cook for another five minutes until tender. Add the 2 chopped tomatoes and some rosemary and a bay leaf, and cook, stirring often, until the tomatoes have cooked down somewhat and smell fragrant, about 10 minutes. Add 1 c lentils and 1/2 c well rinsed quinoa and 5 c water. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently one hour. Taste and adjust seasonings. Stir in the parsley. Serve, garnishing each bowl with Parmesan or Gruyère. Serve with bread.

Holiday Pasta Estate

It's all about being colorful. (Studies have shown that food that is colorful and messy tastes better.)

Pasta Estate

Saute garlic in olive oil until fragarant; don't let it brown. Add chopped zucchini (half half-moons), yellow and red bell peppers (you could use green, but that wouldn't be adding new colors now, would it?!), and broccoli. The veggies should be cut up pretty small and should all be roughly the same size. It's a good idea to add the zucchini first and the others 3-5 minutes later since the zucchini might take longer to cook. Add water to keep things from burning, and whatever spices you like (we used basil, oregano, and black pepper). After the veggies are deemed to be done, toss them with your freshly cooked pasta, a chopped tomato, a splash of olive oil, and a very generous drizzle of red wine. Sprinkle with Romano cheese.

P.S. Tonight I cooked some dried black beans, this time not soaking them for 30 hours in a hot apartment.... Stay tuned for what they become!

the cuties after being soaked, before being cooked

Quesadilla Adventure

One of the things I always say I love about cooking is the creativity involved/required, and now I'm officially adding the adventure factor. Today, I had an adventure. I am being grateful it was not only edible but delicious (sometimes adventures can be of the exploding variety...); I am being grateful that the sun's fury can't touch the cool breeze floating in the window; I am being grateful that the cheese, whose fault this whole thing is anyway, can make anything taste good; I'm being grateful for the corn I got to dig out of the cob with my teeth.

Today's adventure was an attempt to make a quesadilla with slightly crunchy tortillas, and I decided this would be be done in a greased frying pan (So it was basically this but with scallions and much messier). What I didn't count on was that the cheese needs to be close to the heat (not in a layer on top as shown above) or it won't melt and won't hold the whole thing together. Admittedly, there was probably not enough cheese together, but it wasn't noticeable by the end because none of the ingredients were evenly distributed by the end anyway.

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not quite as easy as flipping pancakes...

Still delicious, but we'll stick with the micronde for now.

What was your biggest cooking adventure? Any you'd repeat?

Victory! (Magic Summer Stew)

Did I not call it at the base of the stairs? I did, I did indeed. I declared that tonight would be a night of victory! Victory over the unknown of the Future, victory on extra veggies floating around the fridge...

And so it was. We'll call it Magic Summer Stew. It's very much like Stone Soup: it's a conglomerate of whatever you feel like using up. The only rule is that it must be colorful. Mine included onion, potato, carrot, red and yellow pepper, scallions, and garbanzos, but you're free to include whatever you'd like. I usually care so little for recipes I have no right to inflict them on others (except, of course, the Hershey's Holiday Chocolate Cake recipe, but that's a very different story).

To start, I sauteed minced garlic in a very generous amount of olive oil and then added a bit of cooking sherry and black pepper. My prayers were answered and the veggies cooked down a lot (I added 1.5-2 c of water to help them) - the silly people I live with don't have any big pots :(. I added bit of many spices; if I remember correctly these included about 1/4 tsp salt, about 10 tiny red pepper flakes, and 1/4-1/3 tsp oregano, and 1/3-1/2 tsp dried basil (I meant to put in fresh basil at the end but forgot). After there was enough room in the pot, around the time I added the spices, I added as many garbanzos as I felt like (maybe 2 cups? You can probably tell by now I don't keep track of stuff like this) so they had plenty of time to take in the flavors of the veggies and the spices. Let's hear it for impromptu cooking!!!

Served best over barley (not bulgar like I tried at first; bulgar is too nutty and in my opinion best suited for accompanying stir fry, which I like to do with cashews...). Also, since it's kind of stew-y, but the barley kind of soaks it up, I recommend serving in those dishes you never use, the ones that are a combination bowl and plate.

Yes, you should be jealous. Even the broth by itself is absolutely delicious. Lucky for you there's plenty left (if you hurry!).

Tomato Sauce #2

This is the Chief Senora del Campos espeaking. I have identified the culprit as the mischievous onion. There will be absolutely no more onion in tomato sauce. Tonight it was much darker because of the lack of onion, but I forgot the sugar and overall wasn't impressed. The wine didn't seem to have a big effect. Still searching for how to make the perfect tomato sauce...

Stephxican Lasagna

If I were Mexican, I'd probably not want this called Mexican, so it's Stephxican. Don't ask me how to pronounce that. (Pictures were taken before I realized I forgot the corn.)

Last night's delicious feast was preceded by a stunning spectacle of surgical skill: I forgot the corn, but was able to lift off each layer of lasagna (take that, Italians!) to add the corn back. (The masses that told me it wasn't possible were clearly not aware of my spectacular surgical skill!) It was heavenly. It was in a springform pan.