kolaches

Kolaches are a Czech pastry. They are soft, buttery little thumbprints filled with jam or cheese, or apparently, sausage. I tried recipe from a site called homesick Texan. The dough ended up being not quite as sweet as the ones I'm used to, and I messed up the amount of butter and the brushing with melted butter. I'm not sure if the ones I'm used to are a variant, but for sweet fillings I'd probably double the sugar. For savory fillings it was probably just right and would make for some awesome pigs in a blanket.

Fettucine with radicchio and lemon

I mentioned that I picked up a couple of radicchio at the farmer's market on saturday. I poked around for a few recipes and came up with one that looked good from Mario Batali. The gist of it is wilt the radicchio with some shallots, add cream, reduce, add fresh pasta, add lemon zest and juice, add asiago, enjoy.

It's brilliant. The bitterness of the radicchio with the tangy lemon against the saltiness and creaminess is just amazing. It'll end up being about three or four meals worth for me, so it's a good thing. I substituted two little meyer lemons for one of the lemons, and it's noticeable. I don't think I'd do more than that, and you probably can't get meyer lemons for twenty cents each where you are.

I struggled with the pasta. It's really difficult to make it in quantity. I got in a little fight with my pasta roller, had to step back, take some deep breaths, toss out some dough, and keep going. I need some better strategies for doing it in steps. The stand mixer worked fantastic for making a big batch of the dough, but I found I needed more liquid than the recipe called for, despite measuring the eggs as liquid, not numerically. It's still better than anything I can buy at the store, but I think I may get some dried pasta for when I'm feeling lazy, because it's a pain to clean up. For this dish, though, I wouldn't use anything other than fresh.

Onigiri and rice

I've mentioned here and there that I've been making onigiri. Now, I haven't had authentic onigiri, which is something I'll remedy once I'm a bit more settled. Apparently there's some good places in the Bay area to get Japanese cooking supplies, and some of those places also have foodstuffs. My other option is to make onigiri for the group that went to Japan last summer, and use their experience to guide my own. Or both, since the latter is likely to happen regardless. Onigiri for all!

I've been following the tips and instructions over at Just Hungry, which is a really useful blog for people attempting to cook Japanese food outside of Japan. It's a good read, too, so check it out. Rice is very important. I've got ready access to a variety of rices, and I've come to really like the Japanese short grain rice, which is actually a medium grain. It takes a bit of extra prep work. You need to rinse it thoroughly, rub the grains of rice together, keep rinsing, and then let it dry for 20-30 minutes. You cook it like any other rice, start high, go low, tight fitting lid, but with a bit less water than a long grain rice might use. Package instructions are your friend. After the water is gone, let it rest with a damp towel over it for 10-15 min, and it's just a different class of rice. It coheres and is sticky, but each grain is distinct. It's firm but still soft, and has a great flavor. I've been eating it just as rice, or even in place of long grain.

Onigiri are basically balls of rice with filling. They usually end up in a triangular shape for ease of eating and carrying, but that shaping takes practice and my attempts at it have thus far ended up with fillings poking out. I'll keep trying it though. The simple way to make them is a combination of plastic wrap and a teacup (I use a ceramic dish lifted from a chem lab in some distant past that's been in our family for ages, they're the perfect size). The description on justhungry is better than anything I'd be able to do here. I still find these to be a bit big and the ratio of rice to filling isn't quite right. They're still completely edible, but either I need a smaller cup or I'm not doing it quite right. I'll keep messing with it. My other problem is that they seem to dry out pretty quickly, possibly because I live in a very low humidity environment. Dried out rice is not good eats. I have some ideas to solve this, mostly they revolve around eating them faster, but that doesn't help me with packed lunches.

Fillings are the easiest and probably the funnest part. I did a simple tuna with soy sauce filling the first time, and it was okay. Next time I'd use more soy sauce and some ginger and possibly chili sauce too. I sauted some onions and mushrooms with a bit of soy sauce and black pepper, this worked out brilliantly and was delicious. I mentioned I want to try some braised radiccio, since I think the bitterness will contrast nicely with the rice.

oatmeal cookies

This is in part a test to see if this auto-updates on facebook, and partly a reminder to myself to find an oatmeal cookie recipe. Initial research suggests pretty minor variations in ingredient amounts. I can't recall whether I made the Joy of Cooking or the Quaker oats box top last time. They were crunchier than I would have liked. How does one make chewier cookies?

pinto beans

Dry pinto beans were on sale last week, and I figured they were a cheap and useful staple. I had no idea really how to cook them, so I pretty much winged it. I soaked them overnight, drained, and then boiled them until they were soft but not falling apart. I drained them again, and then sautéd some onions and garlic in butter, added the beans and a carton of chicken stock. I let it reduce a bit, then added a bunch of spices, by which I mean I spilled a little too much ancho chile powder into it. I also added cumin, oregeno, black pepper, and a bit of chipotle. Salt I waited on, since I heard somewhere it makes beans tough. They were still a little soupy when I got too hungry to wait anymore, but I put it over some white rice and they were delicious anyhow. I then left it on low and completely spaced out for a couple hours, at which point it had reduced almost entirely. I put in the fridge, and today they have the texture of refried beans and amazing flavor.

On an unrelated note, I hit the farmer's market again this morning. I got some pluots, which are amazing and wonderful. I much prefer them to plums, and am excited to try more varieties in spring and summer. I got some oranges, which look really sketchy on the outside, but are really juicy and tasty. I got some meyer lemons, which I don't know what to do with yet. I got some radiccio, some of which I will grill, some of which I will braise in ginger and put into onigiri. There was a vineyard there which doesn't seem to make wine so much as edible grapes. Do you still call it a vineyard? Anyhow, I tried some Thompsons, which are small, golden, and oh so sweet. I also got some flame raisins, which have a deeper flavor than standard raisins and are going to turn into some oatmeal raisin cookies tomorrow. They make all the varieties into raisins, and the flavor difference between them is amazing. I'll bring some back east with me at Thanksgiving.

Merced: first impressions

So I moved across the country. The trip itself is another post, maybe. I'm not sure we had any real culinary adventures, aside from fry sauce (meh) and some very good barbeque in Lovelock, Nevada, of which the beans that were almost as much linguisa as beans were definitely the highlight. At any rate, I now reside in Merced, CA.

My basis for comparison is Storrs, but to be fair to CT, I'll include Manchester and Vernon in my local area. Merced, at first pass, pretty much kicks the crap out of it either way. On the fast food front, the presence of In'n'out and Sonic means that it's possible to eat a cheap, quick burger and fries without ingesting toxic additives. Also, strawberry limeade.

I was anticipating being able to get better Mexican food, but my only venture in that direction has been at the 24 hour drive through called Victoria's. Yeah, 24 hour drive through Mexican food. It is cheap, and everything I've tried has been really good. Their beans are a bit too salty for my taste, but the horchata is muy deliciouso. Did I mention they're open 24 hours and I don't have to get out of my car? I've seen at least four or five other Mexican places, including one with a lunch buffet and another that apparently specializes in enchiladas.

As far as other cuisines, I've seen a couple of different asian countries represented, one Italian place, and an Indian place. I went to a Vietnamese place for lunch today, called Rice Bowl. The summer roll was good, if not as fat as I'm used to, and the coffee was great, but the pho was not terribly impressive. The broth was a bit weak, both in spice and general beefiness, and there was no basil included. A nice guy who was arriving as I was about to leave told me there's another one down the street, but that the pho there was too heavily spiced, particularly with ginger. Apparently San Jose has a ton of Vietnamese places, which were the standard for him. I think the strength of this place may be in their non-pho dishes, which I will have to explore at some point.

I'm about to hit the grocery store for the first time, to get some staples and food for the week. I need to explore the different options for grocery stores, especially the ethnic specialty stores, of which there seem to be many.

Ravioli with meat sauce

Tonight was the last regular (to the extent that they ever have been) Tuesday night dinner, ironically, on a Wednesday. I wanted to use some of the tools I don't use a lot, do something a little different, as well as delicious.

I ended up making the ricotta for the ravioli. It's a dead simple recipe, takes no time and is delicious. One gallon of milk, one quart of buttermilk. Combine in a big non-reactive pot over high heat. Stir frequently until it hits 175-180 degrees, at which point the curds and whey will separate. Remove from heat, and ladle the curds into cheesecloth over a strainer. Pull the ends of the cheesecloth together and hang it for 5-15 minutes depending on how loose you want the ricotta to be. The recipe emphasized that the flavor really comes from the quality of the milk, and I got raw milk from some local farms, which worked out wonderfully. To make it into ravioli filling, I added two eggs, a head of roasted garlic, a bit of parmesan, some fresh basil and parsley, salt, pepper and a touch of lemon juice.

I also made the pasta dough. Jamie Oliver had a bit about making your own pasta on a show about eggs, and asked the question of why anyone would buy pasta when it was so easy to make. Tonight really drove that home. If you have a food processor and a pasta roller, it really is a trivial task. Half a cup of flour (plus a bit for adjustment) for each egg, about one egg worth per person. Process it until it changes from a whizzing noise to a thumping noise. Squeeze it, if it sticks to your fingers, add a bit of flour and process until it's incorporated. Repeat until it just sticks to your fingers. Dump it onto a floured surface, work it together, throw it through the roller. Flour it lightly, fold it in half, roll it again. Repeat this four or five times, then roll it to the desired thickness. We made ravioli, and the second setting was pretty much ideal. The ones we did on the lowest setting were too thin and came apart in the water too easily.

The sauce was basically a cross between a traditional ragu and pot roast. I got some top round roast that was on sale (I would definitely experiment with other roasts, this was a bit hard to shred). Seared the salted and peppered pieces of roast, deglazed with onions, garlic, carrots, celery and leeks. When they were soft, I added some red wine and beef stock and let it simmer for a bit. I then crushed some cans of peeled tomatoes with my hands and added them. I added too many and then couldn't fit the roast pieces back in, so I pulled out a bit of the vegetable mixture and set it aside (I added it again when I put the leftovers away). Roast pieces back in, lid on, into the oven for a couple of hours. I pulled it out, pulled out the roast pieces and shredded them with a pair of forks, returned the shredded meat to the pot, and put it back in the oven for a bit to let the smaller pieces absorb a bit of liquid.

It was pretty delicious and very filling. I plan on adapting it to cooking for one by making the sauce ahead of time and freezing single portions, and then making the pasta with the mini cuisinart I have. Probably not ravioli, but it takes less time to make a batch of pasta and rough cut it into tagliatelle than to boil a pot of water. I eat a good bit of pasta in the winter, and while I won't really have winter in CA, I imagine I'll still be eating pasta.

Braised pork roast with fennel and apples

Pork roast was on sale, buy one get one today, so I picked up two smaller ones (2.5 lbs, roughly). I knew I wanted to do something with the shiny new dutch oven that Carissa got for me. So I synthesized a couple different recipes based on what caught my eye and what was in the house. Namely, fennel and apples.

I cut slits in the roasts and put slivers of garlic in them. Roughly 15-20 slits, maybe two cloves per roast. I rubbed salt, pepper, fresh rosemary and fennel fronds into the meat, and then seared each on all sides in the dutch oven with a bit of peppery olive oil. I set them aside, and tossed some onion cut into thick slices and whole cloves of garlic. One large onion, the rest of the bulb of garlic. I tossed that around to loosen the sticky goodness leftover from the searing, then properly deglazed with about half a cup of cider. I put the biggest, outside pieces of the fennel bulbs (after trimming the top and bottom and slicing into half inch discs), on the bottom of the pan to keep the roasts up a bit. I put the roasts back in, and wedged the rest of the fennel in along with two apples sliced about like the fennel. I added another half a cup to a cup of apple cider (whatever was left in the bottle), a couple of sprigs of rosemary, covered it and put it in a 325 degree oven. I have convection, but I don't really think it matters too much, since it's cooking for so long. I left it in there about 3 hours 15 min, it probably was find after about 2 and a half, and I probably could have left it in there for another hour or so without too much going wrong. The meat was falling apart, had all of the sweetness from the cider and apples and the herbiness of the rosemary. The apples had all but disintegrated, and the fennel was on its way, but still delicious. I think if I was using a smaller roast, I'd put more fennel in, because it felt like there wasn't enough, but there really wasn't room for much more than the two bulbs I used. Less liquid and some root vegetables would be interesting as well.

I served it over whipped (sort of, the mixer went with my sister when she moved out) potatoes with a bit of parsley, and a simple salad on the side.

Hmmm, looking back at that, I wonder if I should write these up as proper recipes. I do lot of recipes out of magazines and don't want to really muck about with copyright, though. But I guess in cases like this it wouldn't be bad to make it an actual recipe.

To be resumed

I've been lax in updating the last couple months. I was finishing my dissertation and thus didn't have a lot of time to update. As a result the Tuesday night dinners either haven't been happening, or were something quick and/or not terribly interesting.

I'm moving to California in early October, which will unfortunately cut down on the Tuesday night dinners to almost non-existent, since I was unable to negotiate a benefits package that included weekly flights the east coast. I will have a fabulous kitchen and be living in the area that produces a huge amount of the produce consumed in the US, so I will be cooking a lot. Expect it to feature smaller meals and experiments. My isolation may contribute to more frequent updates, we shall see.

transmute leftovers to takeout

I had leftover slices of eye round, leftover fresh noodles, as well as onions, scallions, and bean sprouts. We made pho on Tuesday, but since Ryan made the broth, it was mostly an assembly meal, so I didn't post about it. I thought about making the noodles into a lo mein style thing when I was eating them on Tuesday, since the texture was very nice. I'd definitely get the same noodles again, they were terrific in the pho and perfect for this dish as well. I think they were Wang brand, which makes them even better.

I picked up some celery and mushrooms on the way home, but didn't end up using the mushrooms, since my sister was going to be partaking. They would have been delicious, however, so I will not where I would add them. I couldn't find shiitake, but fresh shiitake would be ideal, and crimini would be lovely as well.

I heated up a mix of oil (half and half vegetable and an extra peppery olive with a splash of sesame) over pretty high heat in my giant sauce pan (a stir fry pan would be good too). Once it started popping, threw in the chopped celery and onions (red, from the pho). Once they'd softened a bit, I pushed them over to the side and did the sliced eye round (salted and peppered, easy on the salt) in batches, just browning it and then moving it into the pile of aromatics. Once all the meat was in, I added mirin, soy sauce, leftover scallions and bean sprouts, as well as a ton of coarse ground black pepper and some garlic powder (I was lazy, but if I weren't I'd have put fresh in with the beef). I stirred and let it simmer while I put the noodles in the boiling water. Add a bit more soy sauce, sesame oil, black pepper and other seasonings to taste (red pepper flakes or chili sauce if you want some heat). If you want to do it exactly like me, you need to stop paying attention to the noodles just before they're about to boil over, and make a terrific mess of your stove. Ideally, you skip that step, but it seems to happen very quickly, and the fresh noodles are done in a couple of minutes tops. Turn everything off, and transfer the noodles (I used tongs, resulting in more mess) to the pan with the sauce. Basically, you're treating it like you would Italian pasta, you want it to still be hot and still have a decent amount of pasta water on it. Toss it to combine, and the pasta should soak up a good amount of the liquid, and what remains should combine with the pasta water and be thick and lovely and covered with veggies and beef. It should look pretty much exactly like takeout lo mein, only fresher.

For a pound and a half of meat and two pounds of fresh noodles, I used about half an onion, four (six?) celery stalks, two scallions, and about a cup of bean sprouts. Maybe a quarter cup of mirin, and about half a cup of soy sauce, added as two separate quarter cups. Sesame oil was splashes, pepper was grind until my hand got tired, and maybe a teaspoon or two of garlic powder.

experiments in cooling beverages

It is now well into iced tea season. I usually consume about 1-3 mugs (my mug is a bit larger than a pint, apparently, so saying 2-3 cups is misleading) of tea a day during the cooler months. I usually use a bit of skim milk and one teaspoon of organic sugar per giant mug. I am a fairly warm blooded person. Some of my friends have compared my thermal output to volcanoes and other such phenomena. So once it gets warm (by which I mean over 70 degrees), I start drinking iced tea instead. I usually have a gallon pitcher in the fridge, and have a small half gallon pitcher that I use for non-standard tea. I like my tea a little bit sweet, and since sugar is a pain to integrate with cool beverages, I've been experimenting with simple syrups. I've made ginger syrup (used it on fruit salad, but it was delicious with black tea as well), lime syrup (for mojito inspired tea), but a happy accident was what led me to make some vanilla syrup. I have a tub of sugar into which I put all the used vanilla pods and some older pods that got a bit tried out. This subtly infuses the sugar with vanilla. This tub was nearly out of sugar, and I was trying to get a cup out of it, and accidentally ended up with some vanilla pod bits in the syrup. I left them in there, and the flavor intensified a good bit in the syruping process. It is quite delicious in black tea, and I've been repeating the accident since.

Some other experiments I'd like to try include barley tea, which is apparently very popular in Japan, and more with green teas. Most of the iced green tea I make and purchase seems to have a woody or smoky flavor, which I'm not fond of. It's not bad, and in most commercial applications its usually covered with excessive sweetness. I'm trying shorter brew times with more bags, and it seems to mitigate it a bit.

I didn't forget to update last week, I did beer brats again. The only thing I did differently was grilled some onions to go with them. Skewers through the slices made them really easy to handle, and they were quite delicious. I should say something about the red bean paste I made, but that's for another post.

chicken wedding soup

Just realized I never posted this.

I've been feeling a bit sick, so there was no Tuesday night dinner this week, but in an attempt to make myself feel better, I made soup. The goal was a fusion between Italian wedding soup and chicken noodle soup.

I made mire poix, sweat it with a good bit of salt and pepper, and then added enough chicken stock to mostly fill the pot. Once it had heated through, I added a bunch of herbs and two medium sized potatoes that I'd diced to about a quarter inch. I made chicken meatballs (ground chicken, bread crumbs, an egg, salt, pepper) while those cooked, and tossed them in once the potato was soft enough. After about twenty minutes, I added a bunch of torn up broccoli rabe, since I couldn't find kale. I honestly can't recall what herbs I tossed in, but several varieties of thyme featured pretty heavily.

It was quite tasty, and I ate it for the rest of the week and felt much better.

[TND] 5.20 Grilled Salmon with Tzatziki Sauce

I had a good bit of the cucumber, mint, dill and yogurt sauce leftover from a re-creation of the last Tuesday night dinner this weekend, and was trying to think of a way to use it up. My first thought was actually lamb kebabs, grinding the lamb with spices and pistachios and forming it around skewers, sort of a mini version of the spinning stick. But I didn't have luck finding stew lamb last week, so I decided to go with salmon.

Interestingly, the farmed salmon and wild caught salmon were about four cents difference in price, and lying right next to each other in the case. The difference in color is pretty stark, with the farmed salmon being this pale, sickly orange and the wild caught a more vibrant reddish-orange. It's also, in general, a good idea to avoid farmed salmon, as farmed salmon is often treated with pesticides and antibiotics, isn't really sustainable and can spread disease to wild fish populations. But the color is really something I've been trying to pay more attention to, not just in fish, but in pretty much all meats.

My initial plan was to crust the salmon and pan roast it, but I bought more salmon than would fit in my pan, so I moved it the grill. I still crusted it with the same spices: salt, pepper, sate seasoning from Penzey's, and cayenne pepper. I made a cucumber and feta salad with mint and dill and sweet onion, and roasted some potatoes to with it. Simple and delicious.

I've been watching a lot of Jamie at Home, a recent series by Jamie Oliver which is probably the best food tv I've ever seen. It's basically him, in rural Essex, with a ginormous organic garden and him making dishes featuring things from said garden. I really enjoy the way he cooks in general. The second season of his first show was airing while I was studying in England, having to feed myself for real for the first time, and his food was simple, accessible and grounded in very generalizable techniques. The style, the idea that food can be a bit messy and needs to be fun, is something that's really stuck with me. This new show combines that with beautiful ingredients, and it really works. So I'm inspired to make some things from the show, in particular, to get more familiar with the pasta machine Dave got me. He made it look very quick, probably as easy as going to the freezer to get a package of pasta, and that's a place I'd like to be.

[TND] Fell behind again

I am bad at blogging. Reliably. Reliably modifies both bad and blogging.

Shortly after the last time I posted, we had a passover seder, after which we skipped the next Tuesday night dinner. I made creme brulee, and the salt crusted beets mentioned earlier. They came out quite lovely, and the creme fraiche horseradish sauce was amazing, especially with the beets. I would like to do more with beets, I feel like they're underrated and delicious.

We also had a BYOM(eat) celebration to mark the end of semester and my probable future employment. I made some steak au poivre, which I later replicated (sort of) for mother's day. The first time I did it right, grinding the pepper with the mortar and pestle, the second time I did it with a small food processor. The result was very very fine pepper dust, which had a much more intense pepper flavor on the meat. Much more intense. Filed it away as something potentially useful, but not for au poivre with good meat.

Prior to that, I made a gourmet-ed version of chicken fried steak. I was looking for, but unable to find, skirt steak, so I used a cut of meat Highland Park has been carrying, called southwestern fillet. It's a shoulder cut, it's sort of halfway between flank and tenderloin and priced similarly to flank. It's a great cut, I've gotten for a number of uses and been very happy with it. I made sausage cream gravy, whipped potatoes, and some sort of vegetable which was purely ancillary to the meat and gravy.

Ryan made a beef and mushroom risotto two weeks back, which was quite delicious. I made the banana-caramel bread pudding to go with it, which were really simple, really tasty, and will be added to the default dessert rotation. I will take the time to make my own caramel sauce next time, because store bought is generally flavored corn syrup, which is the opposite of yummy.

Last Tuesday I intended to make lamb, but was unable to find reasonably priced lamb of an appropriate cut to make kebabs out of. So I used some chicken and beef, covered generously with cumin and paprika. I also made flatbread from a recipe in the most recent Fine Cooking, done on the grill. It came out wonderfully, and is something I'll repeat often, as it was very easy and versatile. I made cucumber (leech the moisture like you would eggplant), dill, mint yogurt sauce to top these little Mediterranean tacos, along with red onion, cucumber, and tomato. Gotta use the full fat yogurt, none of that low fat stuff, and a good dollop of creme fraiche really brings the sauce together. I actually have a good bit of sauce leftover from this weekend, so I may try to find some lamb to grind up into a sort of doner kebab for this week, but last week doesn't inspire confidence.

I also made pie. I'm getting better with the crusts, but baking seems to be pretty fundamentally alien to my style of cooking. Measuring is for the birds. I made a strawberry-rhubarb-mango pie, which was quite delicious. You don't see rhubarb and mango together, probably because the places you can get good rhubarb you by definition get horrible mangoes and places where you can get good mangoes you probably just don't get rhubarb. It's too bad, because it is a fantastic combination, the tart rhubarb and the smooth sweet mango.

things I should make

I subscribe to two cooking magazines, both of which I enjoy very much. Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit, two very different magazines, both of which I like to pick and choose bits and pieces from, as well as draw inspiration. I often times will read them when they arrive, think "ooo, I should make that and that and that and that." Then I put them down, and when Tuesday rolls around, I think "wow, I have no idea what to make."

So here's a list of ideas, some from the magazines, some from random places.

Dinners

Cuban burgers (chorizo and ground pork patties, possibly marinated, on sweetened buns with pickles and mustard and swiss. And possibly cappicola, 'cause it's awesome)

Peppered beef stroganoff (Jan BA) (creme fraiche, how can you go wrong?)

Middle eastern bison meatballs with cilantro-yogurt sauce (Feb BA) (this is what we call a "targeted" recipe)

Salt crusted beets with horseradish creme fraiche (Feb BA) (sounds neat, and it's fun to rhyme with beet)

Pasta with peas, cream, parsley and mint (Feb BA) (fresh!)

Lamb burgers with gyro fixings (haven't done them in a while)


Desserts

Caramel banana bread puddings (Jan BA)

Pomegranate panna cotta (Feb BA)

Lemon souffles with boysenberries (Mar BA)

[TND] 3.4 Burgers, Oven Fries, Roasted Veggies and Cocunut Pudding

Oh, and crab cakes. Or "laborcakes", as those actually making them came to call them. They were quite tasty, so it was definitely worth the extra effort on someone else's part. The recipe was one of Emeril's, but we pretty much modified it to things we had access to and eliminated steps that we didn't feel like doing. We used my new pan on the new stove, and it was magical. I need to deep fry more things, I think.

There's not much to say about burgers. Good meat, seasoned aggressively with kosher salt and nothing else, not over-handled, and they will be fantastic. I heard a suggestion for Cuban burgers involving ground chorizo and the typical cuban sandwich fixings, we may be seeing those sometime in the near future.

I grilled asparagus, but also some radicchio. It was very interesting, I'll definitely be playing with it some more in the future.

Finally, I made a very simple coconut pudding from Bon Appetit. It was quite delicious and could very easily sustain some heartier spices, like cardamom. My mom got me some vanilla suspension, which seems to be the inside of vanilla beans suspended in some sort of syrup, and it's basically like having vanilla beans you can use with a teaspoon. I predict creme brulee in the future.

[TND] 2.25 Thai Noodle Soups

I love noodle soups. I am assured of ruining a shirt, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make in the name of deliciousness. Bon Appetit had an interesting looking recipe, but I completely failed to find yellow curry paste, despite heroic efforts on the part of some of our regulars. I also had limited amounts of lemongrass. Finally, I was under the mistaken impression that red curries were in general hotter than green curries, so my attempts to make a hot and mild version ended up with two mediums.

The recipe was good, and simple, and I'd make it again. If I'm short on lemongrass again, and even if I'm not (since apparently whole foods sells it by the bushel), I think I'll peel it a bit more than I would if I were using large pieces, and send it through the microplane. Especially for a quick soup.

Two other notes: creme fraiche made both soups better, the red in particular. Also, they were both even better after a day.

[TND] 2.18 Balsamic Garlic Pork and Mushroom Risotto

I refined the balsamic garlic pork I did a while back for this week, since I thought it pair nicely with the creaminess of the risotto. I roasted a healthy amount of garlic, two or three heads worth (by the way, you can buy fresh peeled garlic at whole foods, it speeds up the process immensely and the markup isn't that substantial once you account for the peelings), and put it in a gallon ziploc bag with a cup or two of balsamic vinegar. I added pepper and thyme and a bit of salt, and then mushed everything together until I had loose balsamic garlic paste. Pork chops were on sale, so I used them instead of the pork loin. I put them in the bag, smooshed it around to coat everything, and let them marinate a bit while I got the risotto prepped and started, occasionally flipping the bag. After I transferred them to sheet pans, I snipped the bottom of the bag and distributed the paste over them before roasting them at about 450 for 10-12 min. The real change was topping them with creme fraiche, which turned into an amazing sauce. I think you could put creme fraiche on pretty much anything and it would make it better, though.

Mushroom risotto is something I'll make for a weeknight dinner occasionally, though I usually just use dried mushrooms. This was greatly improved by adding a variety of fresh mushrooms. I was a bit intimidated by the per pound price of fresh shitakes, oysters and enoki, but turns out mushrooms aren't very dense, and you get a good amount of mushroom for pretty cheap. I soaked dried mushrooms (a variety, from trader joe's, or trapper john's, as my mom calls it), and used the soaking liquid (strained) as the broth for the risotto. Every time I make risotto I think "wow, this ratio of wine:rice:stock is really easy to remember" and then promptly forget it. I think it's threes. 1/3 for wine and 3x for stock, so one cup of rice needs a third a cup of wine and three cups of stock. I think I usually need more stock, so maybe it's fours. Between three and four will work. Probably. Warm stock, shallots and onions, not just onions, though now I'm thinking about a risotto involving leeks. Since they're delicious. I really like making risottos, it's fun to watch it come together slowly. Fresh mushrooms go in towards the end, along with a dollop of creme fraiche, lots of thyme (fresh or good quality dried), a handful of parmesan, salt 'til it tastes good, and pepper.

[TND] 1.29 Quiche

I made four different quiches using the same basic recipe. I used puff pastry for the shells, which I rolled out to be to make a crust. Layer of non-cheese ingredients, layer of cheeses, repeat until full, leaving gaps and spaces. I then beat six eggs and a glug (yes, a glug) of half and half, and use that to fill in the gaps.

The four I made were:

Bacon and leek with Jarlsberg and gruyere.
Ham and broccoli with cheddar.
Asparagus and leek with gouda.
Spinach and feta.

All were good, the asparagus and leek with gouda was definitely the highlight.

[TND] 1.22 Meatloaf

Meatloaf is one of those things where every time I make it, I use a different recipe. I'm never satisfied with the results, so I seek out a new approach every time I do it. This time wasn't too much different. I modified a recipe that called for mushrooms, since my sister won't eat them (and then she didn't show up!). It was pretty standard, three meats, except I also added leeks in place of the onions. I think it had balsamic vinegar and was wrapped in bacon. I also made a basic cream gravy (with bacon) to go on the meatloaf and the whipped potatoes I made. There may have also been some sort of vegetable, but I forget which. Possibly just salad.

Overall, it ended up a little dryer then I would have liked. So we're still looking, though the leeks are probably here to stay.

Playing Catch Up

Between illness and a number of other things, this poor blog has been neglected. I'm going to try to fill in the gaps, there's going to be one or two nights that are missing because they didn't happen or they were something I've done many times in the past, like the tomato soup with orange and cumin.

[TND] 1.8 Gnocchi

I am a great fan of potatoes and also of pasta, so gnocchi are pretty much the bee's knees for me. They have a reputation for being difficult to make, and I imagine if you actually shape them properly and aren't an ancient Italian matron with ninja-like gnocchi shaping skills, they can be. The dough is simple, but the cooling process takes a while. Lacking a potato ricer, I had some larger lumps than I wanted, but I think I could also stand to mix the potatoes a bit more to avoid the larger lumps, though I didn't find them noticeable in the finished product.

The recipe I used was from the most recent Fine Cooking, and I made two of the sauces they suggested, a sausage and leek tomato sauce and a gorgonzola cream sauce. I modified both the suggested recipes a good bit, and next time I will add both walnuts and dried cranberries to the cream sauce, which I think will make it quite something.

All in all, easier than expected, and they freeze very well. Next week I'll make other fresh pasta, using my shiny new pasta maker.