I’m pretty sure everyone has foods like this.  I’ve never worried about risotto, and as a vegetarian I happily don’t need to deal with things like de-boning chicken, but bread always makes me very nervous.  It’s such a staple, not to mention so delicious, that I would love to be able to turn out loaf after crusty loaf.

But whenever I make bread, it never seems to rise like it should, and no matter what the recipe says about the correct consistency – wet and shaggy, or smooth and supple – mine always does nothing but stick to my hands, no matter how much flour I use.  I think there’s an innate bread-sense that I don’t have.

Fortunately, winter is the best time for fresh baked bread, so maybe I’ll take Amanda’s advice and try to “make it my bitch” over the next couple months…

Is there a food that really scares you? Have you been able to conquer it?

italian wedding? soup.
(it’s not minestrone, because no tomatoes, but it has beans and a bit of pasta in it, so, italian wedding? sure.)

ingredients:
-one of the massive onions from costco
-a potato from the farm share. wait, it’s rotted. two potatoes from the grocery store.
-those curried carrots leftover from shabbas. what, you don’t have curried carrots laying around? why aren’t you making more mildly curried carrots? they’re delicious!
-three big cloves of garlic
-you know how housemate c made stuffed cabbage, so she left behind the center of the cabbage when the leaves get too small to really stuff? that cabbage.
-a can of beans. which ones aren’t people using? oh, the roman beans. no one knows what the crap those are good in.
-the cup and a half of veggie broth left over from the last time [housemate] made risotto
-the handful of pasta left in the box on the shelf. you know the one.
-the stuff that’s in the kitchen. you know, olive oil, water, salt, pepper, spice drawer.

process:
take out the big saucepan and start heating olive oil in the bottom of it on medium-low. small-dice the onion and throw it in. in the time it’ll take you to small-dice the potatoes, the onions will be ready for company, so toss them in. realize there isn’t enough olive oil, so add some more. slice the garlic thin and set it to the side, then get started working on the carrots. they’re already in fat rounds, but you don’t want to puree the soup, so cut them down into small-dice, too. this’ll take a while, because they’re slippery. every couple of carrot rounds, stir the potatoes and onions. wish for a celery stalk, and consider adding celery seed, but decide against it. keep cutting and stirring until you’ve broken down the carrots, then throw them and the garlic slices in. now it’s time to get to work on the cabbage. slice it into very thin slices, then turn them 90 degrees and do it again. you want those leaves small and unrecognizable. throw them in as they’re ready, then stir some more. realize you’re stirring too much, that you want something to deglaze later, so cover the pot and walk away for a minute until it becomes too unbearable and you have to stir it again. (i’m a hoverer, can’t you tell?) once you see the veggies starting to stick to the bottom and turn into delicious brown stuff, you know it’s ready, so turn up the heat and deglaze with the broth, quickly adding also the undrained beans and three cans of water. stir stir stir. contemplate that onion soup you love, and go to the spice drawer looking for tarragon. lament the lack of tarragon, but espy some smoky paprika. add a generous amount, along with some malt vinegar. red wine vinegar would probably be better, but you don’t have any, it’s too hard to find. add salt and pepper, cover it, turn to low, and walk away. go upstairs, gchat with a cute boy, watch a tv episode. dinner’s not for another hour, so let it go. when you come downstairs half an hour before dinnertime, it’s not even boiling. go back upstairs, that’s where your email lives. come back down at fifteen to dinner, turn the heat up to boiling, and throw in the pasta. serves one, plus five housemates who were expected but didn’t show up.

But sometimes, a little randomness can be good for your creativity. I think these recipe dice from Leafcutter Designs are the cutest thing.  Each face of each die has a different ingredient.  Some of the dice are even seasonal!  Just roll the dice, and challenge yourself to invent a dish using all the ingredients that come up.

I’ll add a rule to this game: stew is off-limits.  It’s too easy to throw things in a pot and call it “stew”.  You have to actually try to be creative.

Has anyone done this exercise, with dice or otherwise?  How did it go?

We have an abundance of apples right now, and I wanted to try using them to cook something a bit more dinner-like, something more savory than sweet.  A search for main-dish apple recipes revealed only that lots of people cook them with pork chops.  I thought tofu would be a good partner, because it would absorb the flavors well.  With some seasoning to round out the flavors, it was quite tasty, sweet but not overly so, and was balanced by a side of steamed kale.  Next time, I might lightly brown the tofu in some oil before adding it to the apples, because otherwise it won’t get crisp if the apples are juicy.

I’m still on the lookout for other ways to use apples outside of desserts.  If you know any, please share!

Savory Apple Tofu

• 1 lb tofu, well drained
• 1 large apple
• 1/2 large onion
• 1 clove garlic
• thyme and tarragon, or other savory green herbs
• vegetable oil

Chop the onion.  Heat some oil in a medium-large pan, and saute the onion over medium heat until it is soft and brown.  Add herbs and a bit of salt.

Mince the garlic, cut the apple into somewhat thin slices, and add to the onion.  Turn up the heat, and spread the apple slices out so the undersides can brown.  Let them cook for a few minutes, then stir and turn the pieces over.

When the apple is lightly browned and cooked through, add slabs of tofu.  Bury the tofu in the apple/onion mixture and let it cook for five more minutes, turning occassionally.

Enjoy!

This recipe has been beating around my brain for a few weeks (I mused about it when I made a more dessert-like blueberry soup), and tonight I finally carried out my mad experiment.  Mad, I say, because this recipe comes entirely from my own head, and it sounds like it would never work.  But it does!  It got two thumbs up in my apartment, so there’s independent verification that it’s actually quite tasty and not just weird.

My last blueberry soup was a fairly common sort of cold fruit soup, which you could serve as a side dish or dessert.  This one is a main dish all the way.  It’s savory, with onions, garlic, cumin, cilantro, and black beans balancing the sweetness of the blueberries.  I found the flavor a little hard to define, because it’s a melding of tastes that we don’t usually think of as belonging together – but the combination is just right.

The most striking thing about it is the color: a rich, dark purple, set off nicely by a spoonful of yogurt.  I was too hungry when I made it to take a picture of the bowl, and the few pictures I tried later on came out very badly.  But this little swatch gives you an idea of how pretty (and striking) it is.  When I took leftovers to work, I got lots of curious questions from my coworkers!  I suspect the color might be a barrier for some people, maybe because we associate such strong colors with industrial flavors like “blue raspberry.”  Does it help that the color is entirely natural?  Do dessert colors (like blueberry) make us nervous when they show up in dinner?  On the other hand, I bet little kids would totally go for this.

This is one of the boldest recipes I’ve concocted (okay, the boldest successful one), and if you try it, I’d love to hear what you think!

Southwest Blueberry Soup

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed
2-3 cups vegetable stock or water, warm
1 T olive oil
1 small onion (or 1/2 large onion), diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp cumin
salt and pepper, to taste
1 T lemon juice
1 T vinegar
1 T fresh, minced cilantro
Yogurt for garnish

• Heat oil in a large saucepan.  Add onion and garlic and saute over low heat until very tender.
• Add cumin, and saute briefly, then add beans and blueberries.
• Add stock, lemon juice, and vinegar.  Bring to a boil, then simmer until many of the berries have fallen apart.
• Add cilantro, and salt and pepper to taste. then remove from heat.  Let the soup cool for a minute. Puree a bit of it in a blender, then stir back into the pot.  (I gave the whole pot a few bursts with my stick blender, which is perfect for this.  I think the pureeing helps the flavors mingle.  Having it half-pureed gives it a nice texture – smooth, but not too smooth.)
• Serve warm with a generous dollop of yogurt, over rice.

The hardest ingredient to find, aside from the berries, is fresh cilantro.  It’s key to the flavor, but not always available.  I think Trader Joes used to have frozen cilantro cubes, and those might do nicely here.  Anyone know?

Blueberry soup

I’d seen a few recipes for blueberry soups over the past week, and it seemed like too much of a coincidence not to try it.  It’s incredibly easy: simmer and blend the berries, chill, stir in yogurt.  It made a nice and refreshing dessert, and I can see it as a side dish for a meal, too.  It’s a little sweet, and full of flavor.  This will be a reason to buy even more blueberries than usual, just to make this soup and have it on hand.

It makes me wonder, though: blueberries are a pretty adaptable fruit.  I’ve had good luck cooking savory dishes with apples; why not blueberries?  I’d have to try it out before I recommend it, but I could imagine something with black beans, blueberries, sour cream, and a touch of cilantro, maybe in a strange New England burrito.  Or am I just being weird?

Seitan and chard with lemon dill cream sauce

It is what it sounds like.  And it was tasty.  This was inspired by a craving for something fish-like; I’m not a huge fan of swordfish, but I associate lemon and dill with fish in a pleasant way.  It works equally well with seitan, and the chard turned the sauce an amusing pink color.

The sauce consisted of:

• half a lemon’s juice
• half a tablespoon melted butter
• a generous helping of dill
• several spoonfuls of sour cream
• salt and pepper

Just stir everything up while sauteing the seitan and chard, then pour the sauce over and heat gently until it’s warmed through.

Iced coffee

I’m not a coffee drinker.  I’m a tea person, through and through.  But the thing that turns me off coffee is mostly the bitterness, and I’ve been hearing for a while that cold-brewed coffee is the way to go, if you want to get rid of that bitter taste.

So I tried it, and it’s true!  My cold-brewed iced coffee was smooth and pleasant, with very little bitterness.  I’m not about to be a convert, but I can imagine making it from time to time.  And the process is easy: put your coffee grounds and water (don’t ask me what proportions; I assume it’s similar to normal coffee) in a mason jar; put on the lid and leave it sit overnight; strain the liquid through a sieve and/or coffee filter, catching the liquid in a cup; chill and drink!

I found that it needed sugar, but that’s just the sort of person I am.

Blackberry pudding

Steamed pudding is a bit foreign to me – I’ve always thought of pudding as a creamy thing made from a box mix or (more recently) cornstarch and lots of milk.  But I saw this picture of steamed blueberry pudding and it was so gorgeous, and I was so hungry for berries, that I had to try it.

Rather than translate the recipe out of the metric system and hunt down unfamiliar ingredients, I went searching for something a little simpler.  I ended up with something similar to this, and it was very tasty.  I made two ramekins (little ceramic dishes) worth, which was just right for a half-batch.  Though, the blackberries from the farmer’s market were so huge, I thought there wouldn’t be room for the pudding!

My recipe looked like this:

• 1/2 T butter
• 1 egg
• 1/4 c sugar
• 1/2 c flour
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/2 t vanilla
• 1/4 t salt
• 2 T yogurt
• 1 T water

Stir together the butter, egg, sugar, and vanilla.  Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.  Butter a tall dish and put in a bunch of blackberries.  Sprinkle on a little sugar, then cover with the batter.  Cover them with foil, place in the oven at 350 in a dish full of water.  Mine were done in about 45 minutes; your mileage may vary.

We ate these last night with vanilla ice cream, and it was heavenly.  I had to take them out of the molds to add the ice cream, and they didn’t make it out in one piece, but you can imagine how pretty they were beforehand when I forgot to take pictures.

On top of all that, Nathan is making a sourdough starter!  From scratch!  Right now it’s just a bowl of flour and water, but I’ll give updates as it progresses.  I’m looking forward to loads of fresh bread.

1. My first attempt at making yogurt!  I’ve been planning to do this for a while, and finally got to it since we had an abundance of milk.  It’s surprisingly easy.  I used my favorite farmer’s market yogurt as a starter.  I love foods that live forever: yogurt is like sourdough in that, theoretically, you could keep making yogurt from the same initial cultures, using a few tablespoons from each batch to start the next, and could keep going forever and ever.  In practice, you’d eventually have a batch go bad, and then the chain is broken.  And the yogurt wouldn’t necessarily be the same each time; a different kind of milk, slightly different temperatures, and so forth would affect the end result.  But you’d have a dynasty of helpful little bacteria, a yogurt kingdom of sorts.  I like that.

   My yogurt came out tangy and good.  It was a bit watery, and separated while it set, so I poured off some of the liquid and when I stirred up the rest, it had about the right consistency.  It’s not as smooth as store yogurt, but neither was the parent batch.

   So, when I bring my homemade yogurt to work to eat for breakfast with the granola I made last week, does that make me the biggest hippie ever?

2. Dinner was meant to be bread, cheese, and something to round it out.  But the rounding-out turned out to steal the show.  I invented a new sauce: combine mustard, yogurt, and a little salt and pepper.  That’s it.  It sounds weird, and I was worried as I made it that it would be gross, but it was actually quite tasty.  The mustard I used had a hint of maple to it (it’s part of my last haul from Stonewall Kitchen, last time I was in New England), so that contributed to the good flavor, but I think any good mustard (or even not-so-good) would work fine.  I served it over seitan.  The only trick is not to heat the sauce too much, or the yogurt will separate out.
3. Finally, dessert.  I was good this time, and used the strawberries while they were still at their peak.  Strawberry cobbler, following my parents’ recipe.  Yum!

But if pancakes are so flexible at breakfast, why can’t they be a real dinner food, not just breakfast-for-dinner? They’re just flour and eggs, after all. It shouldn’t be a stretch to make savory pancakes.

So that’s what I did. These were carrot pancakes with a mix of white and quinoa flours, and veggie stock swapped in for the milk. The batter was very thick, despite all the liquid I added, and the pancakes held their shape excellently and cooked quickly. I seasoned them with garlic powder and mustard — next time I would add more seasoning, maybe crushed garlic or sauted onions, though taking the time to saute onions defeats part of the beauty of pancakes as a quick-fix food. The result was good: heavy, but not rich, and very filling. They were a little dry, so I might add some milk in the future.

I can see lots of possibilities for this. Pancakes with spinach blended in? (Green pancakes would be delightful!) Pancakes with rice or quinoa? Cheese, certainly: a nice sharp cheddar, or maybe swiss with herbs. The only limitation is that any add-ins need to be small enough to mix in and cook as fast as the batter.