Delicious dinner 5.4.2011

Turkey bacon swiss sandwiches with salad!

Lovely lunch 5.4.2011

Black bean burger on fresh baked bread with cheese, red pepper pesto and rum-coffee-soaked cupcake.

First real cookout of the year!

Delicious dinner at Outback

Roast pork with chili sauce, garlic taters, and those delicious greenbeans they make there...

Lovely lunch 4.18.2011

Pasta boiled in tomato-basil stock with carrots and bok choi.

oatzoto again!

 This is seriously one of my favorite things to make. 1) Because it's super-tasty no matter how I make it. 2) Because it's comforting and filling, and I wish I'd known about it when I was growing up so it could always have been my comfort food. 3) Because it's the epitome of Watcha Got Cooking: literally whatever you have will go well in this wonderfulness.

This time I had Steel Cut Oats, Yellow Onions, Dried Shitake, A can of Peas, Frozen carcass meat* from the last time we roasted a turkey, A chicken stock cube, A Beef stock cube, Nubs of yellow and white cheddar, and some Ching Tsai**. So that's what I used.

Make it like so:
- Soak the mushrooms in warm water for an hour or so.
- Use the mushroom juice as part of the stock-- you'll need about six or seven cups. Boil the stock cubes or measure out the stock ahead of time.
- Chop everything before you start.
- Caramelize the onions in olive oil and about an inch and a half of butter. Don't skimp here: this is where a lot of the flavor comes from, so go ahead and let them get really golden.
- Add more butter, maybe a tablespoon, and throw in a cup to a cup and a quarter of steel-cut oats, and cook them until they start smelling toasty. They might open up a bit, but usually they don't, so don't worry about it.
- Add the stock at about a cup at a time, and cook until it's all absorbed and it stops looking drier as it cooks. You'll see what I mean when you do it. Stir ALL THE TIME. Burnt oats are gross and ruin the whole pan. The first few additions, deglaze the pan by scratching at the bottom before the stock gets absorbed.
- Keep adding stock and stirring.
- Add more stock and stir.
- When the last of the stock goes in, cook a while longer until the oats are not chewy anymore. Add any veggies that need to cook down at this point. This is when I threw in the Ching Tsai and the chopped mushrooms.
- Shred up the meat. Add it to the pot with the cheese and whatever other veggies you're adding.
- Cook until everything is the same temperature and all the cheese is mixed in.
- Eat it all up.

Almost everything in this recipe is trade-out-able. Just stick to these basic proportions and the same style of steps and you're fine:
- Fat: I like butter and olive oil. I've also used bacon fat, and thrown the bacon back in at the end. Duck fat would probably be down right decadent.
- 2 alliums: You want it to equal two whole onions in volume, but it doesn't matter what you choose. I've used onions, garlic, shallots, leeks... they're all good.
- 1 to 1 1/4 c  grains: I like oats best, but I've done this with buckwheat groats, rice and brown rice, and it's always great. If you make it with corn, it's polenta. I want to try red winter wheat and millet next.
- 6 to 7 cups of stock: Any kind, real or condensed, home made or store bought.
- 1 to 2 canned veggies: I like peas, but anything you have will do. Diced roasted red pepper is good most of the time.
- 1 to 3 fresh veggies: Anything. If it's hard, cook it first, or add it earlier to the pot. Mushrooms count here.
- 1 cup of cheese: Any kind. Mix it up! Really strong cheeses like blue cheese might need to be cut so it doesn't overpower everything.
- 1-2 cups meat or other protein: Chop it up or shred it, and cook it ahead of time.
- Seasoning: If you use things that have salt in them, you probably won't need to salt it, but add pepper and maybe some herbs-- I wouldn't use more than one or two, because you're adding all sorts of other flavors already.

* I know it doesn't sound all that appetizing, but I can easily get two pounds more meat off a carcass that's been eaten down to the bone. You just have to know where the tasty bits are, and be willing to sift through all the skin and cartilage and week tiny bones to find it.
** I'm guessing on the spelling. It's supposed to be Baby Bok Choi, but it's actually not even cabbage at all, it's baby Collard Greens, and I like calling it by the Chinese name.

link: Meatless Monday Inspiration from Food52

http://www.food52.com/blog/1753_meatless_monday_inspiration?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=New+Feature:+Feed52!+|+Homemade+Yogurt+|+Chocolate+Brownie+Bites+|+Custard+How-To&utm_campaign=food52+newsletter+3_6_+11&utm_term=See+menu+ideas

A list of amazing-looking food with beautiful pictures, all free of meat and most free even of cheese or something meat-related like that.

Ricotta and Chive Gnocchi by The Internet Cooking Princess

today's lunch: stereotypically french potatoes!

 You know what's awkward? Trying to take a picture of your plate with a webcam that's built into your laptop because you can't find your actual camera. But even so, I think it came out pretty well!

Today I had baby red potatoes with caramelized onions, brie and bacon. Seasoned with Herbes de Provence, French grey sea salt, and cracked black pepper. It's 700 calories of awesome, and I'm totally okay with it being half my calorie intake for the day.

Make like so:
Put the potatoes to boil on med-low with sea salt.
Chop the bacon, then cook it slowly on pretty low heat to get all the fat out, until it's crispy and crumbly. Take it out of the pan.
Chop the onions small and cook them in the bacon fat with a pat of butter. Once they're a little clear and juicy, add a pinch of Herbes de Provence. Caramelize slowly for as long as it takes for the potatoes to cook. I like mine pretty soft and sweet.
Drain the cooked potatoes and add a pat of butter, more sea salt and cracked black pepper. Let that sit and absorb while you cut the brie into little rounds or slices.
Dump the taters onto a pretty plate and break them up a little with the back of a fork. Top with the onions, the brie and the bacon bits.
Enjoy deeply.

link: Wednesday Baking | Troubleshooting Yeast Bread

Wednesday Baking | Troubleshooting Yeast Bread

This is a super-useful page. The other day, I used the last of my flour to make a loaf of bread in the machine, and it turned out flat and hard, so I figured the yeast was dead. This one helped me figure out how to make the next loaf better.

I doubled the yeast, and left it in the warm-water-and-sugar for a while to wake up whichever ones weren't dead, and then made the next loaf with that slurry. It was more successful, edible as bread, though it was still heavy. So I need new yeast. I also need to lower the amount of sugar in the recipe-- it's too sweet for sandwiches. I'll try it with live yeast first, though. Maybe the yeast eat it all up before I do when they're working right?

recipe: african stew

Last night, while I should have been revising my novel and cretiquing my partners' work, we took time off to make dinner with friends and play some mahjong with the set H brought back from China for us. I can only say that this is one of the most delicious soups I have ever had, and we have firm plans to make it again with different vegetables and different meats to see how it goes. We're thinking orange veggies, like butternut squash, pumpkin, sweet potato, things like that would be good as a blended soup. We're thinking potatoes and carrots. We're thinking beef stew meat, left to cook for several hours, maybe in a crock pot.

We served this in handmade bread bowls (handmade by Publix, but still handmade), and it was perfect.

Ingredients

4 cups water
3 each chicken bouillon cubes
1/3 cup curry paste (or can be dry curry)
2 Tablespoons ground coriander, toasted
2 Tablespoons granulated garlic
4 cups coconut milk
¼ cup sugar
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 pounds beef/pork/chicken, large diced
2 cups mixed red and green peppers, diced
2 cups onions, diced
½ cup whole kernel corn, frozen
1 bay leaf
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 Tablespoons cornstarch (make slurry)

Method:

1. In kettle, heat water, chicken bouillon cubes, curry paste, ground coriander, and granulated garlic. Let boil and add in sugar and coconut milk.

2. Add in the soy sauce and the diced meat. Let simmer for 20 minutes.

3. Add vegetables, spices, and cook until tender.

4. Bring to a boil and add cornstarch slurry slowly to the mixture and whisk until thickened.

From the Animal Kingdom Lodge at Disney.