oatmeal muffins

Let's recap. I wake up on Saturday morning. I have an oral exam-- to prove that I actually have a dissertation field to begin writing in-- in three hours. I've been preparing for something like three months. I have slept for three hours. Half of a chorizo burrito is somewhere between my stomach and my throat. It doesn't feel good. I check my email. I have negative three hundred dollars in my bank account. Somehow, I guess, for the first time in ten years of automated finances and cash only, I LOST TRACK. Another hundred dollars in overdraft fees. I cry and cry and cry and sit on the floor and cry again.

Getting a Ph.D. is hard, you guys.



Some coffee, a wire transfer, a drive up the coast and a few hours later-- I passed. And while I am still all nerves and, nervously, broker than broke, good things are happening. Good cheap things: swinging on swings, walking around the block, picking apples, watching Mad Men, finally getting a good night's sleep, looking forward.

Because I couldn't go to the store to get bagels for the faculty-- apparently, this is some kind of tradition/bribe-- I made muffins. Because I was pressed for time, I did something I rarely do-- I followed a recipe. And these muffins were really good. They are "supposedly" "healthy" (food studies scare quotes!) but most importantly, not too sweet and not too whole-wheaty either. And with a well-stocked pantry, they are FREE.

OATMEAL MUFFINS
(from Bon Appetit, from Epicurious)

* 2 1/3 cups quick-cooking oats
* 1 cup whole wheat flour
* 1/2 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 2 tablespoons oat or wheat bran (I had wheat bran. You can get it at stores with bulk sections. It's cheap. And delicious in yogurt.)
* 2 tablespoons wheat germ if you have it, I didn't.
* Half a cup of chopped nuts, if that's your thing. Obviously, this did not feature in my muffins.
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup buttermilk (milk with a T of vingar in it, you know the drill)
* 1/2 cup canola oil
* 1 large egg
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/3 cup boiling water
* 1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen berries. I had blackberries.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Plop those cute little liners in your muffin tin. If you have a normal sized muffin tin, this makes 18 muffins, which is to say, a second-day SIX MUFFIN BONUS. The batter keeps fine overnight and eating freshly baked muffins two mornings in a row will ease almost any pain, if this weekend is any indication.

Mix oats and all the dry stuff in large bowl. Blend in the buttermilk, oil, egg, and vanilla. Stir in 1/3 cup boiling water and let stand 5 minutes. Fold in blueberries. Divide batter among prepared muffin cups.

Bake muffins until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 20 minutes for standard muffins. Cool for about ten minutes, serve.

egg salad

Just when I think I might not be turning into my dad-- boom! Another bizarro food craving from the 1940s. As if my newfound love of mashed turnips, vanilla malts, or blue cheese was not frightening enough, my return to San Diego was marked by a fierce craving for egg salad. Let's be real about this. I mostly hate eggs. I wouldn't eat them at all until a few years ago and only then scrambled with cheese. Last year Huevos Rancheros eased me into the fried-egg-fan-club (unlike the Lisa Frank Fan Club, it does not come with stickers, only higher cholesterol.) But I still haven't ever eaten a hardboiled egg without gagging. When I see them in salad bars I feel sorry for the poor nerds who eat them while I help myself to more samosas across the way (this scenario takes place in Whole Foods, I guess).

So WHAT?! I return back a few weeks ago, I move out, I feel all turmoilish, and boom! I find myself in a coffeeshop eating a curried egg salad sandwich. It was delicious, and I ate it and read Giving An Account of Oneself and basically swooned. Fast forward to the Fourth of July. I am contemplating bringing deviled eggs, since that seems like a Martha Stewarty thing to do when you go to the hills to celebrate America. Instead our contribution was grilled peaces with honey and goat cheese FROM A GOAT THAT I MILKED-- but more on that later. Geez I love farms.

The take home message of today: what do our lovely hosts bring out but a bowl of egg salad. And then another. And another! Three types of egg salad with homemade mayo with eggs from their chickens!

My creepily religious but ultimately effective art therapy book (thanks Julie!) says that as soon as you tell the universe what you want it provides it. The examples in the book are like: Molly decided she wanted to be a painter then realized her next door neighbor gives painting lessons. Mine is "I never knew I liked egg salad and as soon as I realized that I loved it, someone made three different kinds of transcendent egg salad." I am either easy to please or have really low expectations.

Anyway, here is how to make some delicious egg salad.

3 hardboiled eggs (the key, according to Alton, is to start with the eggs in cold water, boil, then turn off the stove AT THE BOIL. Then wait ten minutes. Then run cool water over your eggs. I can attest: pretty perfect.)
2 tbs mayo
a little mustard
lots of salt and pepper
a T or so of chives or dill, fresh or dried. Don't skimp.

Mash it all together. Oh yeah. On a sandwich with refrigerator pickles? I want to take a bowl of this out behind the middle school and get it PREGNANT. I am not usually one for citational humor, but I can think of no better way to describe how I feel about this egg fucking salad. Tracy Jordan knows what it means to love a foodstuff, let me tell you that.

Spicy Eggs

I was never a fan of hot sauce. Never saw the point. I always felt like those who liked hot sauce had some kind of cultural cache: I guess one time at some point I visited some grown-up in an office and was amazed, amused at a bottle of hot sauce stashed in the corner of a cubicle. Then when facebook was just a toddler and groups were introduced, one of the first to go viral at Columbia, "Hot Sauce Fixes Damn Near Any Food", made me feel the whole internet was at some party and I was in the corner.

No more. Something about replacing white pizza with burritos, the economy-sized tub of Franks Red Hot in the fridge, going out to the desert or cooking in a cast iron pan. Or maybe it was drinking less coffee. Maybe I am just feistier. But I can't get enough. Hat tip to Adam for inventing these and for feeding me so many breakfasts.

SPICY EGGS

+ Heat up oil in a sturdy pan (or leftover sausage fat over a fire pit, if it is dawn and you are in the desert and life is as good as it gets)
+ Fry a lot of cayenne, or cayenne-lime mix. Add red pepper flakes. Add paprika. Add chili/e powder. Sizzle sizzle.
+ Turn the heat lower and scramble some eggs (you know, that you already beat with a fork in a bowl).
+ Avert your eyes while someone else adds a liberal amount of cheese.

carrot soup

i am very impressed with this stupidly easy soup, which is basically just a love poem to carrots. i think i get confused about soups and rarely make them because they are going to take forever or i am going to have to go out and buy cream, neither of which is the case. anyway, (this) soup is just perfect for fall, or for san diego days when you get too excited about the sunshine and wear shorts but then it gets cold and you have to walk home and you are FREEZING even though the walk is only 20 minutes and-- let's face it-- its 65 degrees.



carrot soup

+a bag of carrots
+a half-inch or so of ginger, grated. what i like particularly about this soup is that it is not like BAM carrot ginger soup, just slightly interesting and really carrot-y.
+stock or its equivalent
+some rice or grains. i used spelt grains. probably buckwheat or wheat berries would also be good. nutty! texture!

-- peel and chop your carrots, throw them in a pot with some olive oil. dump in a few handfuls (a cup?) of rice or grains. i was kind of weirded out by this idea at first but i think it makes the soup way more interesting without a laborious "onion-chopping-and-browning" phase.

--cover with stock and about extra two inches. if you are using can/box stock you might want to dilute it so your soup doesn't get too salty.

--cook for about half an hour until the carrots are soft and the grains are done. cool.

--then blend/puree. if it is too thick, add more stock. if it is too bland, add some salt and pepper. if it is too delicious to be such a bootleg crisper-drawer-reject dinner, then yeah: i hear you.

white lasagna for fall

If you know me in real life, you have probably heard me speak in hushed, wondrous tones about my undergraduate advisor. For brilliant-school-reasons, of course,



but mostly because she has this kind of magical aura of peaceful wisdom. The cardinal example in my mind: one time she made this a lasagna based on carrot puree and it was so good and strange and new and she was like "oh, yes, I learned how to make this on a fellowship in Rome" and I knew right then that I wanted to be an academic. Not for the international travel, but in order to have the free time and gentle disposition to cook mysterious dishes like lasagnas based on bechamel. After years of fantasizing about this carrot lasagna, I decided to copy it with the sweet potatoes that were kicking around my house. If you make your own ricotta, this is incredibly cheap and delicious.

SWEET POTATO LASAGNA


+ 3/4 lasagne noodles (not no-boil)
+ ricotta cheese (a tub, or however much a half-gallon of milk makes)
+ 2 sweet potatoes
+ 4 cups of milk
+ cracked black pepper
+ parmesan cheese, grated (1/2 a cup? As much as you have or want)
+ a clove of garlic, minced
+ 5 T butter
+ 4 T flour

-- Boil the lasagna noodles until al dente then fish them out and try to lay them on paper towels so they don't stick to each other. YEAH RIGHT.

-- Microwave or bake your sweet potatoes until they are done, then take the skins off and mash them.

-- Preheat the oven to 375.

-- Now start making a bechamel sauce. Yes! Maybe this is old-hat to "real cooks" but to me they are just kind of magical, kind of like the carrot lasagna itself. One time my friend Adam's mom made us Hollandaise sauce in a hotel suite and my heart just melted. Strong, brilliant women cooking elegant food with love makes me so happy to be alive.

-- Anyway it's totally not hard, even though it does seem kind of mysterious. Heat up the milk with garlic in the microwave or another saucepan. Melt the butter in a pot on the stove and add the flour a little bit at a time, whisking until it's smooth. Let it get kind of toasty and brown, about 6 minutes. Then add the hot milk a little at a time, again making sure everything is smooth and not doughy or gross. Once you have added about half the milk you can just dump in the rest, but keep whisking (or stirring. I don't have a whisk actually. Bootleg) Let it simmer/cook for 10 minutes, stirring & making sure that the milk doesn't get cruddy on the bottom. It should look really thick and creamy, which is also kind of awesome given that you can make this with skim milk. Then remove from heat and season with salt & pepper & nutmeg. I think a lot of black pepper really makes it. Foux de fa fa, you made a classic white sauce!



-- Now layer the lasanga noodles, the mashed sweet potatoes, the cheeses, and the bechamel sauce in a pyrex or whatever. Bake for about 45 minutes until the top is bubbly and your house smells like melted cheese in the best possible way.

bread pudding

did you know that in french they call bread pudding "unemployment pudding"?!

such is the spirit of a grad school dinner party. but it was great-- i feel really proud of myself for taking initiative. i spent a lot of last year just kind of waiting for the kind of community that i felt in new york to spring up around me.

HENCEFORTH I ASK NOT GOOD FORTUNE. I MYSELF AM GOOD FORTUNE
-uncle walt.



and there has been a lot of it: laughter, hilarious shortie overalls and the antics they lead to, books and ideas, researching south africa and armchair travel, meeting like minds at conferences, not getting a cold that i thought i was going to get. being both very busy and very quiet and still. om!



so pick up the phone and invite some people over! it's as easy as making this dessert.

BREAD PUDDING (via bittman)

+ 8 slices of whatever bread that you have lying around. I used whole wheat thus making this totally "breakfast food"-- basically the same as toast, eggs and milk AMIRITE?
+ 3 cups milk, skim is just fine if that's what you drink normally. Again-- breakfast!
+ 1/2 a stick of butter (4 T)
+ 3 eggs
+ 1/2 cup sugar
+ 1 1/2 t cinnamon
+ a pinch of salt

-- Oven to 350. Grease your baking pan (I used two loaf pans because I was ALSO making lasagne, so groove as your soul sings) and tear the bread into little bits in the pan.

-- Melt the butter with the sugar and cinnamon and salt and add the milk until it gets hottish.

-- Pour this mix over the bread and let it get soggy for a little bit. Push down the bread that doesn't cooperate. Discipline!

-- Beat the eggs and then stir them into this gloppy mess... you could ALSO break up a chocolate bar and add some chocolate chunks at this point. It would probably be a good idea. I would encourage that. You could also dust some cinnamon-sugar over the top. I didn't do this, actually, but it sounds really good right? I think so.

--Bake for 45 minutes or so. It can be kind of wobbly but should be mostly set. Bread pudding keeps for quite a while (if you aren't eating it for breakfast) too, which makes it even more clutch in the "use of leftovers" department. Which is key if you are basically kind of unemployed.

quinoa porridge

Well, kids, I just wrote 20 pages about vegan cookbooks and performing feminism in everyday life. I think I successfully maxed out the number of times a self-respecting human being can write the word panoptic in one paper (7). I also maxed out the number of cookies you can eat in a day (12). This is a recipe from less frantic times. According to Isa and Terry, if you cook quinoa more than once a week you get to be a stage 7 vegan, which I imagine in video game world allows you to cast really powerful healing spells or something.

This is a pretty good way to start the day, you feel like a million bucks. My friend made this for us when she got back from Bolivia... I have been thinking of making it ever since and finally did.

First make or acquire some applesauce. I made mine because I have been reading Vegan with a Vengeance like its the good book and actually do totally agree that if you can do it yourself, you should do it yourself.

SO take 4 apples, peel and cut them up into chucks. Put them in a pot with about an inch of water and cook. Yeah that's right, just cook it down until its applesauce, crushing the apples when they get mushy and adding more water when you need it. Sprinkle some cinnamon on at the end. The whole process takes about 20 minutes... it seems like the perfect congenial task while you are doing other tasks, making everything seem homey and delightful. Because you are paying the bills BUT ALSO making applesauce! You are farting around watching Cougar Town but you just made applesauce! If cooking can't save me from my degeneracy, I don't know what will. Maybe writing 2 more papers in 5 days.

OK so now cook a cup of RINSED quinoa in 2 cups of water with some more cinnamon and honey. I added like 1/8 cup of honey to the cooking water. You can always add more sweet stuff later if you need it, but I think it's good to add some to the water so that the quinoa, you know, absorbs it. And do rinse the quinoa, otherwise it will taste like gross hippie food because of the saponin and what's the point of that? Hippie food can and should be delicious, that's what I learned in school this week.

Boil then simmer for 20 minutes, when the quinoa is done throw in the applesauce and applaud yourself for eating the kind of breakfast a responsible, mature adult would probably eat.

hibernation pasta with lemon and root vegetables

This is probably the least "back-in-California" dinner in the world, but there you have it. I suspect this meal would make a lot more sense in snowy NY. Especially in a charming pre-war apartment owned by the home editor of real simple magazine. AH! I miss walking everywhere, and molding, and fireplaces... but hiking around in Torrey Pines and gawking at koalas is pretty great too. Anyway, here is a mid-winter feast:

A whole mess of root vegetables
olive oil
a lemon
pasta
nutmeg
parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 425, peel and chop a whole mess of root vegetables into sticks. I used two parsnips, five carrots and a sweet potato.

Roast your veggie sticks with a drizzle of olive oil, salt, and pepper for about 20 minutes. You can rattle the pan halfway through to make sure they don't get burned.

Boil some pasta, al dente, you know the drill.

Drain the pasta and throw it back in the pot, adding veggies until it is about 50-50. Toss with about a half-teaspoon of nutmeg, the zest and juice of one lemon, and some olive oil. Grate some parmesan cheese on top and you are ready to brave the cold. Or your nap.

Huevos Rancheros

It only occurred to me last week that you can buy enchilada sauce at the store. That epiphany came pretty much at the same time as the one where I realized that enchilada sauce is "that red stuff that makes Mexican food taste like Mexican food." Which is to say outrageously delicious. My life just hasn't been the same since.

So previous huevos rancheros attempts weren't so good, and I would have to go get them at the only Mexican place in town, where they happened to be the cheapest menu item at 12 bucks. TWELVE! Gah. If you have the foresight to keep some refried beans and enchilada sauce in the house, this is the easiest, fastest, most delicious breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Huevos Rancheros

Heat a (small corn) tortilla in a pan, spread on a layer of refried beans and some shredded cheese. In the other side of the pan, fry an egg to your liking. Plop the fried egg onto the tortilla and pour some enchilada sauce on top.

Repeat as many times as you like. Serve with salsa.

Quinoa with sweet potatoes, kale and mushrooms

It's tough to the be the queen of the nerds. Sometimes I get so carried away thinking about pedagogy or writing one page response papers that they take all night and all I want to eat are Trader Joes's tamales and I am convinced I don't have 10 minutes to throw some veggies in a pan. Sad, right? But whenever I actually make myself a balanced meal I feel like a million bucks. And my In N Out burger self hates to say it, but especially a balanced vegan meal. Especially since the best laid plans of yoga, surf, and cycle classes all went down the tubes this week and I think my body is letting me know if that if I am really going to be a sedentary nerd queen, I best not be eating three tamales in a sitting.

You may be thinking...quinoa?! But actually I was informed that the secret to non-horrible quinoa is cooking it in veggie broth. So I guess my trademark secret for cooking polenta is out. Yes folks, I may be dead before I'm 40, but I'll be damned if salt isn't the most amazing thing in this whole world. Anyway, here's the first real meal I've had in about a week: it was delicious and really, not that hard. And it makes enough for crazy leftovers, so get ready.

Here we go:

1 cup quinoa
two sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
a tub of white mushrooms, cut into slices
a bunch of kale, with the gnarly stems removed and cut into smallish pieces
red pepper flakes to taste
some minced garlic, salt, and pepper

Put the quinoa in a small pot with two cups of broth or a mix of broth and water. Turn the heat on medium and let it cook.

Meanwhile toss some oil in a pan and start cooking the mushrooms and sweet potatoes. After about 10 minutes (potatoes are getting tender and mushrooms are darker), add the minced garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper, and kale. At this point, my pan was at pretty much total capacity. I threw about a cup of water in (you could use wine) and put the lid on and hoped for the best. Check on it from time to time: my quinoa and veggies were done at about the same time.

Also a piece of kale got caught outside the lid and it made me want to make kale chips; maybe more on that later.

In other moderately culinary news, we started composting! And it's totally not working! Does anyone have under-the-sink-in-an-ikea-bin vermicomposting tips? The hot hipster on youtube made it look so easy.

ricotta

Homestead dream complete! Remember the last year and a half when all I wanted to talk about was how plan B was to learn to make cheese on a mountain in New Hampshire? But I never did it? Then when I pined for classes at the cheesemaking institute at UVM that were about a thousand dollars above my budget? Those days are over.

As the internet testifies, making your own fresh cheese is pretty much the easiest thing in the world. All you need is some cheesecloth or old tights and a big container of milk. Here's for ricotta-- paneer and queso blanco are basically the same thing but unsalted and strained a bit more.

So here we go. Take half a gallon of pasteurized (not ultra pasteurized) whole milk and put it in a pot to boil. You want some space on top in case it boils and starts to foam, which happened one time I made this cheese but not the other. Enh. Anyway, if your pots are too small then just scale the "recipe" down accordingly.

Ok, when the milk is just thinking about boiling softly, stir in a tablespoon of salt and three tablespoons of lemon juice. Turn the heat down until the cheese starts to form curds. Yum, cheese curds! Don't stir, just let the milk simmer for 5 more minutes or so until the curds really separate and you can see the whey, which is watery and yellow.

Line a colander with cheesecloth and strain the cheese, pouring some cold water over the top to cool the curds and rinse off some of the lemon flavor. For soft ricotta, just a few minutes in the colander is plenty. For a firmer cheese that you can cut into blocks or crumble into tacos or what have you, tie up the cheesecloth and let it hang from your faucet for an hour or so.

Recipe for my bootleg palak paneer to follow, ricotta is delicious all by itself... or with some jam or honey.

Happy halloween, everybody!

faux-roccan couscous

Well, RealSimple called this a one-pot lamb tagine, and it does have speed and balanced-meal-ness and one-pot-ness going for it. But apparently out here in la holla meat is crazy expensive and fish is cheap cheap cheap. It makes sense, but I was scandalized and cowtowed to the little voice within that says, "NO MORE MEAT." So I made this with seitan, and while I think that made it way less juicy, it also made it easier to freeze and transport to work, both good things. It probably does require a special trip to the grocery store to get some stuff, but again, knowing what you are going to eat in advance instead of eating SEVERAL CUPS OF HALF FROZEN COOKIE DOUGH is worth its weight in... uh, body fat. What have I done?!?!?

FAUX-ROCCAN COUSCOUS
adapted from RealSimple Magazine

* 3 cups of so of bite-size-chopped seitan bits (pre-sauteed until browned) OR 2 1/2 pounds of browned lamb cut into chunks, your choice
* 1 teaspoon paprika
* 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
(I didn't have paprika and used "red curry powder" instead of cayenne, don't sweat the spices if you don't have them but the cinnamon and ginger are key)
* a glug of olive oil
* an onion, sliced
* 4 carrots, peel and cut into little pieces
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* about an inch of finely chopped fresh ginger
* zest of 1/2 lemon, grated and the juice of that lemon
* 1 32-ounce container low-sodium veg broth (or chicken, I guess)
* 1 10-ounce box couscous (Trader Joe's whole wheat couscous, will you marry me?)
* 3/4 cup black olives, cut into pieces
* 1/4 cup chopped dried fruit: I used cranberries and apricots


1. Fry up your onions with some salt and pepper and olive oil in a big ole' pan (seriously, BIG) or a pot until they are translucent and oniony, then add the carrots and cook until mostly tender, 15 minutes, let's say.
3. Throw the seitan bits in there, then add the spices, garlic, ginger, zest and lemon juice (just squeeze it right in there) and stir. Smells good, right?
4. Add the whole thing of broth and bring to a boil. Stir in the couscous. Take your pot off the stove and let the couscous cook for about 10 minutes. Stir in the olives and fruit bits and serve!

granola bars

So much to report! California is madness, but I am (somehow) resisting the urge to eat nothing but rice bean & cheese burritos. I have been pretty busy in the kitchen, yes, but the best thing are these granola bars. They are so good I can't believe it. How many granola bars is too many? Three? Four? A whole batch? I started to just take the whole tupperware with me wherever I went, seriously. So here you go! The other thing that is awesome about granola bars is that you can make them with whatever you want and no matter how bad your allergies are (unless you're straight-up celiac, in which case you should buy special "no way in hell these are cross-contaminated" oats), if you make them yourself granola bars are a go. A cheap, portable, delicious go.

Lily's granola bars
Based on Alton Brown's recipe

4 cups oats (not instant)
1/2 cup honey (or agave, for you dirty hippies)
1/4 - 1/2 cup (brown) sugar (ditto)
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup-ish chopped dried fruit (apricots, cranberries, figs, oh my!)
1/4 cup-ish nut, soy, or sunflower seed butter

In a 350 degree oven, toast the oats on a baking sheet.

Meanwhile, in a medium-sized pot heat the sugar, salt and honey until the mixture is hot and gooey. When the oats smell toasty and are brown (15 min? Turn the oven down to 300!) add them + your fruit to the sweet stuff, and stir. It should be almost but not quite enough to get the whole mass to unite.

Glop in some nut/sunflower seed butter and stir.

Now line a loaf pan or cake pan with aluminum foil and press the oaty goodness in. When you think you've pressed enough, press more. Use another pan for even pressure, if you have one.

Now bake for 25 minutes. After you take them out, press some more! Now let the brick cool. Once it's cool you can break it into chunks and store in your cupboard (a week, if they make it) or the fridge (longer, but also less chewy) or the freezer (for self control).

Get creative! Do you have awesome additions? A kick-ass granola recipe? Let me know.

Strata

Delicious! Remember when I got all excited about frittatas and the possibilty of party sized eggs for dinner? This is like that in heaven. I'm trying to make all my own bread here to avoid sesame scares, save money and structure my seemingly endless "down time" -- I'm two for two weeks, more on that later, but the last loaf got stale before I could eat infinity smoked salmon sandwiches from impossibly cheap trader joes salmon. Damn, and now I want more. Anyway, strata! They use up stale bread and are also so filling and delicious, I am now convinced they will become a fixture of my new Californian cookery. Also that you can throw some "what do i do with these veggies?" veggies in the mix, or a not so healthy version with cream and sausage, if you want to go the heart attack be damned church social type route. The NYTimes first gave me the idea here- and this is basically the recipe I used. Lemme break it down for ya.

1 lb fresh (by the way, the la jolla farmers market was described to me as small and it's basically the size of union sq, I guess there's some farmland in between
those strip malls after all) tomatoes
Half a loaf of stale bread or a stale baguette
4 eggs
2 cups milk (skim worked fine)
Molto thyme and basil and garlic
Whatever cheese you have kicking around- I had mozzarella, times guru recommends gruyere

Slice the bread- if it's too hard to get a knife through, soak it in water and wring it out. Holy great recession, batman! Wringing bread??? It works, near with me.

Now toast the bread and rub both sides with a raw clove of garlic. Slice the tomatoes into, uh, slices.
Preheat the oven to 350.
Layer bread and tomatoes in a bakin sheet of pan or what have you, throwing some cheese and the leftover garlic in there, also salt and pepper, naturally.

Beat up the milk and eggs and herbs in a bowl, then pour that on top. Make sure it's all covered and kind of dense, especially if you are weird about eggs. Get all artistic with the top layer of tomatoes, while youre at it.

Pop that baby in the oven for 40-50 minutes, when it's done, it should be custardy and much more than the sum of its parts. My computer is in the shop so photo evidence forthcoming, but I've been chowing down in this for the past 4 meals and I'm ready to go back for a midnight snack... Now.

rosemary crackers

I'm back! I'm in California! ...I know!

It's been crazy busy, then it's been crazy slow, the sun has been shining pretty much all the time, my room is all set up, most importantly, the leftovers from the last dinner out with dad are gone. Game on.

My inaugural culinary adventure was-- what else?-- crackers. I've already justified my love of making crackers on here, but there is no better evidence than that I whipped these out at the beach today and everyone I was with was all, "I didn't know that it was possible to make crackers! Send the recipe over the grad listserv!" Got it? These crackers are potentially mind-blowing. A note for cracker fans from the Barnard years, these aren't the same ones I used to make... they're a little more toothsome and little easier.

OLIVE OIL CRACKERS
via smittenkitchen

1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
some rosemary, fresh or chopped (or not, or another spice)
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup olive oil

--Throw all the dry ingredients into a bowl then mix in the wet ingredients.
--Mix it into a dough and knead it a little if you want.
--Roll it out onto a baking sheet and pop it into a 450 degree oven for 10-15 minutes, until it is brown and crispy. Undercooked is no good, but (unlike the butter crackers of yore) they don't need to be totally brown the whole way though.

Store the crackers in tupperware and pat yourself on the back for spending less than 4 dollars on a box of snack crackers, then eat them all and realize that you're back to square one.

lentil soup

Ahoy! It's a frog-strangler out there and has been for the last few days. Kind of fitting, actually, that I get some fear-of-God New England weather as a sendoff, so that I can spend my ersatz "fall" drinking tea and eating soup. Up in NH, I made some lentil soup... loosely based on a Better Homes and Gardens recipe Miles' grandmother had clipped and stashed in a pile many, many moons ago. Side note: his grandmother also clipped all the newspaper articles about Scrabbles' invention in in the 50s and has them stashed in the Scrabble set. Grandparents' houses are the best, whether they are yours or not. Side note to the side note: Inventor of Scrabbles was Mr. Butts. Haha, Butts!

Anyway, this soup is pretty tasty; probably the best lentil soup I have ever made. To be fair, though, the last time I tried to make lentil soup half the container of chipotle chile powder spilled and despite my best attempts to salvage it, the soup was inedible. The time before that I think I got bored and made Shira G. finish it. I am such a good roommate. But this soup got pretty high acclaim so try it out.


2 cups lentils
6 cups water
a bunch of carrots, chopped
a few stalks of celery, chopped
1/2 an onion
a large can (1 lb) of crushed/diced tomatoes (or just crush them yourself, whatevs)
salt, pepper, plenty of rosemary


--Cook the lentils with the celery, onion and carrots in the water. First boil, then simmer for about 35 minutes.
--Once the lentils are close to done, add the rosemary, salt and pepper to your liking. Don't skimp on the rosemary!
--Now add the tomatoes, let them cook for about 15 minutes; simmer until the soup is a consistency that makes you happy.

NB: Like the pasta, this makes a bumload of soup... 6 bowls or so. So halve it if you don't want leftovers for lunch.

no-knead bread

Long overdue!

Making your own bread is the big leagues. By which I mean it is one of those things that is easier than it seems, well worth the time spent, and just an awesome thing that will make you feel like you are the winner of Frontier House... despite the fact that there are no winners on PBS. Seriously, you will want to stalk down Laura Ingalls Wilder in her log cabin and flex your biceps, proudly displaying your perfect, golden loaf until she gives you maple candy or a yard of calico. Homemade bread is like that.

Seriously though, when I started making my own bread junior year of college it was a revelation. Oh, the toast! The sandwiches! The superiority to veggie corn dogs as a midnight snack! Now I am both more busy and more lazy, so I have fallen off the bandwagon.

I did start making the famous, super-hyped, MEGA-hyped no-knead bread earlier this spring. And it is awesome. And you can do it! Yes, you!

I mean, you can totally make your own sandwich bread no worries and it takes less time (white or wheat or HONEY OAT or wahhhh I want to make bread everyday) but this is the only way I have achieved "success" with a "European style loaf." So I guess it's as good a way to start as any.

What other sandwich breads have in "taking an afternoon" and "infinite customizability", this bread has in hands-off cool. This bread is like the James freakin' Dean of crusty boules. Two timings: takin' a day off or the workday warrior. Workday warrior timing is kinda intense, but do-able.

Weekend: late night
Weekday: when you get back from work

Throw 3 cups of flour, 1/4 tsp yeast (store the rest in the fridge) and 1 1/2 tsp salt in a bowl.
Mix with 1 1/2 cups water.
Mix, mix, mix, cover your bowl with saran wrap and go to bed.


12-18 hours later.....
Weekday: If you need to show up at work the next day, set your alarm for 2 hours before you normally get up. Sucks, right? But just think of the bread you'll have with dinner!
Weekend timing: Just get up.

Fold your puffy, bubbly dough over itself a couple times and gently roll it into a ball. Plop it onto a floured cloth or just a floured countertop or a floured bowl or whatever. Cover with a cloth and do something else for 2 hours. Like go back to sleep or watch cartoons.



Back? Good! Preheat the oven to 450 with an oven-proof pot or dutch oven or casserole dish in it. Ideally for half an hour, but it doesn't really matter. Gently maneuver the dough into the hot pot, put the lid on or fashion one out of tinfoil, let it bake for half an hour. Now take the lid off for another 15 minutes or so, until it's golden brown. Fly out the door while your bread cools, or just eat it while you continue to watch cartoons. Oh my god I can't wait to get home and eat this.

"Fortune favors the bold" potato salad

Holy overdue post, batman!

This NYTimes article shamed me back to you... but actually, I've been waiting for my NEW DIGITAL CAMERA to come in the mail so that I can be a real food blogger again and not some washed-up old hack who eats ice cream for lunch and picks the cookie crumbs out of her hair on her way to work, wishing that she could eat shit without winding up in the hospital like the other carefree girls and boys. Where were we?

Last night I made some kick-ass potato salad. Thought of y'all because it's summertime and all I want to eat is picnic food. This is healthier, maybe, than the kind you get from the grocery store, plus it's cheaper, plus I winged it so just imagine what will happen when you use your imagination, too! Potato salad for president.

Potato salad

1 bag of waxy red potatoes, about 10
mayonnaise
mustard
a small red onion
olive oil
vinegar (classy wine vinegars probably superior, I used white vinegar I had bought to clean the sink).


Boil the potatoes until they're tender, should take about 15 minutes. While you're waiting, chop up that red onion. I only used half.

Now drain them and let them cool in the fridge while you drink a cold one and contemplate your dwindling work ethic.

Cold-ish? Mash 'em up with a fork and glop in three heaping forkfuls of mayonnaise. Pardon me sir, do you have any Grey Poupon? If so, a spoonful or two is delicious. Stir. Grab the olive oil and vinegar and drizzle them on top for a few counts, like you are a flair bartender with only a very small amount of flair.



Add that red onion and mix it up. Yum. Put on your thinking cap: how good would this be with capers, or dill, or pickles, or.... let me know! Anyway, bring it to work with your sandwich, to the picnic with your slacker friends, to the yacht club with your yacht. It's summer, natch.

mushroom risotto

O
h weather: you're hot and you're cold, you're yes and you're no. What to do when skirt weather turns into jacket weather? Make risotto! It's cheap and hearty and doesn't actually take that long, especially if you have some sweet podcasts to listen to or people over to entertain you while you stir or what have you.

1 cup arborio rice (short grain)
1 tbs. olive oil
1/2 cup dry white wine (NOTE: we all know that the best risotto is made from Chateau Diana purchased from Appletree in the middle of the day while looking over your shoulder sheepishly. If you cannot recreate this glorious culinary experience, this is delicious without wine)
1/4 cup (or until you get bored grating) grated parmesan
4-5 cups hot chicken stock OR veggie stock OR mushroom stock
1 large onion, chopped (or a couple of shallots)
1 cup dried mushrooms

Reconstitute some fancypants mushrooms you've got kicking around in boiling water. Or / and fry some button mushrooms.

Heat olive oil in a big ole pot. Fry up the onion until it's translucent/smells delicious. Meanwhile, heat up your stock, veg or not. If you used dried mushrooms, you should for sure throw some of that mushroom stock in there. 5 cups.



Add the rice to the onion and stir until grains are coated with oil. If you are going the wine route, add wine and stir constantly on medium heat until wine is absorbed. Add one cup hot stock, stirring until liquid is absorbed. Then add some more stock and keep stirring. When that is absorbed, add some more and stir some more. This is the part that takes awhile.

When you're almost done, add the mushrooms (chopped, if you're not there yet.) Now take it off the heat, stir in that cheese, and eat up. In like a lion, out like a lamb, right? Whatever: I'm California dreamin' until April.

she's back!

Well, cooking adventures have been kind of slow this last month or so with one big honking exception:

Candy. Candied citrus peels actually.

These are so good, not that hard to make, and really fancy looking. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon... or say something nice in capital letters. like THANK YOU (now admit me to grad school edition) or HAPPY HOLIDAYS (planning for next year edition) or I LOVE YOU SO MUCH LET'S MAKE OUT (valentines day edition).

So here's the scoop: grapefruit is way too bitter, I tried it so you don't have to. Lemons and oranges were delicious, I bet that limes would also be knockout.

Peel the fruit and slice it. Yes, this takes forever. I did three lemons and four oranges, which made enough stuff for four people to have a little gifty-sized package. I found that the peel first cut second approach worked better than the "try to cut rectangles on the fruit then peel" approach.

"Reserve the fruit for another purpose." I made lemon/orange/grapefruit-aid. Just add seltzer and more sugar than you would expect.

OK now plop these in a pot of boiling water. Boil for like ten minutes. Now change the water and reboil. Now do it again! Again, monkey, again! 5 times. I did a control round where I meticulously scraped off the pith of the lemon rinds. It made kind of a less substantial chewier candy and tasted just noticably less bitter. So unless you are super bitter-averse, forget it.

Now heat up 1/4 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar for every 2 cups of peel. My 4 oranges and 3 lemons were pretty much two cups, for the record. Let it get all liquidified then dump the peels in there. Simmer (or boil) until the peels absorb all the liquid. Don't let them burn, stir a lot and monitor the heat. I would say this step took like 20 minutes? Everything should be a sticky mess.



With a slotted spoon (or your hands, if you can't feel heat-- hiyo!) transfer these guys to a plate of sugar before the syrup cools and your sticky mess gets even stickier. If it does, just reheat until the sugar melts again. Roll them around in sugar them let them cure for a few hours/overnight on a baking sheet covered with tin foil or waxed paper. Are they dry? Good.

Now melt some chocolate. I used Ghiradelli chocolate chips (60% cacao) because they were like 3 bucks and I only needed to use like 2/3 the bag. Do the math, son. If you make orange juice/lemonade, that brings the price of these puppies down to the price of the chocolate. 2 dollars for 4 presents is a pretty good deal. If you want to use cheaper chocolate, whatever. If you want to use classier bars of baking chocolate, whatever.



So melt the chocolate in a double boiler if you have a dishwasher or in the microwave if you have a microwave. Be careful that it doesn't burn, obviously. Stirring helps because chocolate melts before it looks like its melted. 1 minute?

Now dip the peels in the chocolate (you can leave a little tail of the peel so that you have somewhere to hold and the presentation is ultimately more elegant) and let that cool in the fridge or over a tray of ice. Voila. More coming soon, I miss blogging.