Chickpeas, Mushrooms and Italian Sausage

This was an amazing dish considering I left my home this morning thinking I needed to go grocery shopping and then decided to skip out and graze lazily instead of cooking something I could keep for lunch at work the next day.  This laziness was inexcusable, considering I had just organized an Earth Day event at work, and one of the tips we gave was for people to take their lunches to work instead of ordering.

As it turns out, I had more than enough ingredients at home; I just hadn’t imagined them together before they actually came together in the pan.  Now I can go to sleep tonight without feeling like a hypocrite because I’ve got plenty of leftovers.  I served the dish below over brown rice, but it’s good alone as well.

Ingredients:

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3-4 cups cherry tomatoes, run through a food processor until minced with juices
15 brown Chinese mushrooms, or shittake mushrooms
1/4 cup diced red onion
2 T. butter
fresh basil
4 links (more or less 1 lb.) Italian sausage
lemon juice from one half a lemon
1 t. cumin
2 T. red wine vinegar
1/4 c. bread crumbs, finely ground 

Directions:

Brown sausage as whole links in pan, cooking covered over a medium-low heat with 1/4 c. water until cooked through. Partially cover, turn up heat and then brown slightly before removing from pan and letting drain.

Add 1/2 butter to a pan and let melt.  Add onion and saute until sweating and then add mushrooms.  When mushrooms begin to wilt, add the rest of the butter and bread crumbs.  Add cumin and red wine vinegar, and mix thoroughly.  Add chickpeas and combine, then add tomatoes.  Heat through for about 3 minutes, then add fresh basil in whole leaves and lemon juice.  Add sausage, cut into 1/2 in. pieces.  Combine and remove from heat.

Note:

That amazingly-talented woman on smittenkitchen.com has a chickpea and garbanzo bean recipe that I adore, and she has a breadcrumb base that I can’t get enough of.  It inspired this dish, and next time I make this dish, I intend to make it more like she does in her recipe.  That means using fresh bread instead of breadcrumbs, browning it as croutons in the pan with oil and adding cumin, then putting through the food processor with garlic and red wine vinegar.  It’s got a much stronger taste when done that way, and the fresh bread instead of breadcrumbs add a hearty and tangy meatiness. 

Cooking Up a Storm

Haven’t written for a while but was compelled to tonight.  I’ve been cooking up a storm lately.  I moved a little over a month ago, and it took a lot out of me.  I hate cooking in an apartment that’s only half-moved-in-to, and I’m too lazy to do a colossal task like moving quickly.

I’ve also begun hand-writing a cookbook.  For no major reason other than to remember the awesome things I make.  I’m also too lazy to look up recipes online most days, and my only real hard-bound cookbook is too complicated for China, unless it’s a special occasion.  Luckily, I’ve got a English Chinese food cookbook on loan for the time being, but even that’s a bit gourmet.

I’m putting some of the best ones up here, because I can filter like that on the second go; whereas “Creamy, Cheesey Breakfast Tacos with Bacon” is a winner every time, “Pasta with Tomatoes and Cucumbers in Yogurt Sauce” was a bit of a bomb, which I unfortunately only remembered after I wasted a page recording it.  What can I say, I was eager to finally have created something after a long dry-spell of not cooking much.

Prime grass-fed beef

As some of you may already know, there’s absolutely no comparison between grass-fed beef and the usual stuff you buy in the supermarket.  Humanitarian and environmental factors aside (and there are plenty to consider), from a pure culinary standpoint, the difference in taste is phenomenal.

If you live in the Austin area or have access to it, check out ATX MeatShare, a business in Austin, Texas, started by my friend, Benjamin Palmer.

Here’s a little lingo from the web site.

What is ATX Meatshare?

ATX meatshare facilitates group purchases of grass-fed, humanely raised animals from central Texas for residents of the greater Austin, TX area.

Why is this a good deal? 

Grass-fed meat is terribly expensive compared to conventional meat, there is no way around it.

ATX Meatshare aims to even that equation by allowing a group of passionate individuals to obtain high-quality meat at fantastic prices.

When you buy a whole animal you pay a set price for the whole animals so the price/# is the same for EVERY cut ranging from organs, ground meat and up to fine steak cuts like NY strip and tenderloin.

However these prices are usually reserved if you purchase at least 1/4 of animal, which most folks don’t have the freezer space / cash / tenacity to obtain. ATX Meatshare allows you to buy a more manageable amount of meat while still obtaining the same price as if you were purchasing a quarter of a beast.

There’s a lot more information on the web site.  Click on the link above if you want to read more.

Some cooking videos

If you want to see how-to videos on a few of my recipes, check out this YouTube channel, brought to you by the blog El Oso’s Famous Kitchen.

My China Borracho Beans:

 

Albondigas (Spanish Meatballs):

 

…and the Sweet and Tangy Salsa that tops the meatballs:

 

Thanks, El Oso!

Enjoy.

Cooking videos coming soon!

Thank you very much to El Oso’s Famous Kitchen for three new cooking videos featuring me and my blog.  I made my borracho beans, Spanish meatballs and sweet and tangy salsa.

Look for future posts and links to El Oso’s YouTube Channel to see the videos!

Here’s El Oso’s Famous Kitchen Cooking Blog, and here’s El Oso’s YouTube Channel with the videos.

Spicy Chinese Indian pad thai

My roommate requested a stir-fry noodle dish last night.  He originally asked for something carroty and gingery to go with some buckwheat noodles he’d bought last week.  Classically forgetting all details of the request except for the noodle part, I didn’t buy carrots or ginger but instead bell peppers, mushrooms, red onion and broccoli.  I had some chicken breast strips in the freezer that needed to be used, too.

I was having one of my hair-brained cooking nights last night, and I’m actually surprised I didn’t completely ruin the dish because I was cooking with reckless abandon…something that usually leads to strange or even inedible concoctions.

I used the wok for its size, depth and ability to cook a large volume of food quickly.  I started with fish oil over a medium heat and added sliced green, red and yellow bell pepper and red onion.  I made the slices of the onion and peppers large, but if I made this dish again, I’d make the slices for the peppers much thinner (maybe 1/4-in. thick).  The onions work well in thick slices.  I added salt and pepper and let the veggies begin to sweat.

While looking through my spices for inspiration, I decided to attempt an Indian fusion dish.  I added garam masala and ground cumin (about a teaspoon of each) along with some crushed red pepper flakes.  After a minute or two, I added bite-sized chunks of chicken.  As they began to whiten, I added broccoli and mushrooms.  I added more peanut oil and soy sauce and turned up the heat to reduce the liquids and make the ingredients brown slightly as they began to glaze.

To this now-huge amount of vegetables cooking over a high heat, I added more garam masala and cumin powder, hoisin sauce, sweet chili sauce and spicy chili oil.  Once the chicken was cooked through and everything was softened and glazed to my liking, I added the cooked noodles and continued to sautee on a high heat long enough for the noodles to brown slightly.

The result was good hot and even better cold the next day.  It was definitely a dish that tastes great – or better – as leftovers.  It tasted a little like Indian food due to the spices, felt a lot like pad Thai in consistency, and was full of Chinese-style vegetables.  It was a bizarre attempt at a tri-cultural fusion, but it seemed to work, or at least it was tasty.  With some tweaking, the dish could probably be even better.  It was a fun attempt at experimentation, and I feel successful because I didn’t ruin it by adding so many ingredients!

Ingredients:
-1 large red onion, 3/4-in. slice
-1 small red bell pepper, 1/4-in. slice
-1 small green bell pepper, 1/4-in. slice
-1 medium yellow bell pepper, 1/4-in. slice
-1 head broccoli
-1.5 cups sliced Chinese mushrooms
-8 strips chicken breast, but into bite-sized pieces
-1-2 T. garam masala
-1 T. ground cumin
-1-2 T. hoisin sauce
-1-2 T. light soy sauce
-1 T. sweet chili sauce
-1 t. chili oil
-1-2 t. salt
-1 t. freshly-ground black pepper
-1 t. red pepper flakes
-2-3 cups cooked buckwheat pad-Thai style noodles

Tangy salad + tangy salad = delicious chaos

After glancing over the hideously-long last three entries, I’m making this one less cumbersome to read (only slightly), mostly because it’s too good not to. Last night I made two tangy Asian salads – one that was more of a slaw and another with cold udon noodles as a base.

These dishes are similar, but I think they go together well. They are based around the cabbage, which I had from a previous salad and needed to use up. I also really wanted to use mandarin oranges after having some particularly delicious ones lately. The noodle salad was born of a desire to use up some of the pasta in my cabinet, but in the end I bought the noodles I used last night. The slaw was inspired by an old Gourmet spinach, mushrooms and kumquat recipe I used a year ago (or at least, the dressing was). I’d repost the link, but the link-creating function is not currently available on this page. The other recipe is largely based on a recipe called “Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Butter Dressing” on epicurious.com.

My roommate loved these salads. He got home, not very hungry, and ate two bowl-fulls of these dishes mixed together. I tried it with the leftovers at lunch today, and I agree that the maddness of minced and sliced veggies, noodles, and tangy dressings make for some delicious chaos. Tonight’s ninja was candied walnuts in the noodle salad. Not having any extra peanuts and just feeling crazy, I threw them in, and they tasted great!

Oh, and word to the wise: don’t get distracted while using a cheese grater, especially those brilliant stand-up ones where everything falls inside and that anchor so nicely to the countertop. Let’s just say – one gnarly accident later – that I’m pretty sure bits of finger went into my salad.

See my posts in the Recipes section called “Cabbage and Chinese Greens Slaw” and “Cold Peanut Butter Noodle Salad.”

Resurrection stew

I dedicate this original stew to the gays in my life. Tonight I hosted dinner for four of the sweetest men I’ve ever cooked for. They gave compliments, commentary and constructive criticism freely and genuinely. I spent four fun hours cooking a feast last night, and it turned out quite well. Three winners out of three and wonderful company are about as good as it gets.

I made two oldies, both of which are listed on this site. Quinoa, chayote and red onion salad is delicious, especially with an extra boost of lemon juice and vinegar. A reappearance of shrimp and scallion pancakes from Gourmet was also well-received because I substituted the shrimp for sliced, REAL kimchi. But, the winner of the night was a soup, a concoction of mine that had a long journey and is quite complex, but turned out especially savory.

The wet market was closed when I got off work at 8 p.m. last night. As disappointing as this was, a quick trip to Jusco was pleasant, especially since it turned out that my roommate was hanging around in there, probably looking for promotions, and was present to consult about our premeditated dinner party for the next night that was just then coming together. After 8, most of the produce goes on sale, especially the older stuff. Old stuff’s great for soups, and that just happened to be the centerpiece of the menu.

I bought a bunch of stuff and knew immediately that I had a huge undertaking ahead of me even though I tried to convince myself that I didn’t, especially considering I started on everything around 9 p.m. But eventually, I slowly, distractedly started on the soup, and the 3-hour-later result was spectacular.

I started with bacon and butter. My favorites. I couldn’t decide which would be better so I used them both. I couldn’t recall at the time whether I’d actually seen bacon sauteing in butter, 2 tablespoons of it to be exact. To the butter and not-so-fatty Chinese bacon, not yet cooked through, I added large-dice bell pepper, leeks, and carrots. After the leeks started to break apart, I added about a quart and a half vegetable broth, made with the bullion cubes again, and large chunks of white potatoes and winter squash. I also added, at some point in the aforementioned process, dried basil and oregano, yellow curry powder, salt, pepper, and Spanish paprika.

After realizing that my little brew was quite strange, with its many cubed vegetables and nothing else to hold it together except a liquidy broth, I began to panic. What’s so nice about this soup?, I thought. This looks like something concocted by someone who needs to eat, not someone who loves food. A brief consult session with my roommate later and I realized my soup needed saving. It was on a fast course to being a tasty but strange and apology-inducing liquid-and-chunks flop. As I racked my brain for inspiration regarding how to change my soupy mess, I remembered that I lived in a world of sweet, amidst a people with an eternal sweet-tooth so strong that it influences even the most salty and savory of dishes. Everything is sweet here. Why shouldn’t my soup be just a little sweet, too?

So, I added some sweet chili sauce, which is used all over the place here. That improved the flavor, but the soup was still lacking something in its substance. I thawed some frozen marinated peppered beef that had been hanging out in the freezer. I cubed it, browned those and threw them into the now-stew-like mixture of breaking-down veggies. After around an hour of bubbling, the soup had thickened, and the broth had taken on a thicker concentration. The beef cooked for about 10 minutes before I turned off the soup and let it cool. A day in the fridge later, it reheated in the pot to one of the most savory soups I’ve ever made.

So many things congealed. Perfectly almost-sparse beef chunks and bacon slices were hanging out with large, breaking down, completely saturated pieces of potato, hard squash, carrots and bell pepper. The onions were a backdrop, blending in with the broth. The strength of the broth (I added more concentrate than necessary) and the complexity of the spice mixture combined so well with the chili paste, which was this dish’s ninja. I forgot to tell the boys tonight about that little one, so it’ll remain a secret to anyone who doesn’t read this!

I laugh as I type this because of the extraordinarily large, expanded stomach in front of me, proving that I quite enjoyed myself at the dinner table tonight. Good red wine as accompaniment never hurts, either!

Ingredients:
-4 slices bacon, cut into 1 inch strips
-2 T. butter
-4-5 cloves garlic, minced
-2 large leeks, sliced
-2 large carrots, cubed (1/2 inch)
-green bell pepper, chopped (1 inch squares)
-salt, freshly ground pepper
-dried oregano
-dried basil
-2 cups winter squash, cubed
-2 large white potatoes, cubed
-5-6 cups vegetable broth
-Spanish paprika, curry powder
-2 T. sweet chili sauce
-marinated pepper beef, cut into large cubes and browned in 1 T. olive oil.

Directions:
1. Saute bacon and butter over medium heat.
2. Add garlic for 1 minute. Then add leeks, carrot, and bell pepper.
3. Add salt, pepper, oregano, and basil. Saute until leeks begin to fall apart.
4. Add broth. When potatoes begin to fall apart, add paprika, curry powder and chili paste.
5. After soup has cooked an hour, add browned, not-yet-cooked-through beef. Let cook another 20 minutes.

Bittman, I still love you, but I’ve finally learned to live without you

Tonight I had an itch to cook. After a winter of not moving around much in an attempt to avoid the wet, bone-gripping, never-leaves-you-even-when-you-go-inside Guangzhou cold, I’ve been feeling sedentary, and I just needed some uncomplicated, nutrient-dense, homemade food pumping through my system. Once again, I am struck by the infinite number of ways common vegetables, oils and liquids can be combined to be filling and delicious and make you forget that there’s not an ounce of meat in your dish.

My choice of ingredients was determined by my suddenly remembering that I had some organic, preservative-free vegetable bullion cubes at home that I’d snatched up in organic grocery store in Hong Kong. They’re the kind I used to buy back home, and I miss them. I’ve also recently discovered an open-air market right next to my new work location, which happens to be on the way home to my apartment. It’s so ridiculously convenient, I have no excuse NOT to cook.

I miss my huge red Mark Bittman cookbook, my bible, “How to Cook Everything.” It was falling apart and had sticky pages and water-stained pages, and food splatters, and it was woefully too heavy to fit in my luggage. I believe it sits on a shelf in my parents’ house, waiting for someone to pick it up and use it. Inspired by the possibility of making good broth from a really good concentrate (not the stuff you can find in grocery stores here, the quality of which is worryingly difficult to judge because everything is in Chinese characters instead of English), I immediately thought of the Soups section of Bittman’s book, the chapter that made me realize what an amazing cookbook I’d managed to buy and got the wheels of my attention to detail as pertains to food’s fundamentals and how they mix and match groaning to life with a slow, rusted, but persistent propulsion.

Two years after beginning to cook with Bittman’s suggestions, advice and shared knowledge, I realized tonight that I’ve retained quite a bit now that I don’t have easy access to basic, versitile, exploration-inspiring recipes to rely on as a crutch. I prepared my broth, not having a way to measure the amount of liquid but knowing it doesn’t matter because if the broth was weak, it’d be flavored by the sweating veggies. I started with the holy trinity, the aromatics onion, celery and carrot, because they seemed to be the base of every soup Bittman made, and I think he or someone else even referred to the white-green-orange triad by that delightfully blasphemous name. My bulk was white potatoes, which I knew would help make me full while everything else, much less substantial once it sits in the stomach, added the complex flavor. Dried basil, black pepper and dried oregano pumped the sauteeing aromatics up to a new level, especially once they really mixed with the butter/olive oil mixture everything was dancing around in.

I added the broth after, in this order, the aromatics and then potatoes (which I gave a minute to begin to brown). The potatoes cooked quickly due to the way I cut them, but before they finished, I threw in some whole wheat penne I needed to use up and a can of whole peeled tomatoes which I coarsely cut up with a knife in the can itself before pouring in. For garnish, I threw in a few tablespoons of minced celery leaves (which I use here as parsley since that beautiful herb is difficult to come by). The result was similar to a minestrone without the beans, and it was quite tasty.

But, I also wanted something crunchy and fresh – overwhelmingly fresh – and full of a medley of things and consistencies and flavors. The result was a slaw-like salad with mostly thinly sliced or shredded or crushed pieces of: green cabbage, romaine lettuce (mostly hearts of romaine), mango, yellow bell pepper, carrot, celery and almond. I tossed it with a dressing made of S&P, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, and extra-virgin olive oil, heavy on the tangy ingredients, and shaken to emulsify.

The almost all-vegetable result of these dishes was a full stomach that was absolutely packed with a large quantity of food and thus was satisfied, but not at all stuffed. And it’s so good for the immune system – much-needed right now. It feels good to be able to rely on my knowledge of basics I hadn’t even realized I’d absorbed when presented with an opportunity to cook coupled with a lack of time for and the inconvenience of printing out more creative recipes.

Soup Ingredients:
2 cubes vegetable bullion (or just use water and let the aromatics and potatoes cook longer in it)
about 1 liter of water
1-2 cups diced carrot
1-2 cups diced celery
1-2 cups chopped white or yellow onion
1 T. butter
1 T. extra-virgin olive oil
1 t. salt
1 t. pepper
3 medium-large white potatoes, quartered lengthwise and sliced 1/2 inch thick
1 regular can whole peeled tomatoes
1-2 cups penne
2-3 T. chopped celery leaves

Salad Ingredients:
1-2 cups cut (1-2 inch pieces) romaine (mostly hearts)
1 mango, sliced lengthwise
1 half head of green cabbage, halved and very thinly sliced
1 red onion, quartered and thinly sliced
2-3 T. chopped almonds
3/4 cup shredded carrot
3/4 cup thinly sliced celery

1 large thinly sliced yellow bell pepper

Dressing Ingredients:
proportion of 3:2:1 of extra-virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar and fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper

How I learned to stop worrying and love stir-fry

I’ve never been a huge fan of stir-fry. Or rather, I wasn’t before I came to China. It’s a whole new world of single-container cooking here. Last night my view of cooking stir-fry changed, mostly because I finally made a good one. But, I had proper motivation.

John Legend made a speech at a commencement ceremony in which he said “Soul is about authenticity…the moments when sound and silence come together.” Well, I’m now convinced that truly inspired cooking happens when extreme hunger and creative inspiration have a love child. The former pushes the latter to be perfect because it so intensely salivates over the prospective result. So, ravenous with hunger but determined to make use of the fresh veggies in my fridge, I took some time to attempt a stir-fry relying only on wit and my knowledge of the Chinese dishes I so frequently eat in restaurants here.

Before I talk about the what I did, let me explain what I learned. I used to cringe from the idea of cooking stir-fries because they always came out too salty or too oily or too saucy or you-name-it-it-happened. But last night I had an epiphany; all the elements of what I know or have experienced from eating or making stir-fry came together in one of those moments where sound meets silence, and it finally all made sense. Cooking stir-fry isn’t about how much spice or seasoning or liquid you add. It’s not about the ingredients themselves or choosing perfectly matched components and flavor combinations. It’s about heat and the surface you cook on, the way you move the food, and not over-cooking anything. It’s about corruption, the altering of basic components just enough to make them taste like something completely different. Carmelize an onion, brown a potato, saturate an eggplant or wilt a green…do what you like with what you’ve got, as long as you keep a little of the original consistency and taste inside while dressing up the outer surface. One of life’s little pleasures is the occasional (or frequent) corrupting of the status quo. Take some meat or produce and give it a new way of co-mingling with your taste-buds.

Having a wok helps. Ladies and gents, I hate to brag, but mine’s got a 36-centimeter diameter, and it’s well seasoned. You can guide a metal spatula over it’s wide, deep bowl (no flat-bottoms allowed in my kitchen) with slow but consistent strokes in a way that allows you to toss, stir or fold your concoctions with the finesse necessary for any dish. And, it’s such a versatile surface. Never before had I truly known the world of vegetable tempura (try making a batter with soda water, flour and salt some time), and many of my old favorite recipes made in a wok taste much better. It’s the even distribution of heat, the ability to cook with high heat and a large surface area, to brown but not char, to give many ingredients a chance to taste the heat instead of working with a dissatisfying pile of ingredients all competing for a chance to touch the tin. Of course, it’s not necessary to have a wok to make stir-fry, but being well equipped never hurts.

So, here’s what happened. Red onion and white potatoes went into some corn oil for just a bit before salt started working its magic. When the potatoes were almost tender and the onion had just begun to break down, I added red and yellow bell peppers and went spice-crazy. After I was finished adding Spanish paprika, ground 5-spice blend, dried oregano, dried basil, freshly-ground black pepper and dried red pepper flakes, my veggies looked like they were covered in the snowy ash and dust of a post-apocalyptic landscape. I stirred again, beginning to fold instead of toss the ingredients, and then I added sliced mushrooms (with 2-3 inch diameter caps). A minute or two later, tomatoes and the surprise ninja of the night, large-dice pineapple joined the fun. To whet the wheel, I threw in about a tablespoon of hoisin sauce and a healthy splash of vinegar (the kind you dump those delicious Chinese dumplings into). After folding the ingredients again, I was finished. Of course, I gobbled up a bowl-full right away, but I recommend eating the result on rice or fresh salad greens. I ate the leftovers with some tofu cooked in soy sauce, which improved upon the flavors that had congealed overnight.

Next time I try a stir-fry, I’m making a curry. Coconut milk is readily-available here, and it’s DE-LI-CIOUS. Limes and lime leaves, however, take a little more digging!

Ingredients:
2 medium white potatoes, quartered and sliced (1/4 inch)
1 medium red onion, sliced (1/2 inch)
1 red bell pepper, sliced (1/2 inch)
1 yellow bell pepper, sliced (1/2 inch)
5-6 medium/large mushrooms, sliced (1/4 inch)
3 small tomatoes, quartered
1 cup fresh pineapple, chopped
1-2 T. each: hoisin sauce and vinegar (see above for description)
1-2 t. each: salt, freshly ground pepper, dried basil, dried oregano, dried red pepper flakes, Spanish paprika, ground 5-spice blend
high-heat oil

Sardine and avocado sandwich

I love this simple and hearty sandwich. I make it different each time, but the basics themselves were originally taken from the web from an article about Alton Brown losing weight. Imagine a tuna sandwich with some chest hair, more spunk and a sneaky charm. Oh, and if you’re mock-gagging because you don’t like fish or sardines or haven’t tried them, give this recipe a try and then make your judgments.

Get a can of sardines, either in brine or water or in oil (in China you can get them in chili oil, which is best in my opinion). open it up and reserve some of the oil if you’ve got that type. Otherwise, drain the water and put the contents in a bowl. Add oil from the can or some extra-virgin olive oil. Then throw in some salt n peppa, lemon juice and a secret ingredient of your choosing, preferably something that adds a kick, like some heat (dried or fresh chili, cayenne, etc.) or some boldness (smoked or sweet paprika). Or combine all spices by using Cajun seasoning. Mash it all up (and make sure you wiggle your hips a little in the process; it adds to the flavor).

Spread the resulting mixture on some toast, preferably with a little melted cheese on top (Swiss goes well, as does mozzarella). Add some sliced avocado (or, dress it up a little with avocado mashed with more lemon juice, salt, pepper and garlic power or fresh garlic). Cut your sandwich into two or four triangles just for fun and devour it in the three minutes it’ll take to get it down your gullet. Don’t forget to breathe!

Wish I could add a picture, but no digital camera at the moment. Maybe next time.

A new soup recipe is born!

As much as I love making interesting recipes from books and magazines, I also derive deep pleasure from making a creative dish with leftovers lying around (I hate wasted food to a point of paranoia). I usually end up with at least a carrot or some parsley at the end of the week. I plan my shopping trips such that I won’t have many leftovers, but life inevitably gets in the way, and a planned meal is not made or I forget to add something I meant to to a dish. Thus, this week’s adventure in off-the-top-of-my-head cooking: escarole soup.

When I shopped for groceries this past weekend, I knew I’d be making an escarole soup last night. I have a recipe in The Healthy Kitchen by Dr. Weil for a very simple soup with just broth and a head of escarole. That, by itself, will make a fulfilling soup, because escarole is a thick and hearty lettuce that withstands wilting in the hot liquid (it’s no shriveling spinach, that’s for sure). However, I like to beef up my escarole soup quite a bit more, and I find that this simple soup is a great “invention” dish for discovering new flavor cominations.

And last night sure was a practice in experimentation! First, I took stock of the extra produce sitting in the fridge and pantry. Let’s see…a carrot…a shallot…some frozen corn…garlic…just enough parsley…and bacon! Those were the conventional ingredients. I found some beautiful Yukon gold potatoes in the pantry (they’re for something this weekend, but one could be spared), and low and behold, a few straggling radishes from the week before that I hadn’t been able to squeeze into any other recipes since. The rest made perfect sense, but radishes? In soup? Why the heck not?

The radishes, chopped into 1/8-in. pieces like the carrot, went in with the aromatics. By the time the soup was ready for eating, they had lost most of their flavor, but a little did remain. If nothing else, they added bulk to the soup, and I got rid of them before they started to rot. I also had some artisan sourdough bread about to go stale, so I cut a thick piece (1-in. thick) and threw that in too. Bread will disintegrate and add a nice texture to the broth; it’s like magic for thickening soups.

The end result was a very bulky but savory (and intriguing) combination of ingredients in broth that I’ll happily repeat in the future, though perhaps never exactly like this. The best part about soups is that you never have to make the same one twice.

The recipe can be found here.

Weekly menu 2

1. Entree: panzanella (bread salad)
Side: baked sweet potatoes with honey cinnamon butter
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2. Entree: quinoa risotto with mushrooms and thyme
Side: spinach salad with almonds and kumquats
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3. Entree: black beans and tomatoes
Side: Indian-style jasmine rice and peas
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4. Entree: couscous with cilantro and lemon juice
Side: steamed broccoli and cauliflower
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5. Entree: escarole and vegetable soup

Epicurious interviews Michael Pollan

If you’re interested in (a) healthy eating, (b) cooking for yourself, (c) frugal living, or (d) all of the above, then check out this interview with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto on epicurious.com.

Enjoy!

Spinach salad with almonds and kumquats

I also made this recipe last night. I always love a good salad, and this one is a great salad. For convenience and economic reasons, I typically make and eat simple green garden salads with a romaine base and cucumbers, radishes, and sometimes tomatoes added in. My dressings hardly vary, either; they’re usually a red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar based vinaigrette. I make these salads because they don’t require a recipe, they balance out my meals with some much-needed greens, and they’re easy to make.

However, I get really sick of romaine salads after a few weeks of eating the same ones over and over. Any variation is usually devoured as if it were the tastiest thing on the planet. The spinach salad I made last night was not only creative and delicious, it required several flavors I don’t normally think of using when making salad, and it inspired me to dress up my “usual” weeknight salad by incorporating some of these tastes.

The dressing is a mixture of rice vinegar, sesame oil, sliced kumquats (delicious!), ginger and shallots. Mouth-watering, right? Toss that with cilantro, mushrooms, toasted sliced almonds and spinach, and you’ve got a tangy, crunchy salad that’ll definitely have you reaching for this recipe again and again.

As a side note, if you’ve never used/eaten kumquats before (I hadn’t before last night), they’re a sweet, tiny orange-type fruit barely bigger than a large grape. You can eat the skin (you have to; there’s not much inside of them) after washing well. Just slice them up with the skin like lemon slices, and toss them in to a salad. They’re both sweet and sour and a good alternative to madarins.

An educational dinner

Two of my friends came over for an excellent vegetarian dinner last night. We made two dishes from Bon Appetit magazine (my first to make from that publication), and they complimented each other nicely. We made a quinoa and musroom risotto and spinach salad with kumquats and almonds.

One of the friends, fortunately, is a good cook. (And, she waits at my favorite restaurant in the world, Eastside Cafe in Austin!) A vegetarian from a young age, she’s been cooking for herself since she was 10. Needless to say, she’s good at making things up on the spot and just knowing which ingredients compliment each other well and what proportions to add to a dish, etc. That kind of improvisation is not a strength of mine, but I’m quickly learning, by making many different recipes and learning a little from each one.

Due to her tips while we cooked (I played soux chef, and she ended up doing the sauteing for the risotto), I learned a little of the chemistry behind what happens when you sautee mushrooms. The oil/fat in the pan, coupled with heat, cooks and flavors the outside of the mushrooms, while liquid added after sauteing steams the inside of the mushrooms. This is why, when you make a dish that has cooked mushrooms in it, you almost always sautee them first by themselves or with some aromatics (onions, shallots, garlic, etc.) and then add everything else to the pan/pot afterwards.

It was also educational to cook with someone who’s not a stickler about measurements and step-by-step directions, as I am. I first was exposed to cooking by occasionally (though not attentively) watching my mom and then attempting to cook with Brandon. However, much of my own skill has been self-taught through the past few years of practice by following recipe after recipe, sometimes with a cooking partner, but increasingly by myself. I make frequent mistakes, especially when venturing into new territory, but of course, this is the best way to learn. Now, I am slowly learning to take the knowledge I’ve accumulated and put it to use by making up recipes as I go, based on desire and an idea of how ingredients act together. Last night’s dinner has inspired me to traverse this new path in cooking with a little more confidence.

Indian food: how-to and recipe web site

If you enjoy making Indian food (it’s my favorite cuisine) and don’t know about Majula’s Kitchen, check it out. She’s got really good videos and very authentic recipes.

One of my biggest complaints with most Indian food recipes is that they don’t taste authentic, even if I buy the real imported spices from an Indian food specialty store. These recipes taste wonderful; some are better than the dishes in most restaurants.

Making panzanella

Last night’s dinner was a classic kitchen adventure that wonderfully complimented a roller-coaster day. Toes were stubbed, nails bitten, teeth gnashed, and ingredients cursed, but luckily, all improvisations turned out well. Brandon and I made panzanella, or bread salad, combining ideas from a few different recipes with our own judgments. The result was delicious.

Yesterday afternoon, I was assailed by the smell of heated garlic and olive oil upon entering my apartment. Brandon was in the kitchen looking not at all worse for the wear after trying cooking eggplant, a piece of Mother Earth neither of us is very fond of, mostly due to a lack of ability to cook it well. Typically, when we make it, it ends up tasting bitter, even without the skin. Several times in the past, we’d completely written off the preparing of it as a culinary feat that was simply beyond us. However, a recent $1-per-eggplant sale at Central Market encouraged Brandon to once again tred in that taboo arena.

Mark Bittman suggests that, to take the bitterness out of less-than-fresh eggplant, you cover your cut eggplant in salt for about an hour, then rinse off the salt and cook. Eggplant typically tastes bitter when it is not very fresh because, after only a few days, the bitterness of the skin begins to seep into the vegetable’s flesh, irrevocably tainting it for the faint-hearted consumer. Ours wasn’t very fresh; in fact, it had just entered the pre-wrinkle phase of its life on the shelf.  After following Bittman’s prep suggestions, Brandon chose to sautee, following this process: use plenty of oil and garlic and stir constantly for the first 5-7 minutes until the pieces are almost fall-apart tender and have begun to release the oil (that is immediately soaked up by the eggplant). Bittman, as always, could be trusted, and the end result was soggy, melt-in-your mouth delicious vegetable flesh I could swear I had never tasted before. Delicious eggplant, indeed!

As a side note, another way to cook the eggplant using much less oil is to broil it. Brush peeled, sliced eggplant with olive oil, salt and pepper and broil about 4-6 inches from the heat source for about 10 minutes, turning once. Also, you’ll notice in the recipe that I soaked the red onions in ice water for a while. This removes some of the sharpness of the onions and makes them easier to digest for those who have problems with them (such as heartburn…*cough* Brandon *cough*).

The next step in our adventure was preparing the croutons for our bread salad. You can prepare the bread for such a dish many different ways, but we chose to sautee our rock-hard 2-week-old stale bread loaf in oil and garlic rather than toast it (it was plenty hard already, thank you very much!), as some recipes will suggest. After this came the veggies and dressing, and the end result was a delicious, crunchy, spinachy-garlic eggplant salad goulash, the likes of which I haven’t tasted anywhere. Upvote Team Running Chefs!

We prepared this dish with a side of baked sweet potatoes with honey cinnamon butter inspired by a side dish served at Texas Land and Cattle. Sweet potatoes scrubbed and glazed with salt, pepper and olive oil will carmelize beautifully when roasted for an hour. Brandon’s own made-up-on-the-spot honey cinnamon butter was comprised of about 4 tbsp. butter, 1 tbsp. honey, and 1 tsp. Vietnamese cinnamon. Rechilled and then brought to the table at serving time, this sweet, buttery nectar was almost (but not quite) superfluous because of the tender sweetness of the potatoes.

Overall, an excellent kitchen adventure. But beware: for the superstitious among you, this dish may be a lover’s bane. After an evening of romance and brandy (in preliminary celebration of our 5th anniversary as a couple) we made dinner and ate it. As it was digesting, mixed feelings of amorous regard and impatient disgust put an awkward tone on the rest of the night. As such trivial (and perhaps brandy-induced) squabbles rarely last long and ruin an entire evening, we’ve blamed it on the panzanella. Who knows? Try the dish out for yourself, but tred lightly if you make it with a loved one.

“Better Than Bouillon” (concentrated broth paste)

Lately, I’ve been unable to find the vegan bouillon cubes I have been using rather than my homemade vegetable broth. Instead, I tried out this convenient gem: “Better Than Bouillon” (vegetable variety, organic).

This is an easy way to prepare broth (and it comes in all types, not just vegetable). It’s not 100% additive-free, but it’s pretty close and cheaper than buying cartons of organic broth/stock. It’s got a soy sauce base and thus is quite salty and dark in color, but cut out the salt in any recipe you use this with, and the resulting balance is usually delicious. It doesn’t beat out homemade broth, but when you’ve no time to make your own, it’s definitely better than MSG-packed normal bouillon cubes or the thinned-out canned stuff.

UPDATE: After using this concentrated paste in several recipes, I’ve deduced that you should probably double the amount of water per teaspoon that is called for on the jar. In other words, instead of adding 1 tsp. to 8 oz. boiling water, add 1 tsp. to 16 oz. boiling water. Or, 1 tbsp. to 6 cups boiling water. Otherwise, it can be too salty tasting.

A philosophy to cook and eat by

As a general rule, I cook and eat by the following guidelines:

1. Severely limit consumption of artificial “food substitutes,” artificial sweeteners, pre-processed foods and preservatives.

2. Don’t consume an ingredient you haven’t heard of (especially if it has a lab-derived sounding name).

3. Try to limit the amount of ingredients in food to 5-8.

4. Eat all types of food – “good” and “bad” – in moderation.

Of course, when I eat out, I cannot completely control what is in the food I eat. I can choose restaurants based on quality of ingredients, but the real area of my control falls in my own kitchen. I eat out in moderation, thus limiting the amount of “unknowns” introduced to my body. When I cook, I try to make as much as possible from scratch. What I cannot make from scratch, I critically examine for artificial ingredients, or food substitutes that are not actually food. I attempt to consume as little pre-processed food as possible. I buy fresh, seasonal veggies instead of canned, and I make my own stock; I do anything I can to cut down on the amount of preserved foods I ingest.

When I began to follow these guidelines, about a year ago, I lost about 15 pounds without intending to or even exercising. Simply put, I cut out the fluff in my diet – the non-whole-food elements – and allowed my body to simply digest the types of food it is designed to handle. What fell off with those 15 pounds was the type of unhealthy fats that stick around for no good reason; the fats that my body isn’t designed to digest in the first place.

Food, and my intake of it, is one thing I can control. There are several things that will affect my health throughout life that I cannot control; for example, I don’t have the best family history when it comes to heart disease and related ailments, diabetes and thyroid disease. My body will always be prone to handle ingredients, especially unhealthy ones, in ways that are not the best for it. Thus, the best life insurance policy I can invest in is my diet. The better things I put into my body now and for the rest of my life, the better chance my body will have of dealing with everything else that life brings its way. I made that investment before I even knew much about cooking; the knowledge and passion I’ve developed since have led me to where I am today.

For more information on this approach to eating and cooking, see Michael Pollan’s excellent and informative book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

Cookbook: The Healthy Kitchen

Another of my absolute favorite cookbooks is The Healthy Kitchen by wellness doctor Dr. Andrew Weil and chef Rosie Daily. It’s a great book because not only is it very healthy, but it is also a great recipe book. Most health cookbooks I have, like the Sugar Solution and the Low GI Diet Cookbook are great books for cooking heart healthily, but the recipes aren’t always very creative from a culinary standpoint.

The Healthy Kitchen, however, contains recipes that are at once healthy AND delicious. Sure, you’re skipping the butter for a lower-fat oil, but you don’t notice the difference in these wonderfully thought-out recipes. My favorite recipe is the pureed butternut squash soup with pesto garnish, and the green squash soup (with artichoke heart puree base) is a close second.

This cookbook also made me realize what I personally love best about cooking: cooking simply with whole, unprocessed ingredients is not only healthiest, but tastier than anything you can find in most restaurants.

Bonus: you can buy this book for about a dollar plus shipping on amazon.com.

Homemade gnocchi!

On October 12th, I spent much of my day making homemade sweet potato gnocchi (or, as my cute Chilean friend calls them, “nonkis”) following a recipe from Gourmet magazine (now sadly discontinued).

It was tedious but tons of fun. I made all the little pasta balls and then froze them on the baking sheet I had set them on as I made them, plucked them off the sheet once they were hard, and them tossed them in a bag.

The scariest moment came when I cooked them that evening. The recipe says you can freeze the gnocchi but should cook them without thawing first. The expected cook time tells you how long you should wait until you begin to see the little balls of dough popping to the surface (meaning they’re done), but the time is based on cooking them before freezing. For a sad 10 minutes, I thought my entire day’s labor was a waste, as the balls sat contentedly at the bottom for well over 4 times the cooking time suggested in the recipe.

Fortunately, with a little TLC and a wooden spoon, Brandon was able to stir them gently enough to separate them a little without disfiguring them, and soon the thawed and cooked little pieces of joy began floating to the surface!

The dish was delightful and, if I do say so myself, the best thing I’ve made so far. Or, at least the dish of which I’m proudest! And, I didn’t even have a potato ricer.

I’ve attached some pictures. Sorry they’re so blurry, but you’ll get the idea.

The best cookbook EVER

With holiday season approaching, I thought I’d give a recommendation for the best cookbook I’ve ever had the pleasure of using: Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. It makes the perfect gift for any cook, no matter the experience level. While recipe maniacs like myself find it very handy, more inventive and go-with-the-flow creative types will love it too.

This book isn’t just a list of recipes with pretty pictures. It’s a 900+ page textbook with tips for almost every imaginable culinary feat, as well as some specific and many many general recipes. Bittman organizes the book by types of food (as many cookbooks are organized) and includes several paragrahs or pages of text on how to approach the food group from a health, diet, culinary, and consumer standpoint. He doesn’t preach, though; the book is so chock-full of plain, no-nonsense instructions and cooking advice that there’s isn’t any room for food apologetics.

My favorite thing about this book, however, is that it’s the perfect tool for the budding amateur chef like myself. Instead of telling you how to cook vegetable minestrone, for example, Bittman forces you to make a number of decisions while planning out your veggie soup. He says “2 cups chopped hard vegetables” instead of specifically telling you what to use. You have to make decisions based on your own knowledge of what flavor combinations are best, or, if you’re clueless about even that, you can refer back to his text on hard vegetables (he has numerous excellent comparison charts for decisions such as these) for help deciding whether rutabega or butternut squash would work best with parsnips or potatoes.

And, finally, the title doesn’t lie; it really has everything. Have you ever been asked to make something very common for the first time and not known where to find a general recipe? It can be overwhelming rifling through the numerous recipes a search engine will provide, and cooking websites can be just as confusing. With Bittman’s book, whether someone asks you to make coconut macaroons or quiche, you’ll have a very basic, made-from-scratch recipe at your fingertips, as well as a bevy of suggestions for ways to spruce it up if you want to go beyond the basic.

Cooking really is about exploration, and this is just the book to encourage that exploration while subtly hinting at ways to keep your dishes structured.

Weekly menu 1

1. Entree: Black-eyed pea soup/stew with sausage substituted for shrimp   Side:  roasted summer squash and zucchini tossed with EVOO, salt and pepper   Side: carrot ginger cornbread
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2. Entree: Pasta salad with arugula pesto   Side: Green garden salad and homemade creamy vinaigrette
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3. Entree: bulgur and herb salad   Side: ginger garlic green beans
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4. Entree: spinach and sweet potato salad   Side: roasted cauliflower with kalamata vinaigrette
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5. Entree: pasta with zucchini and creme fraiche   Side: green garden salad and homemade creamy vinaigrette

Keepers: carrot ginger cornbread, pasta with zucchini, roasted cauliflower with kalamata vinaigrette, bulgur and herb