That time I set the pot on fire

We had a pub crawl yesterday, and as a result I was severely hungover today. Watching a Jersey Shore marathon and consuming variations on the theme of "bread and cheese" for meals were the order of the day.  At least the weather was cooperating: drizzling mist alternated with purple rain clouds and outright downpours all afternoon.

So when I decided dinner was going to be sweet cheese wontons washed down with OJ leftover from yesterday's festivities, I got to work. The first thing I did was make the filling: one ounce each of goat cheese and neufchâtel, blended with a couple teaspoons of honey. Next, I got out the tiny pot I use for frying things, namely because it cuts down on oil waste and nutrition guilt. I put it on medium heat and started filling wontons.

I had filled about eight wontons when I realized I could hear the heat in the oil. Thinking I just needed to turn down the heat, I turned around to see the oil smoking profusely.  I turned down the heat and dug frantically through the "clean" side of the kitchen sink for the lid, then remembered it was still in the
cabinet. When I turned around, this was what I saw:

FIRE!!!
For obvious safety reasons, I opted for an illustration rather than a photograph of this moment.

There were FLAMES coming out of the pot.  I dropped the lid on as fast as I could and moved it to a cold burner.  The kitchen and the living room were both hazy with smoke now, so I opened up the windows and set up my bedroom fan to circulate the air (alarmingly, the fire alarm did not go off, even though it will sometimes rebel at baking cookies or sauteed onions).

A little taken aback but unsure of what else to do, I went back to filling wontons until I had used up the cheese mixture, about a dozen of them total.  I greased a baking sheet, spaced the wontons out on it, then brushed the tops with a little oil.  Fifteen minutes at 375F and they were done.

The wontons were probably too rich for dinner, and the cheese oozed out the sides, but they were delicious.  Also, my apartment smelled for several hours and still isn't completely cleared of burnt oil-aroma.

At least I didn't burn down the apartment, though!

~Lindsey

Margherita pizza

I think if I had to pick one food to eat for the rest of my life, pizza would be near the top of the list.  It's versatile, you can put anything on it, and at its most basic level, you can't get any more sublime than bread and cheese.  Throw in some tangy tomato slices and some fresh basil bits and whoa.

Those red things are tomato slices, not ginormous pepperonis.

When I make pizza, I like to go ahead and make a whole pan's worth.  If I'm going to mix up the dough, grate the cheese, and prep toppings, I might as well get dinner and a couple lunches out of it.  This recipe fills up a half-sheet pan (or your basic cookie sheet).

Pizza dough

3 c. flour (I like to use 50:50 whole wheat and AP flour, or 33:67 WW:AP for a slightly lighter crust)

2 t. salt

1.5 tsp yeast

about 1 1/4 c. warm water

optional: 2 T oil, 1-2 T honey

In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, and yeast together.  Add 1 c. water and the oil & honey, if using.  Mix with a spoon or spatula until the dough forms a shaggy ball, adding more water if necessary.  Once it's kind of shaggy, start to knead with your hands.  (To save on clean-up, I use a wide bowl and just knead the dough in the bowl, rotating the bowl to get all the crumbs worked in.  I learned this tip from my mom!)  Once all the flour is incorporated, knead for about 5 minutes or longer if you want until the dough is smooth and slightly elastic and just barely tacky.  If it's too wet, work a little more flour into the dough.  If it's too dry, sprinkle on some water about 1T at a time.  Once it's kneaded, drizzle a little olive oil over the top and roll the dough in it, using the dough to spread the oil over the bowl and make sure the dough is completely covered.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for a couple hours or until doubled.

Margherita Pizza

1 recipe pizza dough

cornmeal

mozzarella cheese

1 awesomely-ripe tomato

fresh basil, cut into chiffonade

parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 425F.  Take out your pan and sprinkle some cornmeal on it to keep the crust from sticking to the pan.  Be liberal.  Pat the dough into the pan and smush it to cover the pan.  Spread shredded mozzarella cheese to cover the surface of the dough.  I like lots of cheese, so I make sure there's thick, even coverage of the crust.  Take the tomato and use a serrated knife to make nice, thin slices--I cut mine about 1/4 " thick.  Chiffonade the basil and sprinkle it around on your cheese.  Then take your parmesan and grate it over the top of everything.  I added a pretty liberal amount of parmesan, too, because I like cheese a lot and because the parmesan helps it brown up nicely.

Bake the pizza for about 20 minutes or until the cheese is the right shade of brown for you.  Let it sit for a minute or two if you can help it, then slice and enjoy!

This is perfect for a lazy weekend day, but if you think ahead you can make it on a weeknight pretty easily, too--if you mix up the dough before you go to work/school, leave it on the counter all day, it's ready to go when you get home (in fact, that would make for a pretty airy, easy-to-crisp crust, especially if you rolled it thin with a rolling pin).

~Lindsey

Amateur Recipe Invention and Hurricane Noodles

We cook because we are hungry. It is for this reason that cooking, even at the most basic level, guarantees a sense of satisfaction. Whatever it is you cook, be it a soup or a fried egg, the end product will not only leave you fed but also with a sense that you have fed yourself. That is the fundamental. The act of creation. It is what makes cooking deeply personal. It is what makes it both endlessly rewarding and daunting.

This authorship in cooking inevitably means there is risk. Your self-esteem is on the line here. Right before I eat what I cook, my heart sinks in anxiety. I get stupid, my sympathetics go into first-world stress overdrive. The food is me, and if it is no good, neither am I, and the hours I had spent grocery shopping and dicing vegetables and adjusting heat and stirring and tweaking spices were a waste. It wrecks me. Don't get me started on how I feel when I cook for others.

It is for the moment of pure ecstasy---that food porn, imaginary camera shot in our own kitchens---that keeps us coming back with new recipes and ingredients and tools. On the flip side, there will always be those times when the stuff you cook is just bad. Blech. Bland stews. Gratuitously soy-sauced stir fries. Bone dry cakes. We've all been there. Most of the time,there's at least something to blame. Carrots just aren't for me. The recipe wasn't good. My oven thermometer is a fibbing piece of shit.

All those excuses become moot when you start from scratch. For the amateur cook, nothing feels more risky than inventing a recipe. It seems ridiculous that you would even attempt it. There are thousands of tried and true recipes that are already out there. Why even bother? What do I know? Well, I'm here to say there are lots of reasons to try and that you know more than you give yourself credit.

Reason #1 – You like food things
Jacque Pepin said that if you take a recipe someone else wrote and over time you make small adjustments to that recipe to fit your liking, that recipe is now yours. This definition of “your recipe” includes all the dishes that have been made by taking a recipe from Joy of Cooking and doubling the butter. While that may sound like L.H.O.O.Q.esque kitsch, it illustrates something important, which is to say, recipe invention happens when you take something you enjoy and combine it with more stuff you enjoy. I'd like to think that many of the gustatory combos we love today were made when some dude took a risk and made a strange combination of stuff they liked. Mint and chocolate. Tomato and cheese. Egg and paprika. If you like more than one food thing, you are on your way to inventing recipes.

Reason #2 – You already think about cooking with a critical and analytical mind
Cooking gives you freedom to eat what you want. It gives the freedom to not eat the same Subway sandwich for lunch everyday, to not pay the huge overhead cost, and to not get the teriyaki sauce that's sweeter than you'd like. You can definitely make something better.

That's pretty much the whole ball game of creating recipes: defining what you like and figuring out how to get there. But how DO you get there? Sounds tricky, like learning a new science, but you already do it all the time both purposely and accidentally. You like garlic, so you add triple garlic to your stir fries, and it's really good. You kind of burn your onions while caramelizing them, but it turns out really good in a different way. You're out of strawberry preserves so you substitute honey into your PB&J, and you have a new snack staple. You are watching out for your arteries so you use half the butter in your Alfredo sauce, and still, it's really good. You don't have bay leaves, so you leave them out of your soup, and you can't really tell the difference. You don't have baking soda so you use baking powder, and that was silly. You don't have onions so you use onion powder, and that was also really silly. Each time you have cooked, you have learned a little more about what each step does for the final product. You realize what you can leave out and what you absolutely can't. You begin to parse the flavors of a dish. You develop your palate.

Reason #3 – It's your kitchen, and you don't give a fuck
So you tried to make macaroni and cheese stuffed tomatoes, which on paper sounded awesome, but the end product was mushy red-tinted mac and cheese. Who gives a fuck! It's your kitchen. No one is judging. You are cooking for you and only you. You hold onto that fantasy of cutting into a oven roasted tomato bowl filled with creamy and crunchy macaroni and cheese that holds form for a mere moment before melting in your mouth. It's not going to be perfect the first time around. Of course it's not! There is so much to cooking and you don't know the half of it. Like me, you're a pretty big noob, but you're dish is going places, and even though it isn't THE divine macaroni and cheese stuffed tomato, it's still macaroni and cheese with tomatoes, and that's still pretty fucking great. Drizzle on some hot sauce, mix in a slice of butter, smile like a fatty, and try again tomorrow.

Aaand the recipe – Hurricane Noodles, aka miso chili noodles with basil

Here's a recipe I've made recently using the amateur principles I've outlined above. Cooped up waiting for Hurricane Irene to strike, I decided to cook what might have been … my last meal. I was craving both miso soup and bean and tomato chili, stuff I've cooked before. I thought, why not, let's combine them. And what the hell, chickpeas are awesome, and so is ginger, and so is teriyaki sauce, and so is Sriracha, and so is that Korean hot pepper paste (gochujang), and so is beer, and so is fresh basil, and hey, why not some noodles, because noodles make everything awesome. Sounding pretty good. (It's also vegan if you use miso without fish.) Let's do it.

INGREDIENTS
4 tbsp olive oil
1 pound extra firm tofu, pressed and diced into ½ inch cubes
½ medium Vidalia onion, diced
6 cloves ginger, minced
1 tbsp ginger, minced
5 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked for at least 4 hours and then diced

Powders – mix well beforehand
2 tbsp Chipotle chili powder
2 tbsp miso soup powder mix (powder called for 1 tbsp per 3 cups of water for miso soup)
2 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp all-purpose flower
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp granulated sea salt

Teriyaki sauce – mix well beforehand
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp Sriracha sauce
1 tbsp Korean hot pepper paste (gochujang)
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
4 tbsp cold water

1 can (14.5oz) diced tomatoes
3 oz tomato paste
1 can (15.5oz) chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 bottle Magic Hat #9 (or whatever beer you think would be good)

½ pound somen noodles (or whatever noodles you like), cooked according to package directions
a few handfuls of basil, chiffonade-ed
a bunch of scallions, chopped

METHOD
In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and fry the tofu until golden.

Add onions and cook for about 5 minutes.

Add garlic and ginger and mushrooms. Cook for another 30 seconds.

Add in all the powders and stir until even distributed.

Add in teriyaki sauce. Stir well.

Add in half bottle of Magic Hat #9. Drink the rest. Bring pot to boil.

Add tomatoes, tomato paste, and chickpeas. Stir. Bring back to a boil. Then immediately bring back down to a simmer and COVER. Leave it for at least 2 hours, stirring every half hour or so.

Remove chili from heat (or continue simmering, since the longer the better, but you're starving by now). Adjust seasoning.

In an appropriately sized bowl, toss together the chili and noodles. Divide into individual portions. Top with basil and scallions.



And that's it. The dish turned out a little spicier than I expected, and more ginger would've been good, and my basil was a little old, but you know what? A lot of it was fantastic. The miso really comes out and works well to balance the heat and makes the chili so, so hearty. The mix of different spiciness along with the teryaki makes for a chili that is sweet, tangy, smoky, and rich. The tofu absorbs all this and makes the texture of the dish a bit creamy, and the mushrooms give a meaty bite. The basil is absolutely critical with its crunch and lemony and peppery aromatics that combines perfectly with the sweet and sour chili. The noodles and tomatoes serve their tried and true role of bringing everything together. I came away from this first attempt proud and elated and begged my roommate to eat some even though he was already stuffed from free med school pizza. And next time it will only be better.

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