Ooey gooey brunch: Monkey Bread

Post-exams is always a daze, but especially after finals.  To celebrate being done (and to nurse our inevitable hangovers), some of my friends and I got together and made brunch on Friday morning.  At my house growing up, you can't have holiday brunch without Monkey Bread, also known as pull-apart bread, also known as the best breakfast treat ever.  My mom would make this every Christmas Eve because it was easy to just throw it in the oven while we opened presents.  Then, the warm, cinnamon-sugar smell would remind us that we were starving and we would cluster around the counter, sneaking pieces before they cooled and snacking on them loudly to cool them even as we gobbled them down.

My mom always made ours in this special pan--a white ceramic loaf pan with a little tray to turn it out onto after it baked.  She also used frozen roll dough cut into pieces and dipped them in butter, cinnamon, and sugar.  Since I like to bake bread from scratch (and since it's actually cheaper), I used the recipe found here at Eatin' on the Cheap to make Monkey Bread from scratch.

The recipe is not too complicated if you're familiar with yeast breads: the dough is enriched (milk for liquid, plus some melted butter and some sugar) and also contains some cinnamon.  The sugar mixture for coating contains cinnamon and nutmeg mixed with brown sugar, and then the bottom of the pan gets a mix of melted butter, brown sugar, and chopped walnuts.  Then it's just a matter of assembly (and patience)!

The dough has to be mixed, kneaded, and left to rise for about an hour before you can really start the rest of the recipe.

Get everything set up first: melted butter, sugar-spice mixture, and dough chunks.

The dough gets divided into quarters.  Each quarter is rolled into a log and then cut into 16 pieces.  (Here's a great way to practice your fractions if you're rusty.  I cut the log in half, then each half into halves, then each of those into four pieces.)

Roll a quarter of the dough into a log and cut it into 16 pieces.

The dipping part is definitely the messiest part.  I suggest having the sugar/spice bowl right next to the bundt pan so there's minimal sugar all over afterwards.  I also thought it was easier to plop the buttered dough piece into the bowl and scoop some sugar over it rather than actually rolling it around.

Dip the pieces in butter and then into the sugar-spice mixture.
Then arrange the pieces over the bottom of the bundt pan.

Repeat for all four quarters of the bread dough, layering as you go and smushing the dough as necessary to make it fit tightly in the pan.  Toward the end I ran out of sugar for rolling, so I just dipped the dough in butter and threw them in there (luckily the top ones turn into the bottom ones once you flip it).

Add more pieces in layers until you've used them all up, about 3-4 deep.
I ran out of sugar and spice at the end so these last few are just dipped in butter.

Now you can cover it and put the pan in the fridge overnight.  In the morning, take the pan out an hour before you want to bake it.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40-50 minutes (mine was perfect at 40 minutes), then let it cool for five minutes in the pan.  Don't let it cool too much longer than that, though, or else it will stick in the pan.  Put a plate or platter over the top of the bundt pan and flip the whole thing over and voila! You're ready to go.

Ooey, gooey, caramely goodness!

This was so delicious and really not complicated--totally worth it.  If you're pressed for time, frozen roll dough or (as per other recipes I saw on the internet) biscuit dough would probably work okay, too...but the extra oomph from the bread being cinnamony was pretty delicious.

Happy holidays!

Winter Vegetable Feast

These ain't ya mama's brussel sprouts.

When it's cold outside, and Thanksgiving is over, and you're waiting for the first real snow to hit the ground, there's nothing that warms things up like roasting some winter veg in the oven.

I know I'm not the first one on the bandwagon here, but really: simple, roasted vegetables are the way to go!  Nothing tastes heartier or more delicious than slightly crisped, well-seasoned vegetables that the oven has turned into nutritious dinner-jewels.  (okay, I'm waxing a little poetic, but they're delicious!)

The best part, especially now around finals, is that they're way hands-off.  Throw them in the oven, sit down, go through a lecture, pop up to check on them, and there! dinner's all done.

Oven-baked Carnival squash with a pseudo-poached egg
and roasted brussel sprouts

I like to make my winter squash the way my mom used to, cut in half, gutted, and baked in a pan with a little water in the bottom and foil on top until it's melt-in-your-mouth tender.  This takes about an hour to an hour and a half, so it's good to start ahead of everything else.

Brussel sprouts are a new wonder, too.  When I was little, they were awful: Mom would steam them in the microwave or on the stove, and I remember them being a terrible olive color and smelling disgusting, with a texture that was basically mush.  These I halved and tossed with some olive oil, salt & pepper and popped into the oven 20 minutes before the squash was done.

To pull it all together, I wanted a fried egg with an oozy yolk, but decided I'd made enough dishes for myself.  With the squash done, I put it on a plate, cracked an egg in the middle, and covered with plastic wrap.  Microwave for about a minute or two (check every thirty seconds or so!) until it's done the way you like it, and it looks way prettier than the time it takes to make would suggest.

Bonus: you can actually roast squash seeds in about 5 minutes in the microwave! I did not know this was possible.  I washed them and originally was just going to dry them in the microwave, but after a "nuke for a minute, stir, repeat" for a couple of tries, I added a tiny splash of oil and salt and continued microwaving in 1-minute bursts until they were toasted.  It probably was 5-6 minutes total--I didn't really keep track and since I was trying this out I wasn't even sure it would work.  But it was way faster and just as delicious as the oven, without washing a pan afterwards.

Cheater French Onion Soup

If I had to pick one soup to eat for the rest of my life...it'd probably be French onion.  (It might be tomato soup, but I think it'd depend on the day you ask.)  There is something fantastic about the simplicity of it: onions, cooked slowly until they turn a dark, caramel brown; a few simple seasonings; a rich broth; and of course, a toasted, melty, cheesy crust of bread on top sopping up the juices.

There's just one problem.  French onion soup takes a long time to make.  I mean, caramelized onions are no joke--you have to cook them over low heat for half an hour or forty-five minutes before you're even close to ready, and then you have to add everything else and give it some time to simmer together....By the time you're lapping up the dregs from the bottom of your soup crock you've been hungry (and smelling soup-makings) for hours.

Well, I offer you a simple solution: cheat.

That's right, I said it.  Cheat.

Last year I was perusing foodgawker and the like and came upon a wondrous claim: that, by employing the miracle machine that is the crock pot, one could make caramelized onions without any effort or waiting or constant attention.  Turns out, it's really simple.  Combine pre-caramelized onions with a little vegetable (or beef, if you're into that) broth, some thyme, salt, and pepper, and a cheesy toast-thing for dipping, and you're good to go.

Caramelized onions
6-8 large yellow onions
2 T butter

-Halve and peel the onions, then slice evenly in the direction of your choosing.  (I went cross-grain, but you could julienne, too, if you prefer.  Not sure what difference, if any, it would make.)
-Put the butter in the bottom of a large crock pot. Throw all the onions on top of the butter, until the crock pot is full.
-Cook on high for a few hours to get things going, then turn down the heat.  Cook until the onions are caramelized to your taste.*

Yield: about 6-7 cups.  I put a jarful in the fridge, used some immediately, and froze two containers' worth.

*Note: I foolishly started mine at around 6pm, so at around 9 they were just starting to turn pale beige.  I turned the heat to low and went to bed, and they were perfect the next morning.

Cheater French Onion Soup
serves 1
1/4 to 1/2 c. caramelized onions
1 tsp vegetable bouillon mix or 1 veg bouillon cube
S&P to taste
dash of dried thyme
1 to 1 1/2 c. water

Combine all ingredients in a pot.  Simmer until warmed through.  Serve with cheesy toast things. 

Ready to be packed for lunch: in the bottom, caramelized onions.
Top right, dried thyme; bottom right, bouillon paste.

Cheesy toast things
favorite cheese
bread

Put cheese on bread.  Broil until bubbly.

Added hot water, stirred it around, and
let it sit for a few minutes.  Instant soup!

***
Here's how I cheated even more.  I packed this for lunch--our cafeteria has a hot water dispenser, so I put my onions and seasonings into a jar, packed cheese and crackers to eat on the side, and added hot water when I was ready to eat.  No fuss, plus it's warm and comforting when the weather has finally decided it's fall outside and should therefore be drizzly and gray all day.

Walnut tart

First off, a disclaimer: I am from Missouri.  In Missouri, we call that the Midwest, but here in Wisconsin people say I'm from "the South," rolling it in their mouth a little to make it come out softer and with a drawl.  In retaliation (or maybe just reflexively), my words come out a li'l more slurred together, I start droppin' g's and syllables an' stringin' ever'thin' all togetha an' gen'rally livin' up t' th' expectations they already have 'bout the South.

Anyway.

The South has lots of great culinary traditions, things that I didn't realize were so embedded in my food culture until I moved away and found out that biscuits and gravy is not, in fact, a given at a breakfast joint, or that Waffle House is not on every highway exit, or that chicken-fried anything but chicken was confusing and needed to be explained.

One of my favorite dishes that make me think of home is pecan pie: ooey, gooey, cloyingly sweet with the generous crunch of pecans and a plain crust for a counterpoint.  Pecan pie has a poor cousin, though, that's equally delicious--the chess pie.  Chess pie is basically pecan pie without any pecans.  Sugar, eggs, butter, all baked together in a pastry crust until the custard is set.  I ran into a few variations of the chess pie via The Kitchn and quickly realized that this is probably the easiest pie to have in your arsenal.  Mix it up, throw it in a crust, bake: no need for slicing, dicing, fruit-pie thickeners, or lattice crusts.  Simple.

So, when I was craving something sweet and wanted to try out my new tart pan, here's what I did.  I used the basic recipe for chess pie here (and general ideas about pie crust from David Leibovitz here) and decided to ramp it up with some walnuts.  Then for good measure, I added chocolate chips.  Jus' cause, y'know?

Ooh, look!  A shiny new tart pan.  I brushed it with oil before
I started because it needed a li'l something to get it all seasoned this first time.

Walnut Tart
Crust
1c. flour
1-2t. sugar
pinch salt
4-8T. butter

Combine flour, sugar, and salt.
Cut the butter into chunks and work into the flour.  You can use a pastry cutter or a food processor or your fingers.
Add about 1/4 c. ice-cold water and mix.  Add cold water 1T at a time until the dough comes together and sticks to itself to form a ball. Cover and throw in the fridge to chill while you mix up the filling.

Mmm, walnut filling!

Filling
3/4c. brown sugar
2T. butter, softened
2 eggs
~1 c. walnuts, chopped

Cream the butter and sugar, then add eggs one at a time, mixing well between each egg.
Stir in the walnuts.

Now--make the tart:
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Pull the crust out and roll it out, or if like me you somehow didn't do it right and it's kind of crumbly, press it into the tart pan until the bottom and sides are covered evenly.

Operation: crust-in-pan is a success!

Pour the walnut mixture into the crust.
Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top so they're dotted everywhere.

Are those...are those chocolate chips on top of that tart?  Why yes, yes they are!

Put the tart pan on a sheet pan so it's easy to pull out of the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown and puffed and set.

The chocolate chips kind of sink into the rest of the filling,
but don't worry!  They're there.

This is the hard part: let it cool before you eat it!  Or wait until it's partially cooled and cheat, like me.

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie

The autumn air is cool and leads me to daydream of pumpkin pie. This pumpkin-pie smoothie is a slimmer, quicker version of a pumpkin pie. Delicious way to start the day. I prefer not to measure and rather to eyeball.

Combine in Blender:
- Equal parts plain yogurt and canned pumpkin
- 1 splotchy-brown banana (this seems to be the most sugary sort)
- dash of milk--enough to liquify smoothie,
- 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
- A few dashes of pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg)

I will admit, it seems a bit strange or perhaps innovative to drink a pumpkin concoction, but delightful all the same.

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.

title image from http://hoosonline.virginia.edu/atf/cf/%7B7A479B31-0AD7-4154-814C-2C6C72C03E93%7D/Jessica%20Tabacca%20-%20My%20Cooking%20Disaster.JPG

End-of-summer galette

Nothing says summer like stone fruit: peaches, plums, nectarines--as soon as they hit rock-bottom prices at the store (and once the air hangs heavily with summer humidity), it's time to make pies or smoothies or just eat as many as you can out-of-hand.  My favorites are plums and nectarines.  (Peach fuzz still kinda weirds me out, you know?  But really good peaches are a mess to try and peel...thus, the nectarine.)  I was trying to find something easy to do with some nectarines because I just had tons of them and--much as I love them--I wanted to do more than just quarter them and munch on them as a snack.

My first creative use: salsa.  I forgot to take a picture of it.  (Shame on me, I know.  But I'm new at this!)  My summer research project involved working at a community garden, where they have a weekly cooking demo.  Last week's was fresh salsa, and I was inspired to make a fruity-spicy combo that went really great with plain tortilla chips.

Nectarine salsa (makes 1 bowl, serves 1 for dinner or a crowd at a party)

1 nectarine

1-2 banana peppers

half an onion

half a lime

salt

herbs of your choice

Method:

-Quarter the nectarine, remove the pit, and peel.  Dice medium to fine, depending on how you like your salsa.  I like this one pretty chunky.

-Dice the banana peppers the same size as the nectarine.  Be sure to remove the seeds before you dice them!

-Dice the onion and add it to the nectarine and peppers.  You can use red (a little sweeter, probably better) but I used white in a pinch and it worked fine.

-Juice the half a lime into the bowl of diced fruit and veg and add a pinch of salt.

-Mince some fresh herbs and add to the salsa.  I used a green onion and a few leaves of mint because that's what I had on hand, but the next time I made it I used a little basil and some chives--still good!  They just add some freshness and a brightness to the salsa.

-Mix everything up together and let it sit for a little if you can, or if you're like me just go ahead and eat 2/3 of the bowl right away with chips.

After I made the salsa (twice in two days), I decided it was time to go a little more traditional and make a dessert.  Pie always sounds like too much work, but I remembered that galettes are like pie but without the pan and are a little more forgiving.  I borrowed the base recipe for pie dough and general method from smitten kitchen, but I skipped the complicated parts (the ground almonds and the flour on the galette before I added the fruit).  

So...I couldn't wait.  I had to try a slice right away.

This galette used 2 1/2 nectarines...so almost 3, but I snacked on the scraps.  Basically, I think galettes are my new favorite dessert.  You make a pie dough, you roll it out, and then you slice and arrange your fruit in a pretty circle in the middle.  Leave about 2 inches or a little less around the circumference of the fruit so you have enough to tuck over the sides.  Then, I drizzled some honey over the top of the fruit, folded up the sides into pleats, and brushed the crust with egg.  A quick sprinkle of vanilla sugar and the whole thing went into the oven for I think 45 minutes.  

The directions said to transfer the galette right away to a cooling rack, which I did--the crust stayed nice and firm, with a hint of crackle as I bit into the sugared pastry.  It also said to wait 20 minutes before slicing, which I only barely managed to do.  But then I definitely had a slice.  Or two.  And I may or may not have eaten a big chunk of this for breakfast the next day.  (What?  It was around brunch time when I got up, anyway...)

This was the perfect way to end the summer.  But now it's off to school again...second year and the board exams looming!  

Enjoy the stone fruit while you can!

~Lindsey

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Pan-fried toast with fresh tomato slices, an over-easy egg, and mustard sprouts.

I went to a family medicine conference at the end of last week.  It was in my hometown, so I got to stay at my mom's house and be pampered by her.  While I had a lot of fun--scoping out all the residency displays and picking up a farm's worth of animal-shaped stress squeezie-things, hanging out with a friend from far away--it was still nice to come home to my own apartment.  However, knowing that I would be gone for a couple days, I had let my groceries dwindle pretty low.  So when I woke up for breakfast this morning, I found one egg and a weird assortment of veggies in the fridge.  A paw through the freezer turned up a little frozen bread buried in the back.  With a pat of butter in the pan, I managed to turn fridge leftovers into a pretty passable breakfast.  In other news--I definitely need to go to the store today.

~Lindsey

ULTIMATE Banana Bread

Two weekends ago, I was enjoying some rest and relaxation and watching way too many PBS specials. I learned about travel patterns of wolves in Yellowstone, how to scorch eggplant directly on grill coals, and best of all, how to make Ultimate Banana Bread on America's Test Kitchen. Since I don't have cable but have a wicked, silver, spaceship-shaped TV antenna that gets every PBS station known to man, I have grown to love America's Test Kitchen. This has been my summer fling. I don't have time for much TV during the study season, so I'm taking in as much summer-lovin', recipe-learnin' as I can!

This banana bread looked amazing on the show & it just so happened that I had amassed a half-dozen black bananas in my freezer over the course of the year. You may be thinking, "you can make two or three loaves with 6 bananas!". Au contraire mon frere! This delectable loaf takes 6 bananas. It's so packed with banana flavor that you don't want to stop eating it!

I'm sure you're dying to know how to make it. Well, here is the recipe, my friends (from America's Test Kitchen http://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/detail.php?docid=25349&extcode=M**ASCA00):

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt
6 large very ripe bananas (about 2 1/4 pounds), peeled (see note)
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter , melted and cooled slightly
2 large eggs
3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnuts , toasted and coarsely chopped (optional)
2 teaspoons granulated sugar

So, if your bananas are frozen, let them thaw and they will release their luscious juice. If they're not frozen then you have to nuke them in the microwave.

I'm getting ahead of myself.
1. First turn on your oven to 350F, spray a loaf pan (9"x5" or 8 1/2" x 4 1/2").
2. Whisk flour, salt & baking soda in large bowl (first time I made it I mistakenly put in baking powder, which causes you to have a much denser loaf. Still delicious, you just won't have as much rising action).
3. Here's the fun part! You get to microwave your bananas (skip if your bananas were frozen and already surrended their juice)! So, place FIVE (save the sixth - it's for decoration) bananas in a micro-safe bowl, cover with plastic wrap, poke holes, & microwave for 5 minutes. Make sure you keep an eye on it because the first time I did it, it boiled over and I had banana goo all over the turntable in my microwave.
4. Once they've juiced themselves, place them in a strainer, which I like to place directly over a [cold] saucepan on the stove. Leave them for ~15 min and stir occasionally. This gets all the juice into the pan.
5. Then place the bananas into another bowl where you will be mixing in more ingredients. Reduce the banana juice on the stove for ~5 min. It smells AMAZING at this point & you'll want to drink it. At least, I did.
6. When reduced, pour back into bowl of bananas and mash! Then whisk in butter [MELTED], eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla.
7. Gently fold this into the dry ingredients mix. It's okay if there are streaks of flour because they will go away when you add walnuts (if you choose) next!
8. So gently mix in your walnuts. Don't go nuts (hah)! You don't want to over-mix!
9. Pour into your loaf pan, cut up a banana on the diagonal and shingle along the edges. You may have the urge to cover the entire loaf with bananas, but it will not rise if you do that, so contain yourself! :-)
8. Lastly, sprinkle the top with 2 Tb of granulated sugar. This gives it a nice crust on the top.
10. Pop it into the oven for an hour or so (55-75 min. for the 8 1/2" pan and 50-70 min. for the 9" pan).
11. Let it cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 min, then remove and let it continue cooling for as long as you can stand without cutting into it & trying it! It won't be very long, I can assure you.

I took this to work for a birthday celebration and everyone went crazy. It's also been known to woo men. As we all know, the route to a man's heart is through their stomach! ;-) Enjoy ULTIMATE Banana Bread!

Love,
Whitney

"Shallot" by Jeff Friedman

There's a website I subscribe to that publishes a daily poem, and yesterday's was a beautiful little ode to a shallot.  You should read it here but my favorite part is the end:

Now you wait for me, 
shimmying in a sleek pan—
your streaked layers translucent 
in the glissando of sizzle—
giving up your bitterness 
to the peppery oil.


So much sibilance! Such great assonance, too, with the combination of short i and s sounds sound exactly like shallots in a pan.

Enjoy!
Lindsey

Say it with me: Rat-ah-too-ee

Ratatouille.

Is there another more enigmatic food word?  For me, (thanks, Disney/Pixar) it conjures up visions of a happily contented foodie-rat who moves to Paris to pursue his dream job as a chef.  It also makes me think of summer vacation, hot and humid days, and the south of France.

Ratatouille is a Provençal dish that really says everything summer: fresh as can be produce, thrown together with a few glugs of olive oil and some s&p, and baked until everything's tender and simmering in their own juices.  Sometimes when I want a quick pasta sauce, I do a riff on ratatouille in a saucepan and throw in some spaghetti or linguine and toss it around.

This ratatouille was inspired by smitten kitchen's excellent recipe for it here. If you are moderately good at slicing things, you're good to go.  If you have a mandoline, even better and you won't have to meticulously cut every slice yourself.  If slicing things carefully and consistently isn't your thing, dice everything the same size and throw it on a baking sheet or in a casserole and cook it anyway!  The original dish from Provence is pretty rustic and forgiving.

Ingredients:

1 baby eggplant

2 small or 1 large summer squash

1 medium zucchini

2 roma tomatoes

1 yellow onion

1 large or a couple small garlic cloves

olive oil

thyme

salt & pepper

I was feeling stripey.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375.

2. Slice the eggplant, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes thinly into rounds.  Cut the onion in half (or quarters) and slice the same thickness as the other veggies.
3. Pour 1-2 T of olive oil in the bottom of your casserole.  Grate a clove of garlic into the oil (thank you, microplane! or you could mince it.) and smush it around with your finger (or a spoon, I guess) so it gets into the olive oil and all over the bottom.

4. Layer the veggie slices in concentric circles in the baking dish.  

See how pretty?  I love the bright colors and the pattern the veggies make.

5. Drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil over the top, sprinkle with dried thyme or a few sprigs fresh if you have it, and salt & pepper generously.

6. Bake for 45-55 minutes until vegetables are tender and just starting to release some juices.  Bake covered the first 25 minutes and uncovered for the rest.

Voilà!

That's it!  Really, the hardest part is slicing the veggies thinly, and even that isn't that bad.  Plus, it looks so pretty as you arrange it in the dish that everyone will be impressed when you put it on the table.  I made this for a community potluck on Tuesday night and got so many compliments that I'm taking it tonight for a potluck with friends.

Update: There was just a little left over, so I saved it and had it for lunch over quinoa with another tiny drizzle of olive oil.  Yum!

Enjoy your summer veggies!

Love,
Lindsey

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiive! Part 2

Okay, so things got out of control.

I was just going along my merry way, feeding my little seed culture daily and watching it bubble and foam.  Finally, it was the last day for feeding the seed culture.  Now, good ol' Reinhart warned me that it should double in six hours or so, and that it might even triple.  But I didn't really believe him.  I sort of imagined that I might get a double rise but surely nothing bad could happen if I left the culture out overnight.  Well, see for yourself:

This is after six hours or so.  See the saucer?  This was my overflow insurance.

In a related note, sourdough starter, once dried, is surprisingly difficult to clean up: tacky, gooey, but also slightly crusty at the same time.

This was the next morning.  Whoops!  I guess I didn't think the wild yeasties had it in 'em.

Luckily, the culture survived, I made the barm, and then finally--after a week! I was ready to make bread.  Reinhart's recipe makes a huge bowlful of dough, so I got two baguettes and two smallish boules out of one recipe.  I made mine with half whole wheat and half bread flour, and the resulting bread...well, it had great flavor but I'm not sure that it tasted any better than Reinhart's other bread methods, like pain à l'ancienne.  But, now that the starter's made, I can keep it in the fridge, let it mellow out for a little bit, and feed it again when I want to make bread the next time!  Plus, this is perfect timing--I was just about to run out of yeast anyway.  Good thing my apartment air obliged!

Love,

Lindsey

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiiive

I have embarked upon a wild adventure.

No, I'm not climbing mountains or traversing cliffs barefooted or scuba-diving in the Marianas Trench.  Think more like wild as in organisms--growing organisms.  I started a sourdough culture!

I have fond memories of my mother experimenting similarly with wild yeast and bacteria in the form of a wide-mouthed quart jar with a hinged lid and strawberries on the sides that smelled funny and contained a thin, watery liquid.  The jar would sit in the back of our fridge for weeks at a time, and then sometimes Mom would pull it out and wake up the starter, then use it to make bread.

Since buying Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice, I have taken my whole bread-baking obsession to a new level.  The type of bread with the most patience and time requirements, though, had remained elusive--how to justify taking more than a week to make a loaf of bread when there was physiology and neuroscience to study?  I resolved to wait until this summer to give it a go, with the hopes that once I have my starter made I, too, can keep my own little kitchen chia-pet in the back of the fridge.

Reinhart's method started with whole wheat flour and pineapple juice, and I'm now at the point where I've fed the little bugger for a few days running.  I'm almost at the barm stage now, which is sort of like the leveled-up version of the seed culture and will itself get fed and watered until it's ready to be used in bread-making.

Stay tuned for pictures and updates!  Hopefully I'll get to bake some bread over the long holiday weekend.

Love,
Lindsey

Hello!

Welcome to our blog!

We're med students, but that doesn't mean we don't like to enjoy ourselves once in a while.  Sure, life is hectic.  Sure, we study all the time.  But you still have to eat!

We like to bake, cook, drink fancy drinks, eat good food, and be merry!  If we can make it healthy, bonus points--but if it's a guilty pleasure, that's okay, too (with all those hours in the library, surely we've earned a little something).  Join us for culinary and medical adventures as we learn how to help sick people and learn to cook for ourselves!

Love,
Lindsey & Carly
MDs-to-be