The Lazy Way to Apple Pie

Apple crisp is easier, less fuss, and, in my opinion, just as delicious (if not more so) than apple pie.  The method is simple: peel and chop some apples, throw them in a dish with a little water or lemon juice, sugar, and cinnamon, and stir.  Top this with a crumble that comes together in about 2 minutes and throw in an oven until browned and bubbling.

That's it.

Over the past couple weeks, I've taken to buying apples at the farmer's market.  The problem is, every week I try a new apple and every week I find myself eating through mediocre apples that aren't up to my (exacting) standards of crispness and sweet-tartness.  This week, however, I picked up some Snow Sweets and THEY. ARE. AWESOME.  Pure white on the inside, extremely crisp, sweet with a hint of tart.  Sort of like honeycrisp but with more character.  I won't have any trouble eating all of these out of hand, and bonus: I had a handful of the previous week's apples left in my crisper drawer.  Apple crisp it is!

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Apple Crisp

Ingredients

6-8 small/medium apples, peeled and chopped (enough to fill your baking pan of choice)

1/4 c. sugar

approx. 2-3 tsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

splash of water, lemon juice, or apple cider vinegar

1/2 c. flour

3/4 c. oats

1/4 c. sugar

pinch of salt

1/3 c. butter, cut in slices

1. Preheat oven to 375.  Peel and chop apples and combine with sugar, cinnamon, salt and liquid in a baking dish.

2. In separate bowl, combine flour, oats, sugar, and salt.  Work butter into flour mixture with your hands until crumbly and clumpy. 

3. Dump crumb mixture on top of apple mixture.

4. Bake until browned and filling is bubbling, somewhere between 30-45 minutes.

5. Serve with vanilla ice cream or frozen custard!

Things to Eat when It's Hot Out

Even in an air-conditioned apartment, summer heat leaks in through windows and the cracks under the door and the closets under the eaves.  So, having moved in the middle of summer, I have hardly given my new kitchen a proper christening.  Yes, I've cooked a few times, but really I've been eating lots of cold meals.

Here's what I eat when it's too hot to stand by the (turned off) oven or stove:

-Peanut butter sandwiches and milk

-Crackers and {peanut butter, cheese, hummus, tuna salad}

-Salads

-Cherries (yes, sometimes just cherries for dinner)

-Cottage cheese and nectarines

-Cottage cheese and walnuts and a drizzle of honey

-Cheese roll-ups (large tortilla with some shredded cheese, microwave for a minute until gooey)

-Yogurt

-Cereal (even for dinner)

-Pasta with a no-cook sauce (minus points for boiling water, bonus points for no-cook sauce). I like a creamy yogurt + pesto combo, or carbonara (shredded parm, garlic, and a beaten egg, plus a tiny bit of pepper and pasta water), or chopped tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil.  Throw in a big bunch of arugula and it's like pasta and salad all together.

-Peanut butter (yes, it's on here again.  I eat lots of peanut butter.)

-Ice cream

I love to bake my own bread, but when you don't want to turn on the stove, setting the oven to 450 degrees for any kind of bread is madness.  I did find this recipe for Crock Pot Bread that actually worked like a charm--the end result was really tasty and I didn't heat up my apartment hardly at all.

Here's to staying cool, even in July!

Other people's comfort food

Comfort food is a very culture-specific thing.  Not always the healthiest food, not always the most decadent food, not always the most complicated food, it's usually simple and hearty and makes you feel like your mom just called you in to dinner after a long day playing outside.

For me, comfort food can be many things: macaroni and cheese, chicken noodle soup, tomato soup and grilled cheese, oatmeal, peanut butter and jam sandwiches with a glass of milk, apple crisp.  The idea of "soul food" comes pretty close, too--fried chicken, green beans simmered all day with bacon and onions, mashed potatoes and gravy. 

Over spring break, my best friends from undergrad and I met up in Chicago for a weekend.  We went to Chinatown and ate dim sum, and as we were leaving one of my friends realized that every Chinese family in the restaurant had a big steaming pot of rice porridge on the table.  

"This place must be known for their jook!  We should have had some," she lamented. By this point, though, we were stuffed and resolved to use the jook as an excellent excuse to come back to Chicago.  I asked Gena, whose heritage is half Chinese, half Japanese,and Inez, who is from Singapore, what exactly went into making jook.

Finished jook: all it takes is a handful of rice, lots of water,
bouillon paste, some mushrooms, and plenty of time.

Jook, also known as congee, is just rice porridge: much the way Americans eat oatmeal, or oat grains cooked in plenty of water until they soften into mush, most Asian cultures have a name for rice cooked the same way.  It sounded easy and nourishing and hearty, and I resolved to try to make some once I was home.

All the rest of the week, I made jook just about every morning.  Not just because it was easy, not just because it was new, but also because it's absolutely delicious.  And here's how you do it:

• First, decide how much you want to make.  It's easy to scale up, and a little bit of rice makes a LOT of jook.
• Measure out the rice in a pan.  Add water, about 8:1 water to rice (yes, 8:1.  So if you use a quarter cup of rice, add 2 c. water).  Add any seasonings you might want, or maybe some leftovers (chicken would be yummy, or I just chop up some raw mushrooms and toss them in to stew a bit).  Bring to a boil, then cover and cook on low until the rice has swollen up and completely softened, maybe half an hour or more.  

  

  Raw egg in the bottom.

• To serve, I eat mine the way Inez says she used to get hers at her school cafeteria: a raw egg in the bottom of the bowl, jook on top, some soy sauce and sesame oil sprinkled in, and a generous helping of chopped scallions.  Take your spoon and stir the egg into the jook, it makes it rich and sort of creamy, a bit like custard.  (The heat from the porridge cooks the egg, no worries.)

Chopped scallions, a few drops of sesame oil, soy sauce go in next.

• A few caveats: white rice is best for this, it gets nice and soft (I used jasmine, which is excellent).  If you can't stand it and have to have brown rice (or if brown rice is all you have), it works fine, but be aware that the resulting jook will be chewier and nuttier-tasting and won't get that creamy, soft consistency.  Also, sticking to traditional Asian flavors really go well with the rice, but I'm sure you could use other flavor combinations, too (get creative!).

Stir it all together, then the best part: eat it!

Sometimes, all you really want is your favorite comfort food: when it's rainy, when it's been a bad day, when you're sick, when you miss home...any and all of the above.  But it's nice to branch out once in a while and try on other cultures' comfort foods: jook is definitely a new member on my list of favorites!

bisous,

Lindsey

Honey Mustard Salad Dressing

In undergrad, the "all you care to eat" cafeteria option had lots of daily choices of entrees as well as a handy selection of desserts and baked goods.  They also had the best salad bar, with all the trimmings and tons of different salad dressings.  Most of them were gloopy and pretty gross--your generic red French dressing, thick Ranch, oily Italian straight out of the bottle...and then one gem: honey mustard dressing.

For some reason, this dressing was amazing: tangy, sweet, zippy, a little bit of a bite, strong mustard flavor.  It went well with everything, and my roommate loved it so much we would eat at the cafeteria just so she could get the honey mustard dressing.

I was making a salad for lunch today and that honey mustard dressing popped into my head.  I figured it was worth a shot to try and make it, so I pulled out a few things and whisked them together.  I couldn't have been more shocked that it was pretty spot-on!

Even if you've never had the original, this is a pretty awesome salad dressing and a great sauce for dipping veggies into.  It took about a minute to put together and I doused it all over my salad, which I am now enjoying with relish.

Honey Mustard Salad Dressing

1 T. dijon mustard (I used Grey Poupon)

1 T. honey

~1-2 t. rice wine vinegar

~1-2 T. olive oil

Whisk the mustard, honey, and vinegar together, then drizzle in the olive oil while you whisk briskly.  (Then say "whisk briskly, whisk briskly" five times fast!)  Serve on your favorite salad or dip crudites into it.

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!

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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.