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Tiny bowls simplify the cooking process

Posted in Eats, Home, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

A few years ago, I discovered that cooking is a lot like painting: The more work you put into a project before you start, the smoother everything goes once you begin.

I had always noticed that people on cooking shows had premeasured ingredients at the ready, but I figured they needed to do that so the camera didn’t have to follow the mundaneness of the measuring process. At some point, however, I realized that premeasured additions made a lot of sense. What’s easier: Scooping out various amounts of spices while standing at the stove at the very moment those ingredients need to be added to your concoction, repeatedly glancing back at the recipe, or measuring out all of those ingredients before you start so you can dump them in at the appropriate time, all at once and with no double-checking of the recipe?

A lot of the recipes I frequently use call for tiny amounts of ingredients, meaning it was hard to justify dirtying even my smallest bowls for premeasuring. I had been using wax paper for these smaller measurements, but tearing tiny squares off the roll made for an untidy rectangle when I would finally need a larger piece.

IKEA to the rescue. During my going-away trip to the Atlanta megastore, I stumbled across the BLANDA bowls. At $2.99 for a pack of four, these 2-inch bowls are the perfect size for my small additions of herbs and spices. One bowl will hold approximately four minced garlic cloves (provided, of course, that you haven’t been tricked into buying some monstrous head of garlic with supersized cloves) and maybe 4 teaspoons of herbs and spices.

I almost bought the stainless steel version ($4.99 for four), but I could tell that they were going to scratch easily, since every package I picked up sported at least one bowl that was already pretty roughed up.

So far, the most bowls I’ve used at one time is three. I took the photo above during Cinco de Mayo’s fajita-making festivities; one holds minced garlic, another holds oregano and thyme, and the third holds salt and pepper. All in all, probably not that much to measure out midway through the cooking process, but dumping a tiny bowl of premeasured ingredients into a pan filled with sizzling onions makes me feel like I should have my own cooking show.

Iron Chef Haggerty. I like it.

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Kitchen basics that elude me: fried eggs

Posted in Eats, Family, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2013 | 4 Comments »

Nanny in her natural habitat: the kitchen.

I realized this weekend that I have successfully made a souffle, but can’t make a fried egg.

My grandmother made delectable fried eggs, and made it look easy. The everyday breakfast options at her house included bacon (turkey bacon after my grandfather’s heart problems were diagnosed), toast (or biscuits, on occasion) and eggs, either scrambled or fried (note: fried eggs, over easy, became known as Paw-Paw eggs, because they were his favorite, and to this day I can barely order them in a restaurant without calling them by this nickname).

I should have paid more attention, I guess. I should have offered to cook the eggs instead of going for the easy job of making toast or microwaving turkey bacon. (Or making the grits. I can’t believe I forgot about the grits option.)

I might not even have this ongoing fear of cast-iron skillets.

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Fancy eggplants call for a new recipe

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Don’t let the name of her blog fool you: Kristen over at Crafty Kristen has a heck of a green thumb in addition to mad knitting skills.

She gifted me with a couple of bags filled with goodies from her garden recently as she was preparing to go spend a few days at the beach with her husband. I brought home yellow pear tomatoes (sweet and delicious), cherry tomatoes and eggplants.

Totally exotic eggplants.

The only eggplant I’m familiar with is the big purple one. I remember seeing them when I was a kid, although I don’t recall whether my grandparents grew them, and I don’t remember ever eating them until I tried the ever popular eggplant Parmesan in college. I certainly never cooked an eggplant myself.

So when a CSA box arrived a couple of years ago with an eggplant inside, I faced a quandary. I made a baked version of eggplant Parmesan first — it was delicious, but not quite delicious enough to make up for the time it required and the mess it made.

I finally found an easier eggplant pasta sauce recipe with a complex, garlicky flavor. It took care of the huge purple eggplants in the CSA box, and made enough that I had leftovers for at least a couple of days.

Pre-eggplant season, Kristen had recommended a recipe for Pasta alla Norma, which I tucked away on Pinterest in anticipation of this year’s first CSA box.

When she handed me a small plastic bag filled with the fanciest eggplants I had ever seen, I knew I couldn’t simply smash them into the gray (yet tasty) pulp resulting from my go-to eggplant pasta sauce recipe.

So I broke out the pasta alla Norma recipe, only to discover three problems:

  • It called for ricotta salata cheese, which I wasn’t entirely sure I could find at Publix.
  • It called for deep-frying the eggplant, while I’m really more of a “lightly sauté” kind of girl.
  • It called for sautéed onions WITHOUT sautéed garlic. Say what now?

I made a few simple changes to the recipe and was psyched about the results. The sauce is very light, but the eggplant makes it filling. I found it made enough for two servings (I only cooked 2.5 ounces of penne rigate), with enough left over for lunch (no pasta, just the chunky sauce).

You have to judge how much basil, eggplant and Parmesan cheese to use. If you want a heartier sauce, use more eggplant. Need more basil flavor? Tear up a few more basil leaves. It’s a forgiving recipe.

Pasta alla Norma

Makes about 3 servings

(Adapted from David Rocco’s recipe)

  • 2.5 oz. penne rigate pasta
  • olive oil
  • 1/2 white onion, chopped
  • 14 oz. diced tomatoes
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • 1 medium-sized eggplant (or a few small eggplants), cubed
  • fresh basil leaves, torn
  • Parmesan cheese

Cook the penne in a pot of boiling salted water, stirring to prevent it from sticking together. While the pasta is cooking, make the sauce.

In a saucepan, heat up a tablespoons of olive oil. Gently sauté onions until tender, then add undrained tomatoes. With the back of a wooden spoon, break up the tomatoes into small chunks.

Add salt and pepper. Cook for a few minutes until the sauce has thickened.

In another pan, sauté the eggplant in olive oil until golden. Add the sautéed eggplant and basil leaves to the sauce, and stir in a few sprinkles of Parmesan.

Plate the servings of pasta and spoon sauce on top. Sprinkle with more Parmesan, if desired, and serve immediately.

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Second CSA box yields a colorful harvest

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , on July 9, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Cucumbers, squash, lemon cucumbers, green tomatoes, more squash (sigh) and red noodle beans.

This week’s CSA box was heavy with a little bit of everything.

I faced two unfamiliar items: lemon cucumbers and red noodle beans. The lemon cucumbers are round and a little sweeter than other varieties, and the red noodle beans were tasty but weird.

I riffed on this recipe for Red Noodle Beans with Cracked Black Pepper, only I didn’t have any soy sauce, and I forgot that I just received a couple of bell peppers, so I pretty much just sautéed them in olive oil with diced onion and garlic for about 10 minutes. They tasted like string beans, more or less, except they were squeaky, like cheese curds.

Like I said, tasty but weird.

The box also contained one lone cherry tomato, only I thought I saw two cherry tomatoes, so I ate it expecting to dig the other one out for the husband in a few minutes. Alas, no. I scarfed down the only one. Lucky for me, he’s the forgiving type, and he doesn’t have the same extreme craving for homegrown tomatoes that I do.

Sweet onion, bell peppers, basil, the biggest eggplant I’ve ever had and various hot peppers.

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Sautéed peas end tradition of salty, mushy vegetables

Posted in Cats, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2012 | 1 Comment »

I was excited and a little leery when I found a bagful of fresh English peas in my latest CSA box.

As confirmed by my CSA representative, English peas are extremely sensitive to hot weather, so they would have never had a chance on my grandparents’ farm in South Mississippi. Therefore, the only English peas I’ve ever eaten have come straight out of the can, slightly mushy and pretty bland. Meh.

Since the record-breaking heat in North Alabama/South Tennessee was making it clear that this would be the only fresh English peas I would get this year, I knew I had to make the most of them.

I don’t mean this as an insult to my Southern ancestry, but at some point cooks in the South started boiling vegetables into a salty mush. I remember the first time I ever had a string bean that had been briefly steamed, and thus still held a bit of natural sweetness and a light crunch. (Truly, it would have been considered underdone at my grandmother’s house.) Corn on the cob became a whole new experience for me when I discovered that I could simply wrap individual ears in waxed paper and microwave them for a few minutes, leaving sweet and crunchy kernels that needed neither salt nor butter.

I was determined not to turn these peas into mush.

I found inspiration at Williams-Sonoma’s website: Sautéed English Peas with Garlic and Sesame. Unfortunately, I didn’t have sesame seeds or sesame oil in my pantry, so I had to wing it. I also don’t know how many pounds of peas I started with; Williams-Sonoma recommended two garlic cloves for 3 pounds of unshelled English peas. Do the math for the amount of peas you have, or just use a couple of cloves of garlic.

There are few vegetable recipes that wouldn’t be made better with a couple of cloves of garlic.

The husband was at first stunned by the color of the peas when I removed the lid from the pan; the short cooking time had left the peas a brilliant green. The texture was magnificent; they weren’t crunchy or chewy, but they weren’t mushy either. The garlic flavor burst through with every bite, but not in an overwhelming way.

Sautéed English Peas with Garlic

  • Fresh English peas, shelled
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • Pinch of sea salt
  • Pinch of freshly ground pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl 2/3 full with ice water. Add the peas to the boiling water and cook for 3 minutes. Drain the peas and immediately plunge them into the ice water. Let stand for two minutes and drain.

In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Add the garlic and sauté, stirring constantly, until it is fragrant but not brown, about 30 seconds.

Add the peas, salt and pepper, and sauté, tossing and stirring occasionally, until the peas are just tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Serve immediately.

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Yang hasn’t given up his photobombing duties; here, he inspects the bowl of English peas mid-shoot.

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Simply irresistible: Improved goat cheese balls get rave reviews

Posted in Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Late last week, I realized that I had never posted about my improvements to the recipe for Goat Cheese Pops with Herbs, Pecans and Bacon after I began experimenting with it last fall.

The worst part of this realization? The knowledge that the only record I had of said improvements was a marked-up piece of paper residing in either the kitchen (on a very busy cookbook shelf) or in my home office (a treasure trove of unsorted grad school stuff).

Luckily, the printout was right where I had sort of hoped that I left it, on the left corner of my filing cabinet in a short stack of unrelated papers.

Whew. Because these cheese balls drew rave reviews at a party this weekend.

I totally amped up the goat cheese from what the original recipe called for, resulting in a much bolder flavor. Although I also increased the measurements of the coating ingredients to account for more cheese balls (this recipe makes about 50 percent more than the original), I still find myself running short on coating when I have anywhere from five to 10 cheese balls left uncovered.

There are worse things than having five to 10 uncovered goat cheese balls awaiting you in the fridge, however.

Simply Irresistible Goat Cheese Balls
Makes 30-45

  • 9 slices bacon
  • 8 oz. goat cheese
  • 4 oz. cream cheese (not whipped)
  • 3 tbsp. chopped basil (divided)
  • Cracked black pepper
  • 1/2 cup pecans

Cook bacon until crispy. Place cooked bacon on a plate lined with paper towel and pat to remove excess grease.

Place the goat cheese, cream cheese, 1.5 tbsp. basil and a few twists of cracked black pepper in the food processor. Process until creamy and well-mixed.

Form the cheese mixture into small balls, about the size of the tip of your thumb. (Use food-safe gloves and avoid cleaning cheese out from under your fingernails later.) Place the cheese balls in the freezer for 10-15 minutes; you want them to firm up, but you don’t want to freeze them all the way.

Clean out the food processor (or use your second, smaller food processor). Crumble in the cooled bacon and add the remaining basil and the pecans. Process until the mixture is very fine and crumbly. Roll the cheese balls in the bacon mixture, pressing to lightly embed the coating into each cheese ball. (Again, break out the gloves unless you enjoy bacon shrapnel under your nails.)

Refrigerate until ready to serve. (I’ve always made these the day before serving due to time constraints — they’re fine, if not a little better, the day after.) Serve alongside toothpicks or stick the toothpicks in before placing the cheese balls on a serving platter.

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Simply open a jar to impress guests — or just treat yourself

Posted in Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I’ll forever be thankful to my mother-in-law for introducing me to the easiest appetizer I’ve ever served: marinated artichoke hearts.

You’re probably thinking, wow, isn’t it kind of tricky to trim artichokes? And wouldn’t you have to marinate them for a few hours before serving? Wait a minute, wouldn’t you have to cook them, too?

The answer to all of those questions is “yes.” Which is why I simply open a jar of Vigo’s marinated artichoke hearts and carve them up into bite-size pieces, which I then serve with the fanciest crackers I can dig out of the pantry. (Why Vigo? It’s in stock. There aren’t exactly dozens of brands on the supermarket shelves vying for my business.)

After all, if I’m serving a meal that’s elaborate enough to justify an appetizer, chances are I’ve already spent a couple of hours in the kitchen prepping the other dishes. This is one culinary shortcut that I find completely acceptable.

And best of all? If it’s just me and the husband, they’re mine. All mine. Leftovers get chopped up into even smaller pieces to use as a salad ingredient throughout the week, and the marinade itself makes a delicious (if somewhat thick and rich) salad dressing.

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Roasted chickpeas are worth multiple attempts

Posted in Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 7, 2012 | 8 Comments »

Rarely do I give a failed Internet-based recipe a second chance. There are simply too many other recipes to try, and unless I can point to something I know I did wrong (it happens), I’ll usually just write off such failures as lessons learned.

Roasted chickpeas, though? I WANTED the roasted chickpeas to work. So when the first batch came out half-crunchy and half-mushy a couple of weeks ago, I knew I had to try again. The few (very few) roasted chickpeas that were roasted to perfection were ROASTED TO PERFECTION. They were tiny, crunchy bombs of flavor.

I found two problems with my first attempt:

  1. The original recipe called for what seems like A LOT of olive oil: 1.5 tablespoons for one can of chickpeas. I was left with oil oozing around on the parchment paper beneath the coated chickpeas.
  2. My oven can be somewhat unpredictable. It will bake three tiny loaves of zucchini bread to utter perfection within the recommended recipe time, or it will take twice as long as it should to bake a pan of cookies. And sometimes it’ll burn those cookies on the bottom without leaving a hint of gold on their pale little tops.

So, less olive oil and more time in the oven seemed to be in order. Also, I decided to add the seasoning BEFORE roasting, since, in theory, perfectly roasted chickpeas would be dry to the touch and wouldn’t allow the seasonings to stick.

A word on the seasonings: You can use anything you like. I used Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning. I’m not sure why you would use anything else, but I imagine Greek seasoning would also work. Crafty Kristen recommends a teaspoon or two of cracked black pepper and a generous sprinkling of sea salt.

This batch turned out perfectly — even the biggest chickpeas roasted to crunchy perfection.

Crispy Roasted Chickpeas

Adapted from Steamy Kitchen

  • One 15-oz. can chickpeas
  • Olive oil
  • Salt/seasoning mixture

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (I might go up 25 degrees next time).

Drain the chickpeas in a colander and rinse with water. Rub the chickpeas, a couple of handfuls at a time, between two paper towels to loosen the thin skin on them. Remove the skins until you get tired of removing the skins, then move on. Your roasted chickpeas will be delightful with or without the skins.

Spread a piece of parchment paper out on a baking sheet. Or don’t — hey, I’m not washing your dishes. Spread the chickpeas out on the parchment paper. Put a little olive oil in your hands and coat the chickpeas lightly — you want just enough oil to allow the seasoning to stick. Sprinkle on the seasoning. Less is likely more.

Steamy Kitchen’s original recipe said to roast the chickpeas for 30-40 minutes, but my oven took more like 50 minutes. Stir them around about halfway through. The chickpeas will turn a deep golden brown when they’re done, but the best way to check for doneness is to grab one of the bigger ones, cool it off for 30 seconds and eat it. If it’s crunchy, you’re in business.

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Discovering guacamole: better late than never

Posted in Eats, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Why in the world have I NOT been making guacamole all my life?

The answer, of course, is that I spent most of my life eating (or, more specifically, not eating) the mediocre guacamole served in so many Mexican restaurants.

Overprocessed into a perfectly smooth paste and refrigerated well past the point of freshness, restaurant guacamole has always been something I avoided. I never ordered it, and never considered making it at home.

Thankfully, a restaurant finally changed my mind on guacamole a couple of years ago. When a friend ordered the dish at Cantina Laredo, the server made it tableside, mashing several fresh ingredients together with a fork. It was delicious. It was chunky. It was FRESH.

I thought maybe it was only my taste buds maturing, so in a couple of weeks I tried the guacamole at another Mexican place.  Nope. Back to stale and pasty. I realized that unless I witnessed the smashing of the avocados, the guacamole was likely to disappoint.

Still, I didn’t attempt to make my own. The husband wasn’t enthusiastic about the dish, and, having never dealt with avocados before, I was a little awed by the process.

Fast forward to last week. Somehow, guacamole is an official Super Bowl food, and Earth Fare was offering me two free avocados with a $5 purchase.

Please. I can spend $5 in Earth Fare without ever leaving the Wall o’ Grains.

I looked for a simple recipe, although now I realize that guacamole, like pico de gallo, is one of those dishes that doesn’t require a recipe so much as a healthy willingness to taste as you go. (Check.)

I settled on the California Avocado Commission’s recipe for Guacamole Autentico, which seemed beginner-worthy. It was a cinch to put together (turns out it’s extremely easy to work with avocados), and I thought it was delicious (the husband is still not a guacamole fan, although he readily ate a couple of bites to be nice).

Lime and cilantro are dominant flavors in this recipe, and not everybody likes cilantro. I would probably use two Serrano chilies instead of one next time for more heat, or I might just switch to a jalapeno. And I could totally live without the tasteless bits of Roma tomato, but a REAL tomato may have potential. I forgot to add hot pepper sauce, and I used plain old salt and pepper instead of sea salt and white pepper — still delicious. I mashed it all together with a potato masher, not a fork, because I was hungry and the fork method was taking forever. Just don’t get too overzealous with the mashing no matter what you use.

Guacamole Autentico

Recipe from the California Avocado Commission

4 servings

  • 2 ripe, fresh California avocados, peeled and seeded
  • 1⁄4 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1⁄2 ripe, medium Roma tomato, seeded and diced
  • 1⁄4 cup minced sweet white onion
  • 1 Serrano chili, seeded and minced
  • 1⁄4 cup cilantro leaves, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
  • Hot pepper sauce
  • Sea salt, to taste
  • White pepper, to taste

Cut avocado into large chunks and mash coarsely in large bowl with a fork. Add remaining ingredients and blend gently; leaving some small chunks is fine. Taste and adjust seasoning with more pepper sauce, salt and pepper if desired.

Serve immediately. Eat with enthusiasm.

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