in kat's kitchen

About Polenta

2012-01-29T12:08:00.000-05:00

I can remember mentioning it at least twice in passing, and it's probably pretty likely that you saw the word and thought to yourself, "Self . . . whaaaa?" MY BAD. So before I flippantly mention it once again, let's talk a little bit about polenta.

What is polenta? Well, polenta is--to put it crudely (if you happen to be Italian)--Italian grits. And what is grits? Well, as we mentioned before, grits is corms. Delicious ground corms.

If polenta is just grits, why polenta? Because polenta is Italian grits. And what are Italians other than smooth, silky, and (rico) suave. Let's face it, sometimes you need a little Gerardo in your life, amirite?

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's do this thing. There's actually two ways you can make polenta. (Well, there's probably a million ways to make polenta; I will present you with two.) You can make it according to your package directions (boil water, stir in corn meal, cook for 20 minutes, add cheese) or, if you have a little time, you can make it this way. You'll need:

4 cups water
1 cup medium-ground corn meal (I've used white corn meal here because that's what I have; you'll find yellow is more traditional)
4 tablespoons butter
Up to 1 cup cheese (I like parmesan, but if you want a super fluffy and creamy and outrageous polenta you can use cream cheese)
Salt to taste

So, slightly salt the water and bring it to a boil over high heat. Once it's going, quickly whisk in the polenta until the mixture is smooth.

Reduce the heat to a low simmer, add the butter, and give everything a whisk occasionally for the next 45 minutes to an hour.

You'll begin to notice that, unlike grits, your polenta won't maintain individual granules of corn meal. Instead, it'll almost take on the consistency of pudding. Savory, savory pudding. At this point it's time to whisk in your cheese.

Give it a taste and add salt as needed. Then, plop that goop down on a plate.

And top with your favorite slop.

And enjoy!

About Chicken Cacciatore

2012-01-22T12:00:00.003-05:00

By now you've probably gotten the hang of the old put-chicken-in-take-chicken-out-put-chicken-back-in cooking thing that's been going on in these parts (cf. this and this), so this recipe should be so easy I won't even have to explain it to you. But I will, because Santa knows I do like to babble (no I don't).

Like our chicken bog before it, chicken cacciatore is almost endlessly flexible, and it's almost endlessly flexible because when Italians go out into the countryside or wherever to do their hunting, they don't have grocery stores I guess? I don't know, I think something got lost in translation. But the ingredient list that follows is just the basics, so feel free to add whatever other vegetables you want depending on what's in season or what you pick up at the grocery store because I assume you're not out in the Italian countryside where they have no grocery stores. Apparently.

What you'll need is this:

2 chicken thighs
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
½ yellow onion, thinly sliced
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
⅓ cup dry white wine
1 can diced tomatoes

I also added a package of crimini mushrooms, cut into quarters. Also good: zucchini, summer squash, bell peppers, eggplant, uh... other vegetables.

Now, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat until it gets all shimmery. Generously salt and pepper both sides of your chicken and brown them off really well for about 4 or 5 minutes per side. Then, remove your thighs and put them on a plate for later.

Add your onions and assorted veg to the pan like this:

and saute all that down until everything is softened and the onions have become translucent like this:

Add the garlic

and cook all that for up to a minute, then deglaze the pan with your white wine.

When the wine has mostly evaporated, add the can of tomatoes, with their juices. Give the pan a big stir to mix everything all up, then nestle the chicken thighs back in, skin side up.

Turn the heat down to a low simmer and braise the chicken for about 40 minutes, until your thighs are nice and tender and almost falling off the bone (TWSS or something).

Serve the cacciatore over a crusty loaf of bread or pasta or couscous or rice or polenta or WHATEVER ALREADY GOSH. And feel free to top that mess off with some fresh basil and parmesan cheese.

And as the Italian hunters say, Mangia!

About Chicken Bog

2012-01-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

Well it hasn't exactly been quote-unquote cold in these here parts this season, but that doesn't mean you still don't need some down-home, rib-sticking, delicious Southern comfort food every now and again. And every time I'm feeling blue, you can bet this is what I'm making.

The beauty of this recipe is that it's infinitely adaptable. I mean, it's chicken and rice; every culture on the planet has a version (except those pesky vegetarians--what is UP with those people? (says the former vegetarian)). Mine started years ago with this Paula Deen recipe, and as you'll see it's morphed into something that may seem a little more sophisticated, but is really just a way to cram more vegetables in there (for the vegetarians, don't you know). Here goes.

For two hearty servings (plus lunch for somebody the next day), you'll--at a minimum--need:

2-3 skinless chicken thighs
½ cup chopped yellow onion
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons creole seasoning
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste

and

1 cup wild rice
1 ¼ cup water, vegetable broth, or chicken stock

¾ cup long grain rice
2 cups water, vegetable broth, or chicken stock

I generally start with a mirepoix of a carrot, a stalk of celery, and about half of a small to medium yellow onion. Oh, and some fresh thyme never hurt anyone:

And when I happen to have them on hand, I also like to add diced red bell pepper and fresh jalapeno. But as you can see, they're not essential. Tasty, but not essential.

Heat up the extra virgin olive oil in something with a lid, and saute your vegetables, herbs, and spices over medium-high heat until they've softened up. Then add your herbs and garlic and cook for about a minute more until your garlic becomes fragrant and you find yourself suddenly compelled to smear garlic all over your body but don't do that because that would be gross. And potentially deadly if you happen to be a vampire.

Next, deglaze your pan with a splash of white wine or sherry or even a little beer if you have it. If not, just go ahead and dump in your water or broth, making sure to scrape up all of those little brown crusty bits stuck to the bottom of your pan.

Bring your pot to a boil, then nestle your chicken thighs in that delicious brothy hot tub.

If you like it then you should a-put a lid on it (groan, sorry), then lower the heat and gently simmer for 30-40 minutes.

At this point your chicken should be mostly if not totally cooked (don't worry if it's not; so long as it's not still completely raw, which I'm not sure how that would happen but stranger things etc.) so you'll want to remove the pieces to a plate. Then, add the rice to the pan.

Let that bubble away for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, using a couple of forks or those folk-like things attached to your wrists, shred the chicken thighs.

When the 10 minutes are up, add the shredded chicken meat back into the rice. This is the point where I like to clean the leftovers out of my fridge, so if I have any collard greens or mustard greens or turnip greens or kale or sauteed zucchini or squash or whatnot, I add that too. And then you just let that simmer for another 10 minutes while the rice finishes soaking up all that delicious broth.

Give the pot a little fluff job and serve with a little Tabasco on the side.

And dig in!

About Mirin-Glazed Salmon

2011-10-05T15:23:00.000-04:00

There's not a whole lot to say about this recipe other than it's Winston-approved, which is weird because he has almost no interest in people food (we trained him good when he was a wee little baby).

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Seriously though, unless it's, like, the water from a can of tuna (but not the actual tuna), the orange powder on a Cheetos Puffs Cheese Flavored Snack, butter, or olive oil, he wants no part of whatever you've got. Until, that is, I made this this other night, at which point he jumped up on the dining room table, started eating the salmon right off my plate, and when he was done with that, walked over to Seth's plate and started eating his salmon, too. (Diagram that, Sister Bernadette!)

Oh, and we also liked it.

Here's what you need for the marinade:

½ cup mirin
¼ rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon peeled and grated ginger

Which is this, all mixed up (don't know what to do):

Then you just marinate your salmon fillets in there for at least 20 minutes like so:

And when that's done you pat your fillets dry and then cook them like we did before until they look like this:

And then you try to eat it before your cat does.

About Meatloaf

2011-09-26T14:10:00.000-04:00

I don't know if you ever get this way--I don't know your life--but sometimes I just really, really, really want meatloaf. Like, a lot. Like, more than I've ever wanted anything in my whole entire life (even more than that red Corvette Stingray I really, really, really wanted when I was ten). So what's a girl supposed to do? Why, make meatloaf of course!

But here's the thing; meatloaf is kinda tricky. I mean, not that it's super hard to make or anything (it is just a log of meat, after all), it's just that I tried making meatloaf for years and years before I settled on a recipe that was just right. And oh, how right it is. And, AND! you're in luck, because I'm a-gonna spare you those years and years of wandering the desert like some sort of traveling Wilbury and share with you my perfect, perfect meatloaf recipe.

First up, pour yourself a glass of wine. Like so:

Then, get your shit together. And that shit is:

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
¾ cup finely diced onion (about half a medium onion)
½ cup finely diced green pepper (about half a small pepper)
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ tablespoon minced garlic
1 pound ground meat of your choice
2 slices sandwich bread
⅔ cup barbecue sauce
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon ground cumin
big pinch of cayenne powder
1 egg

(Quick aside: I normally make this in all of its full-sized glory so's to have lots of leftovers for sammiches and stuff, but this time I only made a half batch, which is what you see here. For your full-sized loaf just double the recipe and follow the additional notes I'll try to remember to include below.)

Step The First (after the wine and the getting your shit together and whatnot): Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Now, here's your veg:

Heat up the olive oil in a medium skillet until it gets all shimmery, then throw in the onion/green pepper portion of your veg with a pinch of salt and pepper like so:

Saute that for a few minutes until your veg is soft and the onions have turned translucent like so:

Add in the garlic and stir that up for about 30 seconds, and then pull your pan off the heat while we talk a little bit about MEAT. (I don't know why I wrote MEAT like that; just seemed like the appropriate thing to do.) MEAT.

You can use any combination of ground meat you want for this really, just be aware that turkey and chicken will end up a lot drier than beef or pork. When I make a big meat log I usually use a pound of ground turkey and a pound of ground beef, but this time I found this magical package in the grocery store:

(And I also know that we could have a friggin' year-long conversation about the evils of the ground meat industry, so by all means, grind your own meat. I don't have a meat grinder because no one bought one for us off our gift registry so I guess we'll just take our chances since we haven't died so far as far as I can tell. I mean, who knows, I could be writing this from beyond the grave OMG AM I A GHOST? WTF.)

While we're talking, we might as well talk about barbecue sauce too. Now, I know I could make my own barbecue sauce from scratch--and you're welcome to do just that--but why would anyone do such a thing when this is in the world?

(Seriously guys, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is so fucking good.)

Where were we? MEATLOAF. RIGHT.

So those slices of bread.

Those are the ones. Take them to the kitchen faucet and soak them down with water, the squeeze that water back out like you were squeezing a sponge.

Yeah, like that. Now chop your bread spit-ball up into little pieces like so:

Fun!

And with that, we're ready to start assembling (initially I typed "assumbling" which sounds like a whole lot more fun whatever that is). Get a big bowl, and dump your meat in it. Then, dump in your sauteed vegetables.

Then, get your hands in there and mix everything together. And this is where it really helps that you've gotten your shit together in advance, because after you add each of the next ingredients, you're going to have to mix everything together with your hands. With your shit together in advance, you won't have to keep washing your hands. Without your shit together in advance, you cover your kitchen in meat goo. I think the choice is clear.

So. Add the chopped up bread mush and mix.

Add most of the barbecue sauce and mix.

Add the spices and mix.

Add the egg and mix.

Everything should be all mixed up uniformly now, which will give us the perfect opportunity to talk about pans.

Here are the two pans I own:

The one on the left is your standard 9 ½ x 5 ½-inch loaf pan, and is the one you should be using if you're making a full-sized loaf. Your meatloaf should completely fill this pan. The one on the right is some other weirdo pan that came with the set that's shallower and wider than a standard loaf pan, and it's what I'm using here. But since it's shallower, I didn't smoosh the meat all the way out to the sides; instead, I kept it tall and proud and loaf-like when I shaped it in the pan. Oh! Because that's the next step in the recipe: pressing your meatloaf mixture into the pan, and topping that off with your remaining barbecue sauce.

Then, pop that baby (but not your actual baby) into the oven and bake for 45 minutes (an hour and a half for the full-sized loaf).

When it's done, take it back out of the oven and let it sit for about 20 minutes, if you can wait that long.

Because believe me, the smells that will start filling your house are liable to make you want to chew your own arm off. I'm drooling just thinking about it. Oh man.

ANYWHO. When you're ready to serve, just pour off any fat that may have accumulated in the pan and slice the loaf into thick slabs of meaty goodness. Serve with more barbecue sauce, or ketchup, or A-1 (my condiment of choice), or whatever it is you like or nothing at all because have I mentioned this before? This is SO GOOD.

(And yes, those are my cheese grits. ALSO GOOD.)

About Chilled Zucchini Soup

2011-07-20T14:34:00.000-04:00

Blah, blah, blah, HOT AS BALLS, blahblahblaaaaaaaah. I don't know, it's HOT AS BALLS. But Vahid asked for more summer recipes, and this is a really good one, especially as it's almost the exact opposite of HOT AS BALLS. Which would be cold as cubes? I don't know, my brain is fried on account of it's HOT AS BALLS.

ANYWAY, this joins the pantheon of cold soups I've shared on this here website, and like those others it's delish. (What did I just do there? I DON'T KNOW. Random letters are just coming off my fingertips right now. Let's move on.) Soooo... for about 4-6 servings (or one really, really big serving you bloody pig), you'll need:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 large shallots, thinly sliced crosswise like this:
4 large zucchini, peeled and halved lengthwise, then cut into thin slices like this:
2 strips of fresh lemon zest, about the width of your vegetable peeler and the length of your lemon, sort of this this:
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 3/4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 3/4 cups water
1 cup loosely packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh dill, or about this much:
6 ounces plain Greek yogurt

Heat up your olive oil in a 4-quart heavy saucepan or dutch oven over moderate heat. Add the shallots, and cook those down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until they're softened. They'll go from this:

to this:

Add your zucchini, lemon zest, salt, and pepper, and cook those down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until the zucchini is softened.

They'll go from this:

to this:

Next up, add your broth and water (this is what makes it soup!), and simmer everything for about 3 minutes until the zucchini is tender.

Throw your herbs in the pot.

Then, working in batches, puree the soup in a blender until it's smooth. IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE (although it's not to the side, which I guess makes it more of an IMPORTANT WITHIN-PARAGRAPH NOTE): When pureeing hot liquids in a blender, make sure you take the little nubbin thing off of the blender lid. I don't really know what that's called, if it's called anything at all, but it's the thing that leaves a giant hole in the lid. And now you're probably asking yourself why you'd want a giant hole in the blender lid, because isn't a lid supposed to, you know, seal shit up? And this is true, but if you don't have a giant hole in the lid when you're blending hot liquids there would be no place for steam to escape and with no place for steam to escape you get HOT STEAMING EXPLOSIONS. Hence, the Industrial Revolution.

But, you still have a giant hole in the lid which can (and does, believe me) lead to splash back, so just hold a kitchen towel over the hole to catch any soup that might be organizing a massive jailbreak.

Or, you know, you could just buy a stick blender and use that to puree your soup right in the pot. Like this!

Set that aside to cool. Once it's at room temperature, whisk in the yogurt.

Give it a taste, and add more salt if you need it. Then stick that bad boy (or girl, whatever) in the fridge and let it chiiiiiiiillax for a few hours. When it's cold, it's ready to serve!

Stay cool, friends!

About Chocolate Pudding

2011-03-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

There are things they say about mice and men that apply equally to Kats and women. My Flickr account is overburdened with pictures I need to turn into recipes, and half a dozen cookbooks sit on the shelf waiting to be reviewed. And what have I been doing all this time? Well, a lot of things, actually. Like major, life-altering things. More to come this summer.

For now, let's talk chocolate pudding, and more specifically, this chocolate pudding. I had originally intended to post this before Valentine's Day as a fun little "Heeeeey, I gave you VD!" recipe, but I ran out of eggs. Oops. Anywho, I've adapted this from Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen (one of those aforementioned books I intend to review one of these days) and it really couldn't be easier. In fact, as long as you know how to work a microwave this should be a piece of cake. I mean, a bowl of pudding. Whatevs.

Let's make some groceries. For four servings you'll need:

2 cups milk
4 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons honey
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

Combine your first four ingredients in a large, microwave-safe bowl, and whisk all that up until the honey and cornstarch are dissolved.

Stir in the chocolate chips, and microwave on high for 2 minutes. Remove the bowl and whisk your proto-pudding well, then microwave for another 2 minutes. Whisk again. Then microwave again.

If your pudding hasn't come to a boil or isn't thick enough, keep microwaving/whisking it for a minute at a time until it looks like pudding. You know, like this:

Then, let it sit on the counter for about 15 minutes, periodically whisking to help it cool evenly. Refrigerate it until it's cold, and that's it! You just made pudding! (Whipped Lightning topping completely optional.)

About Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

2010-12-01T06:44:00.003-05:00

I mentioned once before that I have exactly two cookie recipes, and this is the other one. And can I just tell you how lucky you guys are that you’re getting this today? Because it’s H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY STICKS week at work and I’ve been (a) away from the computer, and (b) STUCK IN MOTHER EFFING VIRGINIA.

So, to recap, cookies = delicious and Kat = busy. And this recipe = 18 delicious oatmeal raisin cookies, which are made of oatmeal and raisins, and since oatmeal and raisins are very healthy and good for you, you should feel free to eat all 18 by yourself. Which you are sure to do, because as I said, cookies = delicious. Here’s what you need:

12 tablespoons (that would be 1 1/2 sticks) of unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup raisins
1 3/4 cups flour
2 cups rolled oats (and I mean the good, Irish rolled oats, not the quick-cooking or instant oats)
Sea or kosher salt, for sprinkling

You can easily make this recipe by hand, but since I now have this amazingly amazing stand mixer courtesy of my non-mother-in-law (gift registries RULE!!!11!!!!!!), I will be making it in that. So. In a large bowl, beat the butter for a few minutes (on medium-high speed if applicable) until it’s light and fluffy.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl (if applicable) and add the sugars, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon, beating until the mixture is well blended.

Reduce the speed of your amazingly amazing stand mixer (if applicable) to medium and add the eggs and vanilla extract, mixing until well incorporated.

Stir in the raisins. Then, reduce the speed of your amazingly amazing stand mixer (if applicable) to low and add the flour and oats, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary and mixing just until they are incorporated.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill your dough for at least an hour before baking. Meanwhile! Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat silicone non-stick baking mat. (Thanks, Jennie and Joe! Gift registries RULE!!!11!!!!!!) Form the dough into balls about the size of balls of golf and place them on the mat about 2 inches apart.

Now here’s the (arguably) weird part: generously sprinkle sea or kosher salt on top of each dough ball. Trust me on this one; it makes all the difference.

Bake 1 sheet at a time for 15 minutes or until the cookies are puffed and beginning to turn golden.

Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely. If you can wait that long. Me? I eat them as soon as they stop burning my fingers. And then I eat them all. Which brings us to today’s PROTIP!

You can go ahead and scoop out all of your golf balls onto a baking sheet like this:

and then stick that baking sheet (without the sprinkling of salt) in the freezer. As soon as your dough balls are frozen through, transfer them to a freezer bag for storage and safe-keeping. Then! Whenever you want warm fresh-baked oatmeal raisin cookies, take a ball or two out of the freezer, sprinkle them with salt, and stick them in your toaster oven. They’ll bake at the same temperature, but add a minute or two to the cooking time. Then! Voila! Warm fresh-baked oatmeal cookies whenever you want them!

Yay!

About Roasted Acorn Squash with Marmalade

2010-11-09T08:41:00.000-05:00

Brrr. Sure is getting cold out there, huh? Looks like that long, hot, disgusting summer is finally gone for good, and can I just say? THANK YOU SANTA. And lest you need a kindergarten lesson in the calendar, when summer ends the fall begins. (Speaking of The Fall, has anyone seen that movie? Because it was INCREDIBLE, and I’m not just saying that because The Piemaker is, like, super hot or anything. Which he is. I DIGRESS.)

Where was I? OH YEAH. Autumn. Which brings cooler temperatures and winter squash. Both of which I love. Now, I‘d love to give you about a billion recipes for winter squash, but my boyfriend the picky eater doesn’t like winter squash, so I think I can probably only manage a few, but we’ll start with this one and see what happens. Okay? Okay.

Acorn squash! Acorn squash is a bit of an odd duck, sort of like the illicit love child of a yellow squash and a sweet potato, which means it plays really well with butter and orange marmalade. Yes, you heard me, orange marmalade. Orange marmalade is one of my favorite things on Earth. I like it in my gin, I like it on my rye toast, and I like it on my acorn squash. Just mix two tablespoons of marmalade with one tablespoon of softened butter and proceed as follows.

Preheat your oven to 400 F. The prepare the acorn squash but cutting it in half and removing the seeds and strings in the center of each half with a spoon.

Place the halves cut-side down in a shallow pan or baking dish filled with 1/4 inch of water.

Put that in your preheated oven and bake it for 35 minutes. Then turn the squash halves over, and prick each half several times with a fork. Sprinkle the acorn squash with salt and pepper, and spoon your marmalade mixture over each half.

Broil that up for about 5 minutes or until it’s lightly browned around the edges. And viola! Acorn squash!

About Watermelon and Feta Salad

2010-08-27T10:23:00.000-04:00

I do not make idle threats. However, I am horrifying lazy. Actually, that’s not true at all; I’ve just been traveling a heck of a lot the last couple months so I haven’t had the opportunity to do much cooking. HOWEVER however, revenge is a dish best served cold, as is this one, and long ago I threatened Candice and Heather Anne with this recipe so here it is. NOT that I’m trying to get revenge on them for anything or nothing, it’s just that they were a little aghast at the idea even though it is SO GOOD.

(THAT SAID, we made this for Seth’s mother back in May and, while she didn’t hate it, she informed us that she wouldn’t be making it for herself any time soon. Also that she suddenly developed a love for kalamata olives. Silver lining?)

The key to this salad has a lot to do with balance, with playing off salty and sweet and sour, with freshness bouncing off heartiness. And if you’ve ever put salt on your apple or watermelon you’ll know exactly what I mean. (Do other people actually do this? Or is this another weirdo Vietnamese habit I think is normal?) All that nonsense said, I don’t have a whole lot of instruction for you on this one; just(ish) a list of ingredients. Which look like this:

And consist of:

A watermelon (the sweeter the better), cut into bite-sized chunks
A block of feta cheese, cut into smaller bite-sized chunks
Good quality kalamata olives, cut in half
Fresh mint, julienned
Fresh lime
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

I said that the key to this dish is balance, and the key to balance is ratio. So basically you want a quarter to a third the amount of feta and olives as to the watermelon. Does that make sense? MATH IS HARD. What I mean to say is, you want mostly watermelon, with a bit of feta and olive mixed in to add a little salty accent.

After you've carried the two, put all that in a bowl, add a fair bit of the mint, a generous squeeze of lime juice, and a glug or two of extra virgin olive oil. (You can also add thinly sliced red onion to this, but I never do.)

Give it a gentle stir and an initial taste. My guess is that it’s going to need a bit more lime juice, and some salt and pepper. But they’re your taste buds, so you decide for yourself. Then, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for an hour or two until it’s nice and cold.

And voila. A refreshing salad for a hot barbecue.

(One small note: this salad doesn’t keep well. The salt eventually breaks down the watermelon and turns it into mush, so it’s best to make this the day you need it and not the day before. Consider yourself warned.)

About Basil and Lime Creamed Corn

2010-08-10T12:35:00.002-04:00

Is it weird for me to do a variation of creamed corn when I have yet to give you a recipe for just plain creamed corn? Yes? No? Do I care? Not really.

I’m back from a week in the Pacific Northwest, a week that was very decidedly NOT hot as balls. And now that I’m back I feel like I was away for 47 years, and oh yeah, it’s also HOT AS BALLS. Because it’s summertime. And summertime means CORMS!

Dear Santa I sure do love corn. It’s something I inherited from my mother, I think, who used to bring home 20 ears from the roadside veg stand, steam them all up in a big ol’ pot, and proceed to eat all 20 ears all by herself.

My boyfriend, however, is lazy. He does not like to eat corn on the cob.

But he will eat corn if I do most of the work for him, which does NOT mean, by the way, that I chew it up and regurgitate it back into his mouth like he’s some kind of baby bird EW GROSS YOU PEOPLE ARE DISGUSTING.

(Winston, unlike many lolcats, appears to have no interest in corms.)

ANYWHO, this is my super-healthy version of creamed corn that I came up with all by myself, and it’s light and fresh and requires very little cooking at all, plus unlike real creamed corn there’s no actual cream involved, just a little creaming of the cob.

And this is how you cream a cob.

FIRST! Remove the corn kernels as originally demonstrated in this instructional video.

THEN! Use a spoon to cream the cob as demonstrated in the following instructional video:

You’re gonna want to do that over a shallow bowl or deep plate to capture all the juices that you scrape out of there. It’s slightly messy work, but it’s delicious work, and delicious is half the battle. What’s a battle? I DON’T KNOW.

Moving on. To the recipe. Which is why you’re here (presumably).

For 2 servings you’ll need:

2 ears of corn, kernels removed and cobs creamed
1/4 c diced onion or shallot
1 tsp butter or olive oil
Salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste
Splash of chicken broth or water
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
Freshly squeezed lime juice (if you use those bottles of lime juice you’re not allowed to make my recipes anymore), to taste

Heat the oil and butter in a medium-sized skillet or saucepan over medium heat. When the oil starts to get shimmery or the butter has stopped foaming, add the onions (for sweeter creamed corn) or shallots (for slightly garlicky creamed corn), a pinch of salt and pepper, and, if you like, a bit of red pepper flakes. I don’t always add the red pepper flakes, but I was serving this with a bit of tilapia and thought the heat would be a nice contrast with the mildness of the fish. ANYWHO, saute all that until the onions/shallots become translucent and start to brown.

Add the creamed corn and a splash of broth/water. The starch from the corn creaming will thicken up the sauce and the broth/water will help the kernels cook evenly. Simmer that until the kernels are tender and the liquid has mostly evaporated.

Remove the pan from the stove and add the basil and enough lime juice for bright, tangy freshness. And add a little more salt and pepper if you think you need it.

If all went according to plan, you should now have a light, summery side dish in under ten minutes. If not, well, MY BAD.

About the Negroni

2010-07-28T16:19:00.001-04:00

Have you ever had a Negroni? No? Well you should get on that, because it is the perfect cocktail for summer. But you don’t have to take my word for it; Tim Carman totally agrees. I’ve been drinking my own bastard cousins of the Negroni for the past three or four years, but on this hump day I thought I’d give you this year’s slight variation on the classic.

For one delicious drink you’ll need this stuff:

Which, more specifically, is:

2 tbsp. gin
2 tbsp. Campari
2 tbsp. vermouth
a couple shakes of bitters

Normally you're supposed to shake up your ingredients with ice and then strain the concoction into a martini glass to be enjoyed straight up, but it’s HOT AS BALLS (sorry for the imagery Manmaw!) outside, so I just pour it all into a jelly jar and garnish it with a slice of lime.

Because that’s how I roll.

About Cold Noodle Salad

2010-07-26T13:19:00.003-04:00

Somethong (okay, I could fix that typo but COME ON) about the words cold, noodle, and salad together in a row like that strikes me as... funny? Odd? Somethong? Anyway, let’s get on with it, eh?

How about that thunderstorm, hey? That was some insane shit, I’ll tell you what. Winston was mesmerized by everything blowing around all over the place, and spent the majority of yesterday afternoon with his nose pressed to the window. But I guess that’s what happens when a (relatively) cold front smashes into HOT AS BALLS. (Incidentally, I tried to sit out by the pool on Saturday but my skin melted off after 37 seconds. True story.) Thankfully it’s no longer HOT AS BALLS, but it’s still pretty damn hot out there, so we’ll continue with our tour of dishes that do not require much if any use of heat-creating kitchen equipment. Hence the aforementioned cold noodle salad.

This is a recipe in two parts. We’ll tackle the noodles first. For four, healthy-sized servings you’ll need:

A little more than half of a box of whole-wheat spaghetti
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons dark sesame oil
2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon peanut butter

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the box. While that’s boiling, mix up the rest of the ingredients in a big bowl to make your dressing.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it, then rinse it in cold water to stop the cooking process. Drain again and toss the noodles with the dressing in your big bowl.

Then pop that big bowl in the fridge while we tackle the “salad” portion of our cold noodle salad, which consists of approximately 3 cups of whatever veg you like.

This is what I brought home from the farmers market: carrots, cucumbers, radishes, cilantro, and scallions. Other veg that would be good: baby bok choy, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, etc., etc., etc. BASICALLY, you just want to make sure your approximately 3 cups of veg is cut pretty thinly so that twirling everything onto a fork is no big whoop.

Now toss all that together with your big bowl of dressed spaghetti.

Now you have a choice: you can either serve it right away at room temperature, or you can park that baby in the fridge for an hour or so for it to chiiiiiiiill. Either way, you probably can’t go wrong.

Probably.

About Margaritas!

2010-07-20T11:55:00.002-04:00

Hello, gentle readers. My name is Kat and I’m a boozeaholic. I’m addicted to boozeahol. And why wouldn’t I be, dammit? Booze is DELICIOUS. Or rather, DELICIOSO. Because today we’re making margaritas! From scratch! And you know why? Because it’s HOT AS BALLS out there right now, and I could really go for a nice cold margarita. Or two, for which you’ll need:

The juice of 3 limes
6 ounces of tequila
2 ounces of triple sec or Cointreau

First up, your PRO TIP of the day: If you zap your whole limes in the microwave for about 15-20 seconds, you’ll be able to extract waaaaaaaay more lime juice out of them.

ONWARDS!

Mix together all that stuff I said you’ll need.

Muddle some fruit in the bottom of your chosen drink receptacle and salt the rim (but not in that order, and only if you like).

Divide your boozy concoction between the two glasses, give it a stir to incorporate your optional fruit, and fill ’er up with ice.

Dude, margaritas! (Someone bring me one now please kthxbai.)

About Moroccan Tomato Soup

2010-07-19T09:28:00.002-04:00

It’s too hot to cook. (If you’re reading this out loud, this is how you should say that sentence: “It’s toooooooooooo HOT to cooooooooook.” And throw in some pathetic wimpers and sobs in there while you’re at it.) Seriously, I don’t know if you’ve stepped outside any time in the last, oh, TWO MONTHS, because if you haven’t (LUCKY!), let me tell you, it is HOT AS BALLS out there. So the very last thing I want to do when I come home at the end of a long commute, deliriously meandering back to Chinatown in the 100-degree heat, is turn on the stove. (The first thing I want to do is jump in a swimming pool full of ice and unicorn tears, but that is neither here nor there.)

So, if I get around to it (shit’s busy all up in here, yo), I think I’ll try and feature some coooooool summertime recipes over the next couple of weeks. Because it is HOT AS BALLS out there.

First up: a cold tomato soup that is NOT gazpacho. I like the idea of gazpacho, and Santa knows I order gazpacho a whole heck of a lot for someone who hates gazpacho, but that’s just it; I HATE gazpacho. But this I like. It’s an old New York Times recipe that I’ve tweaked over the years, and now that tomatoes are showing up in the farmers market in full force, I (literally) crank out a batch once a week. So, let’s get started, hmm?

For four servings you’ll need:

5 garlic cloves, minced
2 1/2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
Large pinch of cayenne pepper
4 teaspoons olive oil
2 1/4 pounds tomatoes, cut into chunks (unless you don’t have a food mill, in which case, see below)
1/4 cup packed chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 large English cucumber, diced
2 tablespoons water

One more thing before we get started. This soup is super fresh, so if your produce doesn’t look like this:

don’t bother. Your soup will taste like crap. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also you’ll probably need a food mill to smash up your tomatoes and remove the skins. If you don’t have a food mill, you can always use this technique, to peel your tomatoes before blending them up in a food processor, but that just sounds like a giant pain in the ass to me.

Okay so I guess that was two more things. SUE ME.

Now, in a small skillet, stir the garlic, paprika, cumin, cayenne, and olive oil together. Place the pan over medium-low heat and cook the spice mixture, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. This will remove the bite from the garlic and bloom the flavors of the other dry spices. It’ll also make your kitchen smell like Marrakesh, without all the incense and b.o. Anyway, this is what it will look like:

Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.

Next, pass the tomato chunks through a food mill fitted with a large disk.

This is the hard part.

When your tomatoes are all milled up, stir in the cooked spice mixture, cilantro, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, cucumber, and water. (What I'm saying is, stir in the rest of your ingredients.) Give it a taste, and add more salt if you need it. Refrigerate until cold, then serve, garnished with more cilantro.

And enjoy the antioxidant rush.

About Banana Bread

2010-05-11T14:43:00.001-04:00

I know quite a few of you already have my super easy and super delicious recipe for banana bread, so for those of you who don't, SUCKS TO BE YOU, SUCKERS.

Just kidding.

Here you go, suckers.

3-4 very ripe bananas, peeled
1/3 c melted butter
1 c sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1 1/2 c flour

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Mash up the bananas in a large bowl with a fork.

(When I was in Belize I rode a horse named Banana. This was Banana:

Clearly not the same thing.)

Stir in the melted butter.

Stir in the sugar.

Stir in the egg, lightly beaten.

Stir in the vanilla.

Stir in the baking soda (and fine, the pinch of salt, too).

Stir in the flour...

...Until just combined.

Pour into a loaf pan sprayed with cooking spray.

And bake for one to one-and-a-half hours, until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean.

Let it cool for a while on a wire rack and then slice into perfectly even slices.

Or just cram it into your gaping maw by the fistful. Whatever floats your boat, suckers.

About Mint Juleps

2010-05-01T18:17:00.001-04:00

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-dooooooooo.

I mean,

(Dude, my boyfriend has lost a lot of weight since last year. Go him.)

Happy Derby Day! Last year we celebrated the Preakness with a mighty tasty Black-Eyed Susan, so this year I thought it might be nice to introduce you to the classic mint julep. But, as with everything on this here website, please take this recipe with the following caveat (emptor; hi, Scott!): this is not the "traditional" way to prepare a mint julep. No, like most things Southern-with-a-capital-S, the traditional mint julep is prepared with a level of pomp and circumstance reserved for weddings and funerals (four and a, if you're counting). And since I lack the proper silverware, you'll just have to roll with me on this one.

LET'S GET DRINKING. For each cocktail you'll need:

2-3 oz. of the Bourbon of your choice
1-2 teaspoons of simple syrup (I err on the side of less sweet)
8-10 mint leaves (I grow my own, of course)
Ice, preferably crushed

So, gather your ingredients and glassware.

(My boyfriend and I have slightly different tastes in both, apparently).

Add the mint leaves and simple syrup to your glass.

Now, muddle the mint with a muddler until the leaves are bruised, but not falling apart into pieces (that will later get stuck in your teeth like the obnoxious leaves that they are).

Now add the bourbon.

Now add a little ice, and vigorously stir that all up until it's nice and chilled.

Now fill up your glass with some more ice until you're pretty much full.

And now it's time to make your bets! (I put five bucks on the filly. GIRL POWER!)

Cheers!

About Simple Syrup

2010-05-01T17:15:00.004-04:00

This syrup is simple. And really handy to have around whenever you want to sweeten up a cold drink, because you know how when you add sugar to your iced coffee it doesn't really dissolve and so your last sip is, like, disgustingly sweet and gritty and you can just feel the cavities forming right then and there? Yeah, bet you wish you had some simple syrup on hand. And now you can!

Simple syrup is nothing more than a supersaturated solution of sugar and water. Do what now? Well, the ability of one compound (in this case sugar) to dissolve into another compound (in this case water) is called solubility. Thanks to entropy, only a certain amount of sugar will actually dissolve into water; adding more sugar beyond that point will just leave you with a last sip of, like, disgustingly sweet and gritty sugar. But thanks to the magic of SCIENCE!, we can raise the solubility of water using the magic of HEAT! So, gather these ingredients, and let the magic begin!

1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar

Put both ingredients in a saucepan.

Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring until all of the sugar is dissolved.

Then allow your supersaturated sugar solution to cool, pour it into an air-tight container, and store it in the fridge until you're ready to use it. For a mint julep, perhaps? (Yes, please.)

About Poached Salmon

2010-04-09T12:17:00.002-04:00

Can you put things in a pile? Yes? Then you can make poached salmon! Because literally (not figuratively), all you need to do for this recipe is put your ingredients in a pile. You know, until you get to the sauce part. BUT WE'LL WORRY ABOUT THAT LATER.

Ahem.

Let's begin at the beginning, and the beginning is where we gather up the necessary ingredients:

1 lemon
2 tablespoons of freshly chopped parsley leaves, stems saved
2 tablespoons of freshly chopped tarragon leaves, stems saved
1 small shallot, minced
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup water
2 single-portion-sized salmon fillets (hopefully of about even thickness so they cook at the same time)
1 tablespoon of capers, rinsed and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon of honey
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Cut about 6 1/4-inch slices off of your lemon and arrange them in a single layer across the bottom of a 12-inch skillet (for which you hopefully have a lid, otherwise you are effed). Then pile the parsley and tarragon stems, and half of the minced shallots on top.

Place the salmon fillets on top of the pile (he's king of the world!) and add the wine and water to the pan.

Bring the water and wine to a simmer over high heat, then reduce the temperature to low, cover the pan, and let that cook until it looks cooked. This should tale about 9-14 minutes, depending on how thick your fillets are.

(And now I'll be like the Beastie Boys and drop some science on your ass! The white stuff that forms all over your salmon--and lobster, for that matter--is simply coagulated albumin. And what is albumin, you ask? Well, albumin is a water-soluble protein that denatures under heat. Which basically means that it coagulates. Just like an egg white! And thus concludes today's science/Beastie Boys lesson.)

When the salmon is cooked, remove it (with the lemon slices) to a paper towel-lined plate and tent it loosely with aluminum foil.

Return the pan (with the remaining liquid) to high heat and simmer that down until it has thickened slightly and reduced to about 2 tablespoons.

Guess what? IT'S LATER. So mix the rest of your shallots, chopped herbs, capers, honey, and olive oil in a bowl.

When the poaching liquid has reduced, strain it into the bowl with all that stuff I just mentioned and whisk it all up to combine. Add salt and pepper until you're happy with it.

Then plate your salmon! (If your fillets are NOT skinless, an easy way to remove the skin before serving is by sliding a thin, wide spatula (exactly like a fish spatula) between the flesh of the fillet and the skin until it's separated.)

Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over each fillet and top it with a little of the sauce you just made. Add a wedge of lemon on the side for (lovin' touchin' and) squeezin' purposes.

Here, I put my fish right on top of some Israeli couscous, but you can put your fish on top (or on the side) of anything you like. That's what's so great about cooking! If you don't like it, don't do it!

Chipotle-Whipped Sweet Potatoes

2010-03-29T12:06:00.001-04:00

Let's face it: sweet potatoes rule. AND they're super healthy for you, which combined with the fact that they rule means we end up eating them about once a week. And lately this is the way I've been making them, because though this recipe takes a while it's generally low-maintenance and gives me plenty of time to drink an entire bottle of pinot noir all by myself. Because I'm a real classy broad like that.

You'll need:

2 sweet potatoes, scrubbed clean (try and pick out a matching pair to that they'll cook for the same amount of time)
1 tablespoon of butter
1-2 (depending on how spicy you like your food) chipotle peppers in adobo (cans of which you can find in the Hispanic foods section of your local grocery store)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put an oven rack in the middle position and preheat that baby to 450°F. (Usually I just use the toaster oven. Seems to work just fine.) While that's going, line a baking sheet with foil and prick each potato several times with a fork. (The foil will catch all the sugars that seep out of those holes you just made and make clean up so much easier.)

Bake your sweet potatoes on the prepared baking sheet until they are very soft. This should take about an hour to an hour and a half.

Remove the potatoes and reduce the (toaster) oven temperature to 350°F.

As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle, scrape the insides into the bowl of a food processor, and add all of your remaining ingredients.

Then give it a whirl until everything is whipped up all together.

(If you don't have a food processor, you can use a stick blender or even a regular blender, though it'll probably be a whole lot more difficult to get your whipped potatoes out of a regular blender. OR! You can mash the peppers up with a fork into a fine paste in a large bowl, then add the other ingredients and whip that all together with a hand mixer.)

(You might also be asking yourself what you are going to do with the rest of those peppers from that can. Well, I have no idea what you are going to do with them. But what I do with them is I put them in a small, freezer-safe container, and I stick them in the freezer. Then, whenever I make chipotle-whipped sweet potatoes I take that small, freezer-safe container out of the freezer when I put the potatoes in the oven. By the time I need peppers to throw in the food processor, they're thawed out enough so that I can pull a couple out and put the rest back into the freezer. And then I repeat that process until I'm all out of peppers, at which time I buy a new can and start all over again. But feel free to do whatever it is you want to do with them.)

Spoon out your puree into an oven-safe receptacle of some kind.

Then bake your whipped potatoes until they're hot, for about 20 to 25 minutes. Then serve. And hopefully enjoy. But if you don't then, meh, there's nothing I can really do about that now can I?

About Oven Roasted Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta

2010-03-06T16:11:00.002-05:00

One of the things we generally always have in the freezer is a bag of frozen shrimp. There are many reasons why we generally always have a bag of frozen shrimp in the freezer, but I'll only bore you with four: (1) shrimp is easy to cook, (2) and it does so real fast like, (3) plus it's delicious, and (4) the "fresh" shrimp you buy in the seafood department of your local supermarket is just defrosted frozen shrimp anyway. And just to make life easy, we always buy the frozen shrimp that's been deveined, but still has the shell on, because I like to keep the shells in a bag in the freezer and then make stock out of them. But you don't have to do that if you don't want to, because I do realize that it's weird to keep a bag of shrimp shells in one's freezer. It sort of seems a few steps shy of keeping, like, eyeballs in the freezer or something equally as morbid. But ANYWAY.

SHRIMP PRIMER!

Shrimp are sold by count, which basically means that you'll see a sign or a label or something that will say, like 12-15 count, or 35-40 count, or some other set of numbers. Those numbers tell you how many shrimps will make up one pound. So, if you buy a bag of 12-15 count shrimp, 12-15 shrimps will weigh one pound. The smaller the shrimp the less time they'll take to cook, and I don't really like to buy super tiny shrimp because they're kinda not worth it. For this recipe anything in the 20ish range will work.

Defrosting your shrimp is also super easy. Either let your frozen shrimp defrost in a bowl in the fridge overnight, or put them in a colander under a steady stream of cool water until they're all ready.

Ready? Mis en place!

This recipe definitely qualifies as easy, fast, and delicious. And the only other thing I want to mention is that it is well worth splurging on a good quality feta cheese. It makes all the difference. Also, don't buy the pre-crumbled feta; it doesn't melt too hot. For 2 servings you need:

1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 can of diced tomatoes
1/8 cup minced fresh parsley
1 tablespoon fresh dill, minced
3/4 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
salt and pepper to taste
1/3+ cup feta cheese, crumbled

Preheat the oven to 425°F. In a large, oven-proof skillet heat up your olive oil over medium high heat, and saute the onions for 3-5 minutes until they are softened. Then, add the garlic and cook just until you can start to smell it, about 30 seconds more.

Add the tomatoes and bring them to a simmer. As soon as it starts getting bubbly reduce the heat to medium low and let that continue to bubble away for another 5-10 minutes until the juices thicken a bit. Now remove the pan from the heat. Stir in the herbs, shrimp, feta cheese, and a little salt and pepper to taste.

Now place the pan in oven and bake, uncovered, until the shrimp are cooked through. This should only take about 10-12 minutes.

And, uh, that's about it. I like to serve mine over polenta, but this could easily be eaten with pasta or rice or couscous or with nothing more than a big ol' loaf of french bread.

This recipe is so good, y'all. Promise me you'll make it, okay?

About Pea-Whipped Potatoes

2010-02-23T09:11:00.002-05:00

Confession: I have a love-hate relationship with Michael Chiarello. Seriously, I have no idea if I love the guy or I hate him and his oh-isn't-Napa-just-the-end shut-the-fuck-up-already lifestyle. But then I saw him make pea-whipped potatoes on his television program, and I think perhaps beneath his is-he-or-isn't-he? exterior, we might just be kindred spirits. Because I love mashed potatoes. And I love mushy peas*. But to mix mashed potatoes with mushy peas? BRILLIANT!

* We'll actually be doing a mushy pea recipe that is slightly different than what you will be seeing here. Sometime. In the future. Promise.

So here's what we need:

1 Idaho russet potato
a little warm milk or cream
a little melted butter
1 cup of frozen peas
maybe a bit of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Yeah, now I guess you know what I mean when I say "all measurements are approximate," because I have no idea how much of anything this is going to take. It's all a matter of preference. So just go with it, okay?

POTATOES!

First, peel and dice your potato into about 1-inch cubes.

Next put your potatoes in a pot and cover them with cold water. Add salt. Bring the pot to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to a gentle rolling boil and let that roll along gently until your potatoes are soft enough to stick a fork in them. But not so soft they are falling apart, because then you'll have some problems with the next part, which is draining the potatoes in a colander. So drain your potatoes in a colander, and if you have a ricer or masher now's the time to get it out.

Hopefully while your potatoes were rolling gently you got yourself a bowl and added a little milk and/or cream and/or butter to the bowl. (Start with about 1/4 cup of milk and a tablespoon of butter.) And hopefully you heated that bowl up in the microwave or something until everything got warm. Because you need that now for your potatoes.

So get your potatoes in the bowl, and mix/mash that all up until it's creamy, and if it's too dry add A LITTLE more milk or cream at a time until you get it to the right consistency. And when I say "little," I MEAN little, because you can always add more if you need it BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE IT BACK OUT AGAIN IF YOU ADD TOO MUCH. The importance of this should be evident by the caps lock, but just in case it isn't, I have added this sentence. To point out the importance of that stuff up there written in all-caps.

Add a little salt and pepper to this and, hey! Look! You made mashed potatoes!

BUT WE'RE NOT DONE!

Rinse out the pot you just used to boil up your potatoes in and add your frozen peas. Maybe a little olive oil for extra flavor if you like. Put the lid on that baby and let everything steam over medium-high heat until the peas are tender.

Now put those peas in a food processor with a pat of butter and blend it all up until it's smooth. (A stick blender also works well for this, but I broke mine sometime after my iPod died but before my camera, DVR, and laptop hard drive bit the big one. Apparently there was a month in there when I did nothing but give off electronic-destroying EM radiation. I could have been one of the Watchmen!)

Here's where things get tricky: dump the pea puree into the mashed potatoes and stir it all up until combined.

Give it a taste. If it needs more butter, add more butter. If it needs more salt and pepper (which it probably will), add more salt and pepper. Then, serve. And think about Michael Chiarello. Or, you know, don't. I can't help it. I AM OBSESSED.

About Roasted Fennel

2010-02-20T12:22:00.002-05:00

Way back when we roasted a whole chicken with root vegetables we threw some fennel in there because (a) I told you to, and (b) fennel is DELICIOUS. But what if you want some delicious fennel but you're not roasting a whole chicken? Like, what if you're grilling up a steak or something and you're thinking to yourself, "Man, some roasted fennel would be SO DELICIOUS with this?" Well fear not, because roasted fennel all by itself is a thing. And I'm gonna show you how it's thung.

For two servings you'll need:

1 large fennel bulb, trimmed and sliced
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

First off preheat your oven to 400 F.

Now to trim and slice your fennel. Normally when you bring fennel home it looks like this:

Fennel fronds are great. I like to make a bouquet garni with them whenever I make fish soup. They're great in salads. They are not great roasted. So cut off the stalks and trim a bit off the root-end of your bulb.

Next cut the bulb in half. You'll notice the core coming up through the bulb from the root, and while the core keeps your layers of fennel together, it's not exactly edible. I mean, it's not poisonous or nothing, it's just really tough and stringy and NOT delicious. So cut your halves in to quarters, and again into eighths, and then trim out most of the core of each slice with the tip of your knife, leaving just enough to keep your fennel layers together. Like this:

Thankfully, the hard part is over, because all you have to do now is throw those pieces into a bowl, then add a couple glugs of olive oil and balsamic and some salt and pepper.

Coat each piece evenly and lay them out in a single layer on a half-sheet pan.

Stick the pan on the middle rack of your pre-heated oven and let it roast for 20 minutes. When it's done, you're done!

About Roasted Cauliflower

2010-02-17T07:32:00.000-05:00

Cooking for boys who claim to hate vegetables is SO WORST. It's like, give me a freaking BREAK already, I'm trying to do something good for your freaking colon so just eat the goddamned cauliflower, you know? But that's the thing about boys; they make no sense.

That's why I hereby give all y'all permission to be SNEAKY.

And that's exactly what roasted cauliflower is. Sneaky. One could even call it CRAFTY. Because roasted cauliflower tastes nothing like cauliflower. It tastes like french fries. But BETTER. Better, better french fries. I LOVE BETTER FRENCH FRIES.

Ahem.

Your shopping list for two is pretty simple. and pretty much consists of the following:

1 head of cauliflower
A couple glugs of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

That's it.

Now go and preheat your oven to 425 F. Now unwrap your head of cauliflower and remove any outer leaves, and trim the bottom off the stem to discard any brownish/blackish spots. As soon as you're done with that set your head of cauliflower stem-side down on a cutting board, and marvel at how freakishly brain-like that freaky-deaky vegetable looks. Then pull out your chef's knife and prepare to audition for Shaun of the Dead 2: Cooking Boogaloo.

Slice your brain--I mean cauliflower--into approximately 1/4-inch sections.

Remove these to a large bowl and dump a couple glugs of extra virgin olive oil over them. Then add a few pinches of salt and pepper, and gently toss the slices so they are completely coated but still (for the most part) intact. Spread the cauliflower into a single layer on a half-sheet pan.

Once the oven has preheated, stick the tray in and let it roast for about 20 minutes. Barring any major catastrophes (they have been known to happen) it should look about like this:

Use a spatula to flip the pieces over, then stick them back in the oven for another 20-30 minutes, until they look like this:

(That would be golden, brown, and delicious.) Now pile those on a plate with, what is that? Barbecued chicken and macaroni and cheese?

YES PLEASE.

About Shawarma Chicken

2010-01-05T10:48:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, little chefs! Once again it's time for resolutions, unless you're me of course because I never make resolutions, but I'm trusting that you're not like me because GOOD GOD why would you want that? And I'm trusting that one of your resolutions is probably to eat healthier, and eating healthier probably includes consuming a whole lot of skinless, boneless chicken breasts, and if it does, WHO BOY do I have a tasty one for you.

Today's recipe is inspired by Middle Eastern shawarma, which is like, so good you guys, and so figgin' easy to boot. Pretty much all you need is the marinade and a grill, which is funny because you don't even need a grill when you have a grill pan. Which I do!

So, let's get started. For the marinade, you'll need the following ingredients:

1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
5 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
juice of 1 lemon

which you just mix together in a bowl:

Next to prepare your chicken breasts. You'll notice they're pretty lumpy. Well, if there's one thing I can tell you with any amount of certainty, it's that lumpy breasts do not cook up evenly. So you'll want to de-lumpify them by butterflying the thick part and then smashing it all down with a mallet or the bottom of a small pan or something. (But do it between plastic wrap so you don't get chicken goo everywhere.)

Toss your chicken pieces into your bowl of marinade, cover, and refrigerate it for at least a couple of hours, or overnight if you have the luxury of time.

When you're ready to cook, heat up your grill pan over medium-high heat, then toss on your chicken.

Grill each side for 3-4 minutes, depending on how thick your breasts are (heh). You'll know it's done when you poke at it, and it stops being squishy (but before it turns into shoe leather).

When that's all done, remove the chicken to a cutting board and loosely tent it with aluminum foil while it rests for a few minutes. Now, this part is important: when you cut your breasts into slices, you're going to want to cut them AGAINST THE GRAIN. So in this picture, you'll see that the meat fibers are pointing in a sort of north-westerly direction, and I've sliced the breasts perpendicularly to that grain.

This ensures that your chicken strips will be tender and easy to bite through should you choose to stuff them in a pita with some hummus and lettuce and tomato and maybe some feta and onions, or if you'd rather just throw them on top of a salad.

You know, your choice.

About Mulled Wine

2009-12-06T19:30:00.002-05:00

Appropriately I am writing this while mildly inebriated, but perhaps mildly inappropriately I am drunk on whiskey. But dude, what can I say, I like whiskey. Oh my God, whatever, etc.

ANYWHO.

This particular recipe is a treasured one in the Team Slommins teamdom, if for no other reason than with every sip it brings us back to that magical land called Brussels, the land of waffle vans and really old walls and obscene statues and ginormous beers, the place we both decided was the most magical and wonderful place on the planet we've ever ever visited, and OH MY GOD CAN I GO BACK YET? (I also wrote about that particular trip here and here and here and here and here and here.)

So yeah. Brussels is awesome. But mulled wine also happens to be awesome IF you don't add a billion pounds of sugar to it. Which pretty much every recipe I've ever encountered does. SO. I bring you mine, which is relatively standard except I don't add 2 cups of sugar or 1 cup of sugar or even 1/2 cup of sugar. In fact, what you'll need is this:

which is this:

3 3-inch sticks of cinnamon, or the number of sticks of cinnamon it'll take you to equal about 9 inches of cinnamon lined up end to end, like you were measuring the distance to the moon or the circumference of the Earth or whatever those meaningless statistics Fig Newtons and whomever use to tell you just how many Fig Newtons or whatever are sold each year
10 whole cloves
10 black peppercorns
1 teaspoon allspice berries
2 bottles medium- or full-bodied red wine (e.g., shiraz, pinot noir, zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, oh my God, whatever, etc.)
4 healthy strips of orange zest
1/4 cup sugar
brandy

First up, toast the cinnamon sticks, cloves, peppercorns, and allspice in a heavy-bottomed, non-reactive saucepan (i.e., dutch oven) over medium-high heat until it all starts smelling like a GLAH-DAY candle. This should take about 2 minutes.

Add your wine, orange zest, and sugar. Stir the pot up every once in a while to dissolve the sugar as you bring this up to a simmer.

Then, partially cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for an hour until the wine is infused. DO NOT LET IT BOIL. (I don't know why, I just know that if you let this boil it gets all harsh and brassy and I guess that's why you shouldn't let this boil. Go figure.)

After an hour, give it a taste; it should be a little sweet and a little spicy and not overly... anything. It's hard to explain. But if you'd like it a little sweeter add a very little bit of sugar at a time, but not before...

you add some brandy! See, you pretty much cook out most of the alcohol as you're mulling your wine, and one of the homiest bestest parts of drinking mulled wine is the warm homeyness that spreads through your chest with each sip. (Seriously, this is like the best anti-depressant IN THE WORLD.)

So add a glug or two of brandy to your mug and then ladle in some hot, steaming mulled wine and take a sip.

And then put on some Christmas music and prepare to be transported to your own personal winter wonderland. (Or add a little more sugar as is your wont. But I don't advise it (says the girl who hates fruity drinks).)

(By the way, this is supposed to serve 8. But we're alcoholics so we drank up the whole pot last night while catching up with all the crap television on our DVR. Hence tonight's whiskey.)

Cheers!

About Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

2009-11-10T10:15:00.000-05:00

Tam asked for variations and I aim to please, but I'm not sure if she keeps kosher or not so if she does then OOPS. I guess you can omit the bacon if you want but OH MY GOD WHY WOULD YOU WANT? Except for that whole "God" thing I guess. Whatever.

So yeah. Another way I make the Brussels sprouts. And just in time for your Thanksgiving feast! Although you might need to double the recipe or something depending on how many people you're having over. Me? Just my mother and my sister and my boyfriend and my cat. But I'm not making this anyway, because I think we're doing Vietnamese for Thanksgiving on account of my mother and my sister coming to visit, and anyway this wouldn't be enough unless I doubled the recipe because this feeds two:

1 lb. Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
2 slices of bacon, sliced into 1/4-inch slivers
1 small shallot, sliced
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup water or broth
Squidge of lemon

Preheat your oven to 450 F, then toss the first five ingredients together with some salt and pepper and spread it all out in a single layer in a large skillet or baking dish.

Roast all that in the upper third of your oven, stirring once after about ten minutes. Give it another ten to fifteen minutes more, until your sprouts are tender and browned at the edges.

Pull the pan out of the oven and stir in your water or broth, making sure so scrape up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan (brown bits = flavor!). Add your squidge of lemon and serve.

(Also, enjoy!)

About David's Cousin's Corn Pudding

2009-11-10T09:58:00.001-05:00

Hey there, remember me? I'm the girl who used to cook and then take pictures of what she was cooking and then write about those pictures of what she was cooking and then post that writing about those pictures of what she was cooking right in this very web space. Well, FUNNY STORY. Actually, it's not funny so much as it is ANNOYING, because this camera I've been using? The one being held together by rubber bands? Well it's not so hot, actually. Actually, it kind of sucks. I sucks so bad in fact that I haven't really been able to get any decent shots off of what I've been cooking so that I could write about those shots of what I've been cooking and post that writing about those shots of what I've been cooking right in this very web space.

Also, I haven't really been cooking that much.

HOWEVER, I did cook on Sunday night and this is what I cooked, my BFF's cousin's corn pudding, a recipe Paula Deen would be so very proud of (you'll see why), a recipe that would be perfect for your Thanksgiving feast. Because it's delicious. And easy. TWSS.

So here's what you'll need:

1 can of corn, drained
1 can of creamed corn
1 stick of melted butter
8 oz. of sour cream
1 box of Jiffy corn mix

Mix all that together in a casserole dish. (Mine's vintage Pyrex found in etrets's etsy shop.)

Bake that in a preheated 325-degree oven for an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. (It should still be goopy and jiggly in the middle.)

And then dish it out onto dishes and serve!

(Insider's tip: this goes really well with a bowl of chili.)

Bonus!

There's lots of stuff you can add to this basic recipe, stuff like minced chives and jalapenos and shredded cheese and pretty much anything you can think of that goes good with cornbread. So don't forget to do that! You know, if you want to. Whatever.

Double Bonus!

Here's a picture of Schilbo getting ready to put some in the oven!

About Brussels Sprouts

2009-09-30T11:27:00.000-04:00

Le sprouts from Brussels get a bad rap. When overcooked, le sprouts from Brussels release a chemical compound called sinigrin, adding a certain pungent and sulfuric aroma that is just about as gross as it sounds. So if you like cabbage, but hate le sprouts from Brussels, chances are whoever it was who cooked them for you was a shit-ass-motherfucking bad cook. It's not mean if it's true.

I have about a billion yummy brussels spouts recipes, but this one is by far the most basic and a good introduction for you, the future brussles sprouts lover. Here's your shopping list, and an apology in advance for the crappy picture quality (someone stole my camera when I was in New Orleans, and this one is currently being held together by a rubber band):

1 pound fresh brussels sprouts
2 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

First you need to trim your sprouts. Do this with your paring knife by cutting off any excess stem at the base of your sprout, and removing any loose leaves around the bulb. Now boil the spouts in salted water for 3-4 minutes until just tender. (Just stab a sprout with a fork to judge tenderness. Incidentally, this method also works on boys.)

Strain these in a colander and immediately dump them in a bowl of ice water to keep the color bright green and stop the cooking process. (This is called blanching, for those of you keeping score.)

Once they have cooled, cut your spouts into halves.

Melt the butter in a wide sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the brussels sprout halves and a pinch or two of salt and pepper.

Cook your spouts for several minutes, tossing occasionally until they have started to brown and have finished cooking through. Whatever you do, DO NOT OVERCOOK THEM, because remember that thing I said about sinigrin? Yeah, so if you do decide to overcook them, your sprouts will be bitter. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the lemon juice, tossing to coat. Add some more salt and pepper if you need it.

Now stick them on a plate and prepare to fall in love with your next vegetable. I SAID PREPARE, GODDAMNIT! Ahem.

About My Boyfriend's Mother's Kugel

2009-09-25T10:07:00.001-04:00

Today is my boyfriend's 47th birthday, and in honor of this milestone I thought I would share his mother's kugel recipe, which isn't as good as his grandmother's stuffed cabbage recipe, and definitely not as good as my mother's latke recipe, but I'm not terribly convinced I even like kugel all that much. I mean it's fine, whatever, but I'm not super in love with it or anything, because, I don't know. It's like this mutant side dish/dessert thing that really fucks with my mind, you know? But if you are the kind of person who enjoys a good mind fuck every now and again, I am assured that you'll absolutely LOVE this. So here goes:

1 lb. wide egg noodles

(See?)

16 oz. sour cream
16 oz. cottage cheese
5 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2-3/4 cup sugar (I like half a cup, Seth likes three-quarters; it all depends on how sweet you'd like your kugel to be)
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. butter melted into a 9x13 baking dish
1/2 cup raisins (optional)

Cinnamon and brown sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 350F degrees.

Boil the noodles for 4 minutes, which won't cook them all the way through but this is a good thing! Don't worry about it! And then drain them in a colander.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, beat your eggs well, and then mix in the sour cream, cottage cheese, baking powder, sugar, salt, and optional raisins. (I actually meant to add raisins, but I forgot. Oops.)

And now add the noodles. Stir it good. St-stir it real good.

Pour this mixture into your buttered 9x13 baking dish, sprinkle the top with cinnamon and brown sugar, and then bake that bad boy (or girl, whatever) for 30-45 minutes, until the top is brown and crunchy and the kugel is just set.

Let that sit for another 15-20 minutes or so, and then slice and serve.

Now, there will be a lot of this left over. Like, a whole lot. But don't worry about it! Leftovers can be wrapped and frozen so you can have kugel whenever you want. You know, if you want. Whatever.

Happy 47th birthday, boyfriend!

About Sauteed Tilapia

2009-09-03T10:00:00.002-04:00

A lot of you know me pretty well by now, so it should come as no surprise that I trend towards the complex. I'm way too thinky and I live inside my own head way too much and I generally just make a mess out of things. Why I am like this I do not know, but there is certainly never a dull moment around these parts.

THAT SAID, sometimes simple is best. And this recipe is most definitely simple. Short-bus simple, even. And super healthy to boot. What we're booting I have no idea, so let's just say we're booting claustrophobia.

Yeah, I don't know either.

All you'll need is:

2 fillets of tilapia (or any other fish, really)
The spice mixture of your choice (or any combination of spices, really)
A little extra virgin olive oil
A non-stick pan
A couple lemon wedges

First up, sprinkle your seasonings on both sides of your fish. This night I happened to use some Tony Chachere's, but there's also this Bayou Blackening Spice a company out of Virginia makes, and I'm not sure if you can get it everywhere but if you can, do it because IT IS AWESOME.

Next up, heat just a little bit of oil in your pan over medium-high heat. Once you're hot enough (but really, when are you not?), add in your fillets.

Now here's a fun fact about cooking fish, although I suppose "fun" is probably not a very good word to use in this situation, because it's not "fun" like reading or drinking or Wii, so whatever, fill in your own adjective I guess. Wait, where was I?

OH YEAH.

Fun fact: you cook your fish way more on one side than you do the other. We saw this once before with some salmon fillets, and the same goes here, only since these fillets are so thin it'll take far less total cooking time. And how long is this cooking time? About 3 minutes on your first side, and 1 minute on your flip side.

Aaaaaand you're ready for the plate.

Add a squidge of lemon and you've got yourself a simple, healthy, delicious dinner.

About Toasted Israeli Couscous with Zucchini

2009-09-03T09:28:00.004-04:00

Alex and I used to wander into the UC at Tulane University round about lunch time and every now and again we'd hit the jackpot: Greek Salad Day. Greek Salad Day was the best day of all the days because (a) the Greek salads were ridiculously awesome, and (2) South Park.

Do what now?

Alex and I used to wander around Tulane University quoting Eric Cartmen INORDINATELY, particularly the classic line, "YEAH I WANT CHEESY POOFS!", because yeah, I would like some cheesy poofs, please. And so one fateful day Alex and I were waiting patiently in line, side by side in the UC at Tulane University, watching our ridiculously awesome Greek salads being constructed. And I don't remember which of us said it, but I do remember that the nice lady behind the counter was certainly not expecting her innocent query, "Would you like some couscous?" to be answered with "YEAH I WANT COUSCOUS!" Because yeah, we would like some couscous, please.

This is not that kind of couscous. My boyfriend does not like that kind of couscous. And I don't know, maybe it's because he's Jewish or something, but the only couscous he likes is Israeli couscous, even though he only had Israeli couscous for the first time, like, three months ago.

What is Israeli couscous? Why, it's a unique Mediterranean toasted pasta specialty. Don't believe me? Fine, see for yourself:

Israeli couscous is also ridiculously awesome, because really it's just pasta, but it's tender and chewy and completely unlike pasta. Plus you can add all kinds of things to it, like zucchini for instance! So for four servings, you'll need:

1 large zucchini, cut into small cubes

1 cup Israeli couscous
1 1/4 cups chicken broth
1 small onion, diced
2 medium garlic cloves, minced

Olive oil, salt, and pepper
2 tablespoons of assorted fresh herbs, minced

Once you have your mis en place all placed,

heat up a tablespoon or so of extra virgin olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until it gets all shimmery and starts to smoke. Then add your zucchini (or summer squash or bell pepper or eggplant or heck, all of the above), a pinch of salt, some freshly cracked black pepper, and a couple shakes of any other seasonings you like (like cumin or coriander or paprika or heck, all of the above). Then saute that down until your zucchini has lost a lot of its liquid and is starting to brown all up. Sort of like it went to the beach and got a suntan. Only not like that at all. Shut up, Kat.

(This should only take a couple minutes.)

Dump all that zucchini onto a plate.

Return your pan to the heat and maybe add a drop or two of oil if you think you need it, then dump in your onions with another pinch of salt and some freshly cracked black pepper, and saute that until it is softened and starting to brown, not AT ALL like it went to the beach and got a suntan.

(This should only take a few minutes.)

Next up, add in your garlic and your couscous, and toast that all up for about a minute.

Oh yeah, stick your chicken broth in the microwave for a minute or two until it boils. Then pour it into the pan and stir everything up, making sure you scrape up any fond from the bottom of the pan.

Turn your heat down to low and slap a lid on that baby, and let it simmer away for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Your couscous should absorb pretty much all of the liquid, making it slightly chewy but not hard.

Return your sauteed zucchini to the pan and dump in your herbs.

Give it healthy stir to incorporate all of your ingredients, put the lid back on your pan, and let that heat back up for a minute or two more. And just like that (well, not JUST like that, but close enough), you are ready to serve.

(Oh, and I find a squidge of lemon over everything really brightens things up, kind of like going to the beach and . . . oh, never mind.)

About Roasted Potato Wedges with Herb Butter

2009-08-29T12:31:00.003-04:00

You say potato, and I also say potato, and I'm not sure why I bring this up other than to point out how ridiculous this notion is, that there are actual human beings walking around saying "PoTAHto this," and "PoTAHto that." Damned dirty lie that is, which I suppose is why Alien Ant Farm has yet record one of their absurd faux-punk covers of whatever that stupid song is. I would look it up, but I'm lazy.

ANYWAY, not only do we both say potato, I'm willing to bet that farm I don't have that we both LOVE potatoes, and so while I'm busy formulating a kick-ass jalapeno popper recipe for Jake (Greader friends will know him as the guy who hates tomatoes and JOY), I thought I'd share what is probably my best potato recipe.

Well, it's the potato recipe I made for dinner last night anyway.

For two servings you'll need:

2 large russet (baking) potatoes, scrubbed clean
A couple glugs of extra virgin olive oil
A large pinch of kosher salt
Another large pinch of freshly ground black pepper

1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, sage, rosemary, or thyme (or any other non-Simon-and-Garfunkel-approved herb)

First off, put a rack in the lower third of your oven and preheat that bad boy (or girl, whatever) to 450F.

Line the bottom of a half sheet pan (or jelly roll pan or cookie sheet or whatever) with either parchment paper or non-stick aluminum foil, because it doesn't matter how much you grease that baby up, russet potatoes are starchy. And starch is sticky. You see where I'm going here. (Heh.)

Cut each potato lengthwise into 8 wedges and toss with salt, pepper, and olive oil in a large bowl.

Once everything is well coated, arrange the potato wedges flat sides down, making sure you don't overcrowd the pan because if you overcrowd the pan your potatoes will steam instead of roast and steam = mush while roast = crunch and CRUNCH IS GOOD.

Now cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil and steam in the oven for 10 minutes. Um, yeah. Just go with me on this one.

After your wedges have steamed for 10 minutes, remove the foil and roast them for 10 minutes more. (The initial steam softened up your potatoes and made them all light and fluffy on the inside. NOW we're crunchifying the outsides. See? I (sorta) know what I'm doing.)

Flip them over and roast for another 10 minutes.

MEANWHILE, you're gonna want to make your herb butter, because what the hell else are you going to do when you're not removing foil and flipping potato wedges? Besides drinking I mean. ANYWAY, do you guys know savory? I can't say that I've ever seen any in a grocery store, but if there is any way you can grow some in your garden or on your deck or balcony or even on a window sill somewhere, you should probably go ahead and do that. SAVORY IS DELICIOUS.

So here I have some savory and parsley:

And you're gonna want to mince your herbs up finely, and then throw them in a small pan with the butter, and melt all that together over low heat.

And just keep that on low heat until your potatoes are ready, and when they're ready, dump them a bowl and drizzle the herb butter over them.

Give them a toss to coat and serve, maybe with a little pollo a la brasa?

That's what I did, anyway. But what do I know; I say potato.

About Bagels

2009-08-25T08:19:00.000-04:00

The best bagels in DC now come out of my kitchen, and it's all thanks to Jo Goldenberg via Melinda Lee. Seriously, this recipe was so easy (and messy) that I'm currently pricing stand-up mixers and bigger kitchens, just so I can make these more often.

Then again, I always did want to buffen up my spindly little arms.

The first proof:

The half proof, which should really be called the second proof since, sequentially, it occurs second, but I'm not really a baker so WHAT THE HELL DO I KNOW:

The water bath:

Topped:

And baked:

You guys should totally make these this weekend and tell me how it goes. (So it goes.)

About Dicing an Onion

2009-07-24T09:33:00.001-04:00

Incidentally, this technique also works with shallots.

And for the record, it is exceedingly difficult to dice an onion on camera, either slowly or gracefully.

About Removing Kernels from an Ear of Corn

2009-07-24T09:32:00.001-04:00

About Chilled Corn Soup with Adobo Swirl

2009-07-24T09:27:00.003-04:00

Guess what! It's finally sweaty as balls out there in the un-air-conditioned world! And the corn is as high as an elephant's eye, which I don't really understand, because I'm pretty sure corn isn't native to the same places elephants live. So unless, I don't know, the circus rolls into town (BOOOOOO CIRCUS!) and the elephants arrange some sort of massive jailbreak (AND WHO COULD BLAME THEM) and end up tromping through the cornfields of Iowa, how the hell would you know that the corn is as high as an elephant's eye? I mean, I suppose you could make a rough guesstimation as to the height of an elephant's eye, but Americans did not put a man on the moon with guesstimations. Much.

ANYWAY, the point is that corn is 10 for a dollar at my local Safeway, and although corn on the cob is DELICIOUS, it also crams all in between your teeth which is annoying. So I figured, why not make some corn soup? Oh yeah, because it's sweaty as balls out there in the un-air-conditioned world. Then how about we make some chilled corn soup? BRILLIANT!

For four bowls you'll need:

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped sweet onion (like a Vidalia or a Maui or even a Walla Walla)
4 cups fresh corn kernels (from about 4 ears of corn; I used white corn but any color will do ya)
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth (or vegetable broth for you vegetarians out there)
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 cup (or less) water
Salt and pepper to taste

2 teaspoons adobo sauce from canned chipotle chiles
Fresh cilantro leaves, chopped

(In case you were wondering, what makes this soup instead of the more traditional corn chowder is the lack of cream in the recipe. Also probably some potatoes or something. Whatever, like you care.)

First off, heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a large, heavy saucepan or dutch oven over medium-high heat. When the oil gets shimmery add the onion and a small pinch of salt and sauté until soft, about 4 minutes.

Next add the corn kernels, broth, and 1 tablespoon of the lime juice. Bring the mixture to boil, then reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the corn is just tender. This will take about about 3 minutes.

Working in batches, puree the soup in a blender until almost smooth. IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE (although it's not to the side, which I guess makes it more of an IMPORTANT WITHIN-PARAGRAPH NOTE): When pureeing hot liquids in a blender, make sure you take the little nubbin thing off of the blender lid. I don't really know what that's called, if it's called anything at all, but it's the thing that leaves a giant hole in the lid. And now you're probably asking yourself why you'd want a giant hole in the blender lid, because isn't a lid supposed to, you know, seal shit up? And this is true, but if you don't have a giant hole in the lid when you're blending hot liquids there would be no place for steam to escape and with no place for steam to escape you get HOT STEAMING EXPLOSIONS. Hence, the Industrial Revolution.

But, you still have a giant hole in the lid which can (and does, believe me) lead to splash back, so just hold a kitchen towel over the hole to catch any soup that might be organizing a massive jailbreak.

Pour your batches of pureed soup into a large bowl, then stir in the remaining tablespoon of lime juice and up to a cup of water (just add a little at a time to thin the soup to your desired consistency). Season up your corn soup with salt and pepper to taste, then cover the bowl and refrigerate until chilled, about 2 hours or overnight.

Now, this might not taste like a whole lot of fabulousness now but just before you're getting ready to serve your soup whisk the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil together with the adobo sauce. Drizzle each bowl of soup with the adobo oil and then garnish with a healthy amount of cilantro.

I guaran-fucking-tee it: FABULOUSNESS.

About Soy-Lemon Dressing

2009-07-23T16:12:00.001-04:00

They say that variety is the spice of life, and if that's the case then what the hell is actual spice? I'll tell you: DELICIOUS. So sometimes for a little variety I'll whip up a little dressing with which to dress my vegetables, because as we've learned variety is spice and spice is delicious. Ergo, variety is delicious.

Or something.

This is a really easy dressing that's also really delicious on a whole host of steamed or roasted vegetables, especially broccoli and cauliflower with their nooks and crannies that just ADORE soaking up a delicious dressing, particularly a dressing that is salty and sweet and tart like this one is. (HELLOOOOOOO, run-on sentence!)

So, for 2 pounds or bunches or whatever configuration your particular vegetable has chosen to take, you'll need:

3 tablespoons to 1/4 cup of soy sauce (add more if you'd like it saltier)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic (raw if you like the bite, or you can boil the whole cloves in water for 15 seconds or roast them with your veggies if you'd like something a little mellower)
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

Mix all of this together. And when you're done, it pretty much looks like this:

I know, FASCINATING. But EASY. Because it's all ready to drizzle over your veggies or toss with your veggies or whatever method it is that you choose to combine the dressing with the veggies.

About Roasted Broccoli

2009-07-23T15:56:00.002-04:00

Like most boys, my boy doesn't like a whole lot of vegetables. So when he finds one he actually does like, we tend to eat a lot of it. Like, a whole lot of it. And so it is with broccoli, despite what the greatest Powerpuff Girls episode IN THE WORLD would have you believe. What, you don't believe me that "Beat Your Greens" is the greatest Powerpuff Girls episode IN THE WORLD? Fine. Watch for yourself:

Incidentally, did I tell you that my boy got me the complete Powerpuff Girls series on DVD for my birthday? BEST. BOYFRIEND. EVER!

Wait, what were we talking about again? Oh right, broccoli. And how there's only so many times you can eat steamed broccoli before your eyes roll back into your skull out of boredom. I have no idea what that means. But I do know that steamed broccoli can get pretty boring after a while, which is why we roast it!

Roasting vegetables in general is pretty awesome, because the high and dry heat in your oven caramelizes all the sugars and crunchifies all the tender bits and everyone knows that it's the caramel and the crunch that makes Twix the most delicious candy bar OF ALL TIME. So preheat your oven to 450 F and gather your ingredients:

2 medium heads of broccoli, florets separated into reasonably large chunks
A couple glugs of extra virgin olive oil
A few pinches of salt and pepper and maybe some crushed red pepper flakes and lemon zest
Maybe a couple cloves of garlic

Toss all of this together in a large bowl until the broccoli is well coated.

Then lay out your florets in a single layer on a half-sheet pan.

Then put the pan in the oven.

Hey look, you're cooking!

(Sorry.)

After about 15 minutes, flip your florets. (If you are making a sauce or a dressing or whatever to go with your roasted broccoli, now's the time to remove the garlic cloves. If not, keep calm and carry on.)

And roast them for another 8 minutes.

And you're done! Your broccoli is officially ready to serve, but if you're feeling saucy (heh), why not drizzle your florets with a little balsamic vinegar? Or some soy-lemon dressing? Either way, YUM.

About Cornish Game Hens a la Brasa

2009-07-09T09:45:00.000-04:00

The one and honest-to-Santa only thing I miss about the suburbs is our weekly dinner at El Pollo Rico. And I know we already talked about how blah and boring chicken is, but holy shit this stuff is like crack. In slaughtered chicken form. Seriously, I know I'm the Queen of Hyperbole and all, but this shit is fucking awesome. It is so fucking awesome that last time Tony Bourdain was in town he ended up there just because every single person in the greater metro DC area was all, "GO THERE."

So he did. And he liked it.

And missing my weekly Pollo Rico dinners as I did, I decided (duh) that I would try to recreate a pollo a la brasa at home, except I don't have a giant rotisserie. And I keep using cornish game hens every time I make this. Why cornish game hens? I don't know, because they're cute. Also, how does one say cornish game hen in Spanish? Ah, córnico juego gallina. Thank you, Google Translate.

So, for the córnico juego gallina, you'll need:

2 hens, halved. (Or fine, use a whole chicken, quartered, if you want. Or a bunch of random chicken pieces. Either way you should have about 3 1/2 pounds of poultry total.)

How do you halve a cornish game hen? I'm glad you asked! Just pull out your handy dandy kitchen shears. Then use your handy dandy kitchen shears to cut out the backbone (save these for stock). Then take your chef's knife and slice the rest of your bird in half, right down the middle of its breastbone. (And feel free to trim off any excess fat or skin. You won't need them for nothin' 'cept cellulite.)

Throw these into a gallon-sized freezer bag and pour the marinade on top.

What's in the marinade? I'm glad you asked! You'll need:

1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
5 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Dump all of this into a blender and blend until smooth. It's not 100% exactly like Pollo Rico's marinade, but it is about 83.2% like Pollo Rico's marinade. And damn good in its own right.

So now that you've dumped your marinade in with your poultry pieces, seal up the bag, squeezing as much air out as possible.

Throw the bag in a bowl in case of leakage (heh) (also, ew), and throw the bowl in the fridge. Actually, no, don't throw the bowl in the fridge. More like, place the bowl in the fridge with authority! And let it sit in the fridge and think about what it's done! (Which is die so that you can eat a tasty dinner.)

You're going to want to let that marinate for AT LEAST 8 hours, but more like 24. FOR FLAVOR. And every time you go to the fridge for, I don't know, a glass of water or a piece of string cheese or whatever, give the bag a little shake to redistribute the marinate. Gotta keep your dead chicken on its toes.

When you're ready FOR FLAVOR, take that bag of poultry parts out to your blazing hot grill, throw your poultry parts onto your blazing hot grill (but not the bag, because that would be melty (in a bad way)), and char the hell out of your poultry parts until the internal temperature of your breasts (heh) reach 160 F on your handy dandy instant-read thermometer.

Pull your meat off the grill (heh) (also, ouch) and let it rest about 10 minutes before serving. And then serve!

About Seafood Paella

2009-07-01T15:25:00.003-04:00

Listen, I know what you're gonna say and I don't want to hear it. I don't care if this recipe is nothing like the paella you had that summer you backpacked through Spain, or how this recipe is a complete disgrace to the word paella, or how Jose Andres will probably pack up his restaurants and move out of the city as soon as he finds out that I'm cooking this recipe so close to Jaleo. If you want to go out and spend the money on a paella pan and a fire pit in your backyard so's you can be all snooty and traditional about it, then fine, but me? I live in a one-bedroom apartment and I don't have all day and sometimes I just want a down-and-dirty seafood and rice recipe and this one happens to be really, really good. So if you're offended by that I suggest you move along to some other webpage. I suggest pr0n.

If you are still here, hi there! You're my favorite, did you know that? And it might interest you to know that I adapted this particular recipe from this one over here, and after several tweaks and twanks (I don't know) I think my version is ready for prime time. I have a big ol' 13-inch Lodge cast iron pan that works perfectly for this, and even gets the bottom all crusty and delicious, but if you don't have a big ol' 13-inch Lodge cast iron pan then maybe that 15x10x2-inch glass baking dish thing will work? I don't know. Try it and report back.

Here's the shopping list for a family of four, or two with plenty of leftovers (and I mean PLENTY; you should see my fridge right now), or a double date perhaps:

2 links of chorizo, casings removed
2 chicken thighs, cut in half to make 4 pieces
Salt, pepper, and paprika

1 medium onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced (or pressed through that garlic press I keep telling you to buy)
1 cup of arborio rice (I know, I know, but it's what I have, and it works gosh darn it)
1 jar roasted pimientos, diced, with the juice (pimientos are the same as red peppers, so if you can't find the one the other is fine)

1/2 teaspoon crushed saffron threads
1 cup bottled clam juice
3/4 cup low-sodium chicken stock

Assorted seafood

Okay, let us talk about this one for a second. What kind of seafood should you use? I don't know; whatever you want. Here I have sea scallops, peeled and de-veined shrimp, king crab legs, and squid.

But you could also throw in some clams or mussels or lobster or whatever looks good to you.

How much seafood do you need? I don't know that either. Just think about your four big portions of paella and how many of each seafoods you want in each portion. So like, if you want two scallops then you need 2 x 4 = 8 scallops. And you thought you'd never need math.

1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
Lots of chopped parsley
Lemon wedges

Preheat your oven to 450F. Put Dr. Horrible in the DVD player and hit play.

Generously season all sides of your chicken thighs with salt, pepper, and paprika, and let that sit while you cook up the chorizo. And sing along to Dr. Horrible.

And how do you cook up the chorizo? Well, you heat up your pan over medium-high heat, and then you throw the chorizo in the heated pan. (How do you sing along to Dr. Horrible? Loudly, and with feeling.) As the chorizo cooks, make sure you use a wooden spoon to break it up into little pebble-sized pieces. When it looks browned, push the meat pebbles all around the edge of the pan to make some room in the middle, and add your chicken thighs skin-side down.

Brown the chicken on all sides, which should take about 5-6 minutes per side. Then remove your meat-stuff to a plate.

Throw your onion into the pan and saute those until they're beginning to brown and turn translucent. Then add your minced garlic and cook that down a minute more, until the whole mess looks like this:

If you happen to have a bottle of sherry handy (which of course I do) add a glug or two and scrape up and brown bits that have stuck to the bottom of the pan. If you don't, then no big whoop, it's not like I told you you'd need it or anything and it's not important enough for me to make you go out and buy an entire bottle of sherry for just a glug or two.

Now stir in your rice, roasted pimientos with juice, and the saffron.

Add the clam juice, chicken stock, and chorizo, give everything another stir, and bring that to a simmer. Then turn off the heat and arrange your chicken pieces in the pan so that they're all nestled in amongst (heh) the rice and veggies and whatnot.

Cover your pan with foil and stick it in the oven. After about 10 minutes, pull out the pan, remove the foil, take a nice handful of your chopped parsley (making sure you save some for later) and throw it in. Give everything another stir (you'll notice that the rice is still quite moist) and rearrange your chicken, please.

Re-cover the pan with foil and put it back into the oven for another 20 minutes. Then, pull it out AGAIN, and remove the foil AGAIN, but don't give anything another stir! Instead, nestle all of your seafood pieces into the rice, and sprinkle your peas all about the pan. Be as artistic as you feel necessary.

Re-re-cover the pan with foil and re-put it back into the oven for another 15 minutes, or until the seafood is just cooked through.

Pull out the pan, for good this time, and remove the foil. Let it sit for 10 more minutes to let it finish doing its thang, sprinkle the top with your remaining parsley, and serve with your lemon wedges.

And think fondly of fake Spain.

About Roast Chicken with Root Vegetables

2009-06-25T10:47:00.003-04:00

So I have to give my apologies to the newly vegetarianized Heather Anne for this recipe, but it's been sitting in Google Docs forever waiting for me to get to it, and I've been procrastinating like hell about it, because COME ON, it's chicken, and even though this is a really delicious chicken, chicken doesn't get its reputation for being boring for nothing. I mean, what is there to say about chicken? They're birds and they cluck and if they're lucky they get to roam around eating their own vegetarian meals and having a happy, outdoorsy life until their heads are chopped off and their necks are stuffed back down into their body cavities and see? B-O-R-I-N-G.

But this dish is definitely not boring, and it's impressive-looking to boot, and the best part is how simple it is to make. Basically all you need is:

A 3- to 4-pound whole chicken
An assortment of root vegetables
Olive oil
Salt, pepper, and any other herbs and spices of your choosing

So preheat your oven to 425F. While that's heating up, prepare your veggies. This particular day I used fennel, turnips, parsnips, carrots and a potato.

Scrub your veggies thoroughly and then chop them up into 1 1/2-inch chunks. Try to make the pieces as close to the same size as possible so they cook evenly. Then toss your chunks (heh) with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and what the hell, throw some garlic cloves and chopped parsley in there for fun. And spread them all out into the bottom of the pan. (You can use a big roasting pan if you have one but I find a large skillet works well, and is easier to clean which is awesome.)

Now you get to molest your chicken! Squee! (I don't know.) Stick your hand up the gaping whole between its legs (heh) and pull out the little plastic baggie. In it you'll find your chicken's neck, liver, gizzard, and yes, heart. You'll probably want to throw this away, but me, I like toss the neck in the freezer for stock and chop up the organs into teeny tiny pieces and mix them all up in the veggies. Or sometimes Seth will add the livers to his world famous mushrooms on toast. But like I said, you'll probably want to throw it all away.

Rinse your chicken carcass inside and out and then pat it dry with a wad of paper towels. (This is so the skin browns and crisps all up in the oven, which is important because YUM.) Sprinkle the chicken liberally with salt and pepper both inside and out, and then place it breast(does a hyphen go here?)side down, either directly on top of your vegetables or on a rack placed over your vegetables.

And stick it in the oven!

After about 20 minutes it will look like this,

all golden brown and delicious, but it's not ready DO NOT EAT IT YET. Instead, flip it over onto its back, and I cannot stress this enough, for the love of all that is holy and good try not to burn yourself. Or touch the pan. Which is why I have three sets of oven mitts strategically placed throughout my tiny kitchen. And I use those oven mitts to give the hot pan a little shake to stir up the veggies.

Stick it back in the oven for another 8 minutes, then give a little peek inside to see whether the skin has started to brown. If so, great! If not, let it roast for another 2 or 3 or 5 or however many minutes it takes.

When you're ready, baste the bird with a little olive oil, and if you want to get real fancypants about it you can add some herbs and spices to the olive oil.

Lower the temperature of your oven to 325F, and continue roasting your chicken until the breast meat reaches 160F and the thigh meat hits 165F. And when you tip the bird forward the juices that run out of the body cavity should definitely NOT look like blood.

The whole process should take about an hour, maybe more, and when you're done it should look something like this:

But if you were to cut into it right away all the yummy chicken juices would run right out of your chicken and where you really want them is actually IN the chicken so DON'T DO THAT. Instead, put your bird on a cutting board, loosely tent it with some foil to keep warm, and let it rest for about 10-15 minutes.

And while that's camping out, take a fork and stab at the veggies. If there is any resistance crank the oven up to 400F and stick the pan back in for a few minutes until everything has finished cooking.

Back to the bird, and A CONFESSION: I have no idea how to carve a chicken. Gordon Ramsey says it's the easiest thing in the world, but I have my boyfriend do it anyway. Besides, it gives him something to do and usually isn't it always the head of the family who does the carving? Not that my boyfriend is the head of the family or anything, and especially not that the DUDE always has to be the head of the family because NUH UH NO WAY, but like I said, it gives him something to do.

ANYWHO, since I am of no help here, enjoy this lovely video, creatively entitled "How to Carve a Chicken." I can't vouch for the sound because my computer is on mute and I'm too lazy to unmute it, but the chef is relatively attractive so there's that.

And then there's this, the perfect plate of roasted chicken with root vegetables. (And salad.)

About Sauteed Fish Fillets with Lemon and Capers

2009-06-02T11:40:00.001-04:00

So, fish is pretty delicious, huh? And it's also really healthy for you, so long as you're not eating like, enough to get mercury poisoning or eating anything you fish out of the Tidal Basin with a stick and a plastic bag, NOT that I've ever actually done this or anything, but in this day and age with the need to save money and whatnot, those floaters might look awfully appealing to some folk, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, what I'm talking about is all the dead fish floating about the Tidal Basin THANK YOU POLLUTION.

But then there's the other way to make fish not really healthy, and that's to cook it the super classic Frenchy way, and while I don't always do anything the super classic Frenchy way, every now and again I'll whip this recipe out because (1) it's easy, and (2) HELLO BUTTER. And for this you'll need to use any kind of thin white fish fillet, kinds like catfish, flounder, fluke, sole, haddock, bass, snapper, rockfish, or tilapia (I used tilapia) and thin like 1/4-inch thin.

To feed two, you'll need:

2 fillets o' fish (duh)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
Flour for dredging (just put a small pile of flour in a shallow dish large enough to dip and roll your fish around in)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon capers
Minced parsley leaves

This recipe moves fast, so make sure your mis en place is placed.

Season the fillets o' fish with salt and pepper on both sides.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat for 2 or 3 minutes. Then, add the olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter; when the butter stops foaming dredge the fillets o' fish in the flour, one at a time, shaking off any excess.

Add them to the pan. Raise the heat a notch and cook until golden on each side, about 4 to 5 minutes total. Then, remove the fillets o' fish to warm plates.

Now to make the sauce! Lower the heat to medium-low and add the remaining butter.

When it foams, add the lemon juice and capers and stir that around a bit, scraping the bottom of the pan as you go, for about 15 seconds. Throw in the parsley, give it a final stir, and pour the sauce over your fillets o' fish. And if you happen to have some potatoes or vegetables on your plate, you might as pour your sauce over that, too.

FINE. You're right; this recipe is really just a conduit for butter. Sue me, but BUTTER IS DELICIOUS.

About Strawberry Ice Cream

2009-05-27T14:15:00.000-04:00

As you no doubt have already guessed, it's summer! Well, I'm told it's summer anyway, but if you were to look out my window right now all you'd see is dreary wind-whipped rain and if you were to look at me right now all you'd see is a drowned rat wearing a pink shirt and doing a pretty decent job of typing on a laptop. If the drowned rat doesn't say so herself. POINT IS, we just had a glorious if far too short three-day weekend, and at least two of those days were accompanied by glorious sunny weather and at least one of those days was accompanied by THE NATIONAL, MOTHERFUCKERS! so who cares if it rained a little bit?

Actually, that wasn't the point at all. POINT IS, now that summer is here so is strawberry season and chances are your local supermarket/super farmers' market is overflowing with the stuff, and dear lord almighty I love me some strawberry ice cream. And this particular strawberry ice cream is, as my boyfriend told me, the best ice cream I've ever made. And once again I'm replacing the whole milk and heavy cream with fat-free half-and-half, which I KNOW is so freaking unnatural if you think about it too hard, but as I mentioned once or twice before it's summer and my pool opened this weekend and also my ass is big enough as it is, thank you very much.

For a quart + a heaping bowl for immediate consumption you'll need:

1 pint of strawberries, sliced
3 cups of fat-free half-and-half
3/4 cup sugar (use 2/3 cup if your berries are particularly sweet)
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

First you're gonna want to macerate your strawberries, and all that means is you're gonna toss your sliced strawberries in a bowl with about 1/3 cup of the sugar and let that sit around for an hour until the strawberries get all juicy. I have no idea why this happens, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with science. Also unicorns.

Next, heat up 2 cups of the freaky-deaky fat-free half-and-half, the rest of the sugar, and a pinch of salt in a medium saucepan until everything gets all warm and steamy, but not boiling. (Sound familiar? That's because this is how you make ice cream. It's all the same. Only the names have changed.)

Plop your egg yolks in a bowl and whisk them all together. Now you are going to temper those with a little of your warm cream mixture by slowly pouring a little of it at a time into the egg yolks, whisking constantly so that the egg yolks get incorporated into the cream without scrambling first. Because scrambled eggs are good for breakfast but not for ice cream (as far as I know).

Now to make a custard! Scrape that all that back into the saucepan, stirring it constantly over medium heat with a silicon spatula, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot as you stir. In about 10 minutes, you'll notice the mixture has thickened considerably. Once it coats the spatula so that you can run your finger across the coating and have it not run (if you have an instant-read thermometer, it should register about 170 degrees), you're done. (With this step, anyway.)

Pour the remaining cup of fat-free half-and-half into a large bowl, and set a mesh strainer on top. Now pour your custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream. This will catch any pieces of curdled egg that may have curdled on accident. Don't worry, it's common. It happens to most guys. It's not a big deal.

Strain your strawberries through the strainer, but don't strain yourself as you make sure all the juices get into the bowl. (See what I did there?) Stick these strawberries in the fridge and save them for later.

Finally, add in the vanilla and stir it all together.

And now we Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V:

Here's the big secret to making ice cream at home: the colder your base is before you put it in the machine, the better. So wrap up your bowl in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge at least overnight. Or, as Jack Bauer has taught us, 24 hours is better. Then, fix up your ice cream maker however you're s'posed to fix it up, flip that baby on, and pour your custard in.

And watch the magic happen!

Also, listen to the magic happen!

Magic is loud!

After 20ish minutes of loud magic, add your strawberries. By saving them until the last 5 minutes, you can keep them from getting mushed up into unrecognizable pulp during the churning process.

After they've all been incorporated, scoop your ice cream into a container and stick it in the freezer for another couple hours. Then? YUM.

About Slaw with Spicy Cilantro Dressing

2009-05-22T11:34:00.002-04:00

Oh my God, you guys (every time I say this I think it in the voice of Michael Ian Black; I do not know why), I love slaw! I love slaw SO MUCH! That's a pretty weird thing to say, isn't it? BUT I DO. And since this is Memorial Day Weekend, I thought maybe one or two of you are going to a cookout. And maybe one or two of you are in charge of bringing a side dish. And maybe one or two of you would like to bring an INTERESTING side dish. And if all that is true, then maybe one or two of you would like to make this INTERESTING slaw.

If so, you need this stuff for the dressing:

1/4 cup rice vinegar (not seasoned)
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon grated peeled ginger
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (for a slightly Asian flair, substitute 1/2 tablespoon with sesame oil)
1 fresh serrano chile, finely chopped, with seeds
1 bunch scallions, sliced
1/2 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
1/2 teaspoon salt

Whisk all that together.

And you're done!

Just kidding. You need some actual "slaw." And the beauty of "slaw" is that "slaw" can be anything. I'm not kidding! If you can shred it, you can slaw it. Here, I have some red cabbage, carrot, radish, and green onion, along with the cilantro and chile for the dressing.

Or, you know what? They actually sell bags of already shredded slaw at the grocery store if you want to be lazy about it. Me? I like to do things the hard way. TWSS.

So get your vegetables shredded and put them in a bowl, or open the bag and pour the contents into a bowl (WHATEVER), drizzle your dressing over everything and give it a toss.

And keep giving it a toss, every few minutes, for at least 10 minutes. AND THEN EAT NOM NOM NOM.

(Incidentally, this will keep in the fridge for a few days and stay all crunchy and delicious. Also, if you use a whole head of cabbage, you might want to think about doubling up the amount of dressing you use. Also, also, this is REALLY good on sammiches and burgers and junk.)

About Peeling Fresh Ginger

2009-05-22T11:15:00.000-04:00

I'm a sucker for fresh ginger, and if there was a way to put it in everything, I totally would. (And did! Remind me to give you my recipe for ginger ice cream one of these days.) But the thing that's probably the most frustrating about using fresh ginger is getting the damn skin off, because it's thin and nubby and practically screams I'M A-GONNA MAKE SURE YOU CUT YOUR FINGER OFF!

You're not going to let that ginger tell you who's boss are you? I didn't think so! So pick up that spoon and start scraping!

Yeah, that's about it. Just take the edge of your spoon and scrape the skin away until there's no skin left, and then laugh at that nubbin of ginger for thinking it's so tough and manly or whatever.

About Lamb Sliders

2009-05-22T11:13:00.004-04:00

I'm a sucker for tiny things, like tiny little kittens and tiny little pandas and tiny little cupcakes and, oh, tiny little burgers. I don't know what makes me like a tiny little burger better than a regular-sized burger, but I do and because I do there was this entire week two years ago when I very literally had tiny little burgers for dinner every night for a week, sampling the many types of tiny little burgers offered in my neighborhood, from Bar Louie to the Greene Turtle to Matchbox to Zola to Bar Louie again. (They have, like, seven different kinds. Also tater tots.)

But it was the lamb sliders from Zola that really got my attention, and my friend Mariel decided, Duh, of course I'm going to make these at home. And I thought, Dude, that's the best idea I've ever heard! So I tried Mariel's recipe, and it was good, but because it was originally an Emeril recipe it was chock full of just about everything you can imagine, from cinnamon to all spice to clove to YOU NAME IT. And in the middle of all those spices, Mary's tiny little lamb was lost. (Oh! Speaking of lamb, have I ever told you the story of how I used to hate lamb? It's true! Up until about three years ago I couldn't stand the stuff. Turns out, like most things, the secret is in COOKING IT RIGHT.)

And since this is Memorial Day weekend, the weekend when one's mind wanders to all things grilled, I thought maybe you'd maybe think about making something other than boring old hot dogs and hamburgers maybe. Maybe you'd like to maybe make my lamb sliders maybe. If maybe you do, here's your shopping list:

1 large shallot, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
1 garlic clove, minced (Seriously? Just buy a garlic press already.)
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 3/4 pounds ground lamb

This? Is everything I just mentioned, thrown together in a bowl. Actually, it's just about half of everything I just mentioned, because it's only two of us, and Winston (cutest kitten in the whole wide world) doesn't eat people food unless it's cheddar cheese, Cheetos-brand cheese puffs, canned tuna water, olive oil, butter, or salmon. (Thanks for introducing him to that, boyfriend.)

Mix that all up with your hands until it's all mixed up. This is my favorite part because it's like I'm playing with Play-Doh! And who doesn't like playing with Play-Doh! Meaty, meaty Play-Doh!

Let's take a moment to think about my awesome, awesome buns. Because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Where the H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS am I gonna get tiny little hamburger rolls? And my answer to you is, THE SUPERMARKET SILLY!

Only they're not called Tiny Little Burger Rolls, they're called Dinner Rolls, and Jonny Moseley can tell you a thing or two about that.

So keep those dinner rolls in mind when you're shaping your tiny little lamb slider patties. They'll plump up as they cook, so make them slightly bigger than the roll.

Now throw those patties on the grill (or grill pan) and grill (or grill pan) them until they are slightly charred and cooked the way you like them, about 4 minutes per side for medium-rare.

Actually, that's a lie. Because if you cook these any longer than to medium-rare, I'm taking my recipe and I'm going home. Remember that story I told you about not liking lamb? It's because people INSIST on cooking it to well done and despite its name, well done is GROSSLY DONE.

Now, plop those babies on your buns, and maybe top with a little feta cheese and yogurt sauce? Maybe a tiny little slice of tomato? Or you know, ketchup and mustard or salsa or avocado or WHATEVER. It's YOUR BURGER. That's NOT cooked to well done.

About Cheese Grits

2009-05-18T14:16:00.002-04:00

Of the many important lessons one can learn from the classic movie My Cousin Vinny, the most important is this: no self-respecting Southerner would ever use instant grits. So it's a damn good thing I'm just barely a Southerner, because I'll stand around for fifteen years making risotto, but when I want cheese grits I want them RIGHT NOW. Seriously, the mere mention of cheese grits is enough to make my head explode, and so it was last week when Heather Anne merely mentioned cheese grits, and all my Pavlovian reflexes kicked in and my head was filled with nothing but the thought of cheese grits and so I made cheese grits. AND THEY WERE GOOD.

So now I'll pass the savings on to you! Let's make some groceries. For a big ol' pot o' grits that will serve about six normal-sized human beings, you'll need:

1/4 cup butter
1 cup finely diced yellow onion
3/4 cup finely diced green pepper
1 medium jalapeno pepper, minced
4 large garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press
4 cups milk
1 cup quick grits
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 grated Pecorino Romano cheese
salt, pepper, Tabasco to taste

Have we talked mis-en-place? We have? Good! Because here it is again.

So, melt half of the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. When it has stopped foaming, add the yellow onion, green pepper, and jalapeno. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the veggies and saute them until nice and soft. Then add the garlic and saute for about a minute more, making sure it doesn't burn. It should look like this when you're done:

Pour in the milk, cover the pan, and bring it to a boil. (But watch the pot carefully so the milk doesn't boil over, and yeah, I know what they say about watched pots never boiling, but there's also this thing called physics that says otherwise.) Turn the heat down to medium-low and slowly stir in the grits so's you don't give yourself the lumps.

Cook, covered, for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. (You'll obviously need to uncover the pot occasionally to stir up your grits.)

Now pull the pan off the heat and add both cheeses and the rest of the butter. Stir until the cheeses are all melted and incorporated into the grits.

Give it a taste, then add more salt and pepper if it needs it, and top it off with a little Tabasco. I apologize in advance if, after eating a whole mess of these cheese grits, you never think of anything ever again.

Who am I kidding? I'm not sorry AT ALL.

About Black-Eyed Susan

2009-05-16T17:16:00.001-04:00

It's Preakness Stakes day! And the very best thing about this second leg of the Triple Crown is the booze. Seriously. I don't even like fruity cocktails but this one is delicious. Seriously. So let's go to the liquor store.

1 ounce Cointreau
1 ounce rum
1 ounce vodka
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup pineapple juice

First off, have your kitty gather together all of your ingredients.

Then, mix them all together and pour over ice. And garnish if you like. I like. (I mean, really, why be half-assed about it, ya know?)

Then, you know, drink. Lather, rinse, and repeat to drunkeness. Awww, yeah.

About Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-05-13T12:58:00.001-04:00

Mmm... cookies. I mentioned over here that I have exactly two cookie recipes (because my boyfriend is some sort of freak of nature who doesn't like dessert), and this is exactly one of them (that my freak-of-nature boyfriend will actually eat). And my hopes in sharing this is that I'll convince you how quick and easy it is to make chocolate chip cookies yourself, from scratch, because those fake-o take-and-bake brands? SUCK DONKEY BALLS.

Your shopping list for about 3-4 dozen cookies, assuming you don't already have these ingredients in your pantry (which I almost always do):

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature (Always buy unsalted butter! This way YOU get to control how much salt goes into your food, and not some faceless manufacturer! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!)
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour (Preferably unbleached; it tastes better and is better for you! See, I'm making cookies healthy! DON'T SAY I NEVER DID ANYTHING FOR YOU!)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 375F.

Cream together the butter and sugars. If you have an electric hand mixer now's the time to use it. (Mine is yellow! Like my kitchen!)

It should look about like this when you're done:

Next, add the eggs one at a time and beat until well blended. The add the vanilla extract and, again, beat until well blended.

Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl. I like to sift it all together through my fine mesh colander, just to make sure I don't end up with any random pockets of baking soda, because have you tasted baking soda toothpaste? GROSS.

Now add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients by hand, a third at a time, stirring to blend. Try not to stir it forever and ever and ever; there's this thing with the proteins in flour and gluten or whatever, and basically what happens when you overwork your dough is you get really tough, mealy cookies. Again, gross.

Add the chocolate chips. Here I actually ran out of chocolate chips, so I added some peanut butter chips too. You could easily replace some of the chips with nuts. (Heh.)

Give it a quick stir. You'll see that this batter is pretty damn chippy, because chips (of all varieties, incidentally) are DELICIOUS.

Then, drop tablespoonful-sized mounds onto ungreased cookie sheets. I line mine with parchment paper because I'm lazy and I don't like to do dishes. But maybe you're not lazy and you're some sort of freak of nature who actually likes to do dishes, then by all means, skip the parchment paper.

Make sure your cookie mounds are spread out, because they're cookies, and when they're cooked they'll actually be shaped like cookies. I know, SHOCKING.

Bake them until lightly browned, about 10-12 minutes. Then let them cool on the sheet for around 2 minutes before transferring to a rack to finish cooling.

Next thing you know, COOKIES!

About Guacamole

2009-05-04T11:15:00.003-04:00

More than any other food IN THE WORLD guacamole is an intensely personal experience, and for that reason I am really, really hesitant to post this recipe. But I wanted to say hi to my friend Pete (Hi Pete!) because he mentioned tomatoes (the berries/legal vegetables, not the boobies) this morning and the one thing I will not stand in my guacamole is tomatoes. Because let's face it; unless they are in season and vine-ripened, tomatoes kinda suck. And when you add sucky tomatoes to guacamole they get all watery and sort of ferment in there and UGH.

The truth is that I never really liked guacamole until I started making it myself, and I started making it myself because I just love avocados SO MUCH you guys, and I knew that my love of avocados would be the perfect foundation on which to build a better guacamole. And I did. (For me anyway.)

So I'll go shopping and you can sit back and watch.

1 avocado
1 serrano chile, minced
1 small shallot, minced
2 tablespoons of freshly chopped cilantro
Juice from 1/2 lime
Salt and pepper to taste

So here I have my minced and chopped ingredients all in a bowl.

After pitting my avocado, I've gone ahead and diced it into pretty big chunks. And the easiest way to do that is right in the peel with a butter knife, and then using a spoon to scoop it all out into the bowl.

Then it's just a matter of adding the lime juice, salting and peppering, and carefully mixing it all up, making sure to keep the avocados as chunky as possible.

Because simple is best, ya know.

(And now a shout-out to my boys Karl Alzner and Tyler Sloan: YOU GOT THIS SHIT. Make us proud.)

About Pitting an Avocado

2009-05-04T10:18:00.000-04:00

(You might want to turn your speaker volume down on this one.)

About Chopping Herbs

2009-05-04T10:13:00.000-04:00

I sure do implore y'all to use fresh herbs a whole lot, and it occurred to me that looking at a whole bunch of stalks and stems and leaves and junk might seem a little intimidating (to a big ol' wuss). So let's get back to basics and talk a little bit about how one goes about getting those fresh herbs into some sort of usable format.

First you'll need to separate the leaves, and put them all in a pile right there in the middle of your cutting board. Here, we happen to have some cilantro, unless you're British and then it's coriander. (You know, just like they think arugula is rocket and basil is BAHsil and oregano is oreGAHno.)

Don't worry if you can't get rid of every single bit of stem; so long as you've taken care of the thick (heh) or woody (heh) stalks you'll be fine.

Next, bunch your pile up into a tight ball (heh).

Finally, start chopping, and this probably goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: chop only the herbs AND NOT YOUR FINGERS.

There you go! Feel free to rock the blade of your knife back and forth over your freshly chopped bits if you want smaller pieces. And just in case you were worried, there is absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER why I did this with the giant Chinese cleaver, except that there really is a reason. All of our other knives were out getting sharpened.

About Asparagus Ravioli

2009-04-30T11:51:00.003-04:00

When the Caps have a matinee game, like they do this weekend (LET'S GO CAPS!), a curious thing happens. We'll wander out of the Phone Booth, drunk and exuberant from the latest stunning Caps win (LET'S GO CAPS!), and it will still be light outside. And stores will still be open and shit. And so we'll wander around the neighborhood, hooting and hollering, until invariably we'll end up at the cheese shop because I LOVE CHEESE. And then we'll wander around bar hopping until bedtime and wake up Sunday morning and wonder where the $10 bottle of tomato sauce came from.

Oh yeah, the cheese shop.

So we'll have this $10 bottle of tomato sauce, and we don't want to just waste it on some crappy spaghetti or whatnot and we'll sort of babble about pasta or whatever until the phrase "well method" pops up and then somehow I'll get roped into making ravioli from scratch because asparagus is on sale and also we have a huge hunk of goat cheese in the fridge and asparagus and goat cheese SCREAM ravioli. (Also, tart and frittata and omelet and quiche and LET'S GO CAPS!)

But then I'll remember that our cleaning service doesn't come for two weeks and the well method of pasta making looks REALLY messy and also I have a cat who likes to stick his face in everything and hey! I'm Asian! And I live in Chinatown! Which leads to me buying a package of wonton wrappers and morphing into a cynical, embittered version of Sandra Lee, whom I hate by the way.

And so, to make me feel better about buying these (which you can get in your local supermarket, by the way, usually in the produce section where they keep all the tofu and phoney baloney and whatnot):

I'll spend the day making my own ricotta. So SUCK IT SANDRA LEE.

Your grocery list, for about 35 raviolis:

3/4 cup ricotta cheese, well drained
6 ounces softened goat cheese
1 cup steamed asparagus, chopped
1 egg
Salt and pepper to taste
Package of wonton wrappers
1 egg white

So yeah, first you're gonna wanna steam (or roast or boil or whatever) your asparagus until it's cooked, then you're gonna wanna let that cool, AND THEN! cut off the tips (and save them for later), and chop up all the stems into little pieces.

Then you're gonna take your ricotta, goat cheese, and chopped asparagus, and you're gonna dump it all into a bowl, and mix it up, and taste it. Need salt? Add salt. Need pepper? Add pepper. And then add your egg and mix it all up again.

Then, put your filling mixture (because I don't know if you caught what was going on here, but that's what you just made) in the fridge to chillax for a few minutes. THEN then, pour yourself a glass of wine, because you have a bit of work ahead of you.

Man, I could totally use a glass of that wine right about now. Anyway. Clear yourself a little counter space and set up a little work station: have your package of wontons open and your egg white in a little bowl and a place to put all of your finished raviolis. And those asparagus tips you saved? Slice them all in half lengthwise. And prepare to make magic.

Take out one wonton wrapper and place a little dollop of filling right in the middle. (Little dollop = NOT TOO MUCH! You don't want the damn things exploding on you!) And in the middle of that place one of your sliced asparagus tips. FANCY. Dip your finger in the egg white, and dab it along the edges of the wonton, around the filling. (This is the glue that keeps the two wrappers together.) Then, place another wrapper on top, and carefully press the two sides together, making sure you get as much air out as possible.

Lather, rinse, and repeat. And before you know it, look how many raviolis you've made!

Now stop being so smug and put those in the fridge while you heat up some sauce and boil some water. Go ahead, I'll wait. Done? Okay, good. Gently boil your raviolis for a minute. MAYBE two, but I'm skeptical. Then remove them to your serving dish with a slotted spoon (five to six raviolis should be enough for one person; you can freeze the rest for later).

Sauce those bad boys up, and while you're at it, top it off with some fresh basil and Parmesan.

VOY-LA. A romantical dinner for two, semi-homemade with love.

Gah, I can't believe I just said that. Someone please shoot me in the face. Also, LET'S GO CAPS!

About Ricotta

2009-04-30T10:18:00.002-04:00

I have a rather surprising confession to make, and that is this: I love cheese. I love cheese SO MUCH. I love cheese SO MUCH that every now and again I am overcome with this overwhelming desire--nay, need--to wield my God-like powers and CREATE THE OBJECT I SO DESIRE.

Ahem. Sorry about that; I think my love of cheese momentarily took over my brain like some sort of brain-taker-over thingy. ANYWAY, here's the thing: making ricotta is ridiculously easy. So let's go shopping, 'kay?

For about a cup of cheese you'll need:

1 quart whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
4 lemons
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

So listen, you might not have a Microplane grater in your kitchen, and to that I say WHY NOT? Just look what a good job it does at zesting lemons!

Because that's what you'll need to do first: remove the zest from all your lemons and then juice them. (If you don't have a Microplane, don't fret! You can use either a vegetable peeler or the finest side of a box grater. Just make sure you only remove the outer yellow part, and none of the pithy white stuff beneath.)

Now that the hard work is done, go ahead and heat up your milk and cream. Once it comes to a boil immediately remove it from burner. Add the rest of your ingredients, stir it all together, and let it sit for 20 minutes. It'll go from this to this:

Fascinating, I know. Seriously, though, this is where it gets interesting. Remember that fine-mesh sieve of yours? Well, set that over a bowl and line it with a couple layers of cheesecloth. (Get it? Cheesecloth?) Then pour everything in that pot through that cheesecloth (get it?) and let it strain for at least two hours, until it's about as thick (heh) as you need it to be.

Then, when you dump it all out into a bowl, you can pat yourself on the back because YOU JUST MADE CHEESE.

One final note: this particular ricotta recipe is very, very lemony, which means it's best suited for desserts, or for foods that play well with lemons. So if you want a more Jack-of-all-trades cheese, omit the zest and only use the juice of 2 or 3 lemons.

Happy cheesemaking!

About Pan-Roasted Salmon Fillets

2009-04-22T12:06:00.002-04:00

One of the things that I have the hardest time cooking is fish. And I LOVE fish. Like, SO MUCH. But the problem with fish is that it needs to be fresh, and the problem with fresh fish is that you need a place to actually buy said fresh fish, and the problem with me is that I didn't have a place to actually buy said fresh fish until this past September, when AFTER FIVE FUCKING YEARS OF LIVING HERE my neighborhood finally got a grocery store. Ahem.

So anywho, you know how you'll go to a restaurant and order the sea bass or whatever (don't order the sea bass! They're overfished! Try the skate wing instead!) and it'll be simple and perfectly cooked and absolutely TO DIE FOR? Well that's what I've been working on for the last couple of months and finally nailed over the weekend. And guess what? It's pretty damn simple. Who woulda thunk?

You'll need:

2 salmon fillets, skin on and scaled (you know, how you buy them in the supermarket. Incidentally, this will work with just about any firm-fleshed fish fillet. Also, GIVE ME BACK MY FILET O' FISH!)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Pat the fillets dry (so they won't splatter when they hit the hot oil) and generously salt and pepper both sides.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat until water droplets spittle and evaporate immediately. Then add the oil and heat until shimmery. Place the fish skin side down in the pan, and cook for 5 minutes.

Flip the salmon and cook for another minute.

Then remove the fillets to a plate.

Then, I don't know, serve with a yogurt sauce and some sauteed mushrooms. You know, whatever.

The end.

About Sauteed Mushrooms

2009-04-22T11:40:00.001-04:00

Some things are meant to be eaten at room temperature; food that's either too hot or too cold just isn't as flavorful. Don't believe me? Then burn your tongue on some piping hot soup. Or try to drink an entire bowl full of melted ice cream. See? I was right. (Standard.) So let's try a little room-temperature recipe that will BLOW YOUR TASTE BUDS OFF.

Shopping list!

3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
About 1 pound of mushrooms, cleaned, trimmed, and sliced (here I used half criminis and half shitakes)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon minced garlic, from about 2 cloves
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley leaves (I also threw in a bunch of fresh tarragon)

First off, pour yourself a glass of that there wine. Gotta make sure it's not poisoned, right?

Next off, heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. When that's all hot and bothered, add the mushrooms and sprinkle with some salt and pepper. Saute those down, stirring occasionally, until they're all browned and tender. This should take about 10-12 minutes.

Add the garlic and stir it around until you can start to smell it, which will take no longer than a minute. Then add the wine (Oh! My favorite!) and let it bubble away for about a minute more.

Turn the heat to low and add your herbs; let that heat up for another minute, then turn off the stove and let it all sit for anywhere up to an hour before serving. Easy, peasy, one-two-threesy.

(Seriously; this was so good I made it two days in a row.)

About a Yogurt Sauce

2009-04-22T10:56:00.004-04:00

Let's talk ridiculously easy, shall we? Like, so ridiculously easy that I actually made up this entire recipe ALL BY MYSELF, and its ingredients are so interchangeable it might as well not even be a recipe at all. IN FACT, it doesn't even need to be a sauce! By leaving out the olive oil (we'll get to that) I've actually served this as a dip. And leftovers? Make a great substitute for mayo in your potato salad! Or your tuna salad! Or your chicken salad! Or your . . . well, you get the idea.

This recipe is ridiculously easy, yes, but because of its ridiculous easiness it's important that we spend a couple minutes talking about ingredients. And the main ingredient is yogurt. Generally I use a plain Greek yogurt, because if you've never had Greek yogurt before man, do I feel sorry for you. It's thick (heh) and creamy (heh) and tangy (heh) and delicious. But if you don't have Greek yogurt in middle America do not fret, or rather, do fret, because you have some work ahead of you.

Recipe Within a Recipe: How to Fake Greek Yogurt

It's pretty easy, actually. Just set that fine mesh strainer of yours over a bowl, line it with a couple layers of cheesecloth, and dump a tub of plain yogurt in there. Cover it up with plastic wrap (fats absorb odors like you wouldn't believe, so if you don't cover your yogurt it will end up tasting vaguely like just about everything in your fridge; this is also the number one reason why you should store your extra sticks of butter in the freezer) and put the whole thing in the fridge overnight. Next day you'll see that the bowl is full of whey (which you don't need) and that your yogurt is thick (heh) and creamy (heh) and tangy (heh) and delicious.

The other main ingredient is herbs. Now, I don't care which herbs you use because in this recipe I've used just about every herb known to humankind (lies). But since there is no actual cooking going on whatsoever, you really, really, REALLY MUST use fresh herbs. I'll even give you some suggestions: tarragon goes great with beef, mint is a natural with lamb, dill plays well with fish, chives are awesome with potatoes, AND SO ON AND SO FORTH.

Let's go shopping.

1 small container of plain Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons of shallots, minced finely
3-4 tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs (here I used dill)
A squeeze of lemon juice
A drizzle of olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste.

Mix everything up in a bowl, give it a taste, and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Need more lemon? Add more lemon. Not salty enough? Add more salt. Too tangy? Add more olive oil. YOU GET IT.

Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge for a bit to let all the flavors flavor each other. When you're ready to serve, remove the plastic wrap, give it another stir, and, um, serve.

About Irish Coffee Ice Cream

2009-04-18T09:25:00.003-04:00

We like us some Irish coffee. We like us some Irish coffee A LOT. In fact, now that it's playoff season we'll be spending the majority of our time before games at the pub around the corner, sipping a couple of these:

(1 p.m. games = 10 a.m. Irish coffees.) (Also, LET'S GO CAPS!)

Another thing we like is ice cream. We like ice cream A LOT. In fact, just this last summer Winston (cutest kitten in the whole wide world) bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday so's I could do awesome things like PUT BOOZE IN MY ICE CREAM. Because booze is awesome.

Time to go shopping (for booze).

For about a quart of ice cream you'll need:

3 cups of fat-free half-and-half (usually I use 1 1/2 cups of whole milk and 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream, but I went this route just to see if it would work. And it did.)
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups whole coffee beans (I meant to use decaf, but the boyfriend brought home the wrong stuff.)
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons Irish whiskey (any more and your ice cream won't actually freeze. But the resulting Irish coffee milkshakes will be equally delicious. And way boozier. Just not frozen.)
1/4 teaspoon finely ground coffee (you can press regular grinds through a fine mesh sieve, or use espresso grinds. Also, "grinds" is a funny word.)

First, you're gonna wanna pour yourself a glass of that there whiskey. Gotta make sure it's not poisoned, right?

Next, heat up 2 cups of fat-free half-and-half, all of the sugar, the coffee beans, and a pinch of salt in a medium saucepan until everything gets all warm and steamy, but not boiling.

Then, put on yer lid, remove the pot from the heat, and let the whole shebang steep at room temperature for an hour to let all the coffee goodness get good and coffee-y.

Pour the remaining cup of fat-free half-and-half into a large bowl, and set a mesh strainer on top. Set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together.

Reheat your lidded coffee mixture, now unlidded, on medium heat, until again hot and steamy (heh). When you've gotten all hot and steamy (heh) slowly pour a little of the mixture at a time into the egg yolks, whisking constantly so that the egg yolks are tempered by the warm milk, but not cooked by it. If you pour too fast or whisk not enough, you'll end up scrambling your eggs, which is good for breakfast but not for ice cream (as far as I know).

Now to make a custard! Scrape that all that back into the saucepan, stirring it constantly over medium heat with a silicon spatula, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot as you stir. In about 10 minutes, you'll notice the mixture has thickened considerably. Once it coats the spatula so that you can run your finger across the coating and have it not run, you're done. (With this step, anyway.)

Now pour your custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream. Press down on the coffee beans in the strainer to extract as much of the delicious coffee flavor as possible. (You'll notice that the fine mesh will also catch any pieces of scrambled egg you may have accidentally cooked.) Then you can toss the beans in the garbage. Or better yet, the compost heap! Finally, mix in the vanilla, Jameson, and finely ground coffee, and stir until cooled.

Here's the big secret to making ice cream at home: the colder your base is before you put it in the machine, the better. So wrap up your bowl in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge at least overnight. Or, as Jack Bauer has taught us, 24 hours is better. Then, fix up your ice cream maker however you're s'posed to fix it up, flip that baby on, and pour your custard in.

And watch the magic happen!

Also, listen to the magic happen!

Magic is loud!

After 20-30 minutes of loud magic, you'll have this!

Which is about the consistency of soft-serve. So you can either eat it right away, or scoop it all into a container and stick it in the freezer for another couple hours. Either way, YUM.

Also, LET'S GO CAPS!

About Kitchen Essentials

2009-04-16T15:51:00.001-04:00

I've been asked to dumb it down so dumb it down I will, DUMMIES. (I kid, I kid. And I kid because I lurve.) So over the next few weeks or so I'll be showing you how to, I don't know, dice an onion or boil an egg or whatever, EVEN THOUGH if you weren't so lazy you could watch any of the billion videos on YouTube about the topic RIGHT THIS SECOND. (I lurve.)

So let's start with something easy: a list of somethings each and every one of you should have in your kitchen.

Cutlery. Despite what all the fancy kitchen catalogues would have you believe, all the cutlery one needs is a paring knife, a chef's knife, a bread knife, and a really strong pair of kitchen shears. When shopping for your own set look for something with a little heft and a strong blade; both will give you better control and minimize the accidental chopping off of fingers. You can find really great deals on high-end brands on ebay. For a far more economical option, check out Victorinox's Forschner brand, made by the same folks that bring you Swiss Army knives!

Cutting boards. Now that you have your fancy knives, you're gonna want to get a nice big cutting board. Whether you go wood or high-density plastic in a fabulous color, I really must insist that you keep your fancy knives away from those God-awful glass things the world insists on manufacturing. Seriously, that shit will RUIN your knives. They make some really great bamboo boards now, which have the added benefit of being very eco-friendly. Plus, they look super cool, and I always say if you're gonna buy stuff it might as well look super cool.

Cookware. You're probably gonna want to actually cook things after you've gone through all the trouble chopping shit up, huh? Well your options here are seemingly endless, and I wouldn't even presume to tell you what you should and shouldn't buy. Except that I'm going to. Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY ALUMINUM COOKWARE. Your pots and pans should have gravitas, the kind of strength and fortitude you rely upon when the going gets tough and the tough get going. Which means, NO IKEA. Sorry. Also, beware of plastic handles that aren't oven-safe. Because did you know you use your cookware on both the stove top AND in the oven? Because you do, dummies. Beyond that, the world is your oyster. But might I suggest two things? A really good I-need-to-start-lifting-weights-because-this-thing-is-so-heavy dutch oven (5 1/2 quarts is a good size when cooking for two), and an 8-inch non-stick fry pan for making eggs.

Tools. Let's look at some tools. Heh. Here we have a spatula for flipping, a slotted spoon for draining, tongs for just about everything, a ladle for pouring, a heat-proof silicone spatula for, like, scaping things and stuff, and a wooden spoon for stirring.

More tools. Heh. A manual can opener to SAVE THE EARTH!, a garlic press, a vegetable peeler, a citrus juicer, a whisk, an ice cream scoop, and a steel to hone your fancy knives before each use.

Colanders. Are you bored yet? Because I kinda am. ANYWHO, I have two colanders: a big one for rinsing veggies and draining pasta and whatnot, and a fine-mesh one for straining sauces and custards and stuff.

Finally. A simple set of measuring spoons and a measuring cup, and TWO kinds of thermometers, one for meats in the oven and one for meats on the grill.

This is by no means all the gear that I have in my kitchen, by ANY stretch of the imagination, because for me a kitchen store is just about as dangerous as a bookstore, and MY GOD have you seen how many books I own? I own a lot of books. I do, however, think this is the gear that will get you started, and we all have to start somewhere. Or so I'm told, which is why I wrote all this in the first place.

Finally finally, if anyone has any requests by all means let me know. A long and tedious post where I berate all you dummies is sure to follow! (I lurve.)

About Sweet Potato Fries

2009-04-13T09:58:00.001-04:00

Sweet potato fries make a regular appearance on our dinner plates, and it seems as though just about everyone on the internets has an opinion on the matter. There's dooce's simple and straightforward version, and Shari's holy crap that sounds awesome! version, and then there's mine, which is a pretty reasonable cross between the two I'd like to imagine.

(For the record, I like to imagine a lot of things. Like one day finally getting to see Radiohead in concert. Like actually getting all of my work done when I need it done. Like having the power to turn invisible at will and wreaking havoc upon my enemies. Like Mysterygirl! and Brooksie, sitting in a tree.)

The shopping list is pretty easy for this one, kiddos.

2 medium to large sweet potatoes (depending on how hungry you are.)
Olive oil (staple alert!)
Salt, pepper, and assorted herbs and spices.

Preheat your oven to 400F degrees. While that's a-heatin', peel yer taters, and slice them up into sticks about half an inch thick.

Now throw 'em all in a bowl, douse with a healthy glug or two of olive oil, and dump in your seasonings (last night I used fresh parsley and *GASP!* dried thyme, but you could use cumin, chili powder, tarragon, savory, rosemary . . . pretty much whatever apparently).

Get your hands in there and mix everything about until well and evenly coated. I suppose you could use tongs or a big spoon or something, but that would be BORING. Then lay all of your furture fries on a baking sheet, making sure not to overcrowd the pan lest they steam instead of crisp, and pop them in the oven.

After 20 minutes, give them a flip and then bake for another 15-20 minutes, until they're as brown and delicious as you like. (We like them on the blackened and caramelized side, but then again, we were never afraid of a little char.)

Once that's done you can either eat them as is, or scoop them all up in a little pile and douse them with honey. Or maybe try one of Shari's dipping sauces. Or WHATEVER JUST EAT THEM ALREADY THEY'RE DELICIOUS.

About My Kitchen

2009-04-12T14:05:00.000-04:00

Since we'll be spending so much time together here, let's take a tour, hmm?

This is my cozy little kitchen, spacious enough to fit one human and one cat comfortably. Unfortunately, it's generally occupied by one small human, one giant human, and one cat at all times, which leads to quite a few stomped-on toes and tails.

These are my knives. I use them to cut things, and on occasion, fingers.

This is my ice cream maker. Winston (cutest kitten in the whole wide world) gave it to my for my last birthday. Also, these are our vitamins. We keep them on the counter so we remember to take them with meals, and of course we always forget.

More gear: The Greatest Blender Ever, an adorable miniature food processor, and fruit! That matches my walls!

The Swedish Chef is the patron saint of my kitchen. Which probably explains why there are soup stains on the ceiling.

And this is the most ancient toaster oven in history. It used to not work, but now it miraculously does. Good story, Kat.

Last but not least, Fitzgerald! On my refrigerator!

So there you have it. There's plenty of beer in the fridge; make yourselves at home, won't you?

About Chicken with Mushrooms, White Wine, and Tarragon

2009-04-08T21:14:00.006-04:00

It is often said that chicken is the tofu of the carnivorous world (shut up, it is) and this is used to justify the endless guilt trips that send you to ORGANIC! FREE RANGE! HORMONE FREE! poultry. And dude, yeah, awesome, get as many of those three things you can afford. I, personally, have no car, mortgage, children, or husband to speak of, and oh yeah, I'm a lawyer (albeit of the public interest variety), so I'm pretty much what they call "Recession Proof." And even though it's totally my job to yell ORGANIC! FREE RANGE! HORMONE FREE! whenever I possibly can, I'm also what they call "A Realist." Which is why, in this inaugural edition of in kat's kitchen (aren't lower-case letters so adorable?), I offer for your consideration a recipe to fancy up your Costco value pack.

Lets start with the shopping list, hmm? Like most of the recipes you'll find on this site, it feeds two, because Winston (cutest kitten in the whole wide world) doesn't eat people food. You'll need:

2 chicken breasts or thighs, skin preferably on. (I generally use thighs, because hubba hubba.)
A package or so of mushrooms, cleaned and sliced. (This past Monday I used creminis, but man oh man, if I had access to San Francisco's Ferry Market on a regular basis you'd better believe I'd be using handfuls of about a billion different wild mushrooms.)
2 large shallots, minced. (For the record, I use shallots in just about everything; they're so boss.)
About a tablespoon each of chopped fresh tarragon and thyme, preferably from your garden. (Or AeroGarden, if you're an 8th-floor apartment dweller like me.)
3/4 cup of low-sodium chicken broth. (I made mine from scratch the night before. I'm just sayin'.)
1/2 cup of dry white wine.
Salt and pepper for seasoning, and flour for dredging.
A wedge of lemon for squeezing.

To start, pour yourself a glass of that there dry white wine. Gotta make sure it's not poisoned, right? Then, gather up your mis en place. (Which is fancy French for "get your shit together.") Also, preheat your oven to 400F degrees.

You'll see I rather heavily salted and peppered both sides of the chicken thighs for FLAVA. Heat up a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat (every stove is different, and since mine is super hot I use a 6 out of 10), and while that's heating up, dredge your thighs in flour to coat and shake off all the excess. (You want a very thin dusting, sort of like a baby's bottom. This is important to build the fond; but, too much will burn and make your sauce taste like an ash tray.)

Once the oil looks all shimmerey like a wishing well and is starting to barely smoke like a mildly annoyed genie in a bottle, add the chicken to the pan. Let the pieces sear on that side for about 6 minutes. It's important that you DO NOT TOUCH IT during this time, because once you start fiddling around before it's ready it starts sticking all over the place. Kinda like... never mind. ANYWHO, once you're all brown and crispy flip your bird pieces over and sear off the other side, another 5-6 minutes. Then remove to a plate.

This is important: your chicken isn't actually cooked through yet. AND THAT'S OKAY. You'll get there soon enough, and no, you won't get food poisoning letting your chicken sit there for a few minutes. And if you don't believe me, I suggest you never ever eat at another restaurant ever again. Also, I feel bad for you for missing out on all of the awesomeness this awesome world has to offer. What's it like living in your plastic bubble anyhow? I bet you have a lot of allergies. ANYWHO, there may be some excess oil accumulated in your pan; carefully spoon out all but about a tablespoon of this, and then add your sliced mushrooms, minced shallots, and chopped herbs.

Saute that all up for about 10 or 12 minutes or so, until your mushrooms release all their liquid and brown up, and the shallots get all caramelized and gooey, and the herbs smell SO GOOD.

And now, we deglaze the pan! (This is my favorite part.) First add the wine and scrape the bottom and sides of the pan real good so you get up all those lovely brown bits. (Brown bits = flavor.) Then add the chicken broth. Stir it all up and let it come to a boil.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, This? Is supposed to be a rich, velvety sauce? This is nothing but mushroom water! But like all good things, you, uh, gotta wait. Or whatever. ANYWHO, just let that keep boiling down for a while until about half the water in there has done the thing that water does over heat, namely, vaporize. You should notice that the proto-sauce has thickened up considerably, but that it's also still a bit runny. Kinda like this:

Well this is the perfect stage to nestle your chicken back in to all that mushroomy goodness. So do that, skin side up. (I assume you want crunchy, delicious skin.)

Then stick the whole pan into your preheated oven for as long as it takes for your thighs to reach 163F and your breasts 158F. (I use a probe thermometer to keep track of the internal temperature of my meats while they are in the oven, but an instant-read will work as well. Just start checking after about 8 minutes. (5 if you're using boneless breasts; also, heh.))

MEANWHILE, get some salted water a-boiling, and throw a couple handfuls of egg noodles in there, and boil them so long as the package says to boil them for. (You can easily substitute this whole step with regular pasta, white/brown/wild rice, couscous, mashed potatoes, assorted veggies... basically anything that goes good with sauce.)

MEANWHILE, chop up some more fresh herbs (this time I used tarragon and parsley) and throw them in a bowl with a blob of melted butter.

STAY WITH ME HERE, because this might get busy. When your meat has hit temperature, pull the whole pan out of the oven and remove the chicken to a separate plate. Loosely tent it with a piece of foil and let it rest for at least five minutes. This accomplishes two things: (1) The carryover heat allows the internal temperature of the chicken to rise a bunch of degrees and fully cook without drying out, and (2) the loose juices redistribute themselves about so they don't go running out all over the place as soon as you cut into your piece of chicken, thereby drying it out. Basically what I'm trying to say is NO ONE LIKES DRIED OUT CHICKEN.

Take a look at the remaining sauce. Is it thick enough? If yes, let it be. If not, pop it back on a burner over medium heat and reduce the liquid until you get not-nearly-the-consistency of jarred Thanksgiving gravy. As soon as you have it as thick as you want it (twss), give it a taste, and add a bit of salt and pepper if you think it needs it. And here is when I let you in on one of my not-so-secret secrets: mushrooms love lemon. So take that lemon wedge and squeeze a little juice in your sauce, give it a stir and enjoy the INSTANTANEOUS SUNSHINE.

POSSIBLY AT THE SAME TIME, your egg noodles will be just about done, so drain those in a colander and then toss them about in your bowl with the melted butter and chopped fresh herbs.

Now it's time to plate, and if you're anything like Jennie (or my college friend Jenny, although I already got her with the introduction of parsley) this is where I murder you just a little bit. Basically it goes like this: buttered-herb egg noodles, topped with a piece of chicken, and doused with the mushroom and wine sauce. OH MY GOD YOUR FOOD IS TOUCHING.

Man, that is so brown. But remember, brown is good. But so is green (environmentalist alert!), so here, have a salad:

This happens to be baby greens and cherry tomatoes dressed in freshly squeezed lemon juice and Spanish olive oil, and garnished with shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano. But, you know, Ceasar from a bag is probably good too :)