Thursday, May 27, 2004
Tempest Pancakes
for Grace
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 T baking powder
pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla sugar
3 T melted butter
2 beaten eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
Mix dry ingrediants together. Mix wet ingrediants together. Stir wet into dry. Let sit for 15 minutes. Cook on hot griddle. Serve with butter, syrup, and, um, plenty of napkins.
for Grace
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 T baking powder
pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla sugar
3 T melted butter
2 beaten eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
Mix dry ingrediants together. Mix wet ingrediants together. Stir wet into dry. Let sit for 15 minutes. Cook on hot griddle. Serve with butter, syrup, and, um, plenty of napkins.
Monday, May 24, 2004
Did someone say, “Saag paneer”? Yes. Months ago.
My apologies. I ought not go on about the difficulty in asking my friend Natalie to give me her recipe, debating whether to reveal the blog (and consequently my blog and Stresch’s blog), eventually deciding to ask and tell her about them if it came up. She didn’t ask, but she also didn’t get me the recipe. She’s pregnant and hating food and just got back from Paris where there’s nothing to eat if you’re a vegetarian-leaning mom-to-be in your first trimester and ready to barf on the next waiter who offers you quiche. I really needed her recipe, since she’s the only person I know who has spent significant time in India and actually cooks Indian food.
This version is Nita Mehta’s Palak-Paneer. We ate it just the other night and loved it.
150 gms paneer, cut into 1” cubes and deep fried
½ kg spinach with small leaves
2 onions
1” piece ginger
5-6 flakes garlic
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 green chilies, chopped
2-3 T ghee (butter is adequate but inauthentic)
salt to taste
2 moti illaichi (brown cardamom), skinned and crushed
Wash and chop the spinach. Steam until cooked through but still bright green. Rinse with cold water and drain, then grind into a smooth paste. Grind the onions, garlic, and ginger together. Heat the ghee in a pan and add the onion paste, cooking until golden brown. Add the spinach and cook for 5-7 minutes over low heat. Add salt, illaichi, and paneer and stir well.
Optional: Just before serving, drizzle a hot mixture of 1 T ghee and 1 t red chili powder over the top and mix well.
My apologies. I ought not go on about the difficulty in asking my friend Natalie to give me her recipe, debating whether to reveal the blog (and consequently my blog and Stresch’s blog), eventually deciding to ask and tell her about them if it came up. She didn’t ask, but she also didn’t get me the recipe. She’s pregnant and hating food and just got back from Paris where there’s nothing to eat if you’re a vegetarian-leaning mom-to-be in your first trimester and ready to barf on the next waiter who offers you quiche. I really needed her recipe, since she’s the only person I know who has spent significant time in India and actually cooks Indian food.
This version is Nita Mehta’s Palak-Paneer. We ate it just the other night and loved it.
150 gms paneer, cut into 1” cubes and deep fried
½ kg spinach with small leaves
2 onions
1” piece ginger
5-6 flakes garlic
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 green chilies, chopped
2-3 T ghee (butter is adequate but inauthentic)
salt to taste
2 moti illaichi (brown cardamom), skinned and crushed
Wash and chop the spinach. Steam until cooked through but still bright green. Rinse with cold water and drain, then grind into a smooth paste. Grind the onions, garlic, and ginger together. Heat the ghee in a pan and add the onion paste, cooking until golden brown. Add the spinach and cook for 5-7 minutes over low heat. Add salt, illaichi, and paneer and stir well.
Optional: Just before serving, drizzle a hot mixture of 1 T ghee and 1 t red chili powder over the top and mix well.
Friday, May 21, 2004
Spoons
Here's a question for everyone from portia.
Here's a question for everyone from portia.
...with what does one oil/care for one's nice wooden spoons? namlet gave me a beautiful set of boxwood spoons with a gorgeous finish, but of course as I use them they become less smooth...can I oil and rub them, kind of like seasoning a pan?
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
I went morel hunting with my FIL this weekend. It was so much fun. We actually found quite a few. I'm the uber-foodie. I pick my own wild mushrooms. I probably lose points for not getting them entirely clean. They were a little gritty. Oops.
All-One Kitchen Gear Review!
Probably I'm like the last sentient being in the world to have picked up on this, but I'm feeling all Heloise-meets-Dr. Bronner this afternoon and thus will spout off regardless: I think everyone should have a tupperware tub full of wooden clothespins within easy reach when working in the kitchen.
Poorly designed ziplock frozen food bags spilling lima beans into the ice cube tray? That bag of shredded jack cheese drying out in the fridge? Your brown sugar has been appropriated by the contractors rebuilding your neighbor's chimney?
Take some clothespins! Clip those bags shut! OK!
That's pretty obvious, you say. Clipping stuff with a ... clip thingie. Big whoop. But wait!
You're using a wooden spoon to stir up a mixing-bowl full of jalapeno cornbread batter when the phone rings. It's Hollywood! They want to turn your blog ("Random Thoughts 'n' Stuff ;)") into a Major Motion Picture!
Clip a clothespin to the wooden spoon, near the top of the handle; this will prevent the spoon from slipping into the bowl! And you can gesture animatedly with your free hand while on the phone!
Conversely: Place clothespin on counter. Use it as a spoon rest.
To which you say perhaps: "Pffft."
OK! Your young child stands on a chair at the counter and complains that you are not letting her wash the dishes. With one hand take a clothespin and tell her it is an alligator. Make the clothespin open and shut in the manner of a crocodilian snout and gnash your teeth for sound effects.
The magic of a child's imagination! She's amused for 90 seconds!
What, no kids? Don't fence me in, buddy? I've got a life of the mind to get on with?
Look Foucault, using clothespins in the kitchen repriveleges tangible domestic "texts" across genres to destabilize normative post-industrial social roles. When the laundry and the kitchen cross-fertilize then can we in turn truly feel trammeled?
OK!
Probably I'm like the last sentient being in the world to have picked up on this, but I'm feeling all Heloise-meets-Dr. Bronner this afternoon and thus will spout off regardless: I think everyone should have a tupperware tub full of wooden clothespins within easy reach when working in the kitchen.
Poorly designed ziplock frozen food bags spilling lima beans into the ice cube tray? That bag of shredded jack cheese drying out in the fridge? Your brown sugar has been appropriated by the contractors rebuilding your neighbor's chimney?
Take some clothespins! Clip those bags shut! OK!
That's pretty obvious, you say. Clipping stuff with a ... clip thingie. Big whoop. But wait!
You're using a wooden spoon to stir up a mixing-bowl full of jalapeno cornbread batter when the phone rings. It's Hollywood! They want to turn your blog ("Random Thoughts 'n' Stuff ;)") into a Major Motion Picture!
Clip a clothespin to the wooden spoon, near the top of the handle; this will prevent the spoon from slipping into the bowl! And you can gesture animatedly with your free hand while on the phone!
Conversely: Place clothespin on counter. Use it as a spoon rest.
To which you say perhaps: "Pffft."
OK! Your young child stands on a chair at the counter and complains that you are not letting her wash the dishes. With one hand take a clothespin and tell her it is an alligator. Make the clothespin open and shut in the manner of a crocodilian snout and gnash your teeth for sound effects.
The magic of a child's imagination! She's amused for 90 seconds!
What, no kids? Don't fence me in, buddy? I've got a life of the mind to get on with?
Look Foucault, using clothespins in the kitchen repriveleges tangible domestic "texts" across genres to destabilize normative post-industrial social roles. When the laundry and the kitchen cross-fertilize then can we in turn truly feel trammeled?
OK!
Friday, May 07, 2004
A recipe like Pat Nixon's coat.
Wife B. came home from work Monday with a fever of 103.5, so of course by Tuesday evening I had made the first batch of poached eggs supreme. The recipe card we have on file is dated 6/26/89, which would be within a couple of weeks of her college graduation. My guess is she got her mother to pony up the recipe before setting up house on her own; I learned to make it at some point before we moved in together but when we were serious enough that I would be staying at her apartment when she was sick. I will admit it's a very Betty Crocker ca. 1965 type of dish, but it is also to my mind a very long-term relationship kind of recipe: not too fancy at first glance but when done right it can't be beat.
Poached Eggs Supreme:
1 T instant minced onion
1 T butter
1 can (10.5 oz) condensed cream of chicken soup
2/3 cup milk
4 eggs
2 english muffins
paprika, dried parsley
1. melt butter in a large skillet, cook the onion in the butter for a minute.
2. pour in the soup and the milk and heat to boiling.
3. slip each egg into the soup mixture and spoon a bit of soup over the eggs.
4. Cover pan and cook on medium heat until eggs are desired doneness (about 5 minutes?)
5. Place one egg on each toasted english muffin half. Spoon sauce over each egg. Sprinkle a little paprika and parsley on each serving.
NOTE: Recipe halves easily if your sweetie is really not very hungry and really just wants a little bit and then wants you to leave her alone so she can go back to sleep, or if you are happily living alone.
It might double if you are in a polyandrous relationship and there was a bug going around the house, I don't know. But if that's the case then you probably have more pressing domestic chores than poaching eight eggs.
I realize the recipe calls for chicken soup. It's like the old formulation about atheists and foxholes: in this house, there are no vegetarians in a sickbed.
Wife B. came home from work Monday with a fever of 103.5, so of course by Tuesday evening I had made the first batch of poached eggs supreme. The recipe card we have on file is dated 6/26/89, which would be within a couple of weeks of her college graduation. My guess is she got her mother to pony up the recipe before setting up house on her own; I learned to make it at some point before we moved in together but when we were serious enough that I would be staying at her apartment when she was sick. I will admit it's a very Betty Crocker ca. 1965 type of dish, but it is also to my mind a very long-term relationship kind of recipe: not too fancy at first glance but when done right it can't be beat.
Poached Eggs Supreme:
1 T instant minced onion
1 T butter
1 can (10.5 oz) condensed cream of chicken soup
2/3 cup milk
4 eggs
2 english muffins
paprika, dried parsley
1. melt butter in a large skillet, cook the onion in the butter for a minute.
2. pour in the soup and the milk and heat to boiling.
3. slip each egg into the soup mixture and spoon a bit of soup over the eggs.
4. Cover pan and cook on medium heat until eggs are desired doneness (about 5 minutes?)
5. Place one egg on each toasted english muffin half. Spoon sauce over each egg. Sprinkle a little paprika and parsley on each serving.
NOTE: Recipe halves easily if your sweetie is really not very hungry and really just wants a little bit and then wants you to leave her alone so she can go back to sleep, or if you are happily living alone.
It might double if you are in a polyandrous relationship and there was a bug going around the house, I don't know. But if that's the case then you probably have more pressing domestic chores than poaching eight eggs.
I realize the recipe calls for chicken soup. It's like the old formulation about atheists and foxholes: in this house, there are no vegetarians in a sickbed.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Recipes
I have trouble following recipes. Maybe that's why I'm not in love with Cook's Illustrated. All the warnings about using the wrong cornmeal or baking for 30 seconds too long just don't jive with the way I cook. Last night I made Pepper and Cheese Enchiladas from Sunday's at Moosewood. Except I used wheat tortillas instead of corn and did away with the frying them in oil. I omitted the chiles and cut down on the cumin. I left out the cottage cheese and probably increased the amount of cheddar. I'm not sure since I didn't really measure. Just now I'm thinking that a little dried oregano would have worked in the sauce. Anyway, they turned out really well. I would have felt stifled using the recipe as a protocol.
That's fine. Actually, I think that's a good way to cook. Last night, though, I ventured into new territory. I made brownies without a recipe. I've never baked without a recipe. I am both really proud and afraid I've crossed a line between good-cook and old-world grandmother.
I have trouble following recipes. Maybe that's why I'm not in love with Cook's Illustrated. All the warnings about using the wrong cornmeal or baking for 30 seconds too long just don't jive with the way I cook. Last night I made Pepper and Cheese Enchiladas from Sunday's at Moosewood. Except I used wheat tortillas instead of corn and did away with the frying them in oil. I omitted the chiles and cut down on the cumin. I left out the cottage cheese and probably increased the amount of cheddar. I'm not sure since I didn't really measure. Just now I'm thinking that a little dried oregano would have worked in the sauce. Anyway, they turned out really well. I would have felt stifled using the recipe as a protocol.
That's fine. Actually, I think that's a good way to cook. Last night, though, I ventured into new territory. I made brownies without a recipe. I've never baked without a recipe. I am both really proud and afraid I've crossed a line between good-cook and old-world grandmother.
Saturday, May 01, 2004
The Survey: An Annotated Response
Favorite kitchen appliance: Coffee grinder
Favorite kitchen implement: Henckels 9-inch steel chef’s knife [1]
Three basics my cooking can't live without: Turmeric, onions, red lentils
Things that are worth the extra $$: fair-trade coffee, regional beer [2]
Things that are not worth the extra $$: fancy red wine for everyday use [3]
Things missed most when they are out of season: tomatoes, fresh basil
Things I get really tired of seeing in the grocery store: hipsters [4]
I avoid at all costs: guacamole [5]
My favorite celebrity chef is: Alice Waters [6]
My favorite cooking show is: NA [7]
[1] I own something that’s cold forged or ice hardened or something. How great is that? It sounds like something you might see advertised during an NFL game (you’ll have to check with Frog about that). “The new Dodge Ram / Gillette Razor / Miller Beer: It’s cold forged.” Anyway, this knife makes me a better cook than I really am.
[2] If it hadn’t been snowing today [this was written April 27, but I got confused about how to log onto blogger] I would mention it’s Oberon season. Instead I will say it’s nominally Oberon season. [Now that it's May Day, we've got 50 degrees and rainy: It's like Spring on the freaking steppes around here.]
[3] Instead, we buy this stuff by the case. We have aparently fallen victim to a masterful marketing strategy.
[4] Look, we know you’re vegetarian already, dude. It’s cool.
[5] So back in the day, Tony was dating this woman who worked at an upscale grocery in Oakland and she got to take home the produce that would otherwise have gotten thrown out. We all stumbled back to her place one night after going out for beers and she made us guacamole out of her stash of free overripe avocados. Since then I have looked upon most avocados with the utmost suspicion.
[6] I have always had a thing for earnest, forward-thinking women with Berkeley connections. Reader, I married one.
[7] It’s either cable or that Oberon beer. I returned some empties this afternoon to the neighborhood party store (sometimes it seems our state welfare program boils down to the fact that we get ten cents a bottle on returns) and even with 72 bottles to my credit, I still needed to shell out $3.50 for my six-pack of Oberon. It's not a habit we indulge very often. (Both returning our bottles and drinking Oberon.)
Favorite kitchen appliance: Coffee grinder
Favorite kitchen implement: Henckels 9-inch steel chef’s knife [1]
Three basics my cooking can't live without: Turmeric, onions, red lentils
Things that are worth the extra $$: fair-trade coffee, regional beer [2]
Things that are not worth the extra $$: fancy red wine for everyday use [3]
Things missed most when they are out of season: tomatoes, fresh basil
Things I get really tired of seeing in the grocery store: hipsters [4]
I avoid at all costs: guacamole [5]
My favorite celebrity chef is: Alice Waters [6]
My favorite cooking show is: NA [7]
[1] I own something that’s cold forged or ice hardened or something. How great is that? It sounds like something you might see advertised during an NFL game (you’ll have to check with Frog about that). “The new Dodge Ram / Gillette Razor / Miller Beer: It’s cold forged.” Anyway, this knife makes me a better cook than I really am.
[2] If it hadn’t been snowing today [this was written April 27, but I got confused about how to log onto blogger] I would mention it’s Oberon season. Instead I will say it’s nominally Oberon season. [Now that it's May Day, we've got 50 degrees and rainy: It's like Spring on the freaking steppes around here.]
[3] Instead, we buy this stuff by the case. We have aparently fallen victim to a masterful marketing strategy.
[4] Look, we know you’re vegetarian already, dude. It’s cool.
[5] So back in the day, Tony was dating this woman who worked at an upscale grocery in Oakland and she got to take home the produce that would otherwise have gotten thrown out. We all stumbled back to her place one night after going out for beers and she made us guacamole out of her stash of free overripe avocados. Since then I have looked upon most avocados with the utmost suspicion.
[6] I have always had a thing for earnest, forward-thinking women with Berkeley connections. Reader, I married one.
[7] It’s either cable or that Oberon beer. I returned some empties this afternoon to the neighborhood party store (sometimes it seems our state welfare program boils down to the fact that we get ten cents a bottle on returns) and even with 72 bottles to my credit, I still needed to shell out $3.50 for my six-pack of Oberon. It's not a habit we indulge very often. (Both returning our bottles and drinking Oberon.)
