Tamales

For New Year's this year we made tamales.

.

.

.

.

One tip that we read for steaming them was to put some loose change in the bottom of the pot.  When we heard it start to rattle we would know that the water was getting low and that we needed to add some more.

Thanksgiving 2011

We had a small gathering for Thanksgiving this year, but we still cooked up a storm.

.

.

Even Sprocket helped.

.

.

We tried a new dessert: Dutch apple dumplings. They were tasty!

Inspired by Baby Bok Choy

I have been trying to rededicate myself to posting on this blog.  My goal was to post once a week in September . . . but that hasn't been working out.  I really am planning on posting more, though, so don't give up hope!

.

On Sunday evening, David had a group meeting for one of his MBA classes, and they ordered a pizza.  So I was on my own for dinner.  I've been reading the book Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, which is all about cooking and eating alone, so I decided to get inspired and make myself something fabulous.  Luckily earlier in the day our neighbor Marty brought us over some vegetables from his garden, and among them was baby bok choy.

.

.

I started by sauteing the bok choy in a little bit of oil and vinegar.

. 

.

Then I sliced a tomato from our farm share,

. 

.

and poached an egg.

. 

.

Then I tossed it all on top of a piece of toasted bread that I'd drizzled with olive oil.

.

It was delicious . . . so I made another!

Almost No Knead Bread

Yesterday David was on a bread making mission.  He made a triple recipe of tortillas in the morning.  We ate some with breakfast and froze the rest.  Then he made a yeasted flatbread to go with the curry that I made for lunch.  Then he made Almost No Knead Bread.  Isn't it lovely!

.

.

.

.

We ate the bread with dinner . . . and after eating so many kinds of bread yesterday, I think we are done with carbs for a few days.  

.

Except maybe cookies . . . because he made a batch of those, too!

Hey Good Lookin', Whatcha got cookin'?

It was my turn to host book club this month, so last Wednesday I had everyone over.  While it's not required, sometimes if one of the books has a specific theme, we try to match the food to fit.  The book I chose, Unaccustomed Earth, is about Indian-American families (book review to come later this week!), so I decided to make Indian food to fit the theme.  Almost all of the recipes I used were from the cookbook 660 Curries, a favorite of mine.  I had never used the appetizer curry chapter before, so I was excited to try some of the recipes out!

.

.

The first thing that I did was go to Uwajimaya, an Asian grocery store, to get some of the more exotic ingredients: tamarind, and poori shells.  I also picked up some pomegranate molasses, and buckwheat soba noodles, not for my book club food, but because I'd been wanting to try them in other recipes.

.

.

Sweet and Tangy Tamarind-Date sauce.

. 

.

.

Sprouting Lentils for the Potato Dumpling recipe.

. 

.

Draining Yogurt to make Yogurt Cheese.

. 

.

The final result (from top left): naan (flat-bread), poori shells stuffed with potatoes and chickpeas, potato dumplings with a sprouted lentil-onion filling, cilantro-mint-chili sauce (the green one), tamarind date sauce (the brown one), breaded fried yogurt cheese, and a bit of hummus.  The hummus isn't strictly Indian, but it goes pretty well with everything, and the mild flavor helps to balance out the heat in some of the other food.  Over all the food was really good, and everyone seemed impressed with my mad cooking skills!  My favorite thing was the dumplings; I think that they will find their way back onto the menu before long!

Sweet Potato Gnocci

.

A while back I made sweet potato gnocci with roast chestnuts and fried sage.  I've been wanting to try this recipe for a while.  It was yummy, but a lot of work.  There were a lot of steps: roast the sweet potatoes, make the gnocci dough, form all the gnocci, and finally boil the gnocci.  And that doesn't even count dealing with the chestnuts and sage!  I'm not sure if I'll make this again . . . maybe next year.

Star Anise

.

Yesterday I used star anise and ginger to infuse chicken broth for an Asian inspired noodle soup.  I've never used star anise before . . . isn't it pretty!

.

The soup was pretty tasty, too!

Guilty Pleasure

.

If I add vegetables to ramen that makes it healthy, right?

Granola

Today I made granola.  It is one of our breakfast staples.  During the week David and I usually eat either oatmeal with brown sugar and craisins, or granola & yogurt for breakfast.

.

.

Olive Oil Granola - courtesy of the New York Times

.

Ingredients:

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

1-1/2 cups raw pistachios, hulled

1 cup raw pumpkin seeds, hulled

1 cup coconut chips (I actually use flakes)

3/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cardamom

3/4 cup chopped dried apricots (we were out, so I used craisins instead.)

.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  In a large bowl combine all ingredients except the dried fruit.  Spread mixture on a rimmed baking sheet.  Bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.  Transfer back to the bowl and stir in the dried fruit.

.

 Do not let the granola cool on the baking sheet.  It will harden and become nearly impossible to get off.  Yes, I am speaking from personal experience.

.

 .

 . 

Blueberry Pie!

Happy New Year!  After taking a break from blogging for the holidays, I'm back!

.

Green Smoothie

Since I made my own yogurt, I decided that I needed more things to do with it than just eat it with granola.  So I decided to try out a green breakfast smoothie.

.

.

I have heard a lot about these and following a basic recipe I found online I made one with yogurt, spinach, blueberries, strawberries and molasses.  The spinach is for added nutrients, and in theory you really can't taste it.

.

.

Unfortunately my blender is not very powerful, and I ended up with some not insubstantial chunks of spinach in my smoothie.  It was mostly fine until the end when all that was left was chunks of spinach.  Mmmm yummy.

.

Then I happened to read a recipe that called for blending the spinach and yogurt together first to eliminate the chunkiness.  Why couldn't I have found that sooner?!

.

.

This method worked much better!

.

.

I added the ingredients one at a time, so my blender didn't have to work so hard.

.

.

.

It's a little bit hard to tell, but this smoothie is a uniform color, and chunk free!

Yogurt in the Crockpot!

.

I was recently reading about making homemade yogurt in a crockpot.  We eat yogurt all the time, usually with granola for breakfast.  It sounded fascinating so I decided to give it a try.  I forgot to take very many pictures,  but the one above shows everything that I used.  I used this recipe, although I used my teeny tiny 1-quart crockpot, so I had to monitor the temperature more closely instead of just relying on the times given   The basic steps are:

1. Heat milk up to 180 degrees in the crockpot.  For me this took about 3 hours. 
2. Turn the crock pot off, keep covered and let cool to 110 degrees.  This took me a few hours . . . I don't remember exactly how many!
3. Put half a cup of yogurt (since it was my first time making yogurt I used store bought) and half a cup of milk in bowl and mix well.
4. Put the milk-yogurt mixture back in the crockpot with the remaining milk and stir to combine.
5. Cover the crockpot, wrap it in a bath towel and let sit for 8 to 12 hours.  
6. You should now have yogurt!  Refrigerate for 8 hours for the best texture.

My yogurt was a bit runnier than store bought.  We're about out of the batch that I made last week, so I'm going to be making a second batch today.  I saved half a cup of last weeks yogurt to be the starter for my yogurt this week.  I've been thinking of getting some cheese cloth, and straining the yogurt in a cheese cloth lined colander over a bowl in the fridge to get a firmer texture.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving!  We had so much fun, that we forgot to take very many pictures!

.

.

Me, showing off my lovely apple-cranberry pie.

. 

.

The table all set for dinner.

Atomic Escarole

This escarole is giant!

.

Birthday Dinner!

I planned a special dinner for my birthday yesterday.  I remembered to take the "before" picture.

.

.

But I forgot to take an "after" picture!

.

We had Beet and Beet Green curry, with Toasted Spices Lentils.  It was delicious!  And fabulously pink!  Here's the closest thing I have to an "after" picture: leftover cake!

. 

Eggplant

With all the eggplant that we've been getting lately (and by lately I mean for the past 10 weeks!) people have been asking me what I cook.  We have tried a plethora of things: eggplant rollatini (similar to lasagna), eggplant stew (very much like chili), but the thing that we have done the most of is eggplant curry.  Last week I made Kaanda Vangi aka Pan Blistered Eggplant with onion.  This recipe is from my curry cookbook: 660 Curries.  While we've only tried about 20 of the recipes we've enjoyed them a lot.

.

.

It was pretty darn tasty!  To go with it we tried a new recipe Lebanese flatbread.  The flatbread was also really good.  I think that this recipe will replace the naan that we usually buy to go with currys.

. 

Harvest

On the 12th day of the Harvest my CSA brought to me:

.

.

12 baby carrots

.

.

11 ruby chard stalks

.

.

10 Italian eggplants

.

.

9 ears of corn

.

 

.

8 salad turnips

.

.

7 green tomatoes

.

.

6 sweet peppers

.

.

5 celery stalks

.

.

4 banana peppers

.

.

3 broccoli heads

.

.

2 fennel bulbs

.

.

And a bunch of Cilantro.