What's the deal?

So, are people fed up (pun) with writing about food? Tessie and I haven't been eating too excitingly lately, what with saving for a wedding and, Allah willing, a house. But, man!, those beans and rice have been awfully tasty lately. Sounds boring, you say? Nay, bro. Nay. Dried black beans come in large sacks in the "ethnic" isle at Cub, and I've a spice drawer filled with stuff starting with 'c'--cumin, coriander, chili powder, cayenne...even a bit of cardamom...and allspice, which doesn't start with 'c' at all, but tastes good. Stir fry's good and cheap too, especially with all that tasty produce at the Mpls Farmers' Market. And root-veggie season is soon upon us. Squash!

Seriously, why aren't you writing about food anymore? Have y'all stopped eating? Is it all the negative campaigning? The economy? What? Eat! Then, write about it!

Cookies 'n' Stuff

Yesterday afternoon, in a fit of boredom, I decided to do some cooking and ended up with: cowboy cookies and 2 varieties of musubi/onigiri. The recipe for the cowboys came from a Moosewood Restaurant dessert cookbook that my brother gave me for Christmas. Here's a bit of the back story:

Since my brother is a professional chef, even having a few years as a head pastry chef under his belt, I regularly ask him for advice on variety of cooking topics: substitues for recipes, flavor combos, menu planning, etc. One of my favorite topics to bug him about is vegan baking, which, though not impossible, can be tricky. Now, my brother is a nice guy, but he strongly dislikes (one may go so far as to say 'hates') cooking for vegetarians and/or vegans, especially when baked goods are involved. This past year he finally wisened up, though, because this year for Christmas he gave me a couple of cookbooks from the Moosewood Restaurant. "Now," he said, "don't ask me about vegan baking anymore. Ever."

Anyway, I haven't had a chance yet to try out any of the vegan recipes, but I have made the cowboy cookies a few times now. They are absolutely delicious. My history with the cowboys goes back to my days in Seattle. It's hard for me to decide why I like the cookies so much: is it because of how they taste or the fond memories I associate them with? Being the hopeless nostalgic that I am, I think it's more of the latter.....but I digress.

A cowboy cookie is basically a chocolate chip cookie with a bunch of extra stuff thrown in. The cowboys I've always known have included coconut shavings and walnuts, though you can get as crazy as you like. The Moosewood recipe is actually more like an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, so I added some coconut and called it 'good'. Perhaps next time I'll add some almonds as well....


After the cookies, I decided to try my hand at a classic Japanese snack food: onigiri. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Japanese food, onigiri are basically balls of rice with a filling. Traditionally, the filling for onigiri was some kind of pickled vegetable (tsukemono).

When I visited Brien in Japan during the tail end of spring in 2005, I think I ate these every day, usually for breakfast. Prepackaged onigiri usually comes with a sheet of nori as well, and the Japanese have devised an ingenious wrapper that separates the nori from the rice until it's ready to be eaten. The first time I tried to open one, I invariably failed....good times.

Onigiri are dead simple to make, and I'm a little disappointed in myself that it's taken me so long to bang out a batch. The following links are from one of my favorite food blogs and are the recipes I used.

http://www.justhungry.com/2003/11/japanese_basics_1.html

http://www.justhungry.com/onigiri

http://www.justhungry.com/2007/01/onigiri_omusubi_revisited_an_e.html

http://justbento.com/handbook/bento-basics/onigiri-on-parade-guide-onigiri-omusubi-rice-ball-shapes-types-and-fun

*note: this site has a TON of awesome recipes....more posts on them later.....

I can't remember if any of the recipes mention this, but if you live near/can get to a decent Japanese grocery store, odds are you can get your hands on an onigiri mold. I used one for the onigiri I made, and it made the assembly part a bit easier.

When making the rice for the onigiri, I added a bit too much water. This lead to slightly mushy rice, but for this recipe it wasn't too big of a deal. While I am a HUGE fan of salmon onigiri, I decided to make vegan variations so that Jana could enjoy some too. The white onigiri contain a center of chopped teriyaki edamame and the other onigiri are just rice mixed with wakame and sesame seeds (my other favorite variety from Japan).

To make the edamame filling I used frozen shelled edamame beans and a basic teriyaki sauce, 1 part soy sauce and 1 part mirin. Though you can buy mirin in just about any grocery store, I noticed a big difference in taste when I use actual fortified sake (which is what mirin is supposed to be). It imparts the teriyaki sauce with a better balance between the sweet and salty without the need for adding sugar. Anyway, heat the frozen beans and teriyaki sauce until the sauce reduces to a pretty thick consistency.

The wakame onigiri is even easier. You can buy dried wakame seaweed at any good Asian market, and I bought mine at Whole Foods. I soaked the wakame for about 5 minutes in a mixture of 1 part soy sauce to 2.5 parts water, but straight water is okay too. After draining off the liquid I added sesame seeds, folded the mixture into the rice and formed the onigiri.

Yay! Another hour at work has passed and it's almost time for me to get on home. If anyone wants the cookie recipe, feel free to e-mail me or copy it down at your local book superstore.

Cheers,
nickdoll

Super Bowl Chili

So good, we made it twice--Tessie eats beans now. It's added to the allrecipes.com recipe box. This is especially tasty when it's obscenely frigid outside and you're starting to feel a cold coming on.

I wonder what this would be like without the meat, perhaps with some meat substitute. Jana?

Sunday Brunch

Hey everyone! This being my inagural post, I'm sorry to disappoint in the picture department: in the heat of our revelry we completely forgot! Anyway, yesterday Jana and I had 5 of our friends over for a potluck brunch. Here's what we had:

Food:
Frittatas (and here I thought I'd be the first to post on this...)
Lemon roasted potatos
Bread pudding
Honeydew, cantaloupe, and strawberries
Home-made granola bars
Blueberry and applesauce cake
Chocolate cake (technically, someone bought this from Whole Foods, but it was still good!)

As Matt pointed out in his own post, fritattas are incredibly easy, delicious, and versatile. Since most of our guests were vegetarian, I used onions, garlic, spinach, asparagus and parmesan cheese in our frittatas and they turned out great.

The bread pudding was also a new dish for me. I was a bit skeptical about finding a good vegan recipe, but after 10 minutes on the net I had pieced together a recipe that worked reasonable well. The only problem I had was that the finished pudding was a bit too dry, but it's an easy fix for next time.

If anyone is interested in any of the recipes, let me know. If we ever get Jana's camera to work, my next post should be about a Japanese dinner party we had a few weeks back. Thanks again Matt for the great blog idea!

nickdoll

Indian Food, mmmm

Indian cooking night! I decided to make a couple recipes from a book I read a while back about the culinary history of India, especially how it relates to England. The book was quite enjoyable to read, and I'd recommend it (especially if it happens to be in a library near you). Curry, written by Lizzie Collingham.

http://tinyurl.com/yr2qzy
Anyway, there are only a few recipes in the book, but all of them have been great. Susan's Chicken was one of the recipes I made, basically a tomato based sauce supplemented with a variety of Indian spices. I think I added too many tomatoes to the dish, and I decided to par-cook the chicken on the grill instead of in a fry pan.

The other recipe I made was Bengali potatoes (2nd time making them). They are also quite good, especially since I found actual cardemom pods to use this time instead of just powdered like last time. It makes quite a difference given the method of cooking.

Notice the sad lack of rice on my plate... forgot to cook it. It would go quite well with the tomato sauce on the rice, so some good basmati rice would really add to the dish. I served it with a little bit of naan, which would have been better fresh, but always a good pairing. In case you are curious, wine doesn't go particularly well with Indian food generally... better sticking to beer. The chicken might be compatible with a strong red wine like Cabernet Sauvignon or something.

ps - added recipes to recipebox

Pork Saltimbocca

Saturday night, we made proscuitto-covered pork chops! They turned out great, as pork chops covered with prosciutto damned well better. Basically, we took thin-cut pork chops, covered them with prosciutto, pan-seared them, cooked them in some white wine, and created a simple white wine sauce afterwards. All in all, it took about a half-hour, with enough time to also tend to the couscous and the salad. Also, I didn't end up using all the prosciutto, so I ate the rest while I was cooking. I highly recommend the recipe!

The prosciutto and the white wine sauce gave the dish a very flavorful top layer, while keeping the pork very tender.

Lately, I've been having a lot of fun exploring white wine sauces. Another recipe created an even more flavorful sauce by adding a few tablespoons of lemon juice, a bit of parsley, and reducing. In this recipe (prosciutto-covered pork), I recommend making sure that you stir in all the brown bits at the bottom of the pan with the wine, adding salt and pepper to taste, adding a dash of lemon or lime juice, and reducing until it reaches a consistency that you like.

With the pork chops, we had couscous and salad. For the couscous, we like the boxed kind with flavor packets that can be purchased at the supermarket for ~$1. The flavors are good, everything is premeasured, and it's ridiculously quick - about 8 minutes. There's always enough left-over for another meal and it warms up great.

Frittatas

On Wednesday, we fixed frittatas. Frittatas are basically Italian open-faced omelettes, filled with vegetables, cooked meats, and pretty much anything else you'd like to add. I think it's a great way to use leftover chopped vegetables, bits of smoked meat, and remnants of shredded cheese. Also, eggs are about the perfect protein: it's a whole protein, incredibly cheap, and has a low carbon footprint.

Anyways, we made frittatas with sun-dried tomatoes, andoille sausage, red bell peppers, zucchini, onions, and garlic. It turned out well: it felt fresh and healthy, very veggie-heavy. It sort of tasted like a salad, with egg interspersed. Definitely, though, the meat made the dish, though I think pretty much any salted and cured meat would add a nice flavor (salami, chorizo, left-over bacon). However, it was a little underflavored. We ended up drizzling it with some of the vinaigrette that we made with the salad. When we were going to make it again, we'd add some more flavorful ingredients, like jalapenos, marinated artichokes, marinated mushrooms, or some cheese.

The recipe is at allrecipes.com. Again, login/pass - foodspectacle/foodspectacle.

Also, check out "Que hora es?": the spanish soap opera for those with minimal spanish. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WckCw_-7e3M