this weekend's cooking projects

so this weekend, s and i made three food projects in one morning. each one was so quick and easy, but i didn't actually make them all. no problem. i will talk about them all anyway, as if i had more of a hand than may be technically true.

last weekend, we made some arugula pesto--arugula, sauteed garlic, almonds, parm, salt, pepper--and discovered the total genius that is the kitchenaid food mill attachment. it makes your pesto this lovely consistency where you don't have to add much, if any, olive oil, so the flavors themselves stand out really well. it doesn't puree like a food processor tends to, and you don't have to mess with it and add lots of liquid like you do with a blender. furthermore, you can apparently get attachments with it to make pasta noodles, though i don't have those yet, which would even make it more functional.

anyway, we decided to use that attachment again to make a different kind of pesto (which, with the aforementioned arugula pesto, and the garlic scape pesto my roommate m made on wednesday, makes 3 types of pesto made in one week in our house!), since when we were at the garden we noticed that there was a huge amount of communal cilantro. we picked several handfuls, and got some raw cashews from the store. sunday morning, it was pesto-making time. a few cubes of parm, a clove of elephant garlic, some overgrown chives from the garden that had gotten a little bit woody so weren't good for straight eating anymore, all into the food grinder! after everything was ground up--which, by the way, is so awesome to watch!--we mixed in a splash of the nice olive oil and a little salt, and we were done! cilantro pesto, mmmmmm.

food project #2 was preserving more sour cherries. shayn pitted and washed them, then we added some sugar and let them macerate. once the sugar was dissolved, we froze them in a tub. for some reason, they didn't freeze very quickly, so last night i put some of the cherry sauce over my froyo and it was AMAZING. the longer-term plan for the cherries, if i get final say, is a white chocolate-mascarpone tart, maybe with a graham cracker crust, maybe with an almond crust. but, it's nice being able to take them out and use them at will!

food project #3 is a result of stop #2 on waltham day on saturday, although it is technically on the watertown side of the waltham-watertown line. we went to russo's, the most amazing store on earth. it has the most incredible fruits and veggies, so much cheese, fresh pasta, a great (and not that expensive) salad bar, etc--i used to work two doors down from it and loved going there for lunch. they have a huge selection of produce at amazing prices, and one of the things we got there was a bag of key limes (probably ~15 of them?) for 88 cents. so, we decided to preserve them the way you would meyer lemons. i haven't really heard of doing this with limes. we will see what happens. but, random easy pickling project when you find nice cheap food? yes please. other purchases at russos--after getting a full bag of foods from the garden (mostly lettuce, kale, collards, kohlrabi, sage, cilantro, cherries) include the following: 3 lbs of brussel sprouts, a pkg of blueberries, 2 artichokes, 12 small hot peppers, 1.5 lbs of fava beans, and one other thing that i am currently forgetting because i know that we had 7 items, one too many for the express lane. total cost? $13.00!

last night, i made beet chips. also quick and easy. i sliced beets on the mandoline, tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper, and put in a single layer (i learned my lesson) on a baking sheet for 6-8 minutes. really, really good, and a nice way to eat a lot of beets (if, say, your csa is giving you so many of them but it seems like a funny time for beets since it is SUMMER NOT FALL and so you have to trick yrself into liking them)!

that was this week's easy projects. the photos weren't that exciting so i didn't include them. maybe i will go back later and change that.


RECOMMENDED DINNER (aka how i combined random stuff to eat last night):

• raw kale salad (dinosaur kale, carrots, garlic scapes, chive vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper)
  
• beet chips (see above)
  
• whole wheat toast that m got a huge day-old bag of from city feed, with thinly sliced cheddar cheese (i used my veg peeler) and cilantro pesto
  
• vanilla frozen yogurt with cherries
  

(this is best accompanied by season 1 of ANTM--who knew the whole season came as one rental from the library branch only 1.5 blocks away? it's okay to be in love with elyse, right? sure, she's only 20 then, but she's closer to my age now.)

sour cherry freezer jam

at the community garden where some friends and i have a plot, they have communal fruit trees. they are magical. and right now, the sour cherry tree is heading toward ripeness.

off the tree, the sour cherries are a little bit, some might say, sour. but fixed up with a little bit of sugar and turned into preserves? MAGIC.

freezer jam is nice because you don't cook anything, so you get to retain the really fresh flavor of whatever you are preserving. with cherries straight from the tree, that's extra exciting.

you will need:

• sour cherries (though you could do this with sweet, also, just with less sugar)


• a lemon or lime (or at least lemon or lime juice)


• sugar


• fruit pectin

all photos by shayn.

first, you need to pit and wash yr cherries.


next, mash them up in a bowl and figure out how much you have once they are mashed (yes, you can use a measuring cup if you want).


if you are using sour cherries, add about twice as much sugar as you have cherries. if using sweet cherries, maybe use a 1:1 ratio and then add more to taste if needed?


mix until the well blended, then let sit for 10 minutes (note the masher not moving!)


while it is sitting, you can juice limes or lemon or just pour some juice into a cup. for about 2/3c of cherries, we used a couple of tablespoons of lime juice. look what a good camera this is! you can see the sugar granules on my hands!


after the 10 minutes, combine the lime juice with a package of pectin and stir to blend.


whisk the pectin/juice mixture into the cherries until thoroughly combined--it will thicken a little, but not all the way


pour into a freezer-safe container, put in the freezer, and you're done!


except! then, you have to eat it!!!

crockpots make ugly but tasty food

this recipe was inspired by fresh from the vegetarian slow-cooker, a book by the amazing robin robertson, who also wrote the vegetarian meat and potatoes cookbook that i LOVE. and vegan planet. and lots of other books.
warning: there is no picture on this entry cos for reals, crockpots make things indiscernible enough that i think my cell phone could not capture anything. but i promise, the appearance is made up for by the genius taste.
to make up for it, here is a picture of a crockpot that looks just like mine. it is two quarts. you can tell it is not mine, though, because it appears to have green peppers in it, which i do not really want to eat.

last night, before i went to bed, i turned on my crockpot to make seitan cacciatore. admittedly, this is probably nothing like chicken cacciatore, but it is really good anyway.
it requires about 10 minutes of non-crockpot prep time, and then many hours of crockpot simmering.
first, i sauteed one package (8 oz) of seitan with a little bit of olive oil until it was browned. as it was sauteeing, i chopped up a small onion, a carrot, and a piece of celery. once it was brown, in like 3-5 minutes, i put it in the crock pot. then i deglazed the pan with some amazing apple cider vinegar--basically putting it in the pan, and scraping up the burnt on bits with the help of the liquid. once it had reduced a little, which was almost immediate, i poured it over the seitan, put some more oil in, and sauteed the vegetables. as they were sauteeing, i put like 1/3 can of diced tomatoes (a big can, so maybe like 8 oz?), a little bit of tomato paste mixed with like 1/2 cup of warm water, some dried oregano, and a couple of bay leaves in the crockpot. i also put in salt and pepper. i did NOT put in a little bit of sugar, but i would do that next time.
once the veggies were done, i put them in the crockpot too. then, i put the lid on, and turned it to low till i woke up. the recipe says 6-8 hours. i definitely was on the longer end of that, since i did all this a while before i went to sleep. in the morning, i took out the pot part of the crock pot and put it in the fridge. when i got home, i had a dinner ready to heat up that i had never eaten before!
i put it with some whole wheat pasta, which was fine, but next time i eat it (maybe for lunch?) i plan to have it with the no-knead bread i am making right now.
edited to add: i ended up eating it with the bread, and tearing up the crust (my least favorite part) to throw into the cacciatore. it absorbed the liquid really well and added a nice taste and texture to the whole thing. it makes me want to bake the leftovers with bread chunks to make a nice stuffing. just a thought.

kale and squash and ravioli and caramelized onions and green onions and...

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so, last night i couldn't decide what to make, so i was looking through the recipes i have bookmarked on my computer, and found this recipe, from one of the most exciting (to me) cooking blogs, 101 cookbooks. so i set out to make it, but my usual inability to follow recipes took over and i ended up with something different.
in my fridge, i had some artichoke ravioli that was going to expire pretty soon, so that became the center of the dish. conveniently, i live right across the street from the (ridiculously expensive, faux cooperative) grocery store, so i could get everything else with very little trouble. i got my favorite green, dinosaur kale.
(isn't it pretty? look at the picture randomly found on the internet!)

i also picked up a smallish butternut squash. it is less exciting than dino kale, so no picture of that. at home, i already had green onions, parmesan, and caramelized onions.

---

the mention of caramelized onions brings me to a point: recently, i have been really good at, if i know i will be around for a while, caramelizing onions in a crockpot on high for about 5 hours. you can also set them on low for like 10-12 hours, and when you come home from work you will have a bunch of them! basically, i throw some earth balance (but, you can always use butter) in the crock pot, turn it on, and then set to chopping onions. i have a small crock pot, so i can get like two large and one small to medium onion in there at once. i mostly use yellow onions. i throw them in, toss them around so they are all coated with butter, and then let them cook. if i think of it, i stir them once in a while, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. i think i mostly do that for myself. once they are really broken down and a consistent mellow brown color, i put them in a ziploc and keep them in the freezer. it saves a huge amount of time later.

---

after i got home from the store, i realized i had forgotten a lemon. i decided it was not worth dealing with, and that i would cross that bridge when i came to it.
the first thing i did was chop the butternut squash. ever since i got the best peeler in the WORLD, i am willing to peel things because it is shockingly easy. so i peeled the squash, then cut off the neck. i chopped off the end of the neck, and then sliced it into like 1/2" thick-ish slices. then i cubed it. to cut the main part, i basically cut the end off the roundish part, cut what remained in half, scooped out the seeds, and then sliced that up and cubed it, now that it is manageable. cutting my smallish butternut squash, including peeling, took less than 5 minutes this way, which is clearly amazing. i put all the squash into a pan with a little bit of olive oil, on some heat that was probably way too high for it because i am into speed, and then put the water on to boil for the ravioli. every once in a while, i stirred the squash.
next i chopped up an entire kale, just roughly. i had some time, so i snipped the green onions into little pieces with my kitchen scissors (which i feel like is way faster than cutting them. also, let's be honest, by "kitchen scissors" i mean "scissors that i found in the kitchen and washed off," so don't be intimidated.
once the water boiled, i put in a package of ravioli, and a minute or two later the squash was almost brown enough, so i threw in the kale and a small handful of the frozen caramelized onions.
i drained the ravioli when it floated to the top, and threw that in the pan with everything else. i also put in a splash of lemon juice, ground on a little salt and pepper, and shredded some parmesan on it, but that is totally optional. also, i decided it needed crunch, so i put on some sesame seeds (it might have been nice to toast them, but they were an afterthought).
i stirred it and let it heat through. then i ate it, and it was amazing.

seitan!

ok, y'all, i made seitan today--3 pots of it, for me and e, which will be plenty to last for a month or two (i hope! i do get a little over-zealous with seitan though).
it was ridiculously easy, so i thought i would share with you. this does not mean that i do not want to have seitan-making parties with those of you i have discussed them with! it just means i can tide myself over until they happen.
to make seitan, you need the following:

• wheat gluten. you can buy this at natural food stores. we got it at the co-op i think.


• lots of water


• seasonings! i recommend some combination of the following, plus whatever else you may desire: soy sauce. boullion. vinegar (i used rice vinegar). liquid smoke. thyme. old bay. celery salt. black pepper. sesame oil. poultry seasoning. garlic/powder. onion/powder.

i used my kitchenaid, of course! into the bowl i put almost equal parts water and wheat gluten. what we have established is this: for seitan with more air bubbles, you should use more water and knead for longer. for seitan that is denser, you should put in slightly less water and knead for shorter.
first i used the batter attachment, which is this one:

after that had fully incorporated the two, i attached the bread hook:

i let that go for about five minutes. this made the seitan denser--so, as mentioned, knead for longer if you want it more airy.
the aforementioned steps can all be done by hand. but, if you do them with the mixer, then you can spend the time they are kneading making your broth.
basically, to make the broth, i fill up a pot (or three) with water, about 6" high because you want it to cover the seitan as it cooks. then, i put in enough boullion to add substantial flavor--a little more than whatever the package tells you, because this is what is going to flavor the base of your seitan. i think that a salt-free or low-salt boullion is best, because you are going to put in soy sauce/braggs also and you don't want to overwhelm the flavor. after the boullion, i put in the soy sauce, and whatever else i want. i think that liquid smoke is super important to the taste of the seitan, but remember that a little goes a long way. you do want the broth to be strong, though. honestly, it's pretty hard to fuck up.
i bring the broth to a boil, and once the seitan is done cooking i cut it up into small pieces. the smaller they are, the faster they cook, so i make them maybe about 2 cubic inches (like 1"x1"x2" or so). once the liquid is boiled, i drop the chunks in, and then i go play a game or do something else for about an hour so i don't stare at them, but i stir them every 10-15 minutes to make sure they don't burn to the bottom. if it looks like they are running out of water, pour in some more, with a little boullion if you want.
then, after about an hour, they should feel sort of like the seitan you get from the store! i like to drain them and then cut them up and put them in freezer bags (no liquid needed) so that they are ready to use whenevs.
soon, i am going to make fried seitan with biscuits and broccoli. that might be more like a 30 minute meal, but so worth it! i will post when i do.

adventures in baking--gingerbread and pie

this morning, the day after the fancy meal, my friend k came over to fulfill a baking date we have been trying to have for literally 6 months! we decided to bake two things--i bottomlined the gingerbread, and she bottomlined the pie (with the apples and cranberries left over from last night!).
the gingerbread took maybe ten minutes from conceptualization to oven, and the pie only longer than that because of the crust having to cool.
i threw the following into my kitchenaid:

• earth balance


• vanilla paste


• soymilk


• egg replacer


• sugar


• fresh crushed ginger


• molasses

and i mixed them all up. then, on top of them, i put the next ingredients:

• flour


• baking powder


• baking soda


• salt

then i did this ridiculous thing that i like to think is akin to mixing in separate bowls, which i clearly am not going to do. i put the mixer head down so it just touches the flour mixture, and mixed it that way for like 10 seconds. then, i mixed as usual. it was way too thick, so i added more soymilk. then we sprayed the mini-loaf pans, and put it in the oven (at 375-ish).
i rinsed out the bowl and whipped up some icing--powdered sugar, lemon juice, a little bit of lemon zest.
when we iced it, we put a tiny bit of chopped crystallized ginger on top. the result was the most amazing gingerbread ever. for serious, this shit MELTS IN YR MOUTH. it is so, so good.
and, pretty!:

i can't speak to how the pie was made, really, but is it not the cutest thing you have ever seen?

such a nice morning/early afternoon!

FANCY dinner!

i meant to take pictures of every course of this, but i got swept up in the meal so you will have to be satisfied with two pictures and a lot of description.
so this weekend l and i decided to make a FANCY meal for our old housemates and all of our new housemates--we called it four courses for three houses, but it was really more like five courses when all was said and done.
this was like a 6-7 hour cooking project, so it doesnt fit the theme of the blog, but it was totally incredible!
the theme of the meal is: fall
course 1: beet and goat cheese crostini with garlic aioli
we meant to start with an amuse-bouche, but we made it bigger than we conceptualized it. it was a roasted beet and goat cheese crostini, with a garlic aioli. the aioli was so so so easy to make! i threw the following into the rocket blender, then turned it on for like 30 seconds: 3 cloves of crushed garlic, olive oil, an egg, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
it looked like this, but less blurry:

course 2: roasted corn soup with paprika oil and chives.
the second course was a corn soup with chives and paprika oil. i had this soup at a restaurant and wanted to eat it endlessly afterwards.
to make it, throw corn in a roasting pan (um, or heart-shaped cake pan, which is what i used). frozen corn is fine. add olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper, and roast until it is brown. while that is cooking, slow-cook some onions. heat boullion up on the stove in soy/milk. when they are all ready, blend them together and strain them (can you believe i actually strained soup??? tom colicchio would be so proud!). sprinkle chopped chives and paprika oil (basically, paprika cooked in some olive oil) on top, and voila!:

course 3: roasted balsamic mushrooms and mixed greens with lemon vinegarette
the third course sort of came from starting with ingredients, which is such an incredible cookbook! but then we forgot it when we were cooking, so we made it up. we tossed some mixed greens with a lemon vinegarette, made of lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, grapefruit vinegar, sugar, garlic, and ginger. we then roasted three kinds of mushrooms (oyster, crimini, shitake) in the oven, and made a balsamic syrup with reduced balsamic and brown sugar. we tossed the cooked mushrooms with that. then we fried up some thinly sliced shallots. we then just piled everything on top of each other. i really liked it because the flavors totally worked together, but also stayed pretty separate.
course 4: acorn-walnut gnocchi with roasted garlic-sage butter, cherry tomatoes, and wilted spinach
lucas pretty much spearheaded this course. we tried to make it wheat-free and totally failed. i recommend making gnocchi with a recipe.
course 5: apple-cranberry galettes with maple-infused vanilla ice cream
so for this we basically made a shortbread crust to make some free-form tarts. the apples were chopped tiny, and i mixed the fruits with fresh ginger, a bit of nutmeg, and maple syrup--super simple, and really echoing traditional flavors, but also a sort of unexpected taste in yr mouth. the ice cream was SO EASY--we just heated some cream, dissolved sugar in it, and then cooled it, added vanilla bean, salt, and the maple that we totally forgot about earlier, and added a bunch of 2% milk so it wouldnt be all cream. then we threw it in the ice cream maker! then we (ok, i) spilled it all over. then we ate the rest.
all in all, an AMAZING meal. super labor intensive. but we fed 10 people with aplomb!

another meal with pasta.

ok y'all, i really prefer pasta. it's my total grain of choice. i am interesting in experimenting with the following things:
whole wheat couscous
quinoa and millet pilaf
precooked brown rice (cos i have no patience)
other ideas for quick-cooking whole grains?
but last night i ate pasta again. my evening cooking structure was as follows:
put on water to boil.
get out main ingredients: pasta, fake chicken strips, mixed veggies, precut onion, frozen spinach, canola oil.
i heated up the oil and chopped up the fake chicken strips. i threw the onion and "chicken" into the heated oil, and grabbed the supplies for the sauce:
minced garlic, crushed ginger, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, rice vinegar, sesame seeds.
put the pasta in the now-boiling water.
i tossed the veggies and spinach into the pan with the onions and "chicken," and mixed up all the sauce ingredients. i put half of it on the food in the pan and cooked for about three minutes.
i turned off the heat on the veggies, and waited very impatiently for the pasta to be done. i probably tested it 9 times while i waited. i am not a good wait-er. finally, i poured out the water for the pasta (when it might have been a bit more al dente than was totally desirable), and put the pasta in the veggie pan, along with the remainder of the sauce. i mixed it all around and excitedly ate it!
here is a very poorly-lit picture of my dinner (and lunch for today):

pasta!

one thing i made this weekend was 15-minute pasta. not hard, obvi, but super good.
i started with frozen spinach-pesto filled gnocchi from trader joes. i heated up some oil and threw them in. i stirred whenever i could (though clearly not enough, because they got a little burnt).
while it was cooking, i made pasta sauce with the following quick-and-easy recipe:
/ a couple of spoonfuls of minced garlic.
< one can of diced tomatoes.
\ one can of tomato paste
mix those things together in a heated saucepan with a little bit of olive oil. you could first put some onions in, and cook them for 2-3 minutes, but i didnt have any. as the above ingredients are warming, quickly chop some frozen artichokes and a few strips of fake bacon. throw those in as well. put in some basil, a splash of lemon juice, a tiny pinch of sugar, and let it cook for like 5 min on medium heat while you get everything else ready.
while these things were cooking, i made a smoothie with frozen blueberries, frozen mangos, raspberry sorbet, and soymilk.
and then, tah-dah! a really good meal done in 15 min!