International P-Bear Day!

This Wednesday was International Polar Bear Day, and I decided to celebrate by making delicious gingerbread polar bear cookies. This recipe is from a good friend of mine, and I thought I would share it :)

Gingerbread Bears

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter cut into small pieces
1 large egg
1/4 cup molasses
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar
3-4 tbsp. milk


1. In food processor, combine flour, sugars, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Add butter, egg, molasses and vanilla and process until a snooth dough forms. Shape into 4 1-inch thick disks.

2. Roll each disk of dough between 2 sheets of wax or parchment paper to 1/2-inch thick. Refrigerate until firm. 

3. Heat oven to 350 degrees, line baking sheet with parchment paper. Using floured cookie cutter, cut out cookies. Place cookies on prepared sheets, spacing them 2 inches apart. Re-roll and repeat until dough is used up.

4. Bake until set, 8-10 minutes. Let cool on the sheet for 3 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. Meanwhile, mix together the powedered sugar and just enough milk so that frosting is spreadable. Pread frosting onto cooked and dip in sprinkles. Enjoy! 


The original recipe says to dip into white sprinkles immediately after icing the cookies, I did not have sprinkles, but found cinnamon candies in my pantry, and they were used for the eyes! Not only did I bake for International P-Bear Day, but I also celebrated by turning down the thermostat a few degrees to lower carbon emissions which is always eco-friendly. You can always do the same to help save polar bears!

DOUBLE BATCH!

So this week, I am posting what I cooked on Sunday night, as well as what I made and neglected to post the Thursday of the previous week.

The recipe for humus can be found in the Bittman book on page 93. It was very simple to do!

 The food processor I had access to made things incredible easy. It was really just dump in all the ingredients and pulse to the desired consistency. After the first orund of processing, I added in a little extra lemon juice.

I've since made this humus a second time, and will probably be keeping a can of chick peas on hand, so when the urge for humus hits--I'll be prepared.

This past weekend I ate rather unhealthily, so by Sunday night I felt like I had to compensate.

I found a recipe for Kale with Tahini (which I conveniently had left over from the humus) on page 309. It was really simple, just adding some garlic, tahini, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to the chopped kale while its cooked on the stove top.

 Kale typically has a pretty strong flavor (as far as greens go), and the simplicity of the recipe really helped to let it come through and compliment it, as opposed to covering it up or fighting it. I just about force fed it to everybody I could find, and people generally thought it tasted good. My vegetarian roommate said the tahini didn't really come through, so I will definitely consider increasing it when I make this again.

Classy Ramon Noodles

Although this is not in the cook book, I thought to go off our last discussion in lab, so I used the most common noodles in a college student's food cabinet: Ramon Noodles. However, to make it worth a meal I used the
Frozen Greens
Spices
Honey
Carrot
Onions
Red pepper
Garlic
etc,

Then, to finish my meal off I made cheesy bread for me and all my roommates with tomato sauce on the side. I used this recipe to show how great Ramon can be as a foundation to make a great, creative soup. Plus, its cheap and easy to make, and quick!

Fruit Salad

Today I decided to make a fruit salad. I could not find a recipe in Bittman that I liked so I decided to use the recipe that my grandma taught me growing up. Every summer my family would travel to my grandparent's house for the Fourth of July and we would make a fruit salad to have at the picnic. This is not the exact recipe This recipe is extremely easy and only takes about ten minutes from start to finish. This is also a great way to use up a lot of fruit before it goes bad.

Here is what I used:

1 apple
1 orange
1/2 cup grapes
1/2 cup blueberries
1 banana
1 cup strawberry yogurt

So overall this wasn't the best looking dish ever but it tasted amazing. next time I hope to have more yogurt so I can make a larger batch but it will be nice to have fruit salad to have as a side for a few meals anyway.

Roast Turkey with Cabbage

I recently bought a cabbage. It's not something I usually buy, and I didn't have a plan for it when I bought it; it was sort of an open-ended challenge to myself. The recipe I ended up going for appears on page 700 of Bittman. It's meant to be done starting with a raw turkey breast. I chose to instead use some leftover shreds of smoked turkey that have been sitting in my freezer for some time.

The recipe also requires 2tbs minced garlic (though I used maybe double that), 2 tbs minced ginger (though I probably only had half that much on hand), sesame oil, salt, and pepper.



You want to end up with two cups of roughly chopped cabbage and two cups of finely chopped cabbage. I had probably 3 cups of bite-sized smoked dark meat turkey.

The coarsely chopped cabbage (and, in my case, the turkey) go in a frying pan for about fifteen minutes. Halfway through that the garlic and ginger get added. This should be set aside while you wait for the other half. The recipe suggests cooking the turkey with the other half of the cabbage but since mine was frozen instead of raw I felt I would have better control over it on the stovetop.

The small shreds go on a pan in the oven with salt and pepper at 450F. Bittman says to put them in for 25-30 minutes. That's wrong. My smoke alarm went off after 20 because the cabbage bits were completely obliterated. I threw them out, chopped some more, and had better success with 10 minutes.



When the cabbage comes out of the oven it should be starting to get crispy. Throw everything from the frying pan on top of it and return it to the oven for five minutes.



This probably made about four meals' worth of food, if eaten with some sides. And in fact it would be tough to eat by itself. I had forgotten how salty smoked turkey already is so when I tried the finished product it was VERY salty. Still edible. Just not great.

Herb-Roasted Chicken

For this week, I prepared Herb-Roasted Chicken Cutlets (672). The only alterations I made to the recipe were some added oregano and garlic. The steps were pretty simple. just rolling the chicken in the herb mixture, oven baking with butter and chicken stock, and letting the liquid thicken. I used a little corn starch to give the stock a gravy like consistency.

Pre-bake

After baking

The remaining chicken stock mixture

Final product

With a vegetable mixture on the side, this made for a pretty great recipe. Although somewhat simple, it reminded me of some of my parents cooking. I'd definitely recommend it if you're looking for a heavy home-style meal.

Free-formed Apple Tart

Free-formed Apple Tart

My kitchen was overflowing with apples that were on the verge of going bad, so decided to make a Free-formed Apple Tart (848). I decided to take one of Bittman’s tips and tossed the apples in cinnamon before putting them in the tart. I have to say that the Sweet Tart Crust (929) was the best homemade crust I have ever made. It was flaky and buttery! What a perfect compliment to the soft and sweet apples. This was surprisingly easy and simple to make, and it is a great way to make a quick, homemade dessert. 

 The crust mixture before it was formed into a ball

The apple mixture

The final product

Golden layer cake with chocolate buttercream

Another birthday this week!! This time it is my 25 year old brother. I had to make a cake, so I went with the classic yellow cake (p. 907) with chocolate frosting. It was very good. (that may or may not have had something to do with the fact that I accidentally added two full sticks of butter to the batter rather than just ten tablespoons….)
While mixing together the batter for this recipe, I figured out what my mistake was from last week! It was not that there wasn't enough sugar in the blueberry muffins, it was that I put in baking soda rather than powder. WHAT. I never used to make mistakes like this.. and now twice in a row. I better start reading the directions more throughly! I did decide to omit the almond extract because I am not a huge fan of it but I am wondering if you can really even taste the almond anyway. If I make it again I'll definitely add it to see if there is a difference.

 the delicious batter (how can it not be with 6 tablespoons of butter extra)

Perfectly cooked! I baked them for 20 minutes rather than 25. They came out with unexpected but delicious crusty edges.

 The frosting recipe is from page 917 and I made the modifications for chocolate frosting. 

Time to dive in! and yes, I had two pieces.

Mushroom Risotto

This recipe is found on page 467 of the textbook, but I added some ingredients and steps. I started off by adding garlic and zucchini with the onion to brown it up and added some chicken sausages for more protein. When all of the ingredients were browned I soaked them in some white wine and added to the rice then to absorb the wine flavor and the fat and flavors of the mix-ins. I didn't really follow the recipe all that closely, I just used it as a guide since I make this often. At the end I added more than the recommended amount of cheese and added pecorino to the parmesan for one extra gooey outcome. Overall it tasted fantastic, but I have been making this dish a while and perfecting my skills as I go. If I had a signature dish, this would have to be it. 

Stuffed Mushrooms

A couple months ago I had some fabulous stuffed mushrooms and I've been craving more ever since. This week I thought I'd try my own (recipe found on page 31). I made a small change, though. Since I only made a 1/2 recipe I didn't want to bother splitting an egg, so I used cream cheese (honey nut flavor!) as a sticky binding agent. These mushrooms turned out so deliciously that I'd love to make them again sometime. -Deidra A

Cookies!

This week I thought I would try my hand at homemade chocolate chip cookies (p. 711) .  Cookies are one of my weaknesses in life and I can never pass them up, but typically if I make them I just buy the kind that is premixed in a bag and all I have to do is add an egg.  When I made these I realized that it is just as easy to quickly mix up this dough if you already have the ingredients, as it is to mix up the store bought dough.  I was a little nervous that they wouldn’t turn out because I cut the recipe in half, due to lack of brown sugar, and self control, so I estimated on some of the measurements.  This didn’t seem to be a problem at all though and I also added a little extra butter, because I like soft cookies, and extra chocolate chips, because who doesn’t like chocolate?  In the end the cookies turned out pretty close to perfect, and I ended up eating way to many as always.

emergency tomato soup with quinoa patties

Back story: On Friday afternoon I went grocery shopping with a few people at Seward Co-op, making a point to pick up half a pound of cod from their seafood counter--supplied by Coastal Seafood (yay)! I would have liked to go to their store but I didn't want to make the extra trip... Anyway, I bought this lovely piece of fish with the intention of broiling it, making one of Bittman's salsa recipes to pile on top and eating with the leftover rice in my fridge.

That was the plan. We headed to someone's apartment right after shopping so I didn't get to drop my groceries off at home. When we got there, I stuck the fish in her fridge for (what was supposed to be) safekeeping. "Don't let me forget to take it when I leave!" I said.

Of course I forgot to take it when I left. I got ahold of her yesterday but she was going out of town for the night. She'd be back some time Sunday, she said, and I could swing by and pick it up then.

By noon today I hadn't heard from her and decided I needed an alternate plan. I didn't want to go out and buy anything. I had planned to use a can of tomatoes for the salsa, and from that an idea struck me: tomato soup. It can't be too complicated, Bittman must have a recipe. And I needed some comfort food to alleviate my frustration over the fish situation.

Turns out he does (page 58, softcover), and I had everything I needed in my kitchen to make it.

Veg stock, canned diced tomatoes, onion, carrot, thyme, olive oil, s&p

That's the vegetable stock I made the first week of class! It's come in handy a couple times already.

This is crazy easy to make. I don't know how my mother ever let the canned condensed stuff into our house. Onion, diced carrot, oil, and spices go on the stove, cook until soft, add tomatoes and stock, and cook down for 10 minutes or so to let the flavors come together.

It's pretty chunky, so I decided to food process it to get it to a more tomato soup-like consistency.

The ever faithful Cuisinart

I thought about making grilled cheese to go with it (so good), but all I have right now is pita bread which wouldn't lend itself well to that. I did, however, have a ton of quinoa sitting on my dry shelf. My other most-used cookbook has a good recipe for quinoa patties so I threw a batch of those together too.

Best food ever

Eggs, quinoa, parm, onion, salt, rosemary, garlic 

Cooked quinoa gets combined with eggs, a pinch of salt and grated parmesan--note the block rather than pre-shredded. It's way more delicious! And I know if you buy the semi-fancy Belgioso brand (found at Rainbow... nothing crazy) it's the same price per ounce.

I'm not a big fan of raw onion, so I cooked it with the garlic on the stove before adding them, even though her recipe says to just throw them in as is. I also substituted fresh rosemary for the chives in the recipe because that's what I had.

Then--looking at the bottom of the recipe--I realized I didn't have any breadcrumbs. And without a toaster, no good way to make any. I went through my dry foods one more time to find a potential substitute, and I decided to try using oats.

I put them in the food processor to grind them, and that actually worked really well. They stay a little grainy, but I was trying to replicate bread crumbs so that was perfect.

Add "bread crumbs" to the rest of the ingredients, mix, and form patties on a baking sheet. I like to pop them in the oven for 20 minutes or so instead of frying them as she suggests. As you can see, they turn out nice and brown and crispy anyway!

I grabbed one of the patties, tossed a little white cheddar in my bowl of tomato soup, and added some greens on the side with a tahini-miso dressing I made last week (Jenny inspired me!). I ate this like an hour ago. It was wonderful, and I'm actually kind of glad the fish didn't make it back with me.

RECIPE
Little Quinoa Patties (Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson, page 121)
Makes 12

2 1/2 cups cooked quinoa, room temp
4 large eggs, beaten
1/2 t salt
1/3 c fresh chopped chives (I replaced with about 1 t fresh chopped rosemary)
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1/3 grated parmesan or gruyere cheese
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 c whole grain bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 375.

Combine quinoa, eggs, and salt in a bowl. Add chives (rosemary), onion, cheese, and garlic. Add the bread crumbs, stir, and let sit for a a few minutes so the crumbs can absorb some of the moisture.

Form the mixture into patties and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake 7-10 minutes on each side until deeply browned.

Vegan Chili and Cornbread

I decided to make chili this weekend, as I haven't had it in a while and I am trying to show my dad that vegan foods are not disgusting. haha! I used the recipe Chili non Carne from Bittman p429 for the chili and the Corn Bread recipe from p831.


In place of the meat, I used Boca crumbles to make it vegan.

 

I used tomato juice instead of the vegetable stock and used more of it than called for. I also added a can of diced tomatoes.

 

 

This is just a photo of how messy the kitchen gets when I am cooking :p

 

Here is the final product. Pops approved ;) He said that he could hardly tell that there wasn't meat in there! Vegan:1 Pops:0

I didn't show any pictures of the cornbread being made, but I used ground flax seed for the egg. The cord bread turned out kind of dry. I am pretty sure it was because I didn't put the veg butter in. The instructions were kind of confusing. It said to "Put the fat of oil in an 8-inch ovenproof skillet or square metal baking pan over medium heat." I didn't really know what that meant. I can't put a "baking" pan on the stove top. So, I just didn't put any in :/ I guess next time I will put it in with the wet ingredients.

 

Chocolate Cupcakes!

Adapted from Chocolate Layer Cake

Bittman pg. 911

One of my good friends had a birthday this week so I thought I would try to make her cupcakes! I usually just modify a boxed cake recipe so I was excited to finally make them completely from scratch.  I read the instructions for modifying a cake recipe for cupcakes on pg. 909 and was on my way!

For the ingredients, I did not have baking chocolate so I used the appropriate substitutions with cocoa powder and butter.

 

I also didn’t have an electric mixer so I had to use my immersion blender, which made things considerably more difficult. I gave up halfway through and finished it by hand. Once I had finished mixing everything, my batter seemed WAAAY thicker than what I was used to for a cake. I made one cupcake first just to see if it would turn out and it did so I continued with the rest of them.

When they were done and cooled, I topped them with some super delicious, super easy cream cheese frosting and called them good!

I only made half a batch and ended up with 15 cupcakes, which was plenty. These cupcakes were really good the night that I made them but the following day, they were pretty dry and not as enjoyable. The cake also got really dense (almost like a brownie) after they had fully cooled and wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. In the future, I think I might stick to boxed cake. It is way easier, less time consuming, and tastes just about the same.