Easier Than Falling Off a Log
Archive for November, 2008
November 26, 2008 at 12:23 am · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Ok. I looked up carbonara to see whether what I’m saying here can make sense. See, this sauce had the eggs being added raw to the hot pasta, and it has cream and parmesan cheese, but instead of bacon, it has sausage. The origins of the name “carbonara” are disputed. Either it’s because it was cooked over charcoal grills, in which case this wouldn’t have been carbonara even if it had had bacon, or because it was cooked by coal miners, in which case I feel a substitution could still be true to the original, or because the flecks of bacon and pepper in the sauce resembled flecks of carbon, in which case this was not carbonara. So who can say. I got the recipe from the site of a German, not an Italian, so I doubt she’s going to get all uppity about whether it’s techically a carbonara or not. And unlike her other commenter, I’m not calling her a noob and mocking her choice of kitchen utensils, so I’m in good.
I halved it because I only had 3 sausages in the fridge, and skipped the mushrooms (Matt doesn’t like them and it wasn’t many anyway), and accidentally skipped the parsley too, even though I totally have some getting useless in the fridge. Oh well.
The point is that it was good, the egg situation worked out, so now I’m not nervous of making real carbonara anymore. I just had to get on with it and DO it once, and now I’m fine. Just like when I roasted the chicken; after wearing a whole bird on my hand like a glove, I’m not leery of touching raw chicken anymore. How could I be?
Sausage Carbonara
Ingredients
pasta
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 an onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
3 hot italian sausages, sliced
1/4 cup white wine – thank you, Trader Joe’s, for keeping me in perfectly serviceable cheap wine
1/2 cup light cream
1 egg
1/4 cup parmesan
salt and pepper
Method
Heat the oil in a skillet big enough to accomodate all the pasta and everything, which it will do at the end.
Add the onion and garlic; saute until onion softens.
Add the sausage and cook it until it’s done.
Sometime in here, start making the pasta – you want it to be done right about when the sauce is done, so as to acheive maximum hot-pasta-to-raw-egg-ness.
So when the sausage is cooked, pour in the wine and reduce the heat to a simmer. The idea is to reduce the wine by half, but this happened fairly quickly for me, so pour in the wine, turn down the heat, and get to work on the next step so that you can be ready as soon as the pasta’s done.
The next step is to whisk together the cream, egg, parmesan, salt, and pepper.
When everything is ready to go, add the hot, drained pasta to the skillet with the sausage, and pour in the eggy mixture right away. Toss to coat and serve immediately.
November 20, 2008 at 5:30 pm · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
Oh god this soup is delicious.
It’s got an Indian flavour to it, what with the garam masala and the cardamoms, and it’s a gorgeous orangey red colour, and I could just eat it all day long. This soup is the opposite of FAIL. It has restored my faith in my cooking abilities.
I got the recipe from one of my favourite food blogs, Coffee and Vanilla, and I halved the recipe and didn’t use whole chicken legs as she did, but instead cut up pieces of chicken breast we happened to have in the freezer. And I assumed that by “1 whole garlic” she meant 1 whole head of garlic, so I used half a head. And I couldn’t find any parsnips and figured Matt would go into a Bunnicula fugue state if he saw one (it’s not a vegetable he ever ate as a kid), so I skipped it. She only wanted a small one, and halving it would be really not much at all, so I don’t think it was a big loss.
Chicken and Lentil Soup
Ingredients
2 chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1/2 a head of garlic, each clove peeled and crushed
1 carrot, sliced
3 red potatoes, scrubbed and cut up into bite-sized pieces (I left the skin on; do what you want)
4 – 5 cups hot water
2 bouillon packets
a heaping 1/2 cup lentils
1 1/2 tsp garam masala
1 wee can tomato paste (what are they, like 8 oz? I can’t remember. The little skinny cans, though, you know what I mean)
2 inches ginger root, peeled and sliced thinly
5 cardamom pods
chopped parsley
Method
Coat the bottom of your big pot with the oil and fry up the onions, garlic, and chicken in it until the onions are either starting to brown, or, in my case, just really really soft, and until you’re 90% sure the chicken is cooked. Even if you’re wrong, it’ll cook the rest of the way while the rest of the soup’s in there, so no big deal.
Add the carrots and potatoes and fry for another couple of minutes.
Now dump in everything else except for the parsley, give it a good stir, then cover it and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender and the lentils are cooked.
Stir in the parsley and serve.
November 18, 2008 at 4:45 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Inspired by Culinary Cory, I decided to make pesto pasta the other night. And the beauty of his recipe with the tomatoes is that I can add them into my portion, and Matt doesn’t have to have any if he doesn’t want them.
I used to not like tomatoes. I liked tomato sauce, and things with tomatoes cooked into them were generally ok, but I didn’t want a slice of tomato on my sandwich or cheeseburger, and I would have been horrified to see my future self relishing the way a cherry tomato pops in my mouth when I bite it. So I thought they were fantastic in this dish. I’m still not too nuts about having them on my burger, though.
I did learn something in the making of the pesto, too. I didn’t used to have a food processor. I used to make pesto in a modified old-school way – a ceramic bowl and the back of an ice cream scooper standing in as a mortar and pestle. So now that I have the thing, I decided to give it a shot. It worked ok for pie crust, after all, and people keep saying it’s good for making pesto. Nehhh… not so much. I mean, maybe if I had been making way more. But making just a bit, enough for two people’s dinner, it’s kind of a pain to keep scraping the sides down so the ingredients actually get processed. But don’t cry, little food processor, I still love you for salsa and dumpling filling, and the only reason I’ll go back to the old-school way for my pie crust is that otherwise why do I own a pastry cutter? I can’t waste kitchen tools! But you’re benched for pesto, my little whirly friend.
We also had a hell of a time finding pine nuts – or at least finding them in a container size and brand that weren’t sinfully expensive. I was willing to give up on pine nuts and use another nut for the pesto – I’ve used slivered almonds before – but finally we found some that weren’t going to bankrupt us completely. Why can’t the supermarket keep the little baggies of them in stock? GEEZ GUYS.
Pasta with Pesto and Cherry Tomatoes
Ingredients
enough pasta for whoever you’re feeding
enough pesto for the pasta: basil, olive oil, pine nuts (ideally), garlic, and parmesan cheese, smashed up together until they form an oily paste. You can buy this in a jar, but why when it’s so easy to make?
3 tbsp pine nuts, toasted
as many cherry tomatoes (or grape tomatoes, whatever) as you like, halved
parmesan cheese for topping
Method
Take the tomatoes out of the fridge; you want them to come to room temperature before mixing them into the pasta.
Cook the pasta.
Smash together your pesto ingredients.
When your pasta is done, drain it, and toss the pesto, tomatoes, and pine nuts in it.
Top with parmesan cheese.
BOOM! Easy dinner.
November 12, 2008 at 4:13 pm · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
On my third day off, I decided that I really ought not to give up entirely just yet, so I made this beef stew (although I did halve it, which results in half a bottle of wine in need of a good home). And finally, finally, something went right. I failed to fail. The stew was delicious, worked according to plan, and was enjoyed by both of us. So I won’t be hanging my head in hardcore shame and walking away from this blog right away. But the next weekend that is FAIL after FAIL… well, we’ll see.
My substitutions this time were minimal – I had, or was able to lay my hands on, nearly everything I needed. I did think I had 2 carrots left when I only had one, so I threw in a rib of celery instead of the second carrot. Obviously they don’t taste the same, but so what, is my feeling. I wish grocery stores here sold more produce individually. I wasn’t about to buy a whole bag of carrots just to use one.
Oven-Braised Beef Stew
Ingredients
for marinade
1 lb stew beef, cut into manageable chunks
1/2 a bottle red wine – I did like the original recipe’s author and picked up some 2-Buck Chuck, which is actually 3-buck Chuck out here…
1 medium-sized onion, sliced thinly
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
1 large clove garlic (or 2 smaller ones), finely chopped
for stew
3/4 tsp salt, divided
1/2 tsp pepper, divided
2 tbsp flour, divided
olive oil for browning beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
2 slices bacon
1 carrot, sliced diagonally into 1/2″ coins
1 rib celery, sliced
~ 1 lb Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into bite-size chunks
1/4 lb green beans, ends snapped off and the bean broken in half
1 cup chicken broth
Method
for the marinade
Put all the marinade ingredients in a gallon-size ziploc bag and seal it, pressing out excess air.
Leave it in the fridge for 16 to 24 hours.
for the stew
Preheat the oven to 350.
Take the bag o’ marinade out of the fridge, and drain the beef, discarding the non-meat solids, but reserving the liquid marinade.
Throw the beef into another big ziploc bag with 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, and 1 tbsp flour, shaking to coat evenly. Sure this seems wasteful of bags, but your marinade bag is all wet.
Now get out the pot you’re going to use and heat it up over medium heat. It needs to be big enough for a stew, obviously, but also oven-proof and having a lid, which must also be oven-proof. Handles are what I am thinking of here. A dutch oven or Le Creuset ought to do the trick.
So take this pot, heat it up, and when it is hot, pour in enough oil to coat the bottom.
Brown the beef in this oil, in batches so there’s no crowding, for about 8 minutes per batch, and remove it once it’s browned.
Into the now-empty pot, add the onion and garlic, and cook for 2 minutes.
Add the rest of the flour and cook, stirring constantly, 4 – 5 minutes. Don’t get all excited if it sticks, you’re going to deglaze the pot anyway.
So now deglaze it with the marinade, and also add the thyme and bay leaf.
Add the beef back in and simmer while you cook the bacon.
Cook the bacon.
Break it up into 1/2″ chunks and stir it into the pot.
Cover the pot and throw it in the oven to braise for 2 hours.
At some point during the braise, chop your veggies.
When the braise is over, return the pot to the stovetop at a simmer, adding the chicken broth and veggies, and stirring.
Simmer until the vegetables are tender (or at least until the potatoes are; a little crunch in your green beans is kind of nice, I happen to think).
November 11, 2008 at 2:43 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
So after the roast chicken FAIL, and after the roller derby FAIL (but before I found out that I had failed), I decided to make this spicy, creamy pasta, inspired by this recipe. And it failed, too, because I made it too spicy – I had cayenne pepper and not red pepper flakes, and I didn’t reduce the amount enough. I think a teaspoon would have been ok, though, so that’s what I’m writing in here. But my god, what I did put in was too much. We couldn’t eat it. I tried adding sugar to mine, to kill the heat a bit, but no dice. The worst part was that I could tell it was good, but it hurt my mouth too much to eat it! So I guess it was a good thing that we had leftover chicken, because we just ate that with some rice (which I came dangerously close to overcooking, another FAIL in the perfect storm of failure that was my weekend). ANYWAY, this could be good with the spiciness toned down – someone test drive it for me, I’ve got the fear.
Creamy Spicy Pasta
2 servings of pasta
1 medium-sized tomato (preferably a juicy one so the juice can make it into the sauce), diced
a few sprigs of parsley, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
parmesan for serving
Method
Cook your pasta according to package directions.
In the meantime, make the sauce:
Melt the butter with the oil in a biggish pan (you’re going to be adding the pasta to it at the end, so that’s how big it needs to be).
Saute the garlic until just fragrant, then add the tomato, salt, pepper, and cayenne.
Pour in the cream.
Cook for 2 minutes, stirring a little, until you have a smooth and well-combined sauce.
Throw in your peas and parsley and cook until the peas are thawed and warmed.
When your pasta is ready, drain it and then toss it in the sauce.
Serve with parmesan cheese.
Optional: if your face is on fire, throw it out, mope, and order pizza. Throw out the pasta, I mean. Not your face.
November 10, 2008 at 3:38 pm · Filed under food, meals
I haven’t given up on this thing, let’s just get that out of the way first. Although I was tempted last weekend; it was FAIL weekend in both the cooking sense, with 2 out of the 3 things I made this weekend being failures, at least initially, and then in the roller derby sense, as I took part in the league tryouts and ultimately didn’t make it. So it’s been pretty depressing around here – those are the two big things that I’ve decided to start doing, and they both nosedived into the ground at the same time. But just as I will be putting my skates back on and continuing to practice (at least, I will once the prodigious hole in my foot – caused by a blister that subsequently stuck to my sock and peeled off a dime-sized slab of skin, and positively buckets of blood, with it – and my totally sweet fat lip heal up), I’m going to keep plugging away at the whole foodblogging thing. That’s me, getting back on the horse or whatever.
So anyway, I had taken some days off work, because I had them and I’d lose them if I didn’t use them before the end of the year. I took off Friday, so I could prepare more effectively for tryouts on Sunday, and I took off Monday so I could be nervous in peace. And then I decided I might as well take Tuesday off as well so that I could vote whenever I pleased instead of having to wait in line after work. That part worked out great for me, by the way – no 3-hour lineups for me, I just strolled right in, did my part for democracy, and walked right back out again – probably a total of 10 minutes from start to finish. And on each of those days, I cooked.
On Friday, I attempted to christen my new roasting pan and roast a chicken. I used Bourdain’s recipe from the Les Halles Cookbook, because we love him, and he exhorts me not to be such a squeamish nerd about touching raw chicken and getting salmonella, and it’s about time I got over that. However, I don’t have the book with me here at work (updating at work! scandal!!), so I’m going to go from memory here. It’s pretty uncomplicated, though, so I don’t think I’ll be too far off.
Roast Chicken
Ingredients
1 chicken, about 4 lbs – I had a hard time finding one that small, but I was only looking in the supermarket, so Bourdain is ashamed of me already. Whatever, I’m not made of money.
a sprig of rosemary
a sprig of thyme
3 tbsp butter, softened
2 tbsp herb butter (which I also made, and which was NOT fail – just soften a stick of butter, mix in some chopped up rosemary, thyme, and basil, and then roll it up in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to harden)
1 onion, cut in half
half a lemon
a bunch of salt and pepper
something like a quarter of a bottle of white wine… I’ll edit this with the actual amount later
a couple of sprigs of parsley, chopped
Method
Take the giblets out and rinse out and salt and pepper the inside of your chicken. Don’t throw away the giblets, though – take them out of their plastic bag (duh) and put them in the roasting pan, they’re going to make the sauce tasty.
Trim the excess skin at the neck; this is assuming you know how much there is supposed to be and how much, therefore, is “excess.” I sort of waved a knife at it and hoped for the best.
Now you get to do the fun part to hold the legs up in place without having to truss it. You make a little slit in the skin near the opening, about where the “heel” of the chicken’s foot would be if it still had feet. Poke the ends of the leg bones in through these slits to hold them in place.
Put your sprigs of rosemary and thyme, the half a lemon, and half the onion inside the chicken.
Put the other half of the onion in the roasting pan with the giblets.
Take two 1-tbsp pats of herb butter and work them in under the skin, one on each side of the breastbone.
Rub salt and pepper all over the outside of the chicken.
Rub half of the softened butter all over the outside of the chicken, too.
Pour 1/2 cup of wine into the pan with the half onion and the giblets.
Set the chicken on the rack and put the pan into the oven for 30 minutes, basting every so often with the juices that collect in the pan. When you baste, you might want to shift the pan to another part of the oven, or rotate it or something, just in case your oven has hot spots. My oven is what is known as “basically the same size as my roasting pan,” though, so I sort of scooted it from side to side a couple of inches and called it a day.
After it’s been a half hour, crank up the oven to 450 and roast for another 25 minutes, or until the juices run clear and your meat thermometer is happy with the situation.
Take it out and let it sit for 15 minutes before carving (do you carve a chicken, or does it have to be a bigger bird to merit such a dramatic verb?).
Meanwhile, make the sauce: take the roasting pan out and put it on the stove, and crank up any and all burners it sits on to high.
Deglaze the pan with the rest of the wine.
Boil until it is reduced by half. I assume you’re a better judge of these things than I am.
Chuck out the giblets and the half onion.
Whisk in 1 1/2 tbsp butter.
Serve over the chicken.
I also threw some quartered new potatoes in the pan under the chicken, and while they turned out to be delicious, I wonder what impact they had on the cooking of the chicken. You see, at the prescribed time, and despite the clarity of the juices, this bird was NOT cooked. Oh, sure, the outside was cooked. But if you cut down a little deeper, it was basically still clucking and walking around the barnyard. I was horrified. My worst fears with raw chicken are that it is going to find a way to kill me, and this one snuck past my trusty poking with a thermometer and fervent hand-washings. So take into account your oven’s peculiarities, any time spent basting that would have to be subtracted from the total, and any adulterants that may soak up some of that heat and add time.
After we threw it back in the oven and watched tv for a while, it WAS delicious. So. Just putting that out there.
