Easier Than Falling Off a Log
Archive for December, 2008
December 27, 2008 at 1:12 am · Filed under food, pasta
This is some genius pasta sauce right here. And it’s easier than, well, you know. I didn’t have a red onion, just a white one, which was fine, and I ran out of olive oil partway through (I know, gasp, shock, etc.) and made up the rest with a little sesame oil, which made it a whole new flavour experience. Highly recommended.
Roasted Tomato, Garlic, and Onion Pasta Sauce
Ingredients
pasta
1 head of garlic
1 container cherry tomatoes, all of them halved
1 onion of some sort, peeled and quartered
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil (or replace 1 tbsp with sesame oil), with some extra to splash in at the end
salt and pepper
parmesan
Method
Preheat the oven to 400.
Slice the top off the head of garlic, exposing the individual cloves, and put it into whatever you’re going to be doing the roasting in (I used a cast-iron skillet).
Arrange your onions in the roasting… implement.
Likewise with your halved tomatoes.
In a bowl, combine the vinegar and oil.
Brush it over the tomatoes, onion, and garlic.
Crank a bunch of salt and pepper over the whole works.
Roast for 30 – 35 minutes.
In the meantime, cook your pasta.
When the roasting is done, take it out and mash everything up with a potato masher or a fork. You might want to pay special attention to the garlic so that it squeezes out of its casings, which are not as fun to eat.
Drain the pasta and chuck it into the mushy mixture with an extra splash of olive oil and the parmesan cheese, tossing until well combined.
Yes, I got all fancy arranging it in the pan. This is not required.
December 20, 2008 at 10:49 pm · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
I’d never made squash before, since I thought Matt didn’t like it. But I asked him – I swear – whether he’d eat it, and he said yes, or so I thought. So I was all excited to try this – I never used to like squash, much for the same reason as I never liked pickles, which is to say, no reason. I decided to change that, and the squash at Meghan and Tommy’s wedding went a long way towards accomplishing this goal.
But then when I was like “Voila! Squash!” Matt balked. He insists that he never agreed to squash and that I am making the whole exchange up. To his great credit, he ate it, and if he was spitting it out into a napkin, he concealed it well enough that I didn’t notice. He did, however, inform me that any eating of leftovers will have to be done by me. Well, I thought it was good.
Anyway, I had to kind of perform major surgery on the recipe, originally found here. See, I figured halving it would work to fit it into our wee little slow cooker. And I ditched the saffron, because it’s only the most expensive substance on earth. I didn’t want to buy a lime just for an ounce of lime juice, so I forgot about it. And I figured that would be the end of it. But it turned out that I had to take out a few chunks of squash and scoop out a few of the chickpeas to make it fit, and I couldn’t even think about putting the lentils in. A shame. I had lentils, too.
But! I did make my own vegetable stock! According to something I learned here, I’ve been chucking all my veggie odds and ends into a tupperware that I keep in the freezer – the bits I cut off things, leaves, stems, things getting a bit sad and old in the fridge – and when it was full, I chucked them all in a big pot and filled it with water, smashed a clove of garlic and chucked that in too, and then brought the whole mess to a boil and dropped it down to a simmer for an hour. Then I strained out the solid stuff, chucked it, and added a bunch of salt – that post I linked mentioned a quarter cup, and I figured I had less than she had, so I added a bit less. Still really salty, but stock is, isn’t it. Might use less next time. Anyway, voila, I had my own vegetable stock! I used some in this recipe and put the rest in the freezer.
Slow-Cooker Squash Stew
Ingredients
heaping 1/2 cup dried chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
1 1/4 lb butternut squash, seeded, peeled, and cut into bite-size pieces
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1/2 a large onion, or one small one, chopped
2 cups vegetable stock
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 inch fresh ginger, minced
heaping 1/2 tsp cumin
a few good cranks of pepper
1/2 tsp salt
Method
Soak the chickpeas according to your preferred method; I wasn’t inclined to soak mine overnight, so I did the boil-for-3-minutes-then-leave-for-an-hour thing instead.
While you’re waiting for them to be ready, you can do your chopping.
Drain and rinse the chickpeas.
Now just throw everything into the slow cooker, and put it on low for 8 – 10 hours or high for 6 – 8.
I thought it was delicious. The squash started getting all, well, squashy, and I like that. Slow cooker recipes are awesome.
December 11, 2008 at 3:11 pm · Filed under food
On Sunday, I made these magical little numbers. Pizza… in muffin form. Genius! I actually made them for dinner, so we each had a couple, and there were tons of leftovers to take to work or snack on or whatever.
I only changed two things, namely leaving out the peppers (alas) and using pepperoni instead of ham. Oh, and using half whole wheat flour and half AP, because I ran out of AP. Three things. Oh and I don’t have onion powder. Four things. Oh. No, wait. I added garlic powder and substituted garam masala for straight curry powder. Maybe I should be careful about making outlandish claims like “I barely changed anything.”
However, if I make them again, I might try to stick to only traditional pizza spices – basil, oregano, garlic – and not delve into the magical world of curry. Not that it’s not delicious, it is, but it’s delicious in a more complex way than regular pizza is, and it doesn’t really taste like pizza to me. And I suspect Matt would be a bigger fan if it was more like standard pizza, too. But it’s clearly the kind of recipe where you can add and subtract ingredients to suit your taste.
Pizza Muffins
Ingredients
2 cups flour – I used 1 cup AP and 1 cup whole wheat
4 tbsp butter, softened
1 cup plain yogurt
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
heaping 1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp garlic powder
3 tbsp pizza sauce
1/8 tsp cayenne, or a couple of good shakes
1/2 cup pepperoni, chopped
1 cup cheese, grated
2 shallots
2 eggs
Method
Preheat the oven to 400.
Heat a little olive oil in a pan and saute the shallots for a couple of minutes.
Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and all the herbs in a bowl. In the original recipe, she used her food processor to do all the mixing, and I would have as well, except that mine is too small. So you can do it either way. Or a stand mixer, I suppose, would also work.
In another bowl, combine the yogurt and the melted butter, then whisk in the eggs.
Add this to the dry ingredients.
Dump the shallots, cheese, and pizza sauce into the batter and mix until everything is well combined.
Stir in the pepperoni.
Grease your muffin pan or whatever you choose to use, and spoon the batter into it, leaving some room for it to rise (a bit – not as much as a normal muffin would).
Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and crispy, and a toothpick comes out clean.
December 10, 2008 at 5:26 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Ok, remember how Matt had a union meeting, but it got postponed? Well, it got postponed to last Monday, so I decided to make something else he doesn’t eat, namely shrimp. Well, guess what. I hadn’t even gotten started when he walked in, again. This time, unlike last time, he wasn’t about to take one for the team and eat what I had made with his absence in mind. He got a burger from the pizza place on the corner (Joseph’s, and it’s fantastic, so don’t think he was settling or anything), which is what he would have done anyway had he come home late after the meeting. He told me I should go ahead and make my thing, because the shrimp would go bad otherwise, and I was inclined to agree with him. So I made it, and it was good, and I don’t eat seafood nearly ever anymore. I didn’t even have sushi when I was back in Vancouver this last time.
This recipe is from Dine and Dish, which I love, obviously. I eighthed the recipe since it was only for me and not for a whole big family. Kristen of Dine and Dish added mushrooms; while I love mushrooms and they’re another thing Matt won’t eat, I can’t buy loose mushrooms at our grocery store! I have to buy a little container of them, and unless I get to make food for myself several times in a brief interval, I never get to use them up before they go bad. Besides, in eighthing the recipe, I’d have wound up with, like… 2 mushrooms. So not really worth it.
Garlic-Shrimp Pasta for One
Ingredients
I didn’t want to be a loser who asked the fish counter guy for 1/8 lb of shrimp, so I asked for something under 1/4 lb. and decided I’d just live with the fact that I had excess shrimp. Leftovers!
1 portion pasta
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp butter
a splash of olive oil
a wee shake of cayenne
basil
oregano
salt
pepper
(all to taste)
Method
Devein and de-tail your shrimp.
Cook the pasta in boiling salted water – NOT with oil in the pasta water, though, since that keeps the sauce from adhering to the pasta. I know in the recipe I linked to, she says she always cooks with some oil in the water, but don’t. Make sure to reserve a bit of the pasta water for the sauce.
While the pasta is cooking, wash the shrimp.
Melt the butter in a pan and throw the shrimp into it.
Cook the shrimp until it’s just starting to go pink and curl.
Throw in the garlic and cook for another 5 – 7 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the cooked pasta into the pan with the shrimp and garlic.
Toss with the shrimp, garlic, and seasonings.
Now just finish it off with pasta water, adding a little bit at a time until it is just past dry but before it is sitting in a puddle.
December 9, 2008 at 12:33 am · Filed under food, meals
I made this the day after Thanksgiving. Who says it has to be leftover turkey for a week? Why not pork? Why not pork whose name is inexplicably “soft”? I found this recipe here, and it’s Indonesian Chinese in origin – which you can tell because it’s got potatoes, which I’m not used to seeing in China Chinese food (although no doubt I’m not getting the full picture since I’ve never been all over the huge country), but it’s also got pork, so it’s Chinese Indonesian and not Muslim Indonesian.
I was talking to my dad about having made this, and seeing if he was familiar with it, and it led to a discussion of language. Specifically, that some languages have a different word for meat on your plate and the animal it came from. And some don’t. And some, like english, do for some meats (pork, beef, mutton) but don’t for others (chicken, lamb, fish). The fact that you call a lamb a lamb regardless of if it’s running around a field or lying on your plate, but once that baby sheep grows up, it’s only a sheep on the farm and not on the menu, is particularly weird to me.
Anyway, Matt liked this. It’s unpretentious and has two things he likes – meat and potatoes – and no things he doesn’t. But I think I had the wok too hot, because the oil was going CRAZY and splashing me to death. And the original recipe refers to a pork cutlet, but I don’t think that’s a name that is used here, but I did find boneless pork chops, so I used one of those to no apparent ill effects.
Soft Pork Cubes With Potatoes
Ingredients
1 medium-sized pork chop, cut into small cubes
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
a couple healthy cranks of pepper
1 tsp corn starch
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 medium-sized red potatoes, quartered and sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp oil, plus a little more for cooking the potatoes in
1/4 cup water
Method
In a pan (not the wok you’ll be using later), heat some oil and fry up the potato slices until they’re a little browned on both sides.
When they’re done, drain them on a paper towel and set aside for later.
In the meantime, put the pork, salt, sugar, pepper, corn starch, and soy sauce in a container and stow it in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
Heat the main amount of oil in a wok. Use a medium level of heat, unlike me, and maybe you can avoid being savaged by oil splashes.
Stir-fry the garlic for a couple of minutes.
Add the pork and the marinade, and stir-fry for another 5 minutes.
Add the water and the fried potatoes.
Give everything a good stir to deglaze the wok and coat all the contents with delicious sauce.
Cover and reduce the heat to simmer for 5 more minutes.
It’s tasty, but I don’t really understand what’s so soft about it.
December 5, 2008 at 12:11 am · Filed under dessert, food
The other thing I made for Thanksgiving was pumpkin cinnamon buns, from a recipe I saw on Dishing Up Delights. I have now officially made something with pumpkin that turned out like it should have, so high fives to me. And I didn’t change anything – what a first – except for using the speedy yeast I mentioned in the last post, and making them mini cinnamon buns instead of full-size ones, so people wouldn’t have to commit to them to the exclusion of some other dessert. I mean, I’m not trying to steal the thunder of pie. And that only means that instead of rolling up the dough in one big log, I rolled it from both ends, so it met in the middle and made two smaller logs. Then I cut the logs up as per the recipe, and so on.
Pumpkin Cinnamon Buns
Ingredients
for the dough
1 packet active yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg (does anyone have an 1/8 tsp measuring spoon? It’s basically nothing. I gave it 3 shakes)
3 cups all-purpose flour
for the filling
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp honey
2 tsp cinnamon
Method
Mix yeast and warm water in the bowl you’re going to use for mixing the dough (so, in my case, the bowl of my stand mixer) and let stand for 10 minutes.
Dump in the rest of the dough ingredients and mix until well combined.
The original recipe says to turn it out onto a lightly floured surface to knead it, but I have a shortage of surfaces in my kitchen, and since I was making the breadsticks at the same time, space was even more at a premium than it usually is. So I just kneaded it in the bowl. Whatever you do, knead for 5 minutes.
Then leave it for 15 minutes (again, I left it in the bowl).
During this time, you can mix the filling ingredients together in another bowl until it forms a paste.
After the dough is done doing its thing, roll it out in a big rectangle to about 1/4″ thickness.
Spread the filling all over the dough.
Roll the rectangle up into a big long log for regular cinnamon buns, or roll from each end so you have 2 thinner logs that meet in the middle (like a scroll!) for mini-buns.
Slice your log or logs into a square number of pieces, so that you can fit them neatly into a square baking pan. MATH TIME!
Arrange your buns in the greased baking pan and leave them to rise for 45 minutes to an hour, if you’re using regular yeast, or until doubled in size.
Then stick them in the oven at 400 degrees (turn it on to preheat at some point, obviously) for 20 minutes.
I didn’t make any icing for them. They were good enough on their own, I felt, plus I knew we’d have a surfeit of desserts and I didn’t need to add to the tooth rotting mayhem.
People liked them. They wanted to have them for breakfast. They were all different sizes, though and one person drove me crazy by cutting a big one in half instead of just taking a small one, though. Don’t do that. Why would you do that?
December 3, 2008 at 5:31 pm · Filed under breads, food
For Thanksgiving, we went to Matt’s family’s, and I took the day before off to spend all day cooking. No, I’m not kidding. I woke up, went to the gym, came back by way of the grocery store, and made food until it was time to go meet Matt at his work. Until about 15 minutes after it was time to go, actually.
I made my salsa, these breadsticks, and pumpkin cinnamon buns, which I hope to write about tomorrow, if I get time. They all went over pretty well. These puppies came from a recipe from Cafe Lynnylu, and while she used a lager, I didn’t have any on hand – just Harpoon IPA, so I used that. The beer flavour was thus stronger, but that’s ok – we like beer. And the yeast I used was 50% faster rising yeast, so it said, so I cut the rising times in half. This appears to have been the right decision – not only did the things rise just fine, I just honestly didn’t have the time to let them rise the full time in the recipe. Same with the cinnamon buns, by the way – it was a delicate dance of oven time in my kitchen.
Beer and Pepper Jack Breadsticks
Ingredients
2 tsp active dry yeast
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
3/4 cup grated pepper jack cheese
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup beer
Method
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine yeast, flour, cornmeal, salt, and sugar.
Add olive oil and beer and mix until combined.
Mix in the cheese.
Switch to the dough hook on your mixer and let it rip for 5 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic.
Let rise for 1 1/2 hours (or 45 hot minutes if you have speedy-speedy yeast like me!), until doubled.
Transfer to a lightly oiled surface (seriously – this dough can be STICKY), divide into 2 wads, and let rest 10 min.
Preheat the oven to 325.
Taking one lump of dough at a time, roll out to a rectangle of about 1/4″ thickness.
Cut into strips with a pizza cutter. I did it widthwise and still got long breadsticks, because they stretched when I picked them up to transfer them to the baking sheet – I even had to fold them over to make them all fit! About 10 per dough wad is what I got at the width I did them.
Place on a lightly oiled baking sheet. The original recipe had them covered with oiled wax paper and left to rise for 30 minutes here; I forgot about this step completely, not that I would have had time to do it anyway. But I think I left them for an extra 10 minutes or so in an earlier rest, just because I was busy with the cinnamon buns. Anyway, mine weren’t the worse for wear. If you have time, you might as well do this, but don’t sweat it.
Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until golden. Don’t be a moron like me and forget to move your oven rack back up to the middle from having been at the bottom, or they will get brown on the bottom and have not enough colour on top, and you will leave them in a little too long trying to get that colour. Derrrr.
December 2, 2008 at 3:20 pm · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
So a week ago Monday (I know, backlog, whatever), Matt was supposed to have a union meeting after work. This meant that I could make something for dinner that he doesn’t like, but I do. Plenty of things fall into this category. Mushrooms, bell peppers, any type of seafood, tomato soups, and this, as it was a thick soup. But right as I was getting started making it, he walked in the door! His meeting had been postponed for the next Monday (also known as yesterday). But he decided to give this soup a try anyway, and while I don’t think it was his favourite food ever, he also wasn’t disgusted by it, so I guess that worked out ok.
I halved this recipe, sort of – I thought I had 3 carrots, when in actuality I only had 2. They were biggish, though, so it wasn’t a disaster or anything. But I’d have preferred to use more and get a darker orange colour, like hers, and a more carrotty flavour. This was also one of the only recipes I’ve ever made that, when halved down from a 4-person amount, was just about perfect for 2, instead of 2-and-lots-of-leftovers. Maybe it’s because 2 of the 4 people she was cooking for were small children.
Ingredients
1 tbsp butter, which you could absolutely substitute with oil of some kind if you want to make this 100% vegan
1 smallish onion, diced
1 stalk celery
1 big clove garlic… or one big one and one little one…
1/2″ of fresh ginger, which I have officially stopped grating. It just clogs up my grater and is an unholy pain to deal with. Just mince it. Who cares, it’s all going to get blenderized anyway.
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
let’s say 3 carrots, although more certainly wouldn’t kill you either, sliced into coins
1 can chicken or vegetable stock (so what’s that, like 2 cups? so if you’re a top-quality human being who makes his or her own stock, 2 cups ought to do it… maybe a bit less)
1/3 cup white wine
Method
Melt the butter (or heat the oil) in your soup pot, and saute the onion and celery in it for about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic and ginger and saute for another minute.
Throw in the cumin and coriander and keep stirring for another minute.
Dump in your carrots, stock, and wine, cover, and bring to a boil.
Once it’s boiling, turn it down and simmer for 20 or 30 minutes, or until the carrots are soft.
Pour the whole works into a blender and puree until smooth, or smooth enough.
