Easier Than Falling Off a Log
Archive for September, 2009
September 29, 2009 at 10:45 pm · Filed under food
I made pickles! I’m so excited that they turned out, they taste pickley, and they haven’t poisoned anyone! And they honestly were just as easy as I was led to believe. I had been meaning to make pickles for a long time, but I didn’t have any resealable jars, and I had a moratorium on new kitchen stuff until after we moved. So, we moved, and the next weekend we went to Ikea to get another bookcase (and, as it turns out, a sweet as-is department deal on what is now our pantry), and while we were there I picked up a really nice jar (34 oz size) that I thought I could use to make pickles in.
It worked.
I used a combination of recipes, because everything was essentially the same except that they all called for “pickling spice,” and when it comes to a recipe for pickling spice, everyone had a different one. I used the “what does not require me to buy new spices?” approach and picked the components of various spice mixes that I already possessed. One of the recipes made several jars with one tablespoon of the spice mix, so I figured I’d just use a few shakes of each spice and it would add up to some fraction of a tablespoon, which would be just about right. I may have used a quarter tablespoon of any given spice, at the most. But this does not appear to be the kind of thing that can go wrong. I mean, I’m sure it can, but if you vary your spice amounts within reason, omit ones you don’t have (like mace… who keeps mace around? And not the spray-in-the-face-of-assailants kind, either) and add things you do have and think it might taste good, you’ll probably wind up with something that tastes, well, good.
Pickles
Ingredients
2 Kirby (“pickling”) cucumbers
2 cups water
2 1/4 tsp salt (or more… the salt draws out the moisture from your pickles, making them crunchier)
1 clove garlic, slightly crushed
a bunch of dill – I just kept packing it in until the cucumber spears were held tightly against the jar – and if it’s seed heads, so much the better, apparently, but mine weren’t
1 1/2 bay leaves
peppercorns
coriander seeds
red pepper flakes
a pinch of celery seed
3 or 4 cloves
ground ginger
Method
Run your jar through a dishwasher, or sterilize it some other way.
Cut your cucumbers into spears, and trim them down so that they’re short enough to be completely covered by the brine. I trimmed mine, but not enough; this caused the tops to be less pickly than the bottoms!
Put the salt and water in a pot and heat until the salt dissolves.
Pack your pickles into the jar.
Add the spices and dill; I just kept adding dill until everything was tightly packed. If it’s not tight, the pickles might float, which is bad for business – they can’t pickle if they’re not immersed in the brine.
Pour all the water in. Now you can tell, by the way, if your pickles are too tall. Cut them down if they are.
Put them in the fridge (or another cool, dark place) for 5 days. They’ll be half-sours before that time, apparently, but for the full meal deal, you want to wait at least 5 days.
Other spices I would have used if I’d had the whole spice and not a ground version:
- cinnamon (sticks)
- allspice (berries)
- mustard (seeds)
I’m also pondering making “southwestern” ones, with seasonings like cumin and chipotle, although those will pretty much have to use the powdered spices, and Italian ones, and curry ones… man. The world of pickles has just opened up to me.
September 27, 2009 at 7:00 pm · Filed under dessert, food, things other people made
My entry for the dessert competition at the Fall Food Fest was these caramel apple cookies from Craftzine – which, by the way, the rest of the entries on that site make me wish I had any crafty skills or inclination. I mean, a caution-tape scarf? WANT.
Anyway, back to the cookies. They came in second at the competition, behind these pumpkin cheesecake bars:
which was fine, because it really wouldn’t have been fair for one of the organizers of the thing to win. I got to use up more of my apples from the apple-picking, some of which were HUMONGOUS, by the way, and I ate so much of the batter that it probably evened out to another 3 cookies. It’s so good. And that’s even without the whole two sticks of butter the original recipe called for – since I’d already used up half a stick on the soup, I just used one and a half. Still super moist and delicious.
Caramel Apple Cookies
Ingredients
1 1/2 sticks butter (12 tbsp)
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 3/4 cups oats
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
12 oz caramel baking bits, or regular caramel squares cut into quarters, as I did
2 cups diced apples
Method
Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy.
Add the vanilla and eggs, beating until combined.
Dump your oats into a food processor and grind until fine. I may not have ground mine finely enough, but that just gave it more of an oatmeal-cookie consistency, which is fine. So don’t worry too much about it.
Combine the oat meal (ooh!) with the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl.
Stir the flour mixture into the wet batter until combined.
Mix in the apples and caramel chunks.
Cover the bowl of batter and refrigerate it for an hour.
At some point during this hour, preheat the oven to 350. You’d know best how long your own oven takes to heat up.
When it’s time, take your batter out of the fridge and scoop balls of it onto a greased or be-parchmented cookie sheet. I’m sure it’s obvious to you, but caramel turns into some kind of sweet hell-glue when it’s heated and then cooled. You really need to up the non-stick factor of your pans here.
Bake for 10 – 12 minutes. I went for the low end of this, and my cookies were super tender. I don’t think they’d be too dry or wretched if you baked them a bit longer, but they might have a little more cohesion. Maybe 11 is the magic number for regular-sized cookies.
When you take them out, let them cool on the pan for a few minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
One of the judges described these as “the perfect combination of fruit, caramel, and oatmeal cookies.” That was unexpectedly kind… and profuse. I’m still surprised they stood up against things like my friend Peg Leg Meg’s lattice-top apple pie:
Way to show us all up, Meg!
September 26, 2009 at 8:09 pm · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
We had our Fall Food Fest and it was fantastic. There was so much food:
(this photo not by me – none of the food fest ones are, except the ones of my two dishes)
- and that’s just the savoury/entree side, minus my soup and one other.
But right – my soup. I got the recipe out of a cookbook called One Pot – no author – that I bought while I worked at a bookstore. Since the idea was to bring in enough for 2 – 4 people, since everyone would just be having sample-sized amounts, I didn’t cut down the recipe at all, because it said it served 4. Well. I had a big tupperware that I brought in, and I also have a smaller one with about 2 servings in it sitting in my freezer. The rule here is never believe a recipe when it comes to how much it makes – it always makes more than it says it does.
The theme of the Food Fest was fall; it originated with my friends and I going apple-picking and having the idea of making something with our pickings, so I made 2 things with apples in them. Not everyone stuck to apples, though; the winner of the savoury category was a homemade lasagna, of all things – not sure how it’s “fall,” but I suppose lasagna is comfort food, and you want comfort food in the chilly fall evenings? – which was monumentally delicious, and the judges invented a third category for soups, because there were so many, in which a clam chowder won. You can see the lasagna covered in foil in that photo, and the clam chowder is in the crock-pot on the end.
Potato, Apple, and Arugula Soup
Ingredients
4 tbsp butter (this sounds like a lot, I know, but this makes a TON of soup, so per portion it’s not much at all)
2 lbs waxy potatoes, peeled and diced
1 red onion, quartered or eighthed, depending on how big it is
1 tbsp lemon juice
4 cups chicken stock
1 lb apples, peeled and diced
pinch ground allspice
1 cup (or more) arugula or baby spinach, plus a handful more for garnish
salt and pepper
Method
Melt the butter in a large soup pot.
Saute the potatoes and onion in it for 5 minutes, stirring constantly, which you’ll have to do since I guarantee you this will be a greater-than-one-layer situation. Some stuff won’t even be touching the butter unless you’re always stirring it.
Stir in the lemon juice, chicken stock, apples, and allspice.
Bring to a boil.
Turn it down and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.
Add the arugula or baby spinach (which I had to use since my grocery store apparently doesn’t believe in arugula… whatever) and cook 10 more minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.
Now the fun part: ladle half the soup into a blender and puree for about a minute. I made an effort to get most of the big onion chunks into the blender, because I didn’t want to eat big old pieces of onion like that.
Stir the puree back into the pot and heat through.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Garnish with more leaves and serve.
September 20, 2009 at 11:51 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
This is a Sicilian variation on pesto; it’s from a town called Trapani, about which you can learn a great deal more at the site where I found the recipe, Sippity Sup. Mine is basically exactly the same except that I halved it, as I usually do for most recipes; I wound up using less oil (this may have had something to do with the consistency of the finished product, but I was very happy with the outcome anyway); and I had two different types of pasta involved. What, we had less spaghetti than I thought we did, and I had large macaroni left over from the pasta salad, so I made up the difference with that. Judging by the original post and its discussion of the traditional pasta shape used in Trapani, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable.
So let’s talk about consistency. The original post refers to the ideal consistency as being a smooth, uniform paste and not too chunky. Well, mine was on the chunky side. I didn’t feel the need to add more olive oil than I did – the original tablespoon, and then another hearty drizzle. At that point, though, there wasn’t supposed to be any more processing, so I guess it wouldn’t make a difference. I could have just whizzed it more than the recommended 10 – 12 times – I did, in fact – but I mean I could have kept at it until it was chunkless, but I didn’t see that making any difference at first, so I gave up. That’s probably a damning indictment of my character. Oh well.
Oh, one other thing? This is delicious.
Pasta Pesto Trapanese
Ingredients
enough pasta for 2 people
about 1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, or 3/4 of one of those little plastic containers
7 or 8 large basil leaves, or whatever you find the equivalent might be if your basil leaves aren’t large (like for me)
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup almonds, lightly toasted
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
let’s say 2 tbsp olive oil, but more if you so wish
a generous 1/4 cup parmesan
more salt and pepper, to taste
Method
Put the tomatoes, basil, garlic, almonds, red pepper flakes, salt, and 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a food processor and give it about 10 – 12 presses of the button, or more if you want it creamier. Basically make it go until you are satisfied with the consistency.
I didn’t take mine out and put it in a serving bowl since this was not a dinner party, this was just having dinner. What I did was just take the blade out of the food processor and finish the mixing in that bowl, with a spoon. So add in another glug of olive oil, however much you feel it needs, and the cheese, and stir to combine.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Now put the water on for the pasta. You’d think it would be more efficient to do that at the start and make the sauce while the water boils or the pasta cooks, and it would, but the original recipe said that this extra time the sauce spends sitting allows the flavours to meld, and who am I to argue? They definitely melded. I wasn’t above tasting some right when it was just made, though, and it was pretty good from the get-go, so if you’re in a hurry, put the pasta on first.
Cook the pasta according to package directions.
Drain the pasta, then throw it back in the pot.
Toss the sauce in the pot with the noodles until well coated.
Serve with more parmesan cheese.
September 17, 2009 at 11:07 pm · Filed under meta
I know I know, but let me tell you about the most exciting thing to hit our office since, um… pants.
Ok, so a couple of friends and I had plans to go apple-picking this weekend (here). If you click that link, you’ll notice that they also have peaches right now. So we had a sort of agreement amongst ourselves that we’d cook something with what we got, so something either apple or peach, and then it grew into making both a dessert and an entree, and then it turned into let’s have everyone at work participate. So we’re having the first annual COOKOFF on Wednesday! I sent out an email about it today, and by the end of the day, which was about half an hour later, everyone was all excited. Lots of people have already said they’ll participate – they also have the sweet vs savory categories, although they don’t have to do both if they don’t want to – and everyone’s keen on the eating part of it. There is a theme, namely fall – fall flavours, fall colours, food you’d like to eat in the fall, whatever – and there will be prizes. And there will also be a post about it.
So. Get excited. I am.
September 13, 2009 at 10:55 pm · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
I’m back! I just made something in my new kitchen! It was this garlic and vegetable soup from Cooking Pleasures! I am so excited (apparently)!
This was an interesting soup. I liked the garlickiness of it – I mean, I’m normal – and the vegetable mix I used had water chestnuts and snap peas in it, which added something a little different. There are also oats in it. This might seem weird at first. Oats are for baking, right? Or breakfast. Not for going in a soup. But why not? All sorts of other grains go in soups without a second thought. How is this different than, say, barley? If there are people who get weird about their food categories in your house, I suggest not telling them beforehand, because they won’t mind once they eat it, but the cognitive dissonance of it might make them pre-judge the soup negatively.
The original recipe made a perfect amount for us and about a portion of leftovers, so I didn’t have to change anything except for eschewing the cream to be added at the end – Matt doesn’t love creamy soups, and I wasn’t sure how it would work with this specific one. Might have been fine. It was fine without it, though. I under-salted it, although that was easy to remedy in each specific bowl, and if I make it again, I’m going to use stock instead of water, because I think it could use a boost of flavour in the broth.
Garlic Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
1 cup mixed vegetables, made spoon-size (I used a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, because I don’t know how much of a carrot, for instance, to cut up to make it the appropriate proportion of a cup, and anyway I’d wind up with a bunch of partially cut up veggies. I recommend this approach. Plus, the frozen ones are usually pre-sliced!)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, diced
1 tsp olive oil
2 tbsp oats
3 cups water (except use veggie stock, it’d be even better)
salt and pepper
Method
Heat the oil in a soup pot.
Saute the garlic and onions until the garlic starts to brown – the original recipe said until the onion was browned, but the garlic would be burnt way before that. So, you know, go until it’s delicious.
Throw the vegetables in and close the lid for just a minute or two.
Now add your water or stock and salt and pepper, and stir, releasing the fond from browning the onions and garlic.
Bring to a boil.
Add the oats and turn it down to a simmer.
Simmer for another 5 minutes, then eat.
I’m going to make other things soon and have more time to mess around with the lights and with my camera settings (found the manual for it, too). I know it’s unrealistic and weird to expect a new apartment to lead to better photos, but there IS a lot more light in here.
