Hannah Cooks

2010-07-22T09:43:00.001-07:00

Looking for new content? Try Freezes Beautifully.

2010-02-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

I got voluntold to do the newsletter for my MOMS club and was stumped as to what I should put in it. So I just grabbed a favorite recipe- Nigella's breakfast bars- and ran it with my comments (I never use coconut because I hate it, and I love this because you can make a big batch and have breakfast for a week, and unlike storebought granola bars there's not a ton of cane syrup or high fructose corn syrup. And it takes about two seconds.) And y'all, you'd think I'd published some state secrets or something. The moms went bananas over it. I keep getting emails and calls- "More recipes, please!" One mom told me that she made them and then tore her old granola bar recipe up. "I just TORE IT RIGHT UP!"

So you should make those. People are enthusiastic about them.

And for a sneak preview, next month's newsletter recipe by popular demand will be these muffins- I made them with sweet potato for yesterday's playgroup and they were a huge hit with kids and moms. (And, the mashing of the sweet potato could not have been easier- I quartered it and roasted it the night before, all prepared to get out my food processor, but when it was cool enough to handle the peel just slid off and it mashed with a fork.)

Biscuit fail

2010-01-19T08:34:00.001-08:00

Biscuit fail, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I've often wondered if you can prepare buttermilk biscuits in advance. Yesterday I asked Jeff if he wanted biscuits with the fried chicken and hot slaw I had planned for supper and made the mistake of asking him in front of Nathan, who eats at 5 (we eat around 8, so Nathan usually gets something lunch/snack-y for supper and our leftovers for lunch). "I want biscuits please!" So I made two biscuits for Nathan and left the rest on a baking sheet in the fridge til our suppertime, figuring there's no such thing as a BAD buttermilk biscuit so how wrong could it go? Ha.

Maybe you can make biscuits ahead (don't cut them until you bake them, perhaps? Let them come to room temperature before baking?) but that was not the way to do it. They burnt on the bottom and the butter melted out and everywhere. The biscuits Nathan had were perfect- flaky and rich. These were disastrous, heavy and sodden.

2010-01-18T12:48:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to update this a bit more often. I'm also trying to not save so many old magazines, so each month when I'm done with one I save all the recipes that were any good and toss the rest. So here's what I'm saving (and what I'm not) from the current Cooking Light.

Keepers:

Dijon Croque Monsieur. I only made this to use up some leftover Christmas ham, and it's not like Croque Monsieur is a new recipe for us, but the haricots vert salad that went with it made it. I made the full amount of the haricots and snacked on the leftovers the whole next day.

Grownup Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. I love grillled cheese in any form, and have a whole book on the subject which I refer to often, but can always use a lighter version. More spinach is always a plus.

Jalapeno, Sausage, Jack and Egg Breakfast Braid. I used regular pizza dough for this but otherwise pretty much followed the recipe. It was super easy and I'm already thinking of variations.

Chipotle Bean Burritos. I don't even normally like bean burritos but these were awesome.

Rosti Casserole with Baked Eggs. This was the best recipe of the whole issue, I think. Serve with tons of hot sauce.

Made, but skipped clipping:

Beef and Pinto Bean Chili. Good, but not any better than any other chili recipe I've got.

Roast Chicken with Balsamic Bell Peppers. Forgot I even made this until I was going back through the magazine.

Clipped even though I haven't actually made it yet breaking my rule already:

Chocolate Cherry Heart Smart Cookies.

Lee Brothers Cornbread

2010-01-09T14:05:00.001-08:00

Lee Brothers Cornbread, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I have very strong feelings about cornbread. It should not be sweet, and it should not be like a cake (although Nathan loves "corn cake!") but it should also, you know, taste good.

For New Year's Day I made this cornbread and fell in love because a)it's freaking delicious b)the crust on the bottom is gorgeous c)it's the first food that Nathan, James, Jeff and I all shared as a family. (I'm not really sure if you're supposed to feed small babies cornbread but James, at six months, was totally into it.) It does contain a teaspoon of sugar but trust me, even a purist will forgive that teaspoon.

Here's the recipe:
1 tablespoon lard or unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups stone-ground cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups whole or lowfat buttermilk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 450. Grease a 12-inch cast iron skillet with the lard or butter (or, if you cooked bacon in it and forgot to drain the grease, just leave that in there) and put it in the oven. Melt and cool the other butter.

Whisk together all the dry ingredients (cornmeal-sugar) in a large bowl. Whisk the egg in a smaller bowl until frothy, then beat in the buttermilk. Stir (or whisk, I just whisk it all since I've got it out anyway) the egg/milk into the dry ingredients. Then whisk in the melted butter.

The fat in the skillet should be all melted and sizzling, so hurry and pour the batter in. Return to the oven and cook for 15 minutes. To die for.

2009-03-21T13:29:00.001-07:00

I returned Thursday from a trip to Grammy's that turned into a junk food tour of Texas- not that I am complaining, I just wish I had tried the chicken fried bacon.

But my system definitely needed a reset and thank goodness for Facebook! My high school friend Mat Schuster posted a clip of himself on the San Francisco local news and the soup looked like just the thing. I have a weird relationship with lentils where they always seem like a good idea, and then while I am cooking them I think, "Yuck, lentils," and then when I actually eat them I remember that I love lentils. This soup was no exception, and with escarole and watercress it was absolutely phenomenal. Delicious AND with a little bit of pork fat in it, so my body didn't go into complete grease withdrawal.

2009-03-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

I used to not love tomato soup so much but now I am kind of obsessed with it. The very best tomato soup recipe I know is from Sally Schneider's The Improvisational Cook and involves her versatile slow roasted tomatoes. But the version above, from Vegetable Soups From Deborah Madison's Kitchen, is a pretty good bet when you only have canned tomatoes handy and the souffleed cheese toast is to die for.

Adapted slightly to serve 2 with leftovers:

1 tablespoon butter
1 very small onion, chopped
1 tsp dried basil or herb of your choice (I used herbs de provence since that's what I had handy)
1 tbsp flour
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
pinch of baking soda
1 1/4 cup stock (vegetable or chicken) or water
3/4 cup milk
salt and pepper
1 egg, separated
1/2 tsp dijon
pinch of cayenne
1/2 c grated cheddar
1/2 tsp minced scallion
toasted bread

Melt butter in your soup pot. Add onion and herbs, cook til onion is good and translucent. Stir in flour and cook for a second. Then add tomatoes, baking soda, and stock or water. Bring to a boil, then simmer, partially covered, for 20 min. Off heat, puree with your immersion blender or cool slightly and puree in a regular blender.

Preheat oven to 400. (I did this part while the soup was cooking.) Combine egg yolk w/mustard and cayenne, then stir into the cheese. Whisk the egg white until it holds soft peaks and fold into cheese. Spread on toasted bread and bake til puffed and golden, 5-10 minutes depending on your oven.

While the toast is baking, stir in the milk and season to taste. Bring soup back to piping hot and serve w/a cheese toast half. Or two.

If you have this ridiculously awesome immersion blender, this recipe is super easy because you can use the blender attachment to puree the soup and then the whisk attachment to whisk the egg white. My mother gave me mine, and I never would have thought I needed it until I actually whisked an egg white with the whisk attachment. The motor on that thing makes a hand mixer look like a manual whisk. And if you make soup at all, the immersion blender is so much easier than a regular blender. If I had my kitchen to stock all over again, I'd have started with this and considered the hand mixer and blender optional.

2009-02-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

A few things about Mark Bittman:

He Twitters way too much. I may have to stop following him, as half of his twitters are replies to people I don't even follow.

I still love him, even though I have not read his newest book and am kind of grossed out by the idea of Wild Rice and Quinoa Breakfast Stuffing (it sounds great, I am just not eating it for breakfast). Which is why I am not reading his newest book because I am sure he'd convince me it was a good idea.

His chocolate souffle is awesome and the individual servings fit perfectly in the Le Creuset heart shaped ramekins. I may not even wait til next Valentine's Day to pull them out again.

2008-09-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

I have a whole bunch of things to say about my recent America's Test Kitchen run and will, someday, get around to it, I swear.

In the meantime, please check out my more local blog.

2008-07-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

Current Sandwich Obsession, Toddler Version: Mozzarella and turkey, toasted open face, on brown bread from House of Bread. (Which always makes me think of House of Pain, which always makes me sing "I came to get bread, I came to get bread, so get out of your carseat and get bread! get bread! get, get, get, get bread!" to my perplexed son.)

Current Sandwich Obsession, Mother Version: Mozzarella and goat cheese and pickled onions grilled on the same brown bread.

2008-06-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

I know I've made my own ricotta before, and was reminded by last week's NYT how easy it is. So I made some, and then made this pasta. I did it for my husband, because I am not a huge pasta fan, and I usually only like pasta smothered in bechamel. I certainly do not like pasta with tomato based sauces, and I especially do not like pasta with light brothy sauces. I do not know if it was the fresh ricotta or what, but I LOVED this pasta. I ate my whole serving and then some. I am going to make it again this summer- again with the broth using a base of carrots and onions and basil and fresh tomatoes all from the garden and homemade ricotta, and then I will die of smug domesticity.

I recently had an Amazon gift card and was torn between two books I've long coveted- Italian Easy and Spice. I had made a ricotta and tomato thing from Italian Easy way back when it was run in the NYT and loved it. I had also made crispy persian fried chicken and beet tzatziki and a red pepper goat cheese spread from Spice about a trillion times and was curious to see if the book had her Casablanca scallops recipe. I wound up getting some stuff from the Body Shop with the gift card and both books from the library.

Italian Easy was, well, easy. I already have the sformata di ricotta recipe and do not really need a whole book of ideas on things to put on bruschetta and things to throw on the grill with some olive oil and lemon. If I had never ever cooked before and needed a first cookbook of things that were simple and delicious, this would be great. But I don't need to buy it now.

Spice, though? This book, I need. I made the vanilla-scented carrots about five times. (Alongside just about everything, but with the tamarind braised beef short ribs they were indeed the best.) The scallop recipe was not identical to those I remember from Casablanca, but with orange-saffron butter and crispy rice cakes who is complaining? (And her method of cooking scallops- searing on one side only til cooked through- is brilliant and makes for a tender, seared, but not overcooked scallop.) Crispy roast chicken with za'atar and lemon confit. Phenomenal onion tarts. I hated to return this book and definitely will be buying it.

Lastly, do yourself a favor and make this chicken chili. Have plenty of sour cream and lime on hand.

2008-05-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

Things Jeff loves:

-Beacon Restaurant
-Asian-ish chicken wings

We haven't been to Beacon together in well over a year, and when the LA Times ran this recipe I maybe pouted about that a bit. "I didn't even know they HAD chicken wings!"

Chicken wings are not sophisticated or snazzy, and I'd been put off frying my own chicken wings after my one attempt at Buffalo Wings. (I don't know why, frying chicken is not hard. I have two books called simply Fried Chicken both of which have gotten a ton of use. But something about Buffalo Wings was a major pain. Anyway.) But these wings were super easy to fry (I am coating all my chicken wings in cornstarch from now on) and the sauce. Oh, man, the sauce. I didn't have sake handy, so I added a little rice vinegar, and it coated the wings and they were just perfection. I could have made a triple batch just for the two of us. They were so good, I don't even need to go to Beacon and try theirs. Which is good because I always need room for the ahi tuna pizza.

The Teddy Bear Bread I Told the NYT I Was Going to Bake

2008-05-21T15:37:00.001-07:00

Aesthetically lacking, perhaps, but very pleasing to Nathan, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Nathan loved, loved, loved doing this. But he hated not being allowed to eat all the dough or eat the bread straight from the oven- he pitched full on tantrums, a rarity for him.

Once the bread had cooled, though, I let him eat two feet. He was quite pleased with his efforts. (Although all he really did was poke at the dough. The sadly shaped bears were all my doing.)

2008-05-21T05:56:00.000-07:00

Unlike some people I have a vision of myself in my golden years, spending each morning writing lengthy letters to my newspaper, my representatives, and companies far and wide. Being a full-time or even part-time crank sounds awesome. (Of course, nowadays I guess all any of us need for that is a blogger account.)

Nonetheless, I am now well on my way to seeing that vision realized. (I won't tell you about the stack full of letters to and from Henry Waxman in my drawer.)

2008-05-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

Highlights and lowlights from the June/July Cook's Country:

-Smokehouse burgers. Yum. Ginormous (the friends we had over for this took half of theirs home for lunch the next day. Jeff and I scarfed ours down but I did give some of mine to Nathan.) Excellent with pickled onions.

-Chopped Cobb Salad. Possibly my favorite salad ever- sauteeing the chicken in the bacon fat was an inspired bit of fat recycling. It's not wasteful AND it's delicious. I'm not usually a fan of blue cheese dressing, but either the Stilton I bought or the recipe was exceptionally mild.

-Chipotle-grilled Pork Tacos. Not my favorite use of pork tenderloin, but the pineapple-chipotle slaw topping is worth remembering.

-Crispy chicken salad wraps. At first I though the problem was the less pliable (but more delicious) handmade tortillas I used. (Handmade by Trader Joe's, not by me.) Then I thought, why would you heat chicken salad? Why? Still, I am going to add a dollop of sour cream to all my chicken salad from now on. I'm just not going to wrap it in a tortilla and fry it.

Wilted red onions, pickled beets, Humboldt Fog

2008-05-02T08:58:00.001-07:00

Wilted red onions, pickled beets, Humboldt Fog, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

If you pickle some vegetables the night before you can have supper on the table in two minutes. Add some sourdough from House of Bread and you can make little pickle sandwiches.

(From Lee Bailey's Country Weekends. A fine resource even if it is not the weekend and you are not in the country.)

2008-05-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

I am not a vegetable lover so when I find a vegetable dish I love I get really excited. I get excited when I find a vegetable dish I like, in fact. But love is even better, especially when it is a new vegetable, because one can only eat roast asparagus so often.

Last night I was making this caramelized ginger chicken saute (in which the chicken is more poached than sauteed, but whatevs, Cooking Light) but did not want to make steamed bok choy to go with it as suggested because I may be cooking light but I don't totally hate myself. Which is what I tend to assume about people who eat steamed vegetables. So I turned to How to Cook Everything and as it turns out I love stir-fried bok choy.

Heat a big pan over pretty high heat for a few minutes. Add some peanut or canola or other high-heat tolerant oil and directly after that add some minced garlic, grated ginger, and thinly sliced scallions. Cook for just a smidge and then add a mess of bok choy that's been cut up into nice slices. Saute, stirring, for a few minutes. Then add a good amount of chicken broth and continue to cook until the liquid's all gone. Then add a little salt and pepper the heck out of it.

2008-04-14T20:46:00.001-07:00

Beet and goat cheese salad with peppery cider vinaigrette, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I cannot believe it is salad season already. But it is so, so hot here right now I don't think I ever want to turn the oven on. I'll miss you, pizza.

Fortunately I have beets in the backyard and they are phenomenal. Of course I had to turn the oven on to roast them but it was worth it. I've been pulling up other beet recipes and found both Deborah Madison and Lee Bailey recommend chopped beets with a red onion pickle so I am definitely all over that next. Even though I could eat them with goat cheese and cider vinaigrette day in day out.

I just read the Omnivore's Dilemma and feel that Michael Pollan really didn't stress enough the best part of growing your own food- it tastes amazing. A month ago I made my standby spinach lasagne with spinach from the garden- the recipe calls for mature spinach which is hard to find anywhere, so I had always used baby spinach. I let my spinach grow and then used that and was shocked at the difference- the mature spinach DID hold its spinach-y flavor throughout the cooking process. (Why I thought Cook's Illustrated was lying about that, I do not know.)

2008-02-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to go through little used cookbooks and cull out the ones I don't really need. So this week I pulled out The Silver Palate Cookbook which I had bought and then set aside because I looked at the famous Chicken Marbella, thought to myself, "Prunes?" and never opened it again. (A snap and unfair judgment, I'm sure. I also irrationally think the whole book is determinedly "eighties.")

So this week's menus are all pulled from the Silver Palate and last night we had minted pea and spinach soup. This was probably a very unfair choice because a)I don't actually like soup all that much and b)I have an amazing and beloved pea soup recipe in my repertoire already. Plus I was making unfair judgments while cooking like, "A half a bunch of mint is supposed to yield one cup of leaves? How big were bunches of mint in the eighties?" (I have no idea how big a bunch of mint is now, I have an herb garden.) And then, "They want me to strain out the peas and spinach and process them separately in the food processor? Wouldn't it be easier to just put the whole mess in the blender? Just how enamored of their food processors were they in the eighties?" As it turns out, they had good reason to do that- then you can add some of the broth back in and some heavy cream and make yourself a very thick soup. A very thick, delicious soup, which you can then spoon up on hunks of bread. It's not like my other pea soup at all but it will make you want to have two pea soups in your repertoire. (And my 11 month old, who hates being spoon fed as much as he hates spinach-- he let me spoon feed him a whole bowlful.)

Tonight we had pork chops with black currant preserves (apparently they liked to waaay overcook their pork chops in the eighties- I checked mine less than halfway through the designated 20 minutes and they were done) along with a carrot and sweet potato puree (again with the food processor). The sauce masked the overdone chops well, at least, and the puree was great (although they used a lot of butter in the eighties- you can cut that butter amount down by quite a bit, and if I'm cutting out butter, a recipe has too much butter).

Tossed Lasagne Gratin with Spinach and Goat Cheese

2008-01-23T18:15:00.001-08:00

Tossed Lasagne Gratin with Spinach and Goat Cheese, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I totally love the spinach lasagne from Cook's Illustrated but it is super fiddly and a pain to make, so I only make it when someone is having a baby (and then I make one for them and one for us) or when I'm feeling super ambitious and am making dinner ahead.

When I ran across a recipe for lasagne noodles tossed with bechamel and goat cheese in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone I thought, hey, that looks easier.

And it was. I had some garlic herb goat cheese from the farmer's market, so I did not make an herb bechamel, just a regular one- and I did not follow Deborah Madison's instructions to heat the milk with some sauteed onion first before straining into the roux, because that seemed fiddly, but I did warm the milk and she was right about using hot liquid- no lumps. Just a bechamel thick enough to stand a spoon up in. Fortunately you loosen that bechamel up with some heavy cream before baking. I also was not about to make fresh spinach pasta so I used plain fresh lasagne noodles and stirred cooked chopped spinach into the bechamel along with the cream and goat cheese.

Serve with extra bread to wipe up the bechamel.

2008-01-22T08:28:00.000-08:00

General notes:

Refrigerator cookies are amazing but a terrible, terrible idea if you are someone who has no self-control when it comes to cookie dough.

If something is too spicy for your husband, it is also too spicy for your child. This is okay- more for you.

This macaroni salad is actually quite tasty and not gloppy. If someone in your house has a fondness for gross supermarket macaroni salad, you can make this instead and keep your dignity. The pork chops are excellent, too.

Butternut squash galette

2008-01-09T09:19:00.001-08:00

Butternut squash galette, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Jeff tolerates tarts, but barely. I love tarts, which means Jeff endures a tart every few weeks. This tart had roasted butternut squash and barely mashed roasted garlic cloves along with sage and onion, and Jeff ate half of it. It was rich and wintry, and once you split and seed the squash, very simple.

Nathan loved the leftovers, too, which is more than I can say about the broccoli puree. He hated that, and when I made the leftovers into a frittatta for lunch he hated me even more, because he kept begging for some. I'd give it to him, and he'd put it in his mouth all excited (he LOVES eggs) and then spit it out in horror. Then he'd put it back in his mouth again. Poor broccoli loathing baby.

2008-01-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up, each Thanksgiving dinner, we got to choose one food that we did not have to eat at ALL the whole next year. I always struggled between broccoli and squash. Broccoli usually won, and I still hate it, though I cook it occasionally and try to stir-fry it or dip it in cheese or put it in soup. (Squash, though, I love.)

So Jeff was surprised when I put broccoli puree on the menu this week, from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I was more than surprised- I was shocked- to find that I liked it. I liked it a lot. With scallions, and butter, and a splash of cream and a very, very healthy grating of nutmeg? Broccoli is pretty good. I had three helpings.

We'll see how Nathan likes it at lunch today- he is pretty over purees now that he can feed himself. Yesterday we had forgotten to go to the store so we had scrambled eggs and roasted sweet potato fries for lunch. Did you know you can eat scrambled eggs with your hands? Nathan can, and I had scrambled three eggs, thinking that would be plenty for the two of us, but Nathan ate more than half of them. I can't imagine where he got such a good appetite.

2008-01-01T18:28:00.001-08:00

New Year's, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I got for Christmas from my brother-in-law Gregg, and I was eager to try the black eyed pea fritter recipe that I saw when skimming it. However, Delta took a few days getting our luggage back to us, so I grabbed the first black eyed pea fritter recipe I could find.

Now, I am usually a canned black eyed peas heated up with some leftover ham person, because it is easy. But I could not find any canned peas, either, so I got some fresh ones that they now sell in the produce section. (America!) However, I did not think that maybe I should cook them before pulverizing them for the fritter, so my fritter batter was more like fritter crumbs and they deep fried into, well, crispy fried bits. I totally blamed the recipe but in retrospect it would have been fine if I had cooked the beans.

(The whole New Year's Eve dinner was a disaster- I could not decide what kind of sauce I wanted with the pork chops, and wound up messing that up, too. Rarely is the frozen dessert from TJ's the high point of a meal for me, but last night that Peppermint Joe-Joe Cheesecake was the meal.)

Today, on New Year's proper, I was glad to have more fresh black eyed peas on hand for a second go round. I cooked them, this time, and served them with parsley and marjoram and tomoto and feta and a lemon vinaigrette. Jeff, who does not like black eyed peas, loved it. I do not normally like bean salads, but this was so light and fresh tasting. We ate huge bowlfuls this afternoon and will hopefully have good luck all year. But I suspect there are always a few kitchen disasters ahead, no matter how many black eyed peas I eat today.

(The second recipe was from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which is also the cookbook I have resolved to use more often this year.)

2007-12-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

Some people I know have a long running argument about cake v. pie. I have always been partial to pie but lately have been making more and more cakes- cakes are easier and a nice way to round off Sunday dinner with the in-laws. Southern Cakes is my new bible and I am wondering how I ever landed in the pie camp to begin with- a truly great cake (like last night's brown sugar pound cake with caramel glaze) is so fricking EASY.

I think it is because despite the fact that cake is so easy, there are so many bad cakes being made out there. I don't know why that is- I don't think I've ever made a bad cake, and I am not a master baker, but I have certainly tasted a billion bad cakes. Pie is trickier and I've had some pie disasters but even the world's worst pie is usually delicious. I am not sure why that is, but it is a culinary fact.

2007-11-14T12:50:00.000-08:00

When I reviewed Jamie's Italy for MSNBC.COM I wrote: "Fried pizza, for instance, sounds like it could be great, but would probably need more frying time than Oliver allows and definitely a lower-moisture cheese than buffalo mozzarella. Of course, it also sounds like something invented at a frat house around 2 a.m., but Oliver insists it is how pizza was originally made."

I briefly contemplated at the time trying to tweak the recipe and make an awesome fried pizza but decided pizza did not need to be fried. Fortunately, Mark Bittman did not agree. And his fried pizza is AWESOME and super easy. It is not crispy like regular pizza at all but it is still very, very tasty.

In other NYT food news, my in-laws and husband were nuts about this meatloaf burger although I would have cooked the bacon separately- it did not get that crisp under the broiler and the fat rendered out all over the burgers, making them greasy. And if I think something has too much bacon fat in it, it surely does. This apple cake was a slam dunk, though. Am I the only one who only makes the vintage recipe when Amanda Hesser does this feature? I always look at the update and think, "I'd probably eat that in a restaurante but no way am I making a souffleed crepe at home." Either this means I am culinarily stuck in the 1950s or I am a cook, not a chef. Or both.

Lastly, despite or perhaps because of this recipe's use of frozen hash browns it was totally awesome. Like, I wish I had made the full 4 servings for the two of us instead of halving the recipe awesome. However, when Gourmet says to use a nonstick pan? Gourmet means it.

2007-11-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

You may feel guilty making Nigella's tiny meatballs to serve over store bought pappardalle if you are in the middle of reading Bill Buford's Heat (which incidentally and two years behind the times may be my favorite book- I have never understood people who read books more slowly to make them last longer, because I usually just reread them, but I am portioning this one out because I am not sure what I will do when I am done with it). However, they are still really yummy and if your husband is not reading about handmade Italian pasta and butchery, he will totally love them and spend days afterwards bringing the meal up at random, as in, "Man, that was a great dinner we had five nights ago."

I was tempted to save a meatball to see if Nathan would eat it but am not giving him meat just yet- however I am totally over pureeing and am pretty much letting him try anything that is not meat or berries or nuts or honey. He will try anything and I am amazed by the foods he really goes for- lentils? and pickles? He had mango this morning and I think he was mad at me for waiting so long to bring mango into his life.

Red Beans and Rice

2007-10-24T12:26:00.001-07:00

Red Beans and Rice, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

My sister is getting together a book of all my mom's holiday recipes, which made me think of red beans and rice, which we have every night before Thanksgiving so we have leftover cornbread for the stuffing.

So I requested my mom's (most likely from the back of a bag of beans but delicious) recipe and decided to try my own in the meantime. I cribbed from River Road Recipes, but made a few changes, and oh man was it good.

So. You take a can of red kidney beans and tump it in your dutch oven with some water and salt and a teaspoonful or so of bacon grease. Start it simmering while you finely dice a celery rib and equal amounts onion and green bell pepper. Saute those in either butter or more bacon grease until translucent, and then add to the beans along with a bay leaf and some Tony Chachere's. Let the whole mess simmer for an hour or more. Add more water if needed.

About ten minutes before you are ready to eat, add sliced andouille (or TJ's chicken andouille-style, if that's what you've got) sausage. Serve over rice, garnished with parsley. Make sure you have cornbread (or in this case crazy corn muffin things from Cooking Light) on the side.

Leftovers reheat beautifully.

2007-10-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure it is a traditional recommendation for a cookbook to say that I have never cooked a recipe from it exactly as written, but I still love Marian Burros' Cooking for Comfort. Last night we had her mac and cheese (with a cheddar with caramelized onions built in- what will TJ's think of next? and diced ham), and this book has nearly nudged out Nigella as my go-to dessert source. Her chocolate chip cookies (sans espresso powder) are hands down the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever (and I know Teri will try to disagree with me on that but she will be wrong).

Autumn cooking, if you believe the food magazines, is all about braised turnips and things that, well, you are not that excited to tuck into if you are a normal person. Instead, as the weather cools, I'll be cooking more and more for comfort.

Edited to add the recipe. Teri, prepare to be converted.

Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies- adapted
16 tbsp softened butter
3/4 c packed brown sugar
3/4 c granulated sugar
2 eggs
Healthy splash of vanilla
2 1/4 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
12 oz coarsely chopped schmancy chocolate or 1 12 oz bag chocolate chips
Nuts if you want them

1)Preheat oven to 375. Grease several baking sheets or line with parchment/Silpat.

2) Cream butter and sugars in your mixer, and then add the eggs one at a time, beating well. Then add vanilla, beating well.

3) Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Then slowly beat into butter mixture.

5) Mix in the chocolate (and nuts if you want).

6)Drop by heaping tablespoonful on cookie sheets. Bake 10 minutes or so.

Breakfast

2007-10-01T10:23:00.001-07:00

Breakfast, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I am now cooking for a six month old, which is different than cooking for adults. For one, I have never before served anyone a meal that I then had to wipe out of their nose. Nathan likes to grab the spoon and help shovel the food in, and then lick all the food that gets on his hands off, but inevitably food gets everywhere else, too. My mother said she used to distract us with toys and sneak the food in, but for now I am fine with the mess if it helps Nathan learn about eating.

Other things I have learned:
-babies need things pureed much more than adults do. (Duh, I know.) I first served peas to Nathan pureed the way Jeff and I eat them- which is between mushy peas and a full on puree- and that was way too much pea for him. Also, the food processor purees way better than the blender.

-babies need things cooked way more than adults do, in order to puree well. Carrots should be beyond fork-tender.

-if you give a baby hummus, you will no longer be able to snack on hummus in front of the baby without sharing.

-Keep the bowl of food well out of the baby's reach at all times. Assume the baby can reach about five times as far as you initially think they can.

-Someday they will have a Jetsons style washing machine for the home, where you just put the whole highchair through, baby and all, like a carwash, and I want to get in on the ground floor of that invention.

2007-09-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

The theme of this week may well be "foods Jeff thought he didn't like until I found a recipe that made him change his mind. Before moving I ripped up all my stored Gourmet magazines and tore out only recipes I had tried and liked and recipes I was really, really going to try already. And from the latter stack came Moroccan-spiced chicken paillards and couscous with olives and lemon. Definitely make these two together, as the chicken sauce goes well with the couscous. And unless you are the world's slowest cook, there is no way the chicken will take 35 minutes. I did think this required a ridiculous amount of pots and pans for a Wednesday night, but it was nice to finally feel that my cast iron grill pan had a good use- the charmarks it left on the chicken made Jeff actually exclaim, "wow!" when he saw the meal. And then, the olives complemented the couscous so nicely that he proclaimed he actually liked couscous. Go figure.

I've also been doing a ton of food related reading. Barry Glassner's Everything you think you know about food is wrong or whatever, which stuck with me about as well as the title did- basically he thinks you should eat whatever? Marion Nestle's What to Eat, which I thoroughly enjoyed even if none of it was really news. And The United States of Arugula, which was gossipy and fun, although it contained WAY more information about Craig Claiborne than I ever wanted to know.

My next big project is a kitchen garden- I am planning on getting some raised beds, and maybe even composting. Any tips, books, or websites on the subject y'all could suggest?

Risotto with Grape Tomatoes and Fresh Mozzarella

2007-09-11T08:44:00.001-07:00

Risotto with Grape Tomatoes and Fresh Mozzarella, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Risotto is a dish I almost always like more in theory than in practice, and a dish my husband isn't even all that fond of in theory. So it is a testament to our marriage, I guess, that he never complains when I put a new risotto on the week's menu in hopes that this will be the one.

And finally, last night, my dogged risotto quest paid off, with a risotto we both liked, from the 20th anniversary issue of Cooking Light. Leeks, instead of onions, made a light base, and the addition of half and half instead of butter made it extra creamy. The fresh mozzarella, though, was the kicker, making this more akin to my beloved Sally Schneider/Marcella Hazan's mozzarella rice, but with fresh tomatoes and balsamic syrup to kick it up from that dishes soothing bland comfort food taste. I am often ambivalent about tomatoes, especially raw tomatoes, but this was a perfect place for them- the heat from the risotto just wilted them.

We lacked basil, but didn't miss it- although hopefully by the time we repeat this dish I'll have a kitchen garden going.

Plantation Chicken and Shrimp Pilau

2007-09-10T14:34:00.001-07:00

Plantation Chicken and Shrimp Pilau, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Now that I am fully suburban, I dug up James Villas' Crazy for Casseroles to embrace my middle class heritage. Our inaugural meal in our newly applianced kitchen was a roast chicken, naturally, but the next night I used the leftover roast chicken in a chicken and shrimp pilau, which was kind of like a jambalaya, with a bacon-lemon-worcestershire base. Regardless, it was really good. You can't go wrong with bacon and chicken and shrimp, but the rice was nicely seasoned and the tomato and pimento were excellent additions.

The next night I tapped Villas again for a California scalloped potatoes- potatoes scalloped with goat cheese and jack cheese and green chilies. It was phenomenal, even without local cheese from the Hollywood Farmer's market but with what Trader Joe's carried instead. (My guess is, except for the fanciest of cheese plates, what TJ's carries will be fine in terms of taste. It's the supporting local farmers I'll miss- there is a Farmer's Market here though in the middle of the week, and next week I will try to get my menu coordinated to shop it.) The potatoes accompanied crockpot barbeque brisket, rolls, and TJ's frozen balsamic buttered vegetables for my mother-in-law's birthday meal. We topped it off with a cake- a chocolate number with whipped cream filling and chocolate frosting, from a book, Southern Cakes, which I had seen reviewed in the LA Times and clipped the recipe from. I have a long, long way to go before I make a cake anyone will want to look at, but in terms of eating, it was gorgeous. A good cake is trickier than you would think, but if all the cakes in that book are as good it'd be well worth getting, I am thinking.

In other news, I am adjusting to electric appliances. The electric range seems to boil water way faster, but I have a hard time not "seeing" how hot things are. The oven seems just fine, though.

2007-08-22T15:36:00.001-07:00

Steak with Horseradish Ginger Butter, Asparagus with Soy and Sesame, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I am an unabashed Mark Bittman groupie- his Minimalist column was my first cooking lesson, and I have way, way too many of his books and plenty of his columns clipped and spattered in my recipe file. So I did not think I needed his latest, Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times. But the Good Cook had its 4 cookbooks for a dollar deal, and I was way more excited about the Lee Brothers and Nancy Silverton and Annabel Karmel... but the Bittman, the familiar old Bittman, turned out to be the mainstay.

Oh, was I wrong. It has all of my all time favorite Bittman recipes- stir fry chicken with nuts, cucumber and scallop salad, slow cooked short ribs, potato gratin with cod, and a takeoff on spaghetti carbonara with zucchini. Which, granted, I had in various clippings and books already, but this makes things easier. But it also has a ton of recipes I missed and tips I am all about- like how to cook a steak on your cast iron skillet without smoking up the whole house, and how to make a roast rack of lamb with extra crispy bits. And the recipes I missed! There is a beef with caramel sauce and onions that will completely change everything you think about pot roast. There is a crispy pork shoulder that is DEFINITELY MY ALL TIME FAVORITE pork recipe of ALL TIME. It was so tender and unreal and I know I tend to get hyperbolic when pork is involved in general but this time I mean it. This pork was like butter.

We used this cookbook nearly exclusively for six weeks, and I don't feel like I am halfway done. (I guess 6 weeks is not enough time to try 175 recipes.) You only need one Bittman book, and this is it.

2007-08-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

So normally I photograph meals mainly for my own visual record, not because I am especially (or at all) good at taking pictures or because I do anything special with plating or whatnot.

Last night, however, I really wish I had taken a picture of dinner because it was so freaking adorable.

While skimming through Sally Schneider's Improvisational Cook, I came across a recipe for a deconstructed chicken potpie. However. her potpie base- a pureed root vegetable soup with added stock and cream- while likely healthful, seemed like a ton of work. So instead I made some of her I Can't Believe There's Not More Butter Here pastry early in the day and put it in the fridge. Then later, I caramelized two small onions. Then I sprinkled them with flour and slowly stirred in some chicken broth. Then as it started to thicken, I added plenty of heavy cream and let simmer. When it was nearly dinner time, I rolled out the pastry dough and cut it into two big disks and then cut the scraps into stars with a cookie cutter. I baked these until golden and added leftover roast chicken and frozen peas to the simmering onion base and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Then I poured the chicken mixture into low, broad soup bowls and topped with the pastry disks. I put the golden stars on top of that. It was as good as any potpie I have ever made, if not better, and a fraction of the work.

2007-08-01T08:56:00.001-07:00

Things to do with homemade butter and buttermilk:

-make buttermilk waffles (Luisa, these were nothing special- a recipe from How to Cook Everything which is actually and "easier" waffle as the batter doesn't need to rest. I accidentally added one egg yolk too many which was a good accident.)

-make ginger-horseradish compound butter (with ginger, horseradish, garlic and a little soy sauce). Top steak with it, or rub it under the skin of your weekly roast chicken.

-make Nigella's vanilla shortbread from Forever Summer. Only do this if you have plans to share it or you are liable to eat all the shortbread yourself.

-eat lots and lots of bread and butter.

The butter doesn't keep more than a week, I found, so it is best to make small batches. Or to up your butter intake significantly. I suppose it depends on how you define "best."

Don't Forget The Butter

2007-07-15T10:04:00.001-07:00

Finished Product, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

One might think, with a three and a half month old baby, that one doesn't have time for such craziness as making your own butter.

One would be wrong. One will TOTALLY want to make one's own butter when one reads about such a thing, and here's why:

A)Cooking is a good way to distract and entertain a three and a half month old. They will sit in their bouncer or Bumbo seat and watch, and you can narrate the proceedings. When you are making King Ranch Casserole, you can educate them on their heritage by teaching them all about Ro-Tel. (Ro-Tel is totally part of my heritage.) When making butter, you can teach them counting (One cup of cream! Two cups of cream. Three, three cups of cream!). And there is nothing more fascinating to a small baby than a whirring mixer.

B) Making butter is really freaking easy. Pour the cream in the mixer, let it go, and then knead the finished product. Anyone can do it. Perhaps not my three and a half month old baby, but eventually he'll probably be able to do it on his own.

C) Butter is delicious. It is not like one is making one's own aspic or something nasty. And the leftover buttermilk makes fabulous waffles.

My mother's friend has a catering company whose cookbook is subtitled, "Don't forget the butter!" I couldn't agree more.

(P.S. Directions for making your own butter are here.

Peas, TJ's Harvest Grain Blend, and Cherry-Glazed Lamb Chops

2007-07-11T09:04:00.001-07:00

Peas, TJ's Harvest Grain Blend, and Cherry-Glazed Lamb Chops, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I mainly want to rave about Trader Joe's Harvest Grain Blend- it is cous cous, orzo, dried garbanzo beans and quinoa, which you boil in stock with butter. Even my cous cous hating husband likes it.

And it made the perfect side to sop up the cherry glaze (more of a cherry liquid) from a lamb recipe in the last Cooking Light.

(The peas are because we are trying to eat more vegetables- which means when we have a meaty main, the vegetables are frozen. Jeff said of the TJ's frozen green beans that accompanied a mustard-apricot glazed pork tenderloin, "They taste better than they look." )

2007-07-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

For our anniversary dinner last night I was going to make pork chops with a lime dressing and black bean tomato quinoa from the current Gourmet. However, when I was at my parents' house in Houston this month my mom had made pork chops with biscuits and gravy and yesterday that sounded much better, so I made buttermilk biscuits using Mark Bittman's recipe from How to Cook Everything (surprisingly good and easy, using the food processor. I say surprisingly because Bittman claims the biscuits are even better made with yogurt which made me suspect he knew nothing about biscuits whatsoever.).

The pork chops couldn't have been easier- heat a pan with olive oil til it is nearly smoking and then sear for a few minutes on each side, then put the pan in a 450 oven for a few more minutes until they are around 140. Then put the chops to rest covered in foil and add some flour to the pork fat/oil in the pan, whisk in, and then whisk in milk slowly til you have a thick, thick gravy. Add lots of pepper and salt to taste.

Of course, this all led to this morning, as I was heating leftover biscuits and gravy, having to start our fourth year of marriage with a lie when my husband asked if he just saw me eat a spoonful of gravy. No, I would never do any such thing, dear. Except I totally would.

In other celebration day after meal news, if you have leftover jalapeno cheddar bread from your Goode Company barbeque birthday meal, it makes EXCELLENT french toast, topped with lime sour cream. (Thank you Sally Schneider.) It is hard to imagine leftover jalapeno cheddar bread but when the meal included brisket, pork ribs, sausage, sweetwater duck, pinto beans, baked beans, tater salad and jambalaya, it seems more plausible.

2007-06-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

I have been obsessing over King Ranch Chicken ever since my friend Teri posted this picture. Thanks to the internet, I was able to find the Cook's Country recipe typed in and slated it for last night.

Of course, I then read yesterday in the New York Times Magazine that the wealthy do not eat casseroles, which made me think it must be kind of sad to be rich. Especially if being rich means you do not eat this King Ranch casserole, because boy howdy was it delicious. Soupy-watery, but delicious. And topped with Fritos!

I am currently eating the reheated leftovers and think the secret may be the reheating, like any great casserole. It is much less soupy, and all delicious. The flavors have, if you will, melded. Rotel and cumin, cream and chicken stock, and oh yes, Fritos. It is not super healthy but it is super comforting.

(In other news, the Trader Joe's product of the week is their Harvest Grain blend- couscous, quinoa, dried garbanzo beans and orzo- makes for a brilliant easy side dish, perfect with lamb chops.)

2007-06-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

Have cooked my way through May's Gourmet Quick Kitchen (Speedy May Meals) and also Ten Minute Mains and am reporting:

-the masala spiced potatoes and tandoori chicken are just my beloved roast chicken and potatoes with different flavor, but are definitely worth adding to one's repertoire.

-the asian meatballs with dipping sauce are okay, especially if you have leftover ground pork you needed a use for anyway. The sauce, though, is awful. I think I maybe just got a bum lime.

-open faced chicken cordon bleu is, my husband reports, identical to a dish served at Sizzler called Malibu Chicken. I can neither confirm nor deny that report but will say it is excellent with a side of creamed chard.

-Seared Scallops with Creamy Noodles and Pasta were a huge hit, and I only wish I liked pasta more because I'd be making it all the freaking time- I loved the scallops and the sauce.

I also made a chinese style pork tenderloin from The Quick Recipe that I kind of wanted to marry- the pork was just rubbed in five spice powder, pan seared and then roasted, and then glazed with a sauce, but it was so, so, so freaking good. It didn't even need brining! It kicks the char siu from the Gourmet Cookbook's butt eight ways til Sunday, for anyone keeping track of chinese style pork recipes at home. (Maybe that would just be me).

Tonight we are having BLTs at my husband's request- I made these BLTs the other summer with homemade mayonnaise and the perfect tomatoes (which I had just picked from outside and grown myself) and fresh sourdough, and he constantly says, "Why don't you make those BLTs?" in, you know, February. I gave up and am going to make them with TJ's tomatoes and Best Foods just to SHOW him. We are not moving to a home with a yard til after tomato season is done, so I do not anticipate heavenly BLTs until next summer.

Scallops and asparagus

2007-05-16T09:11:00.001-07:00

Scallops and asparagus, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Jeff said, on looking at his plate, "This looks like a meal I'd be charged $20 for in a restaurant."

Gourmet's April Quick Kitchen continues to hit it out of the park, and any sensible cook will have this made in less than 30 minutes- prep the scallops as the asparagus sautes and cook the scallops in one batch, if your pan seems undercrowded, as it is likely to, and you have shaved off ten minutes. Don't bother cutting the asparagus into pieces and instead just snap the ends, because it is not actually a restaurant meal and can look haphazard, and you are looking at a fifteen minute dinner.

My white wine vinegar looked mega funky- it has these big gelatinous balls in it, which are probably mold- so I used rice vinegar instead and chicken stock in place of the white wine, which is probably some bastard sauce. With all the butter, though, it was a delicious bastard sauce, perfect for the juicy scallops, and my one regret is that I did not serve this with bread. But another benefit to eating at home is no one knows if you dip your fingers in the sauce and lick it off.

2007-05-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

Cooks in a hurry, please clip this recipe for your files, and then pull it out when you want to spend no more than three minutes on meal prep but want to eat something delicious. You can save even more time by skipping the first step and tossing the chicken with the seasonings directly in the roasting pan, and if you get wholly carried away with your santoku's ability to make paper thin slices of lemon feel free to put all those slices on the chicken- they will roast beautifully and once you are done with the chicken you can suck the chicken fat off them and they will be delicious. Since chicken fat drenched lemon does not count as a vegetable feel free to toss some sweet potato spears into the oven as well, to accompany. You can add some thyme to them, too, to tie it all together.

2007-05-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

Why you should always buy your hummus at Trader Joe's, not Whole Foods: Whole Foods keeps it next to the dip and you will wind up bringing home garlic and bacon dip instead, which is really just cream cheese flavored with sour cream and bacon. There are not enough grains in any multigrain pita to negate that lack of nutrition. That delicious, sodium laden lack of nutrition.

Flat iron steak with cucumber tomato salad

2007-05-10T10:27:00.001-07:00

Flat iron steak with cucumber tomato salad, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Usually our steak is been accompanied by rice, or potatoes, but I have been craving lighter fare of late so I jumped at this Cooking Light recipe for flank steak and salad. Modified a bit since the meat guy at the hollywood farmer's market never has flank steak- as he explained, there is only one per cow. And sans avocado as I misjugded the ripening time of the one we had bought.

I do not think I will ever marinate steak in citrus again- the lime taste was nice but the texture of the crust was mushy. The salad as a side dish is what will get us our steak fix through the summer, though- light , bright and filling.

Roast chicken and onion frittata

2007-05-09T09:31:00.001-07:00

Roast chicken and onion frittata, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

The nice thing about roasting one chicken for two people is there are always leftovers. I usually make baked chimichangas with them- in fact, Jeff often requests "roast chicken so we can have chimichangas." However, we also had leftover caramelized onions and fresh eggs, so I made a frittata instead. If you had leftover roast potatoes from your Sunday chicken dinner you could also toss those in the frittata, but I have never encountered a leftover roast potato.

Bonus to the frittata is that its leftovers made my lunch for the next two days.

Asparagus risotto

2007-05-07T09:39:00.001-07:00

Asparagus risotto, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Spring has sprung and there is no better time to enjoy asparagus. We made the Minimalist's/Mario Batali's asparagus risotto last night and it was so easy I could fix it and leave the stirring to Jeff, who read a magazine between stirs while I fed Nathan.

I loved the risotto, which was soupy and light. Jeff called it asparagus oatmeal. I know we are back in the swing of things when Jeff doesn't feel he has to love every meal. Despite his objections, I would totally make it again as a spring side dish, maybe for company alongside some grilled fish. (Am thinking it will be next spring before we are having company, much less dealing with charcoal and the plank..)

2007-05-05T17:16:00.001-07:00

Sconetastic, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I have been eating TJ's scones fairly regularly for breakfast. Today I felt up to making my own, and they are far better. (TJ's does fine as far as "boughten" baked goods go, I guess, but they are way too sweet to make too much of a habit of.)

These bad boys featured dried cranberries and chocolate chips because that is what I had handy, and are a take off from Sally Schneider's "you will not believe how little butter are in these" recipe courtesy of A New Way To Cook.

For 8 scones:
-2cups flour
-2 tsp baking powder
-1/2 tsp baking soda
-1 tsp kosher salt
-3 tbsp sugar
-4 tbsp butter
-handful of dried fruit, chocolate, nuts, whatever
-3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425.

Mix dry ingredients (flour-sugar) together. Cut in butter until pebbly. Stir in fruit/nut choices (she has you add in ground coriander and orange zest, too, which I did not have handy). Add buttermilk, mix with a fork, and then knead a few times. (I did this directly in the bowl.)

Divide dough into 8 balls, place on oiled or silpat-lined baking sheet. Refrigerate for 15 minutes; then bake til golden, about another 15.

2007-05-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

Trader Joe's Product of The Week: Those pre-sliced sweet potato spears. Even if you do not have a newborn, your life is too short to chop sweet potatoes into tiny spears to roast.

Thanks to these and some major team cooking efforts, we had meat (pork tenderloin) AND a vegetable last night. Triumph!

2007-04-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week we had rice noodles with shrimp from the Minimalist Cooks Dinner, a dish Bittman calls similar to pad thai. With its soy sauce and chili paste base, I found it closer to pad see ew, which I cannot spell but really like, so it was a hit, if a gobbled down hit.

No picture as the meal went something like this- Nathan seemingly down for the evening, I begin prep while Jeff walks the dog. Nathan back up, and I get him back down and fear how long he will stay down so much I cook the meal and eat my portion of it before Jeff is even back. When he returns I point him towards the skillet with his share of the warm noodles and run to bed myself.

2007-04-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

Unanticipated changes in my dining habits include:

-the number of "meals" I eat while standing at the kitchen counter. I do not have time to sit down. Or I am holding the baby. Also, during the day, it is really all snacks. If it cannot be consumed in two minutes it is not happening.

-a newfound love for leftovers. Pre-baby, we were pretty profligate with leftovers. Now, we are more frugal but also less likely to do mid-week shopping. So if we have some leftover Black and Blue Beef and a hunk of firehouse Jack and some probably still good tortillas? It is asian-mex-fusion quesadillas for us.

-Seriously, the snacking. I continue to learn what makes a bad snack (chips and guacamole? Too messy, too much effort) and what makes a perfect snack (those prewrapped sticks of cheddar cheese). Any easy to eat, minimal to no prep snacks that y'all love? Bonus points if they have protein.

Shrimp and Cucumber Salad

2007-04-23T10:40:00.001-07:00

Shrimp and Cucumber Salad, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

New parenthood means the meal you meant to fix on Tuesday may not actually get made until Sunday- we are still working out the kinks of meal planning, shopping, and preparing.

(Although, actually, I meant to prepare this salad for a period of about three weeks a few months ago, and kept running into issues- a dodgy batch of scallops, then salad greens gone iffy, then cucumber used for something else- perhaps this should be the Elusive Salad With Scallops or Shrimp and Cucumbers.)

Anyway, the salad was simple- you scoop the seeds out of some cucumber, slice it thinly (I skipped the half hour salting and since we ate pretty promptly there was not much of a watery cucumber issue)- then make a quick dressing and toss the cucumbers with it. Then you cook the shrimp (and I would take issue with the Minimalist's method, which called for tossing the shrimp with oil and cayenne pepper and then cooking in a hot, empty skillet- it was a recipe for sticking. Put some oil on the shrimp AND the skillet and I think you're in business) and then compose the salad- greens on the bottom, cucumbers above, shrimp above that and then a drizzle of sesame oil. I used Sally Schneider's five flavor oil, which is a condiment my fridge cannot live without, instead. And it was heavenly- the shrimp were just frozen TJ's but must have been an exceptional batch, because they were so tender and delicious, and the dressing and the oil were both so light- definitely a meal we'll want to eat a lot more of once summer rolls around.

2007-04-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

At a mother's support group I attended last week, the leader suggested quick chicken dishes including something made by mixing together jam, onion soup mix, and Catalina dressing before smearing it on chicken breasts and baking. I kind of gagged but my Utah-based sister later said, "Oh, apricot chicken! I love that." It is a kind of Mormon-sounding dish.

I did not point out that roasting a whole chicken was not that much harder but instead filed away her suggestion to use the crockpot. So last week we had short ribs cooked in the crockpot per an old Minimalist recipe- with soy sauce, scallions, ginger, star anise, cinnamon, peppercorns. It is a dish I have served at dinner parties but takes five minutes of prep.

The Minimalist may be our salvation from frozen meals- I have pulled out Cooks Dinner and Cooks At Home and am finding plenty there- old standbys like stirfry with nuts as well as tonight's meal, a shrimp and cucumber salad I always wanted to try. (And takes 20 minutes yet does so sans onion soup mix or bottled dressing.)

2007-04-09T12:26:00.001-07:00

First Cooked By Me Meal Post-Partum, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Sometime during the first week after Nathan was born (which was only, actually, a week ago) my mom said that things would get easier and soon I would be able to manage this and that and maybe even feel like cooking a meal.

At the time I thought, man, I am never going to be up to that ever again. But yesterday, with Jeff's help, I roasted a chicken. And it turned out beautifully, AND Jeff let me eat almost all the breast-skin. Now if only I can figure out the timing so that I am not ready for bed by the time dinner is ready.

2007-03-20T10:00:00.001-07:00

Salad, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Sometimes a salad is really nothing more than an excuse to eat most of an avocado. Which is probably fine. (Being pregnant is also a good excuse to eat most of an avocado, so I am two for two there.)

But with the avocado, you can sneak in a very grainy-mustardy-vinaigrette and some garlic cheddar, and then call it Good Fats Salad, I guess. The baby spinach and baby arugula somewhat make up for the super-fats in the avocado and cheese and olive oil, but this is still probably the lightest feeling high calorie meal one could ever make.

2007-03-12T14:49:00.001-07:00

Roast Pork Tenderloin with Caramelized Onions and Salad, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

The Way We Cook is a cookbook that I bought years ago, tried a recipe or two from, and then never cracked open again.

This was not the fault of the cookbook, or the recipe I tried (it was oven-baked fish and chips, and it was hands down the best homemade fish and chips I've ever had). Newer and shinier things just attracted me.

However, now I usually very rarely feel like cooking, and soon I will be trying to cook while even more tired, and somehow I remembered I had this cookbook, which is tailored for busy people.

And so I made the pork tenderloin (brined this time, and I do not care what Judy Rodgers has to say- brining trumps an overnight salting any day*), which is rubbed with a simple prepared mustard-salt-pepper-olive oil combo before being pan-seared and then oven roasted. Served over a bed of caramelized onions and with a green salad, it was pork heaven. Juicy and tender with a crisp just-mustardy outside. And apart from the brining, took next to no active kitchen time. (The salad dressing, even, was just orange juice and balsamic vinegar with some olive oil, and it was easy to whip together while the pork rested.)

The Way We Cook is, I suspect, about to get a whole new life in our kitchen.

*Sign I am maybe too pregnant to think straight: In the store, I was thinking about how I never bother brining chicken any more because it is easier to just buy a kosher bird, and I actually thought, "Why does Trader Joe's never carry any kosher pork tenderloin?" I figured it out before asking a salesclerk, thank god.

2007-03-09T11:02:00.001-08:00

Chicken and Potatoes, braised "red style"(?) over spinach, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

This was another Cooking Light recipe and despite it not being billed as a quick recipe, it was just as easy in terms of time spent actually cooking- so as long as you don't start it ridiculously late, it is still a good meal for when you are feeling lazy and time crunched. You can spend the braising time resting or doing other chores.

I did omit the vermouth and added a splash of rice vinegar, instead, which did not seem to harm the dish any. The chicken was ridiculously tender and flavorful- Jeff actually asked what on earth I did to the chicken, it was so good. The spinach was the perfect bright accompaniment, too. Definitely one to clip.

(My new food magazine plan: try all recipes within two months. Clip any that work. Recycle the magazine with any untried recipes after two months, because if it does not seem worth trying right away it probably isn't.)

2007-02-27T09:52:00.003-08:00

Thai-style chicken saute, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

I am dubious of "quick" recipes but am also currently in a condition (i.e. super busy, super burnt out, super tired) where they appeal to me, so I had flagged this thai chicken saute from the current issue of Cooking Light both because it looked super easy and also like something Jeff would like.

I was right on both counts, even though I ignored 99% of Cooking Light's suggested shortcuts. I am not sure why one would use boil-in-bag rice prepared with no salt or fat, or why that would be a time saver, since regular rice takes 25 minutes. (The recipe promised it would only take 19, I figures the extra 6 minutes were worth not having to eat boil-in-bag rice.)

Once the rice was started, I managed to mince fresh garlic and grate up some fresh ginger and then cut up my own chicken tenders from whole breasts, instead of using precut tenders and bottled ginger and garlic. Not only did I do that, but I wasted a good few minutes cursing about not having a single onion in the house, another five minutes looking for some sort of clean tupperware to store the leftover coconut milk in, and then had to chop up a second batch of lime wedges after realizing I had chopped the first with the same knife and cutting board I had used on the chicken. (Pregnancy amnesia: also likely to give you salmonella, if you don't watch out, I guess.)

I did all that, and still had the saute ready just as the rice finished up. And it was very, very good- spicy and warm and a good addition to my stir-fry repertoire.

2007-02-21T11:14:00.001-08:00

Creamed spinach with brisket, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Nothing says 3- day weekend, to me, like pulling out the crockpot on a Monday. And there is nothing better to put in a crockpot than a faux-barbeque brisket-- for real, it is the one crockpot meal that in our pre-dishwasher days Jeff not only didn't complain about but requested. You know if it is worth washing the inside of a crockpot by hand it has to be good. (It is also one of the first things I made for my in-laws, and we now have a family saying that brisket is the meat that unites Jews and Texans.)

First you take:
1/2 c Worcestershire sauce
1/2 c vinegar (cider vinegar is best, regular old white vinegar is fine too)
1/2 bottle Liquid Smoke (which I bet you did not realize was a vegan food product)
1/4 c vegetable oil
1 tsp dried minced onions
1 tsp garlic powder
plenty of pepper

Marinate your brisket in this overnight. (Or not- if you forget, it is not the end of the world.)

Then put the brisket (fat side up) and marinade into either a 275 degree oven or your crockpot and ignore it for 6 to 8 hours, however long is most convenient for you. When you are about a half hour away from wanting to eat, take out the brisket (it is definitely ready if, say, it falls apart while you lift it onto a cutting board) and carve off the fat. Then chop it into manageable pieces.

Empty the marinade, reserving one cup-- you will want to strain the fat off this, too. Then combine that cup of marinade with:

1 cup barbeque sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar

and return this mixture with your carved meat to the oven or crockpot and cook for another half hour. This time I used the barbeque sauce Jeff brought back from Rendezvous in Memphis, which was especially vinegary and kind of orange, but still delicious.

If you can bring yourself to wait, you can fix this a day in advance, and then refrigerate in the sauce and then skim the fat off the sauce before reheating. Or you can just eat the greasy fatty version that day and de-fat your leftovers--- and it is worth getting a much bigger brisket than you need in order to have leftovers.

It is not authentic barbeque, or authentic anything, really. Which is why I am fine serving it with storebought King's Hawaiian rolls (and when we don't have company, will let Jeff get storebought macaroni salad to go with it. For company you have to make potato salad, at the very least.) Inauthentic or not, it is dang good and one of our family staples.

2007-02-20T11:53:00.001-08:00

Shrimp in their serving state, originally uploaded by hannahcooks.

Some days you have maybe eaten really well and plentifully for two days running (and although this is not a restaurant-review blog, per se, I do have a lot to say about Mozza at some point) and you want something that is light but not a salad.

Those days I almost always make shrimp in a ton of oil, and Sunday was one of those days, so we had the sizzling garlic shrimp from The New Spanish Table. This recipe (not that one really needs a recipe for garlic shrimp- I cannot imagine combining decent olive oil, garlic, and shrimp and not producing something edible) calls for first heating a ridiculous amount of olive oil (one cup, it could easily be done with half that) and a just right amount of garlic (six cloves, minced) in a cazuela or other flameproof serving dish over moderate heat. I am pretty sure this casserole is not flameproof, so I heated the oil in a regular skillet. Then I poured it over some salted, peeled shrimp which WERE in the casserole and plunked it in the oven for 10 minutes.

The recipe would have you cook it on the stove for a mere 2-3 minutes. If I had it to do over again, I would have done that, too, in the skillet, and served it directly from the skillet. It would not have been as attractive a serving dish, but the oil would have had more sizzle, and I am kidding no one if I pretend that I care more about appearance than taste.

Sizzling or not, the shrimp was still perfectly cooked, tender and garlicky, and while there was way, way, way too much garlicky oil leftover, that is also why they make french bread.

2007-02-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

Love is untidy, and rich, and so the molten chocolate babycakes from How to Be a Domestic Goddess, baked in heart shaped molds, were really the one thing I knew I wanted on last night's Valentine's menu. The theme of the meal, though, seemed to be lack of preparation, and when I went to fix up the babycakes I realized I was out of parchment, so I sprayed the molds with a lot of Pam and crossed my fingers. And they probably would have unmolded beautifully, except I was trying to hold them with two very thick potholders and potholders+ clumsy cook does not = easy unmolding. So they were sort of heart-shaped. Covered with whipped cream, they were even less recognizable as hearts, but were all the more delicious (they were really, unbearably, rich- one cake would have done it for the two of us, and for the first time in history, I did not finish my dessert.).

The rest of the meal was all about the slapdash last minute inspiration- I had just finished reading Julia Child's "My Life in France" and had been thinking about her description of aigo bouido ever since, and if there is one little-heralded perk to marriage, it is the freedom to consume as much garlic as you want and know you'll still have someone to make out with. And it also seemed super-easy, and I am all about convenience foods these days.

It was super-easy- boil some garlic with herbs and olive oil, and then whisk together some egg yolks and olive oil and then beat in the broth, bit by bit, and then serve with french bread and grated swiss cheese. However, it was also pretty mild. I loved it, but would double the amount of garlic for next time (and also not make it unless I was sure I had cloves on hand- I omitted them, since I was out, and I think that would have added some sharpness to the soup.) Jeff claimed it tasted like "milk with butter" even though it contains neither. Of course, milk with butter also sounds kind of good to me, so I think this was more of a me dish than a Jeff dish. Nonetheless, I caught him using leftover french bread to sop up some of the extra soup.

And for a starter, I was inspired at the last minute by the Homesick Texan blog to make "Love Dip,"* which is really just a very, very, very slightly more laborious version of cream cheese with salsa poured over it. (You mix up the cream cheese and salsa and some other spices in the blender, and it is pink, which is where the Love comes from, I guess.) Not that I am knocking easy dips, and it was certainly perfect for last night- we were able to lounge about and relax, eating dip and crackers while the soup simmered, which, for me, is pretty much the perfect Valentine's Day.

*Apparently the original Love Dip is a proprietary recipe of Texas-based Central Market- which leads me to wonder if Homesick Texan takes requests, and can finally unearth for me the definitive recipe for Randall's Chocolate Chewies?

2007-02-08T13:21:00.000-08:00

I have blogged about this pizza before, and have to laugh at my "you may want to make two" suggestion. You WILL want to make two, and you will probably still not have leftovers. It is, almost four years later, still my signature pizza, and still probably my all time most favorite thing to eat, period, no exaggeration. In fact, I cannot look at the pictures of it too much right now because it is making me sad that I do not have some right now.

I do now use Peter Reinhardt's recipe for traditional Neopolitan pizza dough, because it is easier (although I am not sure it is as ideally suited to this pretty hefty mix of toppings).

I mention it now because I learned an important and valuable lesson about onions last night. I usually caramelize my onions in a regular 10" Calphalon anodized alumninum skillet, but last night my 12" copper pan was already out, so I figured why not just caramelize some extra onions and reduce the leftovers into an onion jam?

Why not indeed? Because all the caramelization that was suppose to happen on the onions happened on the stainless steel. Fortunately, a lot of it was cleaned up when I cooked the leftover onions down and deglazed the pan with some vinegar, but man, was it still a mess to clean. (I say that like I cleaned it, when in fact I just owe my husband a trillion apologies.)

Anyway, now I have onion jam and a ton of leftover prosciutto and am at a loss for what to do with it- I kind of just want to make more pizza but will likely instead make sandwiches.

2007-02-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

When Jeff picks the menu, it is usually roast chicken and potatoes. Which is fine by me, as roast chicken is easy and potatoes are even easier. It is also one of the few meals we eat family style, as it seems easier to just chunk everything you've roasted onto a serving platter. (Usually, for a family of two, it is just as easy to plate a meal as it is to use serving dishes.)

This week, though, I was fixing to get some potatoes from the Weiser Farm stand at the farmer's market when I noticed the crosnes. It was hard NOT to notice the crosnes, because first of all, they look like bugs, and second of all, there was a huge crowd gathered around them, and while the guy working the stand kept wanting to go back to talking about his carrots (did you know that they used to be black, carrots, and were developed in an orange color by the Dutch, to honor the House of Orange? This fact did distract people from ogling the crosnes momentarily, if only to ask what the House of Orange was. I refrained from making any nerdy comments like, "You know, William of Orange? DUH"*) and there were also cauliflower of every hue to gawk at, everyone kept asking about the crosnes. There was a big sign, explaining that crosnes are a tuber, and that you can eat them raw, saute them in butter like they do in France, or roast them, but the sign was not enough to get us all past the "what in the...?" gut reaction we had to the crosnes.

So of course I had to buy them instead of potatoes, and tossed them in the roasting pan during the last 20 minutes of roasting the chicken, so they got roasted in plenty of chicken fat/juice. And they were-- different. They are kind of like jicama in texture, and taste kind of minty, roasted. I still didn't know what they WERE, so I consulted every single French cookbook I have and none of them mentioned crosnes, much less sauteing them in butter. The Penguin Companion to Food had nothing on crosnes (and, as a side note, has NEVER had an entry on ANYTHING I have tried to look up in it. Is most useless food reference ever.). I kind of suspected maybe Weiser Farms was using its status to sell us all fossilized bugs, until I found a reference to crosnes in Harold McGee. They are apparently related to the sunchoke and contain an enzyme that we cannot digest and in large quantities will make us gassy, something I wish I had known before eating a whole mess of them, because the last thing a pregnant lady needs is to be more gassy.

All in all, I think crosnes are evidence that people like me are suckers for novelty food items-- hence Weiser Farms' ability to charge $16/lb for them. I imagine they would be good grated up like celery root in a remoulade, but so is celery root and it is a lot cheaper.

*is actually the extent of my House of Orange knowledge

2007-01-31T12:14:00.000-08:00

I am nothing if not open to suggestion, so when Teri told me to brine the Mark Bittman Twice Cooked Pork Tenderloin and Luisa told me to try Paula Wolfert's Knife and Fork Kale, I said, sure, sounds like dinner. And Paula Wolferts' Slow Mediterranean Kitchen has been one of those cookbooks I bought and then never really used, so I was especially glad to drag it out.

I am not sure if lacinata kale is just much better than regular kale or if it was Paula Wolfert's method (although due to what I think is a typo in the book, I stewed the kale in 1/4 cup of olive oil instead of 2 tablespoons, which did not seem to hurt it at all), but this kale was SO MUCH better than my first attempt at cooking kale. I think stripping out the stems before cooking helped enormously, but whatever it was, this is clearly the way to prepare kale. It was yummy and didn't even need to be served on toasts, although the toasts didn't hurt. (Jeff had second helpings sans toast, even.)

And the tenderloin! I wound up not brining it, because I didn't have enough kosher salt, but I did use Judy Rodger's lazy person's seasoning technique for the pork- I took it out, set it on a plate, and then liberally rained most of what kosher salt I did have all over it before covering it with plastic and returning it to the fridge overnight. (I can sense Judy Rodgers, of the "stop, think, there must be a harder way" motto, somewhere cringing at any of her techniques being described as the lazy man's anything, but it is the lazy person's alternative to brining. She also often does not cover her meats with plastic wrap but I imagine that is because her refrigerator has no other food in it but maybe some Meyer lemons, so she can leave hunks of meat in it uncovered to develop a crust that doesn't smell of refrigerator.) And that technique worked brilliantly on the tenderloin- it was far more tender than the last one I made.

I also totally ditched Mark Bittman's sauce for a standard pan sauce- shallots cooked in the leftover cooking fat, then deglazed with some cider and a splash of cider vinegar, and once it reduced I whisked in some butter. I hate to criticize Mark Bittman, because he is obviously usually right about everything, but I would put my sauce, which was almost apple-jammy in consistency and hit just the right sweet-tart note against the pork, up against his sauce any day of the week.

2007-01-31T11:24:00.000-08:00

Sunday's dinner went wrong at around 11 AM, when I accidentally bought a loaf of olive bread instead of a loaf of pain rustique at the Farmer's Market. In fact, I remember thinking, these loaves are the same size, and this one has no label, and then grabbing it anyway when a second look would have revealed the presence of olives. And olives and onions, pissaladiere notwithstanding, did not sound like an appetizing basis for the croutons for Sunday night's onion soup.

So I went out again to the store (not just any store, but the Third and LaBrea Trader Joe's, which on a Sunday is possibly the worst decision one can make) and then thought, hey, I will also get some chocolate and make the Chocolate Wonders from The Improvisational Cook! And I will get some of this Trader Giotto's gelato to go with it and we are going to have a lovely Sunday supper.

I started the soup, and everything went splendidly, following Mastering the Art of French Cooking version of onion soup because what could go wrong with such a recipe? Nothing! I made just enough for two since unlike Jane Smiley, whose Gourmet article had reminded me I love onion soup, I didn't particularly want to use the onion soup as the basis for every meal this week. Once the soup had simmered long enough (you can tell because it stops smelling of beef stock and smells just of onions) I set the soup aside and started on dessert.

That was when things really went awry, as I realized that one of the beaters to my hand mixer was missing, and I decided that since my husband puts away most of the dishes, it had to be his fault. Long story short, I picked a huge fight, and then burnt the croutons (which I had put under the broiler while the Chocolate Wonders baked and then figured would need longer than usual under the broiler since the oven was only on 325 or something, which was a huge misconception.

So I wound up with burnt croutons (as a result of making a dessert I would never have made had I not bought the wrong bread) and an angry husband (also as the result of said dessert and also my own irrationality. Okay, mostly my own irrationality) which led to a delicious (once I cut most of the burnt parts off the croutons) but mean dinner. It was, sadly, a mean dinner that not even the very tasty Chocolate Wonders could fully take the bitterness out of.

However, the Chocolate Wonders taste just as good the next day and are excellent even room temperature with gelato, so it is good to make extra just in case you and your partner are not speaking when you eat the first batch. They remind me of nothing so much as the late, great, Randall's Supermarket Chocolate Chewie. (They are a little denser and not quite as chewy, but they are a remarkable approximation.) They will not get you instant forgiveness if you have been a total jerk, but they will pave the way.

2007-01-29T11:06:00.000-08:00

I saved last week's attempt at whole-grain no-knead bread because, well, look at it (on the right). It seems likely to fossilize and make a kick-ass doorstop.

I tried again, though, and think I have succeeded. I used the basic recipe, substituting in one cup of whole wheat King Arthur flour (the other two cups were King Arthur AP) and adding what was probably just a splash more than 1 5/8 cups water. I did not add any whole grain in the first mix, and it turned out to bubble gratifyingly after 16 hours or so. At that point I stirred in some whole-grain bulgur and flopped it onto a Silpat to double in size, which it did.
(You can see all my no-knead bread pictures here- am going to keep most "food-in-progress" shots in Flickr.)

The result, once baked, were vastly superior to the first attempt. I do not know if it was using too much whole wheat flour, or not enough water, or adding the bulgur too soon, but it never rose at all. This attempt made a lovely, soft sandwich-y bread that makes toast you WANT to eat, not toast you eat because you think, "well, whole grain is good for you." And that was the goal- sandwich and/or toast-y bread with some whole grains mixed in.

(Side note to Gwen: If you are looking for a very chewy, hearty bread, I think this recipe will disappoint no matter what flour you use. Both the all-white flour versions and the whole grain versions are more like an every day, almost sandwich bread- albeit an unprocessed, lovely looking sandwich bread, which to me is exactly what I like about it.)

2007-01-25T16:08:00.000-08:00

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make these pictures line up, but this is the progression of last night's soup. (Minus, obviously, the addition of split peas and water and frozen peas and the blending etc.)

After my friend Teri's offhand mention of split pea soup I was reminded of how much I love the split pea soup from Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen, which is not at all murky and, well, pea-soupy, but light and frothy with a kick of lemon and smoked paprika. (And, I have to say, of all the cookbooks I have ever reviewed, Vegetable Soups is the one I return to most often, which is saying a LOT since I a)would never describe myself as a soup person and b)am most definitely not a vegetable person.) Plus, you get to make a mirepoix, which is possibly one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen- I love chopping.

I do not normally make a full batch of soup, and this stretched my dutch oven to its limits, but I wanted leftovers to freeze. I did not have quite as much leftovers as I imagined, though, as we went through several bowls of it last night. Topped with bread crumbs which are toasted in butter and then sprinkled with lemon juice, rosemary and salt, it is possibly my all-time favorite soup- elegant enough to serve as a dinner party starter but hearty enough for a mid-week, mid-winter supper.

2007-01-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

Reason #971 why the Hollywood Farmer's Market is my Happy Place: the guys who sell beef and pork out of coolers down at the Hollywood Boulevard end of Ivar.

Now, there is no shortage of places in Los Angeles to get good meat- both Huntington Meats or Marconda Meats in the 3rd and Fairfax Farmer's Market are wonderful and helpful and especially great for special orders or your giant party cuts of meat. And in a pinch there are trillions of Whole Foods, which is pricey but reliable, or Trader Joe's, which is not pricey and likely to have something from Niman Ranch or a decent steak for your spur of the moment needs.

However, I do not think anyone at any of these places will say to you, as you pick out your pork chops, "Oh, yeah, those are going to be good. Just did a kill yesterday." There is something about having pork on Tuesday that was killed on Saturday that thrills not the local foodie in me as much as it thrills my redneck heritage. Maybe *I* didn't kill that pig myself, but I know who did.

To cook the chops, I gave them a probably unnecessary brine that I cut out from the NYT Magazine ages ago. (If you are a Times Select member, it is worth reading the whole article for Julia Reed's account of Howard Dean on a pig farm.)

The brine is, more or less, 3/4 cups of kosher salt, 2/3 cups sugar, a tablespoon each of allspice and juniper berries, a teaspoon of peppercorns, and some bay leaves, thyme, and marjoram. First dissolve the salt and sugar in a gallon of warm water, then crush up all the herbs to the best of your ability in a mortar and pestle (really just smash them a bit, a ziploc bag and a heavy pan will also work) before stirring them in, too. Then toss in your chops and refrigerate for up to 24 hours. Like I said, this is unnecessary for pork you know to be flavorful, but it doesn't hurt, and it is essential for supermarket pork.

I usually take the pork chops out an hour or so before cooking and then rub with a little olive oil and pepper before searing on each side. After that, if they are more than an inch thick, you will want to finish them in the oven or they will be too dry by the time they are cooked through.

To accompany the pork chops I made some kale based on what I recalled of Russ Parson's recommendations. I of course mis-remembered, and simmered the kale for half an hour before briefly sauteeing it in olive oil. The result was like nothing so much as decomposing broccoli, and it was completely yucky. I am going to try it according to his actual recommendations next week (blanching, then stewing in olive oil and garlic) to see if it is much better, because learning to love more vegetables is my mission this year. Any other kale suggestions are much appreciated.

2007-01-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

"Unconventional bread baking" and "experiment" are probably two concepts that do not need to ever mix in my kitchen, ever again.

After making two successful regular loaves of no-knead bread (the undying trend) I thought, well, surely I can mix this up a bit. I figured I would just swap out for some whole wheat flour and also some wheat bran to make it whole-grain-y and what could go wrong? Bread baking is not really the arena to try out your half-baked theories, though, and after 24 hours the dough still looked much as it did when I first stirred it, with some possible bubbles perhaps deep on the inside.

I plunged forward, let it rise again, and baked it anyway (side note to everyone wanting to spend $ on a Le Creuset oven for this bread- a Le Creuset oven is wonderful and very useful, but for this purpose I find my infinitely cheaper Lodge cast iron oven provides a superior crust).

The result was crazy dense and looked like nothing so much as a meteorite. Sliced and toasted, it was... not terrible. I am sure there are refined-flour shunning hippies out there who even eat worse tasting bread on purpose. I'm eating it and grimacing this week, but next week suspect I may return to conventional bread baking techniques (starting with, oh, a recipe) to make a whole grain loaf, because unlike the white flour, wheat bran free version, this was nowhere near as good as bakery-bought.

2007-01-22T17:18:00.000-08:00

Unlike my friend Molly, Jeff and I hardly ever go out on Friday nights. It is just too exhausting to even think of getting back in the car after a work week, so we are either condemned to take out or we have a home-cooked date-type meal. The problem is that I am also usually too exhausted for any elaborate date-type meal, but the good news is that is not too much of a problem when you love steak. Grilling up a steak with some sauce is simple, and indoor cooking of steak in a cast-iron skillet is also super simple, if sometimes smoky. My favorite method involves a ton of butter and some hollandaise (somehow the reward of hollandaise makes me forget I am exhausted) but this week we had Jeff's favorite, the "black and blue" beef from Forever Summer. I am not entirely sure what a rump steak is but find this works best with a flank steak- although with a thin flank steak it is hard to get both the char on the outside and an especially rare center, so black and blue is very rarely how I actually serve it. The most important thing to remember is to wipe the marinade off the steaks before searing- the moisture will inhibit the searing, otherwise, and the scallions will totally burn. Also, serve it over rice and feel free to pour any juice from the rested steak right over the rice.
Accompanying the rice was the teeny tiny just in asparagus- I love the thin spears, way more than the thick stubs you get later in the spring. And my favorite way to cook them remains this method, from A New Way to Cook:
-Brush however much asparagus you want to eat with up to a tablespoon of the fat of your choice. (Brown butter is excellent, olive oil is fine, but for this I used Sally Schneider's Five Flavor Oil, which appears in both ANWTC and The Improvisational Cook- one of a few repetitions that sort of annoyed me until I realized she had repeated the recipes I use constantly, so at least she was revisiting the best. I always have some of this oil in my fridge.)
-Toss on a pan and roast at 450 for 20-25 minutes, turning once. (Fatty stubby asparagus takes longer, and you can roast it to your desired level of crispiness, too. I like them extra-crispy.)
-Pepper liberally.

2007-01-22T13:58:00.000-08:00

Here is another reason to add more leafy green vegetables to your diet: they will pretty up your plate like no one's business.

This was a sausage risotto, which was excellent, and mushrooms, which were even more excellent. The mushrooms were the regular button ones left over from disaster tart with some oyster mushrooms tossed in for good measure, and I was just going to make a sausage and mushroom risotto, but at the last minute decided to let them stand alone, forcing Jeff to be in charge of risotto stirring duties for a while.

Sauteed mushrooms are about the easiest things in the world, and it is worth keeping mushrooms around if you are regularly in need of a last minute side dish. To cook just heat a little oil, add some minced garlic, and as soon as the garlic starts to get fragrant, toss in sliced mushrooms and stir. There is always that panic as the mushrooms absorb the oil that perhaps you did not use enough oil, but a minute later they will start to release all their liquid (sometimes in a very satisfying gush) and then you just stir occasionally until the liquid is reabsorbed and they are browned and delicious. Salt to taste and serve. Maybe not the prettiest of vegetables, but then, mushrooms hardly seem to count as real vegetables anyway.

2007-01-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else been watching Nigella Feasts on the Food Network? I have been finding it kind of boring, which is odd, because I love the actual book. (Jeff finds it disappointing, too, but only because the music keeps leading him to hope she is going to take her clothes off any minute.)

However, she did recently do a shrimp and noodle salad which I had ignored in the book, since the shrimp is a variation mentioned in a turkey and noodle version which seemed wholly unappealing. With shrimp, though, it is phenomenal (and probably would be with chicken, too, and probably with turkey, as well, although I am a leftover-turkey-is-for-sandwiches person). The dressing is really just a retread of the dressing you use for her also faux-Vietnamese chicken and mint slaw salad from Nigella Bites, but it continues to work and is super easy, so why not keep rehashing it on different salads? (It also raises the question, for me, of why on earth doesn't Ralphs carry fish sauce, but that question is probably best left between me and the store manager, who may remember me from the why on earth doesn't Ralph carry miso conversation of last month.)

I did omit the sprouts, on the grounds that pregnant women are not to eat sprouts and more importantly I don't like them, but added extra snap peas to make up for it, which made the whole dish seem even better for you. Nigella's new show may not be that exciting, but she's still my go to woman for lazy person taste good meals.

2007-01-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

Perhaps one of the personal benefits to foodblogging again is that it (hopefully) will help prevent cooking amnesia, which strikes me more often than I care to admit.

For instance, there was this leek, mushroom and goat cheese tart that I made last year and which I loved. I remember eating it and loving it, I remember the company who also ate and loved it, I remember recommending it vociferously to Luisa who also made, ate and loved it, and so I decided to make it again. Except this time I had no sense memory of ever having made this tart before. I mean, fennel? Did I really put fennel in it that time, because I do not like fennel.. Also, did I not think that 5x14 was a ridiculous dimension to roll a tart out into? (I think last time I must have just rolled out a big circle, which I should have done this time- the Zuni Cafe rough puff tart dough recipe I use does not fare well rolled out quite as super thin as what you will get if you try to roll a mere 4 ounces of it into a 5x14 rectangle.)

So this time the dough was not nearly as puffy or sturdy enough for the filling, and even though I used less goat cheese than recommended, because the recommended amount seemed excessive, the goat-cheese eggy base was far to rich, so the lovely leeks and mushrooms were stranded on a too rich, soggy drippy base. I wish I had kept a record of what I did the first time to get it so right, because this version was all wrong. (Also, I totally did not broil it beautifully brown in the last step, which would probably have helped, too.)

On the plus side, the salad I made to go with it- baby romaine and spinach, walnuts, dried cranberries and Brianna's poppyseed dressing, the only storebought dressing I've ever found worth using (is there something in the water in Brenham that makes for great food?), was delicious.

2007-01-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

Now, I love Peter Reinhart and still hold his book American Pie as my ultimate pizza resource.

Nonetheless, if Peter Reinhart and I were to get in any sort of white pizza contest, and he were to use the recipe from his book, and I were to use the recipe I improvised, I am sad to say that he would lose and badly. (To be fair, I still used his New York-style pizza crust recipe, which is perfection for a NY Style pizza and reheats even better. Somehow Jeff and I can devour two of my regular 9 inch super thin crust pizzas no problem, but a nearly 12 inch thicker crust leaves us with leftovers.)

I did add some onion and garlic to the base of a regular old bechamel similar to his white sauce, but then I spread shredded low moisture whole milk mozzeralla on top of that (and used a lot less white sauce), along with some grated parmigiano and then a few blobs of ricotta, instead of the staggering amount he called for. Surprisingly, less onion and ricotta was definitely more, with the onion flavor balancing with the cheese nicely.

I'm still a super thin crust partisan at heart, but this pizza is definitely becoming a regular part of my repertoire for when I need a change.

2007-01-16T16:29:00.000-08:00

Jeff was out of town Saturday; I thought that I could just fix myself some cereal for breakfast or I could take advantage of the fact that my glucose tolerance test results weren't in yet and have what would maybe be my last sweet, carb-y breakfast for a while if it turns out I have gestational diabetes (unlikely, but one needs to prepare). The fact that I had two near stale pieces of no-knead bread and a raft of new french toast recipes in The Improvisational Cook handy made cereal seem unappealing. Sally Schneider's savory french toast recipe in A New Way to Cook is my favorite french toast of all time, so I figured her chocolate french toast would be worth a try.

I did not have high quality bittersweet chocolate, but I did have leftover chocolate chips, so I improvised (ha!) and melted them in some milk and beat them in with some eggs and vanilla. Schneider recommends soaking the bread for four hours,but I cannot imagine that is a good idea. The hardy bread I was using was practically falling apart after fifteen minutes, and a less-sturdy bread would be mush in no time. Great if you want a pile of mush, but the mushy piece that broke off was much less appealing than the whole slices of bread, which got crisp on the outside and just custardy on the inside. And the chocolate flavor was not super-pronounced, but that was probably due to the amount and type of chocolate I used- I'll try this again when I have mad hunks of Scharffen-Berger lying around. (Or maybe even buy a bar for this purpose.)

She also recommends serving this with a pile of granulated sugar, which is silly. It is much more delicious with maple syrup, though I gave the sugar a try for one bite.

I am hoping I do not have the gestational diabetes for many reasons, obviously, but giving up the occasional french toast indulgence is for sure one of them.

2007-01-12T15:36:00.000-08:00

That giant hunk of bread is probably more than a recommended serving, first off.

This was the twice-cooked pork tenderloin from a recent Minimalist column, which could not have been easier, with some chard a la Jamie Oliver (his instructions for preparing greens- boil them and then dress them with oil and lemon- is the one thing that I really loved from his new book, which I was mostly unimpressed with). Seriously, the most time consuming part of the whole meal was boiling the water for the chard, which left plenty of time for all the mise en place. Once the chard was prepared (stems removed) and the sauce ingredients set up, the whole thing flew together.

Please note that the tenderloin and the chard were on separate cutting boards at all times, I try not to food poison anyone. However, when I was cutting the just browned but not cooked through tenderloin up (on a third cutting board) my husband looked at the raw slices of tenderloin and said, "What kind of crazy recipe is THAT?" apprehensively. I assured him I was not going to serve it to him like that.

And once you brown the tenderloin slices into little medallions, it is not only not raw but very, very good. Next time I will use chicken stock or cider in lieu of the water- I felt the sauce was a little lacking. But this method has made me reconsider the pork tenderloin, which I had fully written off as being never as flavorful as a pork chop. Perhaps a brined tenderloin, then twice cooked and with a richer sauce, would be enough to make me give up pork chops for good. (Not likely, but we'll see.)

2007-01-10T11:21:00.000-08:00

This is a horrifying tale with a happy ending. We recently went on vacation with my family to NYC, and for the most part it was completely awesome and wonderful and really perfect. This is not about that part of the trip, though.

You see, we were staying in the deepest heart of Midtown, and we arrived exhausted, after being stuck in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel forever, and when we all checked in to the hotel they had one room ready for all nine of us. Which was not conducive to what we all (me especially) needed, which was some time to rest and get our bearings.

So we decided to go explore. Hours later- hours of wandering through tourist crowds which I cannot even begin to describe- we start looking for a place to eat. Which, with nine people and all of us cranky and exhausted and also everywhere, even the Bubba Gump Shrimp house, having two or three hour waits, was just a nightmare. We finally wind up in some faux Irish-y pub and when we sat down, I was so overheated and exhausted and the thought of potato skins was more than I could handle so Jeff wound up taking me back to the hotel.

Which is where the happy ending comes in- after we got our own room and a bit of rest, we went back out in search of food, and wound up at the not original Original Ray's next door where we had a few slices of white pizza. And even if it is not the ultimate New York slice, it was good enough to get me to reconsider my entire opinion of the New York slice, a pizza genre I had wholly dismissed as a result of, well, never actually having had a New York slice. It was really, really, good, and the snap of the crust was unlike anything else.

So of course when I got home the first thing I did was pull out American Pie to see what it had to say about New York pizza, and of course it had plenty to say. I immediately added the white pizza to our menu for the week. The crust was as close to the Ray's version as I've ever had- nothing at Los Angeles' NY-style pizza places, even the vaunted Mulberry Street, comes close. (And Peter Reinhart was right about it having even more of a snap when you reheat the leftovers). The toppings, though, were a bit much. Reinhart calls for a white sauce which is more onion than cream, and a ton of seasoned ricotta smeared over that. This may be how the Prince Street Ray's does it, but I would have to give the midtown location's version (barely any white sauce, with some onion and a little garlic, mozzarella, and then a few blobs of ricotta) higher marks.

So to sum up: The one good thing about Midtown Manhattan was the white pizza at Ray's on 7th and 53rd.

2007-01-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

I am so woefully behind the food trends (for instance, I have just now gotten a santoku knife) and only this weekend got around to the No Knead bread that I clipped a while back and that everyone else has already tried.

I have baked plenty of bread, including schmancy versions that involved resting in bannetons and/or crazy oven prep maneuvers with bricks and spray bottles and even once attempted to make my own sourdough starter from scratch, and then I moved around the corner from the La Brea bakery and said to hell with all that.

The no knead bread, though, may be even easier than walking around the corner and is quite nearly as good. (If it also sliced itself, I'd never darken the door of the La Brea bakery again except for maybe a twice baked sour cherry brioche. Okay, definitely for the twice baked sour cherry brioche.) I am still hung up on how amazingly easy it was- if you have not baked a lot before, you may not appreciate this ease as much, but truly, it is making muffin level of effort with four day growing your own starter and eight different rises level of quality product.

We have been eating the bread cut in hunks and dipped in olive oil or whatever sauce is on our dinner plates; toasted with butter and jam; sliced and used for sandwiches. I'll be experimenting with different flours and whatnot, but I think we'll be eating a LOT of this bread in the future.

2007-01-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

I have been tearing through The Improvisational Cook and although part of me wishes there was not so much repetition from A New Way to Cook, most of me is loving it. I was particularly interested in slow-roasting fish (which I think was also in ANWTC but which I had never tried) and so decided to grab some fish and slow roast it to serve with a brown-butter, vinegar and caper sauce. I figured since we now have hazelnut oil I'd also try another one of her hazelnut oil suggestions, as well.

Of course, at the market, NONE of the fish looked any good besides the salmon. I always want to like salmon, but never do, and stupidly I decided to buy some anyway. I cannot comment on the slow-roasting technique at all since I liked the salmon about as well as I have ever liked salmon. The sauce, though, was delicious and I was glad to have some whole wheat baguette (store bought, Molly) on hand to mop it up.

The real triumph, though, was the "creamed" chard. I love chard, I love creamed spinach, and this version, which was easy as pie- saute some shallot in olive oil, then add rinsed chard leaves and cook, covered, until the chard wilts, and then stir in some creme fraiche and cook a little more- got a lot of creaminess from not a lot of creme fraiche. (The few drops of hazelnut oil at the end didn't hurt, either.) It was much easier than standard creamed spinach and just as good. (And, dubious as I am of the entire concept of cookbooks that teach you how to cook without a cookbook, this recipe proves that the concept can work- I don't think I'll ever need a recipe for creamed anything again.)

2007-01-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

Part of my New Year's resolution is to get back into cooking more, a habit that fell away during early pregnancy and which I would like to not fall away post-partum, so I am back to blogging to go along with that.

Last night's meal could not have been easier- a curried chicken salad from last month's Cooking Light, which like most curried chicken salad did not exactly break new ground, but which had "light" tasting elements like sliced grapes and dried apricots as well as orange juice and zest and fresh grated ginger- I upped the ante on the ginger substantially since Jeff and I are both battling head colds and also used peanuts instead of cashews since that is what I had on hand. I think the calorically light part of it was probably just the use of light mayonnaise, which I unhealthily do not stock. (And I omitted the watercress, since the watercress at the market looked terrible, so I could have done with some green on the plate.)

Cooking Light suggested this be served with sweet potato chips, but since I was roasting the chicken breasts anyway I decided to try the sweet potato puree with butter and hazelnut oil from my Christmas present,The Improvisational Cook. You just roast sweet potatoes, and then pop them in the food processor and puree them, and then mix in butter, salt, pepper and hazelnut oil to taste. It was super easy and almost made me think that maybe I will be one of those moms who cook for their babies- you could easily take out a baby portion of the straight pureed sweet potato before adding the adult flavorings, and also set aside some of the roasted chicken, and tear off some of the naan. Cooking special things for the baby and things for us seems overwhelming, but one meal for the whole family I could totally do.

2006-08-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

I'm probably not going to be posting here too much anymore- after three plus years,this blog has pretty much run its course.

When I started this, I really didn't have a lot of confidence in my cooking skills or in my menu planning ability, and this site was really a great way to experiment and learn and record my results. I threw in some local food reviews, and even terrible pictures, as time passed, but now my home cooking is pretty routine. I don't need a public record of my progress to keep me going. I have a few other side projects that are taking up most of my writing time. And, really, I feel like there are a lot of foodblogs that do it better.

I'll be continuing to post any LA-restaurant-discussion stuff over at Hannah Talks and maybe a successful menu or two, amidst the poking fun of personalized license plates and Bush-hating that is most of that blog.

Thanks for reading, it's been great.

And if you're looking for a GOOD new foodblog, check out Slow Cooked.

2006-08-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

Now, I love nothing more than jumping on a bandwagon, especially a bandwagon involving trendy frozen treats. I mean, I loved Dippin'Dots (the ICE CREAM OF THE FUTURE!). And I love green tea mochi, and the green tea and white chocolate cheesecake is my favorite thing at Beacon, so I was super, super ready to join the Pinkberry nation.

So yesterday I went and got some green tea Pinkberry and I have never put anything so vile in my mouth in my entire LIFE. It tasted like ammonia. It is terrible. And I paid $5 for it. I hate you, Pinkberry.

(But I am wondering where I can get myself some Dippin' Dots. That would hit the spot about now.)

2006-08-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

We had friends over for dinner Sunday for fried chicken, and I have to say it was probably my number two fiasco of a meal, ever. My number one fiasco was the time I thought it would be a good idea to prepare fish meuniere for 10. This was nowhere comparable, and really, not that bad, in the scheme of things- things just didn't go as smoothly as I thought.

Starter was pimiento cheese, which was just fine, but which struck me while the friends were on their way as potentially patronizing. Is it patronizing to serve Southern food to Southerners? I don't know. I just know I really craved pimiento cheese, so I will chalk that up as fine. Also quite fine was the squash casserole (I halfed the usual recipe, which fills a 9X13 pan and which usually provides for leftovers at Thanksgiving. It turned out to be a blessing that our other two guests were no-shows, since this was the perfect amount for four people but would have been a stretch for six. I forgot that you can stretch things further at Thanksgiving because there are so many items, people want less of each) and the sliced tomatoes and watermelon. You can't really screw up slicing tomatoes and watermelon, they just need to be in season.

The fiascos were, in this order, the biscuits, the chicken, and the rhubarb-strawberry tart. While making the biscuits I realized I did not have any baking soda, and that is all I will say about that. They were edible, but had I any other bread product in the house to serve I would have tossed the biscuits. They were kind of embarassing.

As for the chicken, I grew overconfident in my chicken frying skills. I did not monitor the first batch closely, and it got almost burnt. I turned down the heat too much for the second batch, though, which led to really unpleasant looking chicken. Fortunately again the no-shows were a blessing in disguise, since I just served the first dark chicken and the presentable pieces of the second. The chicken was better than edible, but, still, not my best.

The tart was actually perfect, except for the fact that it had way too much filling, and the juicy sugar part of the filling ran over and burnt. Causing dinner to be marred by an unpleasant burning odor. Causing me to want to hide under the table.

Fortunately, good friends and conversation can make even the smell of burnt sugar seem bearable. (At least, I hope so. They did a good job of pretending, if not.)

2006-07-31T14:50:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else ever talk back to recipes while preparing them?

For instance, while making eggplant and smoked gouda open faced sandwiches, one might say, "Gourmet magazine, what the heck is your problem? Why on earth would you specify an 8 oz piece of smoked mozzarella in the ingredient list and then direct me to 'reserv[e] [half] for another use.'?? How hard is it to say 4 ounces! You'll need 4 ounces of cheese!

And what's with the eggplant wasting? You want me to take two slices out of the center of an eggplant and discard the rest? Do you not realize there are children starving in Africa? Also, there is no way I am putting white wine vinegar or parsley in with this tomato. What kind of flavor does that bring to the party? What? Okay, yes, I have been watching too much Good Eats lately. You're right, I will never discuss bringing flavor to any party ever again. That's a terrible phrase. But I'm still using balsamic and basil. I hate parsley, and my basil is growing like crazy."
In the end, though, it was a pretty good sandwich.

2006-07-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

Jeff figured out how to disconnect the smoke detectors from the power source. Don't tell our landlord.

This means we had butternut squash pizza, and here is where I make a shameful confession- I am hooked on prepared food products. I'm practically Sandra Lee. I used the precooked beets from TJ's for the beet tzatziki, and pre-roasted peppers for the whipped feta. (I bought them from the same guy who sold me the feta, at the Farmer's Market, while hiding my face. I mean, do y'all know how easy it is to roast your own damn peppers?)

So I also of course used the pre-cut butternut squash for the puree I put on the pizza. And, because I am an idiot, assumed it was also pre-cooked. I discovered this was not the case when I put it in the food processor. And it shredded instead of puree-ing. I then figured I would just try cooking the shreds in some water and then repureeing. I hoped perhaps this would turn out to be a revolutionary cooking technique that would win me a job on America's Test Kitchen. I imagined the banter Chris Kimball and I would have- he would tease me for wearing goggles while chopping onions, I would point out that people with bowties have no room to mock... but of course the resulting puree was just, well, squash puree.

It was a pretty good pizza, though.

2006-07-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

Camera phones do not focus, either, apparently. America's Test Kitchen did a "Curry in a Hurry" episode the other week, which made me want to make some shrimp curry. Unfortunately their recipe didn't seem to be in any of the Cook's Illustrateds, yet, so I made a recipe from Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World. I don't think this was actually the best curry in the world- or maybe I just need new curry powder. Actually, I know I need new curry powder. Or to make my own. The stuff I have has lost all flavor so it was more coconut-y than curry. The shrimp came out real nice, though.

Last night we had what may be my favorite meal I've ever prepared. The NYT has been running recipes from Ana Sortun's cookbook, Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean, and I had been thinking, hmm, maybe I might buy that book. Oleana was one of my favorite restaurants in Boston, and I may have had an obsession with Sortun that dated back to the scallops from Casablanca in Cambridge. Well, I whipped up some whipped feta with hot and sweet peppers and was licking the food processor. It is so, so, so good. It is like mediterranean pimento cheese. But that wasn't the best part--
The best part was the beet tzatziki. FINALLY, a beet recipe my husband and I both love. (He loves borscht, I think it is gross. I love beets in salads, which he finds repulsive.) Even if you don't like beets in any form, this may change your mind. I could have just eaten this.

But I didn't- we also made Persian Fried Chicken. I had my doubts about frying boneless, skinless thigh meat, but after a soak in saffron yogurt, the yogurt and flour makes a pretty crispy coating. And I am not usually a fan of lemon with my fried chicken, but it was wonderful with this. I was not sure how to eat the walnut pieces, or why you needed them, but I sprinkled them over the chicken anyway.

Anyway, I have gone from thinking I might like this cookbook to "I must buy this cookbook NOW." The recipes I tried were supereasy. The food itself was healthy, flavorful, and (for me) sophisticated and different. What more can you ask for?

2006-07-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

If there is one dish I always cook exceptionally well, it's steak. I would match my steak up against any, and I don't usually use schmancy steaks or anything. Steak is easy.

So here is my technique with a slideshow. My technique is actually from David Walzog, and is apparently good enough for Michael Jordan, so it should be good enough for anyone. (And it is so easy.)

2006-07-14T11:58:00.000-07:00

Thank you SO much for the smoke detector tips. I am buying shower curtain caps this weekend. Y'all are brilliant.

Last night I made a roasted eggplant and tomato tart from Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone, a dish which fortunately required oven temperatures of 375 and 400, neither of which cause the smoke detector any distress. Deborah Madison warns that this tart is pretty drab looking, and boy is she right.

The basil helped that drabness, for sure, as did the addition of some of those teensy tinsy mozzarella balls from TJ's. (Probably the only thing those balls are good for. The Fearless Flyer claimed they were great for anything you would use shredded mozzarella for or for antipasto, and they are crap on pizza and worse straight up. They taste like water. They're awful. And TJ's sells the North Beach whole milk low moisture mozzarella, which you have to shred yourself, but which is AMAZING on pizza, so I will never buy another carton of balls there again. Also, Beavis, shut up.)

But the drabness didn't matter- Jeff looked dubious when I served it to him, but the roasted eggplant and charred tomato (I used a grillpan) is flavor-iffic. And the crust, which I really had my doubts about (Deborah Madison suggests a really short crust which she claims you can make with room temperature butter!) was flaky and rich and to die for. Of course, I overfilled it which made the crust stick to the tart ring which led to a mangled if beautifully browned shell.

2006-07-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

What do you do when your oven sets off your smoke detector? We have two smoke detectors, both placed on opposite sides of our kitchen, and they go off whenever the oven is heated above 450 for more than 20 minutes or so. So, whenever I am roasting chicken or preparing to cook pizza or just about any time I want to use the oven, dammit.

There has to be a better solution besides running and fanning the area in front of the detector every few minutes. We tried taking out the batteries, but that did not deter the detectors one bit.

On the plus side, we did sign a lot of paperwork about the detectors and agreed to test them once a month. I guess that is covered.

2006-07-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

I love my new kitchen so much I made a whole crappy cameraphone picture photo set of last night's dinner.

I got my barbeque shrimp recipe, such as it is, from AB Chao aeons ago. It is this- melt plenty of butter, add plenty of worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, hot sauce, and Tony Chachere's to taste. And scads of pepper. I think her original direction was something like "add what seems like too much pepper. Then add more." Then pour it over some shrimp and bake at 350 until the shrimp is done. I judge the shrimp doneness and the amount of worcestershire sauce involved strictly by color.

2006-07-05T12:23:00.000-07:00

I love, love, love, love, love, love, love my new kitchen. It is not ginormous or anything, but it is a workable size*. It has a dishwasher, which means I can cook whatever I want without worrying about Jeff griping about the dishes. It has plenty of counter space. It has room for all my pots and pans and plates and glasses etc. It's pretty much perfect.

It was the first thing I unpacked when we moved in, but the cookbooks were in the last room to get unpacked. So we christened our new kitchen with food I could cook from memory- steak fajitas using a skirt steak rubbed with an improvised spice rub and served with the Avogadro's number guacamole from Trader Joe's, just because the name cracks me up.

Then a "I'll use every serving piece I want, because I can" meal of roast butterflied chicken, with mustard and butter smeared under its skin and sliced potatoes roasted underneath it, based on what I could remember of a recent episode of America's Test Kitchen, with creamed spinach on the side. (That is three serving plates for two people, for those keeping track. Sinful.)

Tonight is barbeque shrimp with a baguette from BreadBar- we are right next to La Brea Bakery, but I was running errands over near Bread Bar this morning so I thought I'd check them out.

Next up is a meal with the most prep dishes I can think up, probably. To abuse the dishwashing luxury some more.

*read as "a trillion sizes bigger than any kitchen I have had in my adult life"

2006-06-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

So I wrote a letter to the editor of the LA Times today-- S. Irene Virbila (their restaurant reviewer) wrote the following about the cornbread at Republic"

"It's sweet as cake, something you have to be deeply Southern, I'm guessing, to appreciate."

I may have used the phrase "Yankee abomination" in correcting her.

2006-06-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

A cookbook review I am glad I wrote before starting the South Beach Diet is part of MSNBC's Summer Book Guide... for anyone who lives in Los Angeles, the recipes in Trattoria are all you need to bring a little Angeli Caffe into your home. (Of course, it is also true what the waiter at Angeli told me is their secret... more butter than seems legal.)

2006-06-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

Orange Roughy with Scallion-Ginger (and soy-vermouth) sauce from the SBD book.

Jeff said, "This fish... has... a lot of flavors?" It does. The vermouth was, even after being mixed with soy and ginger and cooked, way too strong tasting for certain people in our household. It was edible, but I prefer a more viscous sauce- as you can see, this sauce just ran everywhere.

The eggplant, though, was a success. I tried to replicate the eggplant at Buddha's Belly and even though I did not have any miso handy, I wound up doing this: Cube some eggplant. Heat a good amount of olive oil. Saute, stirring often, for about ten minutes. As the eggplant starts to release some oil, add splashes of soy sauce and mirin (is that SBD- okay? I guess I do not care.) and keep stirring occasionally until tender. It was so good.

2006-06-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

Last night was the first South Beach dinner I would eat even if I wasn't dieting- an omelet with peperonata and goat cheese. I am not sure if goat cheese is even okay on Phase I, but I also kind of don't care.

2006-06-06T13:07:00.000-07:00

So I am once again trying the South Beach Diet, which is annoying to anyone who knows me because it is about the trillionth time I have done so. But this time I really mean it, and have been on it for three days, and will stick to it because I MUST lose promised 8-14 pounds before this wedding a week from Saturday or I will go insane. If I can't stick to this it is cabbage soup diet and therein lies even more madness, right?

Anyway, I bought the prepared beets from TJ's in anticipation of a week of beet and goat cheese plates with olive oil for lovely lunches. And then realized beets are not PERMITTED on the SBD until Phase III. (One time I met with a nutritionist who asked me what kind of vegetables I like and I said, "Oh, I love corn" and he was all, "That is probably the WORST kind of vegetable there is." Apparently I only love vegetables that do not help you lose weight at all.) So we wound up having this salad- greens and beets and panko-crusted goat cheese- for my last carb-loaded meal. I still wish I had bought bread to accompany it. Or maybe a croissant. Or eight.

SBD is not all that bad, really. These are both recipes from the book- gingered chicken which was more lemony than ginger, and a vinegary cabbage salad/slaw. Jeff LOVED the cabbage, and he hates cabbage. I wished there was mayonnaise on it. This is why I am on a diet, I fear.

Also, I wonder when Dr. Agaston will be sued by some family that dies of salmonella cooking the chicken breasts as he directs- sauteing on high for 8 minutes total "until tender." A chicken breast half will be pretty tender cooked that way. And, probably, raw on the inside. I pounded the chicken breasts flat first, and sauteed them on medium-high.

Skirt steak marinated in vinegar, which was delicious. Even if I used way more vinegar than Dr. Agatson recommends. He also recommend roasted peppers as a side dish, but it is way too hot here to turn on the oven, so instead I made the peperonata from A New Way to Cook. Which is so, so good. And made leftovers. Tonight I am going to put the leftovers in an omelet with some goat cheese.

I actually feel okay today- not nearly as nauseated and homicidal as I felt on the first two days. I am terrified that I will learn I am addicted to sugar as a result of all this and have to give it up forever or make peace with weighing 20 pounds more than I like. I want to get to a point where I can eat carbs and sugars in moderation and stay healthy-thin, like a French person. Also, this is totally not a diet blog. I'll shut up now.

2006-05-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

We were all about "things I have seen recently on America's Test Kitchen" this weekend.

First, I busted out the grill to "rethink barbequed chicken" with crazy faux pulled pork chicken sandwiches. My grilling technique was pitiful- I could not keep the grill hot enough to save my life- and I may have actually given us food poisoning. Or at least a tummyache. After all the work of removing the backbone from the leg quarters and setting up the grill just so with the drip pan and the cantilevered legs and the homemade sauce and the shredding and the processing of some of the chicken.... I realized I'd made tastier barbequed chicken by dumping a decent bottle of sauce on chicken pieces I baked.

(The blueberry peach cobbler I made for dessert and the very traditional mayonnaise-cream dressed coleslaw were good, though.)

Second, I made corn and black bean quesadillas, a recipe I snickered at when Cook's Illustrated first ran it because how hard is it to make quesadillas? But they looked so good when Julia and Bridget made them and I had a ripe avocado to serve with them... and people, the toasting the tortilla then stuffing, oiling and salting it before cooking, followed by a cooling period? Is a technique that will never make you think of quesadillas as greasy grody second rate bar food ever again. They were crisp and spicy and phenomenal. And as easy as any other quesadilla technique.

2006-05-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, so if you do not have the August 2005 Cook's Illustrated lying around, you should totally pay for the online Cook's Illustrated access to get yourself the recipe for Thai Style Beef with Chiles and Shallots. (America's Test Kitchen has officially invade my brain, by the way. As I was adding the chile sauce to the skillet, I started scraping up some of the beef fond and could hear Bridget's voice saying, "That's good flavor.")

It is so easy, and so good, and even though one wants to mock the Yankee breeziness with which the CI folks dismiss the necessity of tamarind pulp and dried shrimp, it tastes almost exactly like the beef with garlic and lime at Palms Thai. (Even though there is no lime in this version. How do they do that? Also, the General Tso's sauce at TJ's is a perfect sub for chili garlic sauce, if you don't have chili garlic sauce handy.)

Of course, one will still go to Palms Thai for the authentic version, because, hey, Thai Elvis. And maybe one day one will decide to try the spicy chicken feet salad.

2006-05-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a hint- when you are making a lovely 10 minute meal from Gourmet Magazine, particularly one as easy to put together as the gratineed spinach and ricotta gnocchi (basically bechamel with spinach and gnocchi and ricotta then broiled- all in one pan, super quick- it is like spinach lasagna minus the pain in the rear factor) and you are quickly tossing spinach into warm bechamel, whatever you do, DO NOT place the bag of spinach directly on the burner you just used to boil the gnocchi.

Seriously, don't do that. Of course you would never used bagged spinach anyway, I am sure, because we all support our local farmer's markets and never just sleep in on Sunday. Ever.

Also, don't add extra ricotta just because you love ricotta. Trust me on that one.

(Notice who got a camera phone? Miss "What the frick is the point of a camera on your phone," that's who. Apparently the point is now you can take really bad pictures of your cooking!

2006-04-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

I made spaghetti carbonara this weekend- Mark Bittman's recipe, which I have made before with glorious (and easy) success. This time, however, the egg and cheese mixture just... didn't do much. It cooked, but it didn't coat the spaghetti with the rich sauce I am used to. It was more of a pasta-slick. I don't know what went wrong- was my egg too old? All I know is it was a major disappointment, and when eggs and bacon disappoint, you know something is off.

To make up for it, I also made Marcella's fettucine alfredo, which was possibly even easier and about a bijillion times better. (And I have also suddenly developed a taste for pasta- who knew?) The fettucine came out perfectly and really lightly sauced, and I added some sage leaves in with the butter (which I melted first before adding the cream, crisping the sage leaves just a bit). So I guess it was more of a browned- butter sage cream sauce than alfredo, but it was also divine.

I hate to criticize Bittman ever, since he is usually so foolproof- it must have been the egg. His pancake recipe, at least, is no-fail. This weekend I omitted the optional melted butter from the batter and the pancakes came out both crisper and fluffier. I had no idea anything could be improved by REMOVING butter.

Okay, so we don't eat all butter all the time. We also had a pinto bean soup from another foolproof cookbook (a soup Jeff really, really didn't want to try. "I don't like beans." "But you like refried beans. And black beans. And baked beans. And..." "But...") and it was both super healthy (no fat besides a smidge of canola oil, fortified with chicken stock) and rich and filling. In fact, without the chicken stock, it'd made a decent refried bean substitute. With the chicken stock (and some grated cheddar and sour cream) it made an excellent light supper.