Culinary Circle

2007-03-14T16:47:00.000-07:00

Although we hadn't been doing much new exciting cooking around our apartment the past few months things are picking up lately. Here's some pictures. First a delicious Greek dinner, both recipes from the cookbook, The Olive and the Caper, (I highly recommend it), we had salmon with a caper and shallot sauce and a side salad with a classic Greek dressing that is honey and vinegar. It was excellent.

Next up two other new dishes that we tried from an Armenian cookbook that we got for Christmas The Cuisine of Armenia, we've only made a few things from this cookbook but the recipes have all been excellent. We made a filling that had ground lamb, pine nuts, cinnamon, allspice and onion, half the filling was used to fill the pastries the other half as a mix in for rice pilaf. Wa-la another excellent dinner.

2007-01-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

I can't find my notes on this root beer but I remember it being quite tasty and I wouldn't hesitate to pick one up again. Also I like the label art.

2006-10-29T16:04:00.000-08:00

With all our fall veggie bounty from the farm and the cool weather lately it was high time for a new soup. The plan at first was cream of broccoli soup, plus we had a lot of carrots so we thought that'd be a nice addition. The night we were making the soup was also a farm pickup and we were lucky enough to receive some celeriac. We both have a thing in that we like the flavor celery adds to soup but we don't like eating stringy celery pieces. Celeriac solves this problem, it has the exact same celery flavor packed in a nice root vegetable, it cooks up similar to potatoes but more solid and more smooth in texture, which is perfect. I know that celeriac looks really really funky, but I highly recommend it if you ever find some at the store.

The soup turned out excellent here's our final recipe:

1 onion
2 small heads of broccoli
3 medium carrots
1 medium celeraic
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp flour
1/2 gallon of milk (I used 1-2 cups less than the full 1/2 gallon)
3/4 cup light cream
1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Sweat chopped onion, carrot, and celeriac for 15 minutes with 2 tsp salt. Add chopped broccoli and sweat for an additional 5 minutes or until all the veggies are soft. Sprinkle flour over veggies and cook for 2 more minutes. Slowly add milk and simmer lightly for 30 minutes. After soup is cooked add light cream and slowly add in cheddar. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

2006-10-29T16:03:00.000-08:00

We've been experimenting with making panini this summer. Our first sucess was with fresh grilled veggies (eggplant, peppers and zuchini) fresh mozerlla, sundried tomatos, and basil, using some bakery bought country sourdough. Next up we tried grilled chicken, fresh tomato, pesto mayonaise, marinated artichokes, red onion and mozzerlla using fresh ciabatta bread that I had made, with all the fresh ingredients and homemade bread these cannot be beat!

For pressing and heating the sandwiches Tom had devised a method to use a bottom fry pan and for the top he heats up the cast iron skillet and puts that over and it has enough weight and heat to cook the top and press the sandwich, not perfect but it works. We're in the market to get a cast iron grill press, a large round one, but we're going to have to order it online and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

2006-09-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

We stopped at the local Beverages and More store on our recent trip to CA and discovered and amazing selection of root beers. Since we were only in CA for a few days and new that whatever we didn't finish would be coming home with us in our luggage we only got a couple root beers to try along with a bunch of our favorite Henry Weinhards (root beer and cream soda).

Here is the first one that we tried, Barrel Brothers Creamy Vanilla Root Beer. We've got some extra notes on the tasting on Tom's computer but I'll just post the picture now along with the brief comment that I really enjoyed this it was smooth creamy with a nice vanilla flavor. I'd definitely get it again.

Fall is Here

2006-09-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

It's been three weeks now, but it's officially apple season. We got our first round of cider from the Davis Farmstand two weeks ago, excellent as always. This week they switched over to the next batch (we religiously follow the expiration dates on the cider, as that is an indication of whether you are getting the same batch as last time our not). I love how the flavor of the cider changes with the season progresses and the types of apples they use in the cider changes.

Along with picking up fresh cider every week we're also getting an apple share that we pick up with our farm share. Every week we're getting 1/2 peck of fresh picked apples. One of my favorite easy recipes for apples is caramel apple oatmeal.

Recipe (one serving doubles or triples easier for more topping or more bowls of oatmeal)
time ~10-15 min:

1 apple
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp brown sugar
sprinkle of cinnamon
1 bowl of oatmeal (cook per manufactures recommendations)

Dice the apple into 1/2 squares, I usually leave on the skins just because it's easier, but you could peel them if you'd really like. Heat up the butter in a frying pan until melted, add apples, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cook until apples are tender and the brown sugar has melted and carmelized, add more butter or sugar if you feel it is necessary, I just add the cinnamon to taste. Mix in with oatmeal and enjoy. I always add some milk or cream to the oatmeal too because that's the way I like it, Tom eats it with out the extra liquid though. Enjoy!

Best Salad Dressing of the Summer

2006-08-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

Tom created this recipe on his own. Everyone that's tried it loves it! This summer was the summer of balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing, last summer it was buttermilk ranch (also another one of Tom's creations). This base recipe is good for 2-4 salads, we've been making a triple batch to fit in our salad dressing jar and it'll last us a few weeks then (we average 4-6 salads a week).

Honey Balsamic vinaigrette
1T honey
1t Dijon mustard
2T balsamic vinegar
5T olive oil

Mix and enjoy. The olive oil congeals a bit in the cold of the fridge so if refridgerated we usually let it sit out 10-20 minutes before serving.

The Farm

2006-07-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

Photo of most of one of our Farm shares from a few weeks ago. We're in prime summer season getting tons of lettuce, eggplant, summer squash, basil, swiss chard and much much more. I have a few salad dressing recipes Tom created that I really need to get to post. Maybe next week.

Rocking the Kale Recipes

2006-07-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

We've been doing awesome this summer with our use of kale from The Farm. Along with the previous filo dough kale recipe Tom and I developed this Kale and Potatoes recipe.

1 lb kale, cleaned and stemmed
2-3 medium sized potatoes
1/2 lb bacon
1 onion
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Chop bacon into small pieces and fry in a cast iron skillet until mostly cooked. Add chopped onions and cook until slightly browned(if you really want you can drain the bacon fat, but it adds a really great flavor to the dish so I highly recommend keeping it around, I swear it won't kill you). Meanwhile peal and chop potatoes into 1 inch cubes, boil potatoes until tender, drain. Add Kale to skillet once the onions and bacon are cooked, stir constantly until kale is cooked down and mixed in well with other ingredients. Add potatoes and stir and cook for a minute or two to meld the flavors. Taste test and add salt and pepper as needed. Top with cheese and let melt, serve and enjoy!

I'll have pictures to add to this if I ever get them downloaded to my computer, this dish really looked great in the cast iron skillet.

Cook-Mykal
Time-45 minutes

2006-06-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

With the start of the summer and our piles of farm fresh produce we've been getting we've been in need of new kale, collard and greens recipes. We had tried a recipe for kale and blue cheese rollups last summer and they were good, but needed a little extra. So I thought up this recipe, we tried it out tonight it was awesome! We are definitely making these again.

Recipe:
10 kale leaves
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 tbs olive oil
1/3 cup blue cheese
1/3 cup ricotta cheese
2 tbs red wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
1/2 pack of filo dough

Chop kale, blanch in boiling water until tender, 3-5 min, drain and let cool. Chop onion, chop garlic. Preheat pan and add olive oil, add onions and cook until tender. Add garlic and cook for a few minutes. Turn off heat and add vinegar and salt. Let cool. Mix together chopped blue cheese, cooked onions and garlic and kale.

Prepare filo dough, put down a few layers of filo brushing each with melted butter. Spread out kale mixture onto filo dough. Add a few more layers of filo dough brushed with melted butter to the top, cut squares into the pie. Place in preheated 350 oven for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown and delicious!

Chicken Wings

2006-05-10T16:36:00.000-07:00

We just made Sticky Sesame Chicken Wings with a nice side of ginger broccoli for dinner. Huge success. We've been meaning to find a good chicken wing recipe and I'm glad we finally found one. This only took 5 minutes to prepare and 35 to cook. Only change is since Tom and I are sauce fiends we'd probably double the sauce and keep half for dipping at the end. Next we need to find a good buffalo chicken wing recipe, now that we have Asian inspired down.

Back from vacation and a week and half of busyness

2006-05-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

What have I been doing lately? I would show you with some pictures but you know I haven't been doing that. We've had some awesome meals and creations lately but I just haven't been able to muster up the effort. I'm going to try and set a goal of one interesting and picturefull post a week.

Things of interested:
-Tom developed and awesome potato salad recipe, I will found out where he wrote it down and post it, very delicious.
-We've been making a lot of ice cream sundaes lately. This started when we found banana boat bowls at our vacation rental condo. They have been banana, brownie, caramel, coffee or chocolate ice cream, with whipped cream and toffee bits, mmmmm.
-I've finished some awesome pottery for kitchen use! Unfortunately I have to give a lot of it away since we don't have enough space to keep it all.
-More cookbooks! I am now the proud owner of Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book on Breads. It looks awesome, I just got it last night though so I haven't gotten a chance to make anything yet. There is a 60 minute bread recipe that I think Mike D. might be interested in.
-I made bacon focacia finally last weekend, delicious and perfect for sandwiches. We did fried egg and cheese with mustard on toasted focacia, perfect!

Ok that's enough aimless rambling for now.

Vacation

2006-04-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

We're headed off to the beach for a week, don't expect any updates for a week or two. One week for vacation, one week to recover from the laziness of being home from vacation.

Corn Chowder

2006-04-13T08:33:00.000-07:00

This Sat. it was all cloudy and cool outside, perfect soup day! Tom and I made plans to make some Corn Chowder. Basically we only ever make two kinds of soup from scratch, Chili, which is Tom's Soup, and Corn Chowder, which is My Soup. The recipe comes from my Stepgrandmother, and my Mom used to make it a lot. It's easy to prepare and keeps well. I do have to admit we never got around to making the soup until Monday and by then it was sunny and warm out, not so great soup weather anymore.

Recipe:

1/2 lb bacon
1 onion
3 medium sized potatoes
1 can corn
1 can creamed corn
1/2 gallon milk
salt and pepper to taste

Chop bacon into small pieces, fry until half cooked, drain fat and add chopped onion. Cook until onion is translucent and bacon is done. Add canned and creamed corn, milk and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 2-3 hours, watching to not overheat as the bottom of the pan will burn, or it will boil over and make a huge mess.

2006-04-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

Last week I was in a bit of a funk, so twice I came home from work and instantly decided to make pudding, my favorite feeling down snack. I'm not sure how pudding came to be so comforting for me, as my Mom never made homemade pudding, I just started making it for myself in college and it's fast become a favorite.

Last week we had Chocolate Blancmang again and Tapioca cream, both recipes from Fanny Farmer. The tapioca recipe uses quick cooking tapioca so it only takes about 15 minutes to cook up, no overnight soaking required. It's also folded into beaten egg whites in the end so you end up with a light fluffy pudding, good served warm or chilled, mmmmm.

Brown Rice Salad

2006-04-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

I was sorting through the cabinets the other week to find old food stuffs that needed to get used up. One of the items was some brown rice we've had since we made some rice pilaf with it a couple of years ago. I wanted to do something more interesting with it than just cook it plain. I remembered that good old Alton Brown had done a show on rice with an interesting brown rice recipe so we went with that.

We didn't have high hopes for this recipe, we just figured it'd be good way to use up the rice that we had and besides it had bacon in it. We were pleasantly surprised that this dish was excellent! The method for cooking the rice was to bake in the oven, which resulted in a nice chewy, light rice. Then the bacon, onion and vinegar flavor mixture were a perfect seasoning. We're definitely going to make this again. (Also check out my new dotted bowl!)

Cook-Tom
Time-active 30 min, 45 min baking

Mixing Bowls

2006-03-31T14:26:00.000-08:00

We have a new set off mixing bowls! Aren't they great?

I'm back in pottery class and making tons of stuff to use around the kitchen. I think these turned out really great, there are a few glaze drips but that just helps with the handmade look. Next up I'm making some large pasta bowls for my Mom and small desert cups for us. Hopefully they'll turn out as well as these nested bowls.

Pesto and Ricotta Souffle

2006-03-31T14:17:00.000-08:00

We've have about 5 cups or so of pesto in the freezer. The remains of the pesto that we made last summer with our bounty of basil from the farm. Pasta and pesto is great but we've been needing other ways to use up the remaining pesto. We made up this pesto and ricotta souffle from Molly Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook. Turned out nice and fluffy, wasn't quite filling enough for dinner but we think it'd make an awesome side dish.

Next up for using up pesto we are going to try pesto and cheese calzones. I also have an idea for pesto/ricotta bake.

Cook-Mykal
Time-10 min active, 45 min baking

Half Time Bread Bowl

2006-03-28T14:01:00.000-08:00

This recipe was originally posted online by the author of Breaking Bread with Father Dominic , but the webpage is no longer up. Tom and I managed to find the archived pages on the way back machine and grab a whole bunch of tasty recipes. This is a bread bowl and spinach dip. We usually don't bother with the bowl though and just make the bread and cube it and then dip in the dip, it's easier than trying to turn the round loafs into a bowl.

The bread is great a nice light whole wheat with some honey, dill and caraway. The spinach dip has parsley, bacon and scallions in it and the bread and dip go together so well. Also this is a house favorite, highly recommended!

Recipe:
Half-Time Bread Bowl
Yield: 1 bread bowl.

1 1/2 to 2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 envelope FLEISCHMANN’S RapidRise Yeast
1 teaspoon dried dill weed
1 teaspoon caraway seed
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons butter or margarine

Directions
In a large bowl, combine 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, undissolved yeast, dill weed, caraway seed, and salt. Heat milk, honey, and butter until very warm (120 to 130 degrees). Gradually add to flour mixture. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed of electric mixer, scraping bowl occasionally. Stir in enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. Knead on lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 8 to 10 minutes. Cover; let rest 10 minutes.

Shape dough into 6-inch ball; place on greased baking sheet. Cover; let rise in warm, draft-free place until doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

With sharp knife, make 4 (1/4-inch deep) slashes in crisscross fashion on top of loaf. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes or until done. Remove from baking sheet; cool on wire rack.
Cut off top portion of loaf (approximately 1/3); reserve top. Hollow out loaf to form 1/4-inch thick bowl, reserving center of loaf. Cut reserved bread into cubes, about 1-inch in size, for dipping. Fill bowl with dip (recipe follows).

SPINACH DIP

1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained and squeezed dry
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/2 cup (about 10 slices) crisply cooked and crumbled bacon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions:

Mix all ingredients. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Cook-Mykal
Time-About 2 hours total, if you make sure to make the dip while the bread is baking

Balsamic Glazed Pork Chops

2006-03-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

This recipe was great. Cooked it up for the first time last night, only took about 30 minutes total and the results, delicious! We went with some cheap brand balsamic seeing as we used nearly a cup. Definitely will be making this again. Along with being tasty the dark color of the balsamic vinegar with the shallots really made everything very pretty.

Cook-Mykal
Time-30 min.

Pain Seigle - Rye Bread, Another Bread from France

2006-03-27T08:19:00.000-08:00

I made this Pain Seigle, or Rye Bread, last weekend. It was another two day adventure. The recipe has a double starter, first rise for at least 5 hours and then with more flour and water added rise again for at least 7 hours. So you start off with a nice sponge that gets you to an almost sour dough flavor. The bread is very dense but has a very good whole wheat flavor being mostly rye flour also a little bit of a sour dough flavor from the extended rise times.

We used it for bacon, cheddar sandwiches, delicious. Even though the loaves are small and we had smallish sandwiches with the bacon and cheese and super hearty bread it was a huge dinner that left both of us very full. I also used some of the bread for toast with marscapone and lox and also marscapone and strawberry jam, both were excellent. This is a great hearty bread, anytime I had any to eat it stuck with me for at least 3-4 hours before I was hungry again, which is rather amazing as most of the time I am always hungry.

Overall this bread was awesome! I can't wait to get the third loaf out of the freezer, Tom and I have plans to make ham and cheese sandwiches with it.

Cook-Mykal
Time-long (started Sat. 8pm, finished Sun. 4pm, so nearly 24 hours.)

That's a picture of our sandwich press, improvised. We used our cast iron skillet and then I put another skillet with the full of water teapot on top. Results, nice browned and smooshed sandwiches.

Chocolate Pudding

2006-03-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

This is the basic blancmange from Fannie Farmer. I usually make chocolate, sometimes butterscotch, but the chocolate is the best. I love eating warm pudding, so making it from scratch is really great for me. In my opinion this is the best smooth creamy ordinary pudding out there! My next favorite pudding is Fannie Farmers tapioca Cream pudding, which uses quick cooking tapioca so it doesn't take any longer to cook than the blancmange does.

Cook-Mykal
Time-20 minutes, plus a couple hours if actually enjoy your pudding cold

Shrimp Fried in Leavened Batter

2006-03-13T14:25:00.000-08:00

Also by request, sorry it took nearly two weeks, here is the fried shrimp recipe, from "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" by Marcella Hazan.

1 lb shelled shrimp as small as possible
2 eggs
salt
1/2 package active dry yeast, 1 1/4 tsp dissolved in 1 cup warm water
1 cup flour
vegetable oil for frying

1. Break eggs into a bowl, add large pinch of salt, and beat well with a fork. Add the dissolved yeast and then add the flour, while beating the mixture steadily with a fork.

4. Put enough oil into a pan to come 1/4 in up it's sides and turn up the heat to high(or whatever you need to get a good frying temp, we always use a thermometer, which has recommended temps on it).

5. Dip shrimp into the batter, let excess flow back into the bowl, then slip the shrimp into the frying pan. Do no crowd the pan. Once a golden crust has formed flip the shrimp and cook the other side, once golden brown and delicious remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and transfer to a cooling rack to drain.

6. Stir batter and repeat 5 until all the shrimp are cooked. Sprinkle with salt and eat promptly.

Chai Recipe

2006-03-13T14:11:00.000-08:00

By request of my first do not know in real life commenter (yea!) the chai recipe!

This recipe is from the cookbook "Classic Indian Cooking" by Julie Sahni, highly recommended if you're in the market for an Indian cookbook, great korma and mataar paneer recipes.

Masala Chai

6 cups water
1 stick cinnamon, 3 inches long
6 whole green cardamon pods
4 whole cloves
12 black pepercorns(optional, I always use them)
6 heaping teaspoons of loose leaf tea or 9 tea bags

1. Bring water to a boil and add spices. Turn off heat and cover pan and let the spices soak for 10 minutes or longer(I usually do about 20.)

2. Add the tea leaves or bags and turn up the heat to boil again, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes( I like less strongly brewed tea so I usually do about 2 minutes.) Strain tea leaves and spices out(this sometimes gets tricky if you don't have enough large pots around, I usually end up straining into two large bowls or whatever is around and clean.)

3. Add milk and sugar to taste, the recipe recommends 1/3 cup milk and 12 tsp of sugar. What I usually do is just add the milk on a per cup basis just a splash until the color is right, probably ~2tbsp, and I use about 2-3 tsbps of sugar per mug(8oz). Remember that if it doesn't taste cinamonny enough that adding more sugar will bring out the flavor, don't be shy.

4. Enjoy! And now your house will smell all delicious for at least a few hours.

Look at all that Chai.

2006-03-05T13:58:00.000-08:00

Recently I made a double batch of chai base. MMMmmm tasty. This should last us nearly a month. Actually the chai lasted about two weeks, I'm planning on finishing the last mug with breakfast tomorrow and I actually made it two weekends ago. Most likely I'll be making more this weekend, this stuff is just so great to have a mug to wake up with.