Showing posts with label Recipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recipe. Show all posts
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Portrait of a Saturday Morning
My house. Noon.
What D wears to make brioche cinnamon buns.
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Friday, September 19, 2008
In-Home Entertainment
With all the bacon and dumplings and oddly-flavored naan lately, I know it looks like I never actually eat at home.
Which I do.
Sometimes.
Proof: This pizza, which I made last week. In my house. I have this troublesome compulsion to grocery shop, buy a ton of perishable goods, and then eat out every night until everything I bought goes bad. I know I have a problem, and this pizza is part of the solution. Pizza is a great way to use up whatever's hanging around the fridge, on the brink of moldy death. In my case, critical patients included prosciutto, mushrooms, spinach, cherry tomatoes, and a tub of ricotta cheese.
I know that making pizza dough is really easy and cheap and blah blah, so shoot me, I bought prepackaged dough from Trader Joe's because it costs all of $2 and saved me at least an hour of prep time. Some might argue that this whole defense of me cooking at home isn't even cooking, because I'm actually really just assembling all my groceries on top of store-bought dough, to which I respond "meh" and point out that I had to turn on the both the stove and the oven for this venture, which constitutes cooking.
Anyhow. Here's the recipe:
1 bag pizza dough
4 tbsp olive oil, divided
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 lb fresh spinach, washed
1 cup cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives, sliced in half
(optional) 5-6 thin slices prosciutto or other cured meat
fresh mozzarella cheese
fresh ricotta cheese
1/2 tbsp crushed red pepper flakes
salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pizza dough to fit whatever you're cooking it on (I used a cookie sheet, so my pizza was rectangular). Brush with 2 tbsp olive oil.
Heat the remaining oil in a saute pan over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the onions and garlic. Cook until onions get soft, 5-7 minutes. Add the spinach and saute for an additional 2-3 minutes.
That's all the cooking we'll be doing today.
Arrange your pizza: I layered the prosciutto on the bottom, then mozzarella, the spinach/onion mix, mushrooms, and sprinkled the tomatoes and olives on top . And then spooned globs of ricotta over that. Salt, pepper and red pepper flakes were last.
Bake for appx. 25 minutes, or until crust is brown.
This recipe screams for adaptations, substitutions, additions or subtractions. I was trying to use up what was in my fridge, and pizza is pretty much a blank slate. It's stupid easy to make, but for some reason people are always really impressed with homemade pizzas. So remember, kids, every once in a while it's ok to have a night in.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tour de Noodles
It has come to my attention that I eat a lot of noodles. Nobody really went out of their way to point this out to me, but in reviewing my diet this past week, I've noticed an abundance of pasta. I love me some carbs. I like bread, straight up. Rice is okay, too. I also live in fear that I will one day wake up and weigh 300 lbs. 
This is my version of Chinese Dan Dan noodles, which is basically an Asian version of spaghetti bolognese. Mine was mouth-inceratingly spicy, so tread lightly with hot bean sauce.
The finished product: goes well with beer.1/2 lb ground pork
1/2 cup peanut oil
1/4 cup chopped fresh ginger
1/4 cup chopped fresh garlic
2-3 tbsp hot bean sauce
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp rice vinegar
1/2 cup chopped scallions
1 lb fresh egg noodles
1 tsp sesame oil
Chop the pork into an even finer mince.
In a wok or heavy pan over high heat, heat peanut oil. Add ginger and garlic and stir briefly, about 20 seconds. Add the pork and stir 2-3 min to separate the grains, but do not brown.
Meanwhile, boil (unsalted) water for the pasta.
When the pork has separated and changed color, add the bean sauce, sugar, soy sauce and vinegar. Cook, stirring often, 3-4 min. When the pork has cooked through, turn off heat and stir in scallions.
Boil noodles 3 1/2- 5 min. Drain and toss with sesame oil. Serve with meat sauce.
1/2 cup peanut oil
1/4 cup chopped fresh ginger
1/4 cup chopped fresh garlic
2-3 tbsp hot bean sauce
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp rice vinegar
1/2 cup chopped scallions
1 lb fresh egg noodles
1 tsp sesame oil
Chop the pork into an even finer mince.
In a wok or heavy pan over high heat, heat peanut oil. Add ginger and garlic and stir briefly, about 20 seconds. Add the pork and stir 2-3 min to separate the grains, but do not brown.
Meanwhile, boil (unsalted) water for the pasta.
When the pork has separated and changed color, add the bean sauce, sugar, soy sauce and vinegar. Cook, stirring often, 3-4 min. When the pork has cooked through, turn off heat and stir in scallions.
Boil noodles 3 1/2- 5 min. Drain and toss with sesame oil. Serve with meat sauce.
It's your call on keeping the meat separate from the noodles. Whatever floats your boat. Also works well with peanuts, cucumbers, and/ or cilantro thrown in at the end.
Next up: Something a little lighter, perhaps, after all that pork. But I clearly have an Asian fixation. This is a Japanese dish called Otsu. It's ridiculously good, and one of the few things I actually follow a recipe for, unlike my ungodly Dan Dan concoction above. The recipe calls for tofu as the protein of choice, but I also like to use sliced avocado.
Tofu: My roommate likes it. I prefer avocado, aka "The Bacon of Fruit"
For the dressing:
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1-inch cube fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1 tablespoon honey
3/4 teaspoon cayenne
3/4 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup unseasoned brown rice vinegar
1/3 cup shoyu (soy) sauce
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
For the rest:
1 package soba noodles
1 package extra-firm tofu
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1/2 cucumber, roughly chopped
toasted sesame seeds for garnish
Recipe adapted from Heidi Swanson, 101cookbooks.com
The dressing for otsu is really what makes it. It's perfect for summertime, and I use the leftovers on top of salads, rice, and other bland things.The final leg: Something not Asian. Remember my first post, about garlic scapes? Yeah, I'm still pretty into them. Despite my initial hesitation, I ended up making scape pesto last week. It was actually too strong by itself (a shock, given my abrasive-taste tendencies), so I blended in a can of cannellini beans to make a sort of pesto/hummus/pasta sauce/ spread thing. I then put this multi-hyphenated spread on top of fettucini, along with a nice healthy handful (or two) of grated Parm, and fried up some sweet onions for texture on top. That's it. No recipe. You should be able to figure this one out.
The cannellini beans give these noodles a great creamy feel without actually using any cream (don't get me wrong--the cheese didn't hurt, but I'd like to think the healthful properties of beans made up for some of that dairy goodness).
And that is all in my Tour de Noodles--for this week, anyway.
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