Monday, December 9, 2013

Stir-Fry Chicken and Long Beans

This is a quick, easy, delicious recipe from my childhood friend's mother.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb ground chicken (ground chicken is sometimes difficult to find; you can ask the butcher to grind it for you)
  • lots of garlic
  • 1 red onion
  • 1 red pepper
  • 1 bunch long beans, diced (make sure that they're not sad and limp looking. If you have an Asian grocery store nearby, they probably have good bunches)
  • 1/2 bunch cilantro, leaves primarily, chopped (I don't care for cilantro, so I usually leave it out if I make it myself)
  • lime juice (1-2 limes)
  • nampla (fish sauce) to taste

Chop onion, red pepper, and garlic. Stir fry until soft. Add ground chicken. Cook until no longer pink. Add the diced long beans. Cook about 1-2 minutes until soft. Add cilantro, lime juice, and nampla.

Serve over rice.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Homemade Yogurt


If you don't already follow David Lebovitz's food blog, you definitely should.  His recipes are great and his writing is funny.  Sometimes his tales from traveling make me a bit jealous, but they're always packed with photos of delicious foods, so it works out.  This summer I read a post by David Lebovitz about homemade yogurt that encouraged me to try making it one more time.  I had tried making homemade yogurt in the past and those "yogurts" ranged from abysmal failures to things that tasted good, but had textures so unusual that we just couldn't make ourselves eat them no matter how hard we tried.  One of them almost needed to be cut with a knife if you wanted to take a bite!  

Peaches with homemade yogurt and homemade granola.  Makes you miss summer doesn't it?
I used his recipe and created my first truly successful batch of yogurt in June, and since then I've made 21 other batches.  Only two of those have failed, and the successes have been really great.  The only downside is that now we are hooked - none of the commercial yogurts seem quite good enough, and they're all monstrously expensive compared to homemade yogurt, which only costs about $0.25 per pound.

I've made a few minor tweaks to his recipe, but the recipe that I've been using is not complicated.  Since David Lebovitz's post gives plenty of detail, and I'm mostly just a fanboy giving him a shout-out, I'm not going to give very complicated instructions here:
  1. Sterilize some glass containers with boiling water
  2. Heat milk to 180 degrees F 
  3. Cool milk to 120 degrees F
  4. Add 1/4 C yogurt per 4 C of milk.  This is your starter culture.  
  5. Put milk/yogurt mixture into jars and keep them warm for about 10 hours, then refrigerate them.
Pretty simple, right?  You don't need much in terms of special equipment, just a pot, thermometer, some jars, and a cooler.  Other folks use different methods to keep the milk warm during step #5, but I've found that a cooler lined with beach towels works and is the most simple and reliable method.  One of my terrible failures in the past involved using the oven to keep the milk warm...

I took some pictures and a movie during my last batch and they're below.  Since I usually make one gallon batches nowadays, this is probably a bigger batch than you might want to try as your first shot at yogurt.  I've tried using expensive organic milk (about $6 per gallon) and the cheap milk from King Soopers (which is from CO) and from Safeway (both about $2 per gallon).  I really couldn't tell a difference between the two of them.  My Seattle self is condemning me as an environment-ruining selfish jerk right now, but oh well!  While you're figuring out which milk to buy, I should mention that we tried using skim milk or 2% a few times, but the texture was always a little strange, even when we added things like powdered milk (which, by the way, is expensive and makes homemade yogurt a bit less economical, if you choose to use it).  Using whole milk results in a pleasing texture and flavor and is definitely worth trying.  

Canning jars full of hot water.  I put a couple of these in the cooler while the milk is cooking to warm up the cooler.

Heating milk
Cooling milk in an ice bath

The yogurt starter culture just before mixing into the milk!  I like to mix it in with an immersion blender so that there aren't lumps.  If this is your first batch, your starter culture is probably a commercial yogurt.  I used Brown Cow Nonfat Vanilla as my starter culture because I liked its texture.  Choose any yogurt that you think has a good texture and use a fresh container so that it has a higher number of living yogurt bacteria.  After that first batch you can just use some of the yogurt from a previous batch as your starter, like I'm doing in the picture above.  Your texture probably won't be the same as the commercial yogurt because basically all of them add thickeners like gelatin, pectin, guar gum, etc. that you probably won't use.
Adding milk to jars.  In the middle of the video you'll see me spooning the froth out of the jars to make room for a little more milk, but you don't have to do this.  I mostly remove the froth so that I can fit the maximum amount of milk into the minimum number of jars - after all, our refrigerator is already too full :-)
Cooler full of milk (soon to be yogurt!).  The longer you let it ferment inside the cooler, the thicker the texture and tarter the flavor will be.  I usually set a timer for 10 or 12 hours so that I don't forget and leave it in overnight.  If you do that on accident, I think your yogurt would be fine, although it might be a bit more tart than most folks like...
You can strain your yogurt too if you prefer greek yogurt!  I found this cheap plastic strainer at the local Mexican grocery store and it works great!  If you don't have a strainer like this you can use a towel.  We like to stir flavorings in to our strained yogurt - cinnamon, honey, vanilla, fruit, etc.  Strained yogurt is also a great addition to lots of sauces and dressings, and when you make it at home like this it is practically free compared to the commercial equivalent!

















So, I wrote a lot more than I meant to, but if you have any unanswered questions about the process let me know.  Also, if you try making yogurt like this let me know how it goes!

~Joe

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Spaghetti Squash with Shrimp Scampi

I think I've mentioned this, but it is squash season. That's basically all you can get at the Boulder Farmer's Market at this point in the season. And while I like squash, sometimes you need to do something different with it. Enter spaghetti squash with shrimp scampi.


Ingredients
Spaghetti Squash
Shrimp (number of shrimp depends on the size)
Cherry Tomatoes, halved
Garlic
Butter/Olive oil
Lemon
Artichoke hearts (optional)
Parmesan Cheese

First, roast your spaghetti squash. Pre-heat the oven to 425-450 degrees F. Poke some holes in it with a knife and stick the whole thing in the oven on a baking sheet covered in tinfoil and let it roast for about an hour. The skin should be easy to pierce when it's done. Take it out, cut it in half, and fork out the insides so that it looks like noodles.

To make the shrimp scampi, sautee your shrimp in garlic and butter (I also added some olive oil) until they turn pink. When they're done, remove from the heat, and squeeze the juice of your lemon over the shrimp. Toss the squash and tomatoes in with the shrimp and the sauce. You can also add the artichoke hearts now, if you're using them. It's now ready to eat. Add lots of Parmesan cheese, and you have a squash dish that isn't too squash-y. We had it with a side of crusty bread, but this dish is Paleo (if you use olive oil instead of butter)/Gluten free without it.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Sugar Beets

Apparently sugar beets are a big crop in the Longmont, CO area.  I noticed them loading some trucks full of sugar beets on my way to and from work and my curiosity was piqued.  What was this mysterious vegetable that wasn't sold in supermarkets or farmers markets?  Did it really taste like sugar?  Why was it so huge?  Did it taste like a beet at all?  My obsession with trying new ingredients took over and lets just say that I "obtained" a sugar beet, which is pictured below.  It was about one foot long, but I forgot to weigh it!


 After peeling and cutting, the vegetable looked a lot prettier and less intimidating:


I looked for recipes online and most of them suggested that sugar beets were too bitter to eat plain, but could be turned into a molasses-like syrup by chopping them finely and boiling them in water.  I used the food processor to grate the sugar beet into shoestrings:


 I tasted the beet at this point, and was shocked to find that it was pretty tasty!  Imagine a beet crossed with daikon radish, or something else very crispy, and infused with a strong sugary sweetness.  I think they would actually be pretty nice sprinkled over a savory salad.  I saved a few spoonfuls and nibbled on them as the day went by.  The shredded beets and some water went into a pot and I put them on the stove:

Once things started boiling I simmered the mixture for about 90 minutes, until the vegetables were soft and the liquid was sweet:


Then I filtered out the beet strips and did a second filtration through a coffee filter to remove the last few particles.


After filtering I reduced the clear liquid to a thick syrup, which took around 30 minutes.


This is the syrup that I obtained (I know it is a little scary-looking).  It is in a 1 cup canning jar, so obviously there isn't a lot of it!  The flavor is good though - not really like molasses...closer to the sweet liquor that you get from malted barley when making beer.  Perhaps this will be a good ingredient in some fall-themed cocktails...


I think it would be pretty hard to argue that sugar beets are a more economical source of sugar, given the low price of cane sugar.  But, it was fun to get acquainted with a new vegetable.  Does anyone reading this have recipes for sugar beets or experience eating or cooking with them?

Stuffed Delicata Squash

Fall is here, and so are squash. Carl an I got a delicata squash from the farmer's market the other day. I had heard you could eat the skin (not that you can't in a regular squash, but the delicata skin is supposed to be actually tasty), so we decided to get one and try it. We stuffed it with a wild rice stuffing.

Ingredients
Delicata Squash
For the Stuffing
Wild Rice
Broth or Water
Celery
Carrots
Leeks (or onions, or shallots, or...)
Garlic
Pine Nuts

Assembly Instruction
To assemble, you'll want to cook the wild rice stuffing separately before putting it in the squash. Wild rice takes about an hour to prepare, so plan accordingly.
1. Put olive oil in the bottom of a pot, enough to cover the bottom. Add garlic and leeks, and sautee until the leeks are soft. Add the celery and carrots, and continue stirring until they are soft. Add the rice, stir to coat in olive oil, and then follow the instructions on the wild rice package for how much to use and how much to cook.
2. Once the rice is about half-way done, you can pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees F and start prepping the squash. To do that, cut the squash in half and remove the seeds.
3. About five minutes before the rice is done, stir in the pine nuts. When the rice is done cooking, portion it into the squash. You may have leftovers that don't fit in the squash, that's fine. You can serve it on the side or save it for later.
4. Bake squash for 25-30 minutes. It'll be done when it's easily piercable with a fork or knife.

As I mentioned above, you can eat the peel. Carl didn't like it. I found it pretty bland. It definitely didn't add anything to the dish, for me.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup


 adapted from Modernist Cuisine at Home by Nathan Myhrvold

We recently got a pressure cooker and have been finding every excuse to use it.  I was pretty skeptical before we owned one, but they really are amazing.  Our model is an electric model made by InstantPot.  At first we were worried about finding a place to put it, since our kitchen is pretty small, but it turns out that having it away from the stove is great because it frees up a burner on the stove.  This recipe uses the pressure cooker in a few ways and all but one of them are awesome!

Ingredients
  • 1/2 gallon chicken stock, preferably homemade (in a pressure cooker, if you have one!)
  • 2 precooked chicken breasts, chopped
  • 7 or 8 medium carrots, ends removed, then steamed and chopped
  • 4 small leeks, white parts only, sliced almost in half and rinsed to remove grit, then steamed and chopped
  • 4 ounces cooked fingerling potatoes, cooked
  • 1/2 recipe fresh pasta (50:50 all purpose and semolina flours) cut into the shape of your choice, or about 8 to 12 ounces of dried noodles.

A few months ago we rented Nathan Myhrvold's book Modernist Cuisine at Home from the library.  The recipes range from simple to ultra-complicated, but most of them use some kind of non-standard technique or strange gadget to achieve a unique result.  A lot of recipes use a pressure cooker, which is a big reason that we chose to buy ours.

Chickeny Ingredients
The modernist cuisine recipe for chicken stock is great because it creates a full-flavored stock in only 1.5 hours of cooking time.  When I've made stock in the past it simmered on the stove for 4 to 7 hours, so this was a big improvement! The chicken breasts in this recipe are from a grocery store rotisserie chicken.  I don't really understand it, but they are usually cheaper than raw chickens, so we buy them now and then and use the carcass to make stock.
Noodles
Emily's dad gave us a pasta roller for christmas a couple of years ago and believe it or not, we actually use it semi-frequently.  The texture of the noodles is superior to store-bought pasta, and, perhaps equally important in my book: you can make noodles as thick as you want!  We created pretty thick noodles for this soup so that they would have a very chewy texture.  You can make the dough in a food processor, which only takes about 1 minute.  The dough needs to rest for 30 to 60 minutes, and then rolling and cutting it takes about 5 minutes.  So, as long as you aren't in a time crunch, it really doesn't take that much extra "active" time to make homemade pasta.  We are surprised by how easy it is just about every time we made homemade pasta.
Vegetables
We cooked our potatoes by poaching them in a mixture of chicken fat and bacon fat that we had leftover from other recipes.  Our potatoes were quite small - about the size of kalamata olives - so we didn't even need to chop them.  The potatoes are in a jar because we did the poaching inside the pressure cooker, according to a recipe from Modernist Cuisine.  The cooking technique is kind of like using a water bath - the hot steam in the pressure cooker heats the canning jar and the oil is supposed to flavor the potatoes.  I don't think they really ended up with that much extra flavor -  Boiled potatoes would probably be indistinguishable and a lot less work.  The carrots and leeks were steamed for 5 minutes in the pressure cooker, then removed and chopped into bite-size niblets.
Assembly
The stock was brought to a boil on the stove, then the chicken, peas, and noodles were added.  Fresh pasta cooks a lot faster, and ours were done in about 5 minutes.  The hot potatoes, carrots, and leeks were added and it was dinner time.  We got excited to take a picture, but our new camera was out of batteries!  We snapped a couple of photos on our phones, which basically get the point across.  :-)



Joe



Monday, October 21, 2013

A Taste of Fall!

I eat yogurt basically every day for lunch. In the fall, I like to get apple butter from my local farm and mix a bit of it in plain yogurt and eat that. It's a nice way to sweeten the yogurt without having to chop up lots of fruit.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

An Ode to the Sandwich Press

Sandwiches are all over the blogosphere this week, thanks to one woman's quest for an engagement ring. Now, the debate as to whether she's a marraige-obssessed harpy kowtowing to regressive gender politics or a business savvy woman who's blatant ploy to grab a book deal is transparently obvious is outside the purview of this blog. However, sandwiches themselves are totally on topic!



I normally eat sandwiches for lunch every day, and have since elementary school. They're easy to make, and have endless variations. Sometimes I get fancy and eat cheese and fruit for lunch, but I love a good sandwich. And since I've been working from home, I get to use my sandwich press! I didn't use it that much in Boston, since my kitchen was tiny, but now I have tons of counter space and the press sits prominently on the counter, rather than on the bottom shelf of my kitchen rack. I feel like the simple act of pressing the sandwich really elevates it. The sandwich press can also be used as an impromptu grill. I've made hamburgers on it, and last week grilled some corn up. It's so versatile!




Thursday, June 6, 2013

CHOCOLATE COVERED STRAWBERRIES



I brought my favorite last-minute dessert to a function this week and someone asked for the recipe.  I was just going to refer them to this blog but I was surprised that I had never actually posted this.  So, here it is.

Ingredients

Fresh strawberries
Molding chocolate

The most important part of this recipe is the "tricks".  They are easy enough to follow, but if you don't know them you can possibly be disappointed with the results.

1.  Fresh strawberries - Ideally you do this on the day you buy the strawberries.  But let's get real - who ever does that?  So you can wash them and store them in an airtight container in between paper towels.  The longer you wait to use them, the worse the results will be.  So I try to use them no later than the next day.  Bring the strawberries to room temperature for the best results.
2.  Chocolate - The better the chocolate the better the results.  Molding chocolate has some kind of "emulsifier" that makes it more waxy.  If yours is too thick and is not coating the berries the way that you like, just add some solid shortening to it until it is the way you like it.  Start with a tablespoon.  If it gets too runny, just add more chocolate.
3.  I buy chocolate in bulk.  Although your initial outlay may seem a lot ($30-80), that can last for years and it is at your fingertips when you need to make something at the last minute.  If you have a choice, get it with 3 "drips" (marking on the package).  If it is not available locally, you can get it online from Surfas (www.culinarydistrict.com).  The molding chocolate is Callebaut.  Store in a cool place.  If it separates (areas of paleness) you can still use it.  It is not bad and the color becomes even when you remelt it.
4.  Use a double boiler to melt the chocolate.  If you don't have one, then make one by putting a smaller pot in a larger one.  Just make sure that the water does not touch the bottom of the smaller pot.  Don't be skimpy with the amount of chocolate you melt.
5.  Put them down to dry.  Parchment paper works best, but you can use wax paper or tinfoil.  It takes 30-60 minutes to dry in a cool room.  Better not to put them in a refrigerator because the chocolate can be uneven.
6.  Take the leftover chocolate in the pot and put it in a container to harden.  Yo


Now, just dip the strawberries.  Do it with no one around otherwise you will find that they will never make it to your function.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Quick and Easy Tomato Sauce

Last Monday was Earth Day. It was also Meatless Monday. Reducing meat consumption is a great way to help combat climate change, so I try to stick to having vegetarian meals on Monday. I whipped this up in about 15 minutes. For one serving, I took the leftover canned tomatoes that I had in the freezer (about two whole tomatoes, plus some sauce) plus half of a fresh tomato and heated them in a pot with some minced garlic, a little olive oil, and some basil leaves. The tomatoes were broken down pretty well, but I decided to give them a mix with the immersion blender to make the sauce even smoother. You can serve this with basically any pasta. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese (the real kind, not the crap from Kraft), add a nice slice of crusty bread, and voila! You have a simple, easy meal that's entirely meatless and vegan if you forgo the cheese. Delicious!

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Cabbage Soup

Cold weather is upon us here in Boston, which means soup. I actually made this soup the day before Sandy came to Boston, as I still had quite a bit of cabbage left from my Farmer's box. This cabbage was huge. I wish I had a picture. It was actually half of a head of cabbage, and it weighed in at 5 lb 14 oz, making the entire cabbage ~12 lbs. Craziness. So, with all this cabbage I needed to do something. I called my mom, and she told me to e-mail my aunt for the recipe for my great-grandmother's cabbage soup. Here it is. I'm transcribing it from a handwritten recipe, so I'll try to leave the idiosyncrasies in. I think it was written down by my grandmother, based on the bizarre underlining, but it's legible so I'm not sure.

1 large head cabbage (4 or 5 lbs) (n.b. my pot could only hold 4 lbs)
4 or 5 medium boiling potatoes
1 pint heavy sour cream
3 sour salt chips, which is called sour salt (can only be bought in a Jewish store) (n.b. Despite living in Brookline, which is home to quite a few Jews, I couldn't find sour salt. The internet told me it was citric acid, so I just used a lemon)
6 very large size onions
1 tablespoon or more salt (to taste) (6-8 qt size pot)

Shred cabbage with knife (not fine) and put into large pot with (more than to cover) water

While that is boiling peel potatoes and insert right in pot in quarters

While this is boiling brown onions VERY brown (n.b. this is excessively underlined) with LOTS (n.b. again, very underlined) of butter and when real brown pour in the sour cream (something illegible) and on LOW FLAME (n.b. again, underlined, you don't want to curdle the sour cream) mix all liquid.

These are my onions. They're pretty brown, but I got bored. Getting your onions really brown takes quite a while. I think this was after 30 minutes.

Merge together very well until no liquid in pan.

Pour back into soup. Not a high flame (or cream will curdle), but low simmer. (Scrape all brown from pan and pour into soup). Remove the potatoes and smash and insert in soup.

Add sour salt to taste (one nice size or 2 small ones) just to give it a little tart and cook one hour.

All in all about 2 hours of cooking time.

My soup. I toasted some rye break to go with it.