A Passover Feast!

For Passover, I try and keep Kosher. As someone of Ashkenazi descent, this means no grains, no rice, no corn, no legumes, and no string beans. Given that everything these days is made with soybean oil and corn syrup, this gets difficult. Why do I do this, since I'm not technically Jewish nor am I ver religious one way or the other? I don't know; I take it as a personal challenge. Luckily, quinoa is not a grain. It is actually a grass, just like wild rice. The first night of Passover, things went really well in my quest to keep Kosher. I made a nice salmon with quinoa and broccoli, so here it is!



Start by cooking the quinoa. This can be done over the stove or in a rice cooker. I used a rice cooker, and then towards the end, I put the broccoli florets in the steamer basket. Make sure you use fresh broccoli, not the old stuff in the back of your vegetable crisper. That's what I did, and it brought the dish down. After the quinoa and broccoli were done, I mixed them together and added some red wine vinegar. Don't forget salt! I sometimes do, and this could have used it.

Now for the salmon. This was the highlight of the meal. I tried a little experiment, and made an impromptu grill on my stove. I have a tortilla warmer, which I heated over a burner and then wrapped the fish in tinfoil and put it on the warmer. You could also do this in the broiler. It should take about 15-20 min for the fish to cook through, depending. I like my salmon a little on the rare side, so I think I had it cooking about 7 min on a side.



I used tinfoil for easy clean up, but it's not necessary. First, I rubbed some olive oil into the fish, and then sprinkled it with salt and pepper. I also sliced up some onion, and sprinkled some minced garlic on, as well as some dried Italian herbs. If you have fresh herbs, those would be better. Since I had some parsley, I also tossed some springs in the package. If you have a lemon, that adds a tangy flavor to the salmon. You can get creative with what you put on the fish. Once I had it seasoned to my liking, I wrapped it up and tossed it on the "grill."

While I was waiting for the fish to cook, I assembled the quinoa and broccoli.

After this meal, my attempts at keeping Kosher became less than successful. Oh, well. There's always next year!

Book Review: "Quick and Easy Tofu Cookbook"

My mom got me this book (by Yukiko Moriyama) for Christmas, and I've been enjoying it. It's a bit dated (who uses the word Oriental anymore?), and some of the recipes are kind of out there, but it's also got some great ones. They are also very quick, and very easy. They don't require much prep work, and most of the ingredients are pantry staples. Heat up some rice in the rice cooker, and get to work on the meal. The rice will probably take longer. All the recipes are illustrated with photos, and all the ingredients are shown in a photo as well. This can be seen in the image below, although it's kind of blurry.



I've made the above recipe, Chinese Style Tofu with Red Pepper Sauce" a few times now, and it's come out great. I do the curry variation, because I really like curry.

Chinese Style Tofu with Red Pepper Sauce, adapted from Quick and Easy Tofu Cookbook



Ingredients (I've halved the recipe, since the original calls for 24 oz tofu, which is a lot for one person):
1 block tofu, cubed
1/4-1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 cup green onion, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (or 1 fresh red chili pepper)
Oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 tsp curry powder
2 tablespoons cooking wine
1/2 cup stock (bullion cubes are fine)
1 tablespoon cornstarch, dissolved in 1/4 cup water
Peas (the recipe calls for three tablespoons, but I usually put in more)

While you're assembling the dish, put some rice (brown or white) in the rice cooker to serve alongside the tofu.

Take the cubed tofu and dip it into hot water for 30 seconds (I don't know what this step does), and drain well.

Heat the oil in a wok; add ginger, green onions, garlic, and red pepper and stir-fry.

Add the ground beef and stir-fry; add 1/2 tablespoon of soy sauce and reduce heat to medium. Add the curry, the rest of the soy sauce, the wine, and the stock. Bring to a boil. Add cornstarch mixture, and stir. At this point, I also like to squirt some sriracha in, but it's probably not necessary.

Add tofu and peas; simmer until thick.

Serve with rice. This lasted me 2-3 days.

Popcorn!

In Irvine, I had an air popper. When I moved, I didn't want to take it with me, but I still bought real popcorn, and not the microwave stuff. One of my friends makes it by putting it in a paper bag, folding the bag over tight, and putting it in the microwave. I have yet to try that. But I have been making it on the stovetop. The nice thing about this is that nearly every kernel in the pot pops. Even with the air popper, I got a lot of unpopped corn. It only takes about 5 extra minutes (so about 10, total). All you need is a large pot with a lid (the lid is key), and the possibilities for flavors are endless. So far I've made kettle corn (pictured), and savory popcorn with salt, pepper, and dried herbs. Here's the general idea.



1. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil or butter in a large pot. For kettle corn, I think butter is better; for savory, olive oil.
2. As the butter melts/the oil heats, add your flavoring. For kettle corn, a sprinkling of sugar goes in now. Unfortunately, I haven't quite figured out how to keep the sugar from caramelizing, so you get kind of a burnt taste to the kettle corn.
3. Once the butter is melted/the oil is hot, add a quarter cup of popping corn to the pot and cover it. Shake the pot as much as you can while still keeping it over the heat. It takes a few minutes for the popping to start, and once it does it takes about 2-3 minutes for all the kernels to pop.

The Rice Cooker

I used to not like the rice cooker. I actually burnt rice trying to cook rice in it, so I was suspicious. Instead, I used a pot and boiled my rice in the pot. However, I have finally figured out how to use a rice cooker successfully, and it is now one of the most used items in my kitchen. The one i have also has a steamer basket, which makes steaming things a snap. The downside, however, is that to get the rice cooker to work, you have to use at minimum one scoop of rice, which is about three servings. That's where I was getting tripped up before, because I was trying to make one serving of rice, which doesn't really work. If you only want one serving of rice, use a pot. However, if you have space, invest in a rice cooker! It means that watching the rice is one less thing you'll have to worry about while cooking.

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Sauce

Previously, I wrote about my pasta dish and how it needed a good sauce. I found one. It's a carbonara. Super simple.

Carbonara Sauce
2 Eggs
Parmesan cheese (grated to taste)
Pepper

In a bowl, beat the eggs and add the cheese and pepper. Mix. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it, then toss the egg mixture in. Mix, but don't let the egg scramble. Don't be concerned about raw egg--the heat from the pasta cooks the egg so that you won't get sick. I used this sauce tonight for a simple pasta dish of tortellini, broccoli, peas, and spinach. I cooked the tortellini, broccoli, and peas together in the same pot, drained it, threw in the spinach, added the sauce, and mixed. The whole thing took about 20 minutes. A perfect dinner for an exciting Friday night of studying for finals.

N.B. Generally a carbonara sauce has pancetta mixed into the pasta. If you don't have pancetta, you can use bacon. I didn't have either, and it turned out fine.

A Lesson in Baking

I made a cake for Carl's thesis defense. Actually, I tend to make cakes fairly regularly, and one of the problems I frequently have is that the cake sticks to the pan after it's baked, even if I butter and flour the pan. This was particularly frustrating with Carl's cake, because I wanted it to be perfect. So, there were two lessons here. The first is to butter the pan, and then cut a round (or whatever the shape of your pan is) piece of parchment paper for the bottom. The cake will just slide right out. If you forget that step, lesson two is that copious amounts of frosting can fix anything. Well, almost anything. If it comes out in crumbs there's probably no saving it. I also wanted to show you pictures of my pretty cake.