Archive for April, 2009
This morning upon waking (and the alarm was so cranked and so sudden it jolted the million dollar idea I had brewing right out of my head) my gut instantly ordered up two Easter Creme Eggs over easy, with a side of candied bacon, toasted hot crossed buns and a latte. For elevenses, perhaps some mini eggs and Hershey’s kisses. Easter withdrawl bites.
So I got up and ate a banana, and grabbed a cheater latte from Starbucks en route to CBC (tall Americano in a grande cup – fill with milk – almost a latte, but half the price). But instantly upon arriving, a co-worker walked up to me with a pan of brownies. With chocolate frosting. His wife really wanted me to try them. You know, to give my opinion. What could I do? Really, it would be impolite to turn him down. So that’s how I came to have chocolate before 8 am on the morning after Easter weekend.
It was a slippery slope from there. When I did my piece and got the chance to leave early at the very same time friends called to ask me to go for muffins and lattes at Cafe Rosso, I went. Everyone knows that socializing is good for your health, right? Even the rich and famous and obviously very knowledgeable Dr. Oz said so on Oprah last week. So really, it was akin to going to the gym. My membership ran out anyway. So that brings us to 10:30. Two lattes (one real), a muffin and a brownie.
Hypocrite that I am I spent the rest of the day telling W that candy was not good for him and he could have an apple for a snack, whilst reaching up to the stash of Lindt chocolate eggs on top of the fridge.
But I did have a fairly adequate dinner. Last night as I was doing dishes I put a pot on to boil some noodles – fettuccine, only because there was a bit lingering in a tall glass canister that has been taking up prime counter space for too long, and although I have nothing against fettuccine, I never actually make it – so that I would have no excuse today to not make quick peanut noodles with plenty of vegetables. I already had a jar of peanut sauce in the fridge, and some pea pods, although I would have preferred asparagus. I always like cutting carrots into ribbons with a vegetable peeler when they are to be consumed along with noodles, and I love slivered red peppers. I generally prefer peanut noodles with leftover roasted chicken (or one from the deli), but a few shrimp from the freezer work too. If they’re still raw, you can throw them in the pot with the noodles for the last minute or so of cooking time, and drain the whole thing together in the colander. It’s a great way to blanch any veg that are going in as well.
Tomorrow, I am determined to get through the day without one bite of chocolate. (Should be simple, considering I ate it all today. I had to shut it up somehow.)
Peanut Sauce
Peanut sauce is a wonderful thing. Double the recipe (leftovers keep well) if you want extra to pour over cold noodles or dip satay, lettuce wraps, rice paper rolls, grilled chicken or shrimp. Use more or less broth to make the sauce as thick or thin as you like. If you like coconut flavor in your peanut sauce but not the saturated fat it contains, add a teaspoon of coconut extract.
2-4 Tbsp. chicken or veggie broth or coconut milk
1/4 cup peanut butter (preferably the just-peanuts kind, but any will work)
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. brown sugar or honey
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar or lime juice
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger
1 tsp. sesame oil (optional)
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. curry paste (optional)
Combine all the ingredients in a blender or jar and whiz or shake until smooth. Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve it. Makes about a cup.
Per tablespoon: 26 calories, 1 g total fat (0.2 g saturated fat, 0.5 g monounsaturated fat, 0.4 g polyunsaturated fat), 0.7 g protein, 3.9 g carbohydrate, 0 mg cholesterol, 0 g fiber. 35% calories from fat
One Year Ago: Ground Lamb with Peas and Yogurt (Keema Matar)
April 14 2009 | one dish and pasta and vegetarian | 20 Comments »
Remember the Lentils with Sweet Potatoes and Chard that made a batch far bigger than we could handle in one night? (Or even two, having had leftovers for lunch the next day?) It turned into a mighty fine soup – better than its original incarnation, I think. I quickly cooked up an onion, a chubby clove of garlic and two leafy stalks of celery in a bit of oil, threw in a small chunk of chopped salty ham left over from yesterday, the rest of the lentil-sweet potato stuff (about 3 cups) and a 1L tetra pack of chicken stock. It was fantastic, particularly with the last of the cheese biscuits, which toward the end I started dropping in chunks into the soup and then scooping out with a spoon. I made too many yesterday – 32, once I counted – but better to have too much food than not enough, right? Anyone should be able to mix up a quick batch of cheese biscuits – there is nothing better with a steaming bowl of soup, stew, or chili. And they make pretty fab fried-egg-and-bacon sandwiches, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Parmesan Biscuits
You can get away with using about half the fat, if you like – 2 tablespoons of each – but you may have to bump up the milk just a bit. These would also be fab with bits of chopped, cooked ham and green onion stirred in. Add it to the dry ingredients before adding the milk.
2 cups all-purpose flour (or use half all-purpose, half whole wheat)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup canola or olive oil
3/4 cup milk (any kind – 1%, 2% or cream)
Preheat the oven to 400F. In a bowl or food processor, combine the flour, Parmesan cheese and baking powder. (You won’t need to add salt, since the Parmesan cheese is so salty itself.) Add the butter and oil and pulse or stir with a fork or pastry blender until crumbly, with bits no bigger than the size of a pea. If you’re using a food processor, dump the mixture out into a bowl.
Add the milk and stir just until the dough comes together. Pat into a 1″ thick circle on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray, and cut into 8 wedges. If you like, brush the tops with a little milk (this will make them brown nicely.) Pull them apart, spacing them at least 1″ from each other on the sheet, and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden.
Makes 8 biscuits.
One Year Ago: No-knead Bread and Homemade Butter
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April 13 2009 | bread and freezable and soup | 11 Comments »
Oh, but the churros. It was an unplanned but very much welcome addition to our Easter brunch-slash-Easter egg hunt. It’s a good thing I had a crowd to pawn them off on, or I would have cooked up the rest of the batter and eaten them all myself, and then exploded like that guy in The Meaning of Life.
It’s not like I was a closet churro addict before. I can’t even remember where I’ve ever had them. But I am aware that they are in fact fried dough rolled in cinnamon sugar, and that’s enough information for me. As it turns out they really aren’t more complex than that, and don’t need to be.
I dug up a few recipes, and decided to go with a version made with choux pastry, a flour-butter-milk mixture that is so much easier than its name implies. Ironically, this afternoon after saying goodbye to the last of our friends and ingesting the final churro (and a couple waffles with butter and syrup, for good measure) I went and plopped myself on the bed (wasn’t physically able to do much more than digest at that point) and opened up a recent issue of Saveur – to a page with a churro recipe. They were made with orange juice and self-rising flour – very different – but I can’t imagine getting any better than these. The choux pastry makes them amazingly light, and crisp, and everything I imagine a churro should be. (I imagine some recipes might produce cakey churros, like a cake donut vs. a cruller.) You use a pastry bag with a large star tip to give them their shape – or if you only have the tips and have long lost the bag, snip off a corner of a large ziplock freezer bag and reinforce the connection with some electrical tape. Works a charm. The batter puffs up as it cooks, opening up and becoming light and airy – I never tired of watching them cook.
Remember the mini donuts I made last Stampede? These, I think, are better. And easier than cutting out all those little ‘nuts – you just squeeze the batter right into the hot oil. And are people ever impressed that O.M.G. you made homemade churros.
But their delicious pulchritude can backfire: my poor sister was determined today to get past her weight loss plateau. She went for two extra-long walks today, and ate well, and read a Weight Watchers magazine (hey, thinking thin helps). Then she came to my parents’ house for dinner, and I walked in with a bowl of fresh churros, and she ate the whole thing. I’m not sure she’ll forgive me anytime soon. But then again maybe she will, because I can make homemade churros.
Homemade churros! And really, they are not hard at all. If you want a visual of choux pastry, there are lots of batter pics here.
Homemade Churros
Batter:
1 cup milk or water
1/4 cup butter
2 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup flour
4 large eggs
canola oil, for frying
cinnamon sugar (spike granulated sugar generously with ground cinnamon)
In a medium saucepan, bring the milk, butter, sugar and salt to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium-low, add the flour, and stir vigorously by hand until the dough comes together in a smooth ball that cleans the sides of the pot. Transfer to a bowl and let cool for about 10 minutes.
Using an electric mixer, beat in the eggs one at a time. You’ll end up with a sort of smooth, shiny, sticky batter that’s thicker than pancake batter but thinner than cookie dough. If you like, you can let it sit at room temperature for an hour, or refrigerate for up to 24 hours, until you’re ready for it.
When you’re ready to cook your churros, heat 2-3 cups of canola oil in a pot until hot but not smoking – test to see if it’s ready by dipping a bit of bread in – it should bubble and simmer around the bread. Spoon the batter into a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip, and squeeze a few inches at a time into the oil, nudging the batter off with a knife. Don’t crowd the pot – cook maybe 3 or 4 at a time, flipping them as necessary as they turn golden. They should take a few minutes to cook – test to make sure they are cooked through (if they brown too quickly they might not – just turn the heat down). Transfer to paper towels to drain any excess oil.
In a shallow bowl, combine the cinnamon and sugar. Roll the churros around in it to coat them well while they are still warm. Eat.
Makes lots (a few dozen, depending on how long you make them.)
The ham was just your typical one, brushed with a mixture of equal parts grainy mustard, balsamic vinegar and brown sugar. Cook for 15 minutes per pound at 350; really you’re just heating it through. The absolute easiest thing to serve to a crowd: everyone loves it (except the vegetarians) and it doesn’t matter one bit if it gets cold. Just put the whole thing on the table, right on the cutting board, with a knife.
I figured cheese biscuits would be the best thing to go with ham, and something small children could run around with. I made too many. Again, not really a problem. (Unless you want to not be eating biscuits.)
One Year Ago: Bison Pepperoni Pizzas
April 12 2009 | dessert and snacks | 25 Comments »
A surprise birthday party tonight for the wife of a friend, and I cooked. Mexican theme. Chili pulled pork (in the CrockPot) straight up and turned into mini pizzas on little pitas. Stuffed jalapeño poppers, chili-lime peanuts, beef empanadas (little half-moon pastries), quesadillas with beans and queso fresco, and angel food cake with berries and cream. And something I have been waiting for an excuse to make for a very long time – homemade churros. If you’ve only ever had them at Costco, the homemade version, made with a simple choux pastry piped into hot canola oil using the large star tip of a pastry bag and then doused while warm in cinnamon sugar, is to the Costco ones what, I don’t know, the very best chocolate chip cookies are to a generic packaged kind.
I’d love to tell you about them, but there will be more tomorrow morning at our Easter egg hunt, so I’ll save it. And seeing as it’s almost midnight, I can hardly keep my eyes open and I lost count of how many people (with their kids) are coming for brunch tomorrow, and I’m still not really sure what I’m making except that I missed the boat on my orange-chocolate hot crossed buns, I’m going to bed.
But if you are a fan of jalapeños and cheese (I have never been a fan of jalapeños, but I’ve been recently converted) these are a fun party food.
Jalapeño Poppers
6 good-sized fresh jalapeño peppers
1/2 – 8 oz. (250 g) pkg. light cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup grated old cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese
1/2 tsp. ground cumin (optional)
2 large eggs
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
salt and pepper
1-1 1/2 cups Panko (crunchy Japanese breadcrumbs), or fine dry breadcrumbs
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Cut the jalapeños in half lengthwise and remove the seeds and membranes. (Rubber gloves are never a bad idea.)
In a small bowl, stir together the cream cheese, cheddar and cumin. Stuff the jalapeño halves with the cheese mixture – they will be overflowing! That’s OK. When I do this, I take a bit of cheese in my hand and roll it into a rough cylinder, then press it into the pepper.
Get three shallow dishes. In one, beat the eggs with a fork. In another, combine the flour, salt and pepper. In the third put the Panko or breadcrumbs.
One at a time, dredge the jalapeños in flour, then in the beaten egg, and then into the crumbs, pressing to coat well. Place the coated peppers, cut side up, on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray.
Bake for about 30 minutes, until golden and bubbly. Serve immediately. Makes 12 poppers.
Per popper: 87 calories, 3.6 g total fat (1.7 g saturated fat, 1.2 g monounsaturated fat, 0.3 g polyunsaturated fat), 4 g protein, 9.5 g carbohydrate, 43.2 mg cholesterol, 0.5 g fiber. 37% calories from fat
One Year Ago: Curried Lentil & Sweet Potato Soup and Chipotle Peanut Pork Chili
April 11 2009 | appetizers | 7 Comments »
No, not together. (Mike just peeked over my shoulder and said “ew, that sounds disgusting.”)
I think this has been one of my best days ever, to date. The only improvement might have been a nap and/or sleep in (went to bed at 1, Lou desperately wanted out at 3:30, and again at 4, and W was up at 6:30). I spent hours this morning at Beano lingering over coffee (a latte, then a mocha made with Bernard Callebaut chocolate) with s revolving door of friends – old and new, coming to collect sourdough starter. Stopped at the Greek grocery store for shredded kafati (phyllo pastry) to make nests (even though the Mini Eggs are long gone) and at the Mexican grocer’s for queso fresco (fresh cheese) for a Mexican-themed birthday party I’m cooking for tomorrow night.
Came home, pulled on my wellies and dove right into clearing out the yard. Both neighbours were out chatting over the fence as we raked up layers of squishy apples and dog poo, and the remnants of what appears to have once been a Nerf soccer ball and several hundred small plastic toys. But underneath all the crap we found green shoots poking through. Strawberries coming back. And chives. We burned old leaves and dried-out pea plants and paper and twigs, I got a blister from raking, and W ran naked (except for his rubber boots) through puddles. I cleared a new space out back for rhubarb. We all got much-needed doses of vitamin D. Lunch off the porch was green pea hummus scooped up with torn chunks of canopy-sized whole wheat pita I picked up at Kalamata grocery, washed down with berry smoothie (W), Grasshopper Pale Ale (M) and icy Prosecco (me). (Did you know you can buy it in individual-serving bottles? OK, it might be two servings, but enough for me to pop the top and drink straight from the bottle in the back yard. I’m not a beer fan.)
Green Pea Hummus
When adding green peas to hummus you could use leftovers or quickly cook them, but today I threw them in and let them thaw in the food processor before adding everything else, and it worked just fine.
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can chick peas (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
1/2-1 cup frozen peas, thawed
2 Tbsp. tahini (sesame seed paste) or peanut butter
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 garlic cloves, peeled
juice of 1 lemon (or 2-3 Tbsp.)
1/2 tsp. cumin
salt to taste
2-4 Tbsp. olive oil
Put the chick peas, peas, tahini, yogurt, garlic, lemon juice, cumin and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until pureed. With the motor running, drizzle in the olive oil until it’s smooth and has the texture you want. If it’s too thick, add a little extra oil, yogurt or water.
Taste and adjust seasonings (salt, pepper, lemon juice, tahini) to your taste. Serve with fresh or toasted pita chips and/or fresh vegetables. Makes about 2 cups.
And then we came in, bathed and made pink popcorn. When I was a kid, we had a very 70s cookbook of “popcorn cookery” that contained disgusting recipes for popcorn cereal and crushed popcorn “shake n’ bake” chicken. But it also had a recipe for something called popcorn pastels; fruity candied popcorn made in rainbow colours using Jell-O powder. I loved popcorn pastels. I still think of it once in awhile, and so this year when I found wee candy bags with bunnies on them at the dollar store, I became determined to make pink popcorn to fill them with for our Easter egg hunt.
It must be pink popcorn though, not blue or green, and not popcorn balls, which are harder on the teeth and tend to lose their appeal halfway through. You can’t munch on them like popcorn – by biting into one you make a commitment to finish it, whether or not it’s a good idea.
Pink Popcorn
You can use any red Jell-O powder for this; I tried cherry and raspberry and liked raspberry better, although cherry was a paler pink.
Lots of popped popcorn – a big bowl (around 15 cups or so)
2 cups sugar
1/2 small box red Jell-O gelatin powder
1/2 cup water
1 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. baking soda
Put the popped popcorn in a large bowl, carefully picking out any unpopped kernels. (I do this by popping into one bowl, then lightly scooping out the popcorn with my hands into another, leaving the unpopped kernels in the bottom.) Preheat the oven to 250F. Line one or two rimmed baking sheets with foil.
In a medium saucepan (with room for the mixture to at least double in size), bring the sugar, Jell-O, water and butter to a boil. Once fully boiling cook for 4 minutes without stirring, swirling the bowl occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla and soda. Pour over the popcorn and toss with tongs to coat completely. Spread out onto the baking sheets and bake, stirring once or twice, for an hour. Set aside to cool.
One Year Ago: Lemon Poppyseed Whipped Cream Pound Cake
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April 10 2009 | snacks | 79 Comments »
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