Depending on your location, spring has come, or is just a collective figment of our imagination, never to be realized (yup, still in Vermont). I finished eating my Easter Peeps yesterday, which I think may be the longest life-span of a Peep in my household on record. When I was a younger whipper-snapper, and the Internet was still a novelty, a favorite site was one by some bored graduate students “experimenting” on Peeps (i.e. testing solubility, flammability, etc). Very entertaining. The Washington Post recently had a contest to use Peeps in dioramas. Sweet!
Cooking as science November 7, 2007
Here’s an article from the NYT about a chef who is using laboratory-like methods for making dishes. I’m a bit wary of it, but would also be very interested to try. Overall, I’d rather go for simple and fresh.
GazPasta October 24, 2007
[NOTE: Pictures forthcoming!]
When I lived in Washington, DC for a semester in college, I was the proud renter of my very first, (almost) very own kitchen. I cooked, I baked, and I George Foreman-ed. I also gained 10 pounds because I would make a batch of cookies and have nobody else to share them with, like I do these days, but that’s another story.
When the semester was coming to a close, I brought the contents of my cabinets to the kitchen of my friends who lived a few block away. For a little more than a week we tried to buy as few new ingredients as possible in order to use what we had bought over the past few months. I don’t remember many of the specific dishes, but I do remember how much fun it was to be creative with food. I think that this was when I realized how much I loved the experimentation involved in cooking. One thing I do remember was the chicken pot pie we made with some almost gone-by vegetables, a can of cream of mushroom soup, frozen chicken and plain pie shell pastry. Not the most ground-breaking meal, but just the fact that we took all of those ingredients, originally meant for different purposes, and turned them into a sum greater than its parts was exhilarating to me.
Keeping that in mind, the recipe I am about to share will probably not be very useful. Rather I wanted to share my excitement at re-capturing the same feeling of experimentation as I had in DC. Imagine the scene: I had a day off, a lot of gazpacho that I was getting tired of, and nobody with whom to share it.
The recipe for gazpacho in my last post made a big batch of soup, but I was alone for a week while my roommates (read: parents) were away for vacation. I had bought a package of chicken and turkey andouille sausage at the local health food store (my favorite place to shop) and was itching to make a meal. I don’t know where the idea came from, perhaps remembering a snide comment by my sister that another tomato-based soup I made tasted like pasta sauce, but I decided to make angel hair pasta and use the gazpacho as a sauce, adding the andouille into the mix.
The sausage was pre-cooked, so I just cut it up and browned it in the skillet with a little olive oil for flavor. I decided I wanted to add some chunkier vegetables, and chopped up a zucchini and shallots from the garden, as well as some carrots. I sauteed these and then added the gazpacho. I wanted the sauce to reduce, so I put the burner on med-low and let it do its thing while I got the pasta ready (I used wheat angel hair because I love the texture). I decided that the spinach in the fridge needed to be eaten, but didn’t want to make a salad, so I added a couple handfuls over the top of the sauce to wilt down. Noting that I still had sour cream to use and that it tasted really good in the regular cold gazpacho, I added a few tablespoons to the sauce as I took it off the heat and stirred to distribute it evenly.
Meanwhile, the pasta was cooked to a perfect al dente, so I added it right to the sauce and mixed everything together. And it was good. I happily ate it for a few more days, relishing the fact that I had a delicious and healty meal already prepared.
The virtues of tomatoes October 5, 2007
One of the best parts about living in Vermont is the abundance of local produce. I am late in writing this post, but August and September are the Months of the Tomato, in New England and elsewhere. There is absolutely nothing better than a simple insalata caprese with sliced tomato, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, a good balsamic vinegar and fresh basil. Now, the tomatoes of which I speak are not the mealy, somewhat orange slices that accompany a 2-star salad buffet. A ripe, local tomato is a thing of beauty. The variety of heirloom tomatoes available at the local Farmers’ Market in Burlington, VT, is breathtaking. At this time of year I often find that I eat so many so frequently that I develop small sores on my tongue from the natural acids. No joke.
It is at this time of the year when mom’s garden hands you tomatoes, you make gazpacho!
The following is my adaptation of a recipe from Gourmet Magazine.
1 egg
3 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
1 bell pepper, minced
1 small cucumber, minced
1 small to medium red onion, minced
1/2 cup olive oil
Juice of 1 lime
1 jalapeño pepper, minced (depending on spiciness desired)
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth, low-sodium
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
Choose: 1/4 c fresh parsley, minced, OR 3 Tbs fresh cilantro, minced
1 Tbs fresh oregano (or 1 tsp dried)
2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper, to taste
Choose: 2 cups tomato juice, OR 4 Tbs tomato paste
1 slice good bread, toasted and chopped into crumbs
3 cloves garlic, minced
To hard-boil the egg, cover with water in a small pot, bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, add tomatoes through bread crumbs. Stir to combine well.
Once egg is cooked, peel away the shell and mash in a small bowl with the garlic. Add to the large bowl.
Refrigerate several hours before serving. This will be better with age (up to a week).
If desired, using a blender, puree a portion of the soup for a creamier consistency.
I like to garnish with sour cream or creme fraiche and fresh parsley or cilantro.
As you can see in this picture, I still had even more tomatoes left. What did I use them for? Check back and find out!
~B
Color Like No Other September 26, 2007
Imagine what 300,000 rubber bouncy balls look like as they stampede down a San Francisco street.
Now watch Color Like No Other.
Thoughts?
I love it, regardless of the fact that it’s an advertisement, especially the frog.
Let’s spice it up September 25, 2007
It’s no secret to those who know me that I am an avid Martha Stewart fan. I love the magazine, the styling, the crafts, the elegant simplicity and the creativity of all the comes from the MSEmpire. So I spend quite a bit of time perusing the web site, especially while at work at the Inn. One thing that I noticed is that in the “top search” area for as long as I can remember is a recipe for a certain apple spice cake. That struck me as odd, being that it was not apple season and did not include the generally accepted favorite flavor: chocolate. So when I had an excess of apples to work with after making apple crisp for a bike tour dinner (recipe for that in a few days), I decided it was time to see what all the hype was about.
Here is a link for Martha Stewart’s Apple Spice Cake. (I won’t post the recipe to avoid copyright infringement.) There is an accompanying video which may not be as interesting to you as it is to me, but let me tell you, Dorothy Mae Brown is a hoot.
In any case, the changes I made when following the recipe were the following:
- I added 1 tsp ground ginger and 1/8 tsp allspice. The ginger because it makes everything better, and the allspice because it has a wonderful peppery flavor that is almost unexpected but is perfect with apples.
- I did not have Granny Smith apples, only macs that were already peeled and chopped up from the orchard. The sourness of the Granny Smith I can imagine would have been slightly better, and the texture of the cooked peel also good.
- Since I would be serving this as a breakfast coffee cake (our guests don’t lose any weight with me around) I made a streusel topping instead of the caramel sauce with vanilla ice cream in the recipe.
So what’s the verdict, you ask? Well the cake was wonderful. It was dense, flavorful, and had the perfect “crumb”, as you can see in the picture below. I did not serve it at breakfast, but it was a large bundt cake, and for a breakfast seating of about 16, there was only one slice left for me to try when I went to work the next afternoon.
I highly recommend this cake, but make sure you’ll be sharing it with many people, as it is so delicious you may not be able to stop eating.
Improper use of office scanner: September 23, 2007
It may be a little cheesy, but I really enjoy it when my food and beverage packaging provides wome wisdom and inspiration. Good karma.
One small step September 23, 2007
In the past few years I have slowly noticed that my tastes have shifted. The flavors I find palatable have matured and expanded. I have always loved “odd” flavors: licorice (anise, fennel, ouzo, etc.), raisins in my cookies, onion rings drizzled in honey (it’s a Canadian thing, don’t try to understand), and most bizarrely white rice soaked in cranberry juice for an entire meal and eaten as dessert. Until recently, however, cantaloupe, coffee, tuna, red peppers, and cucumbers are all items I would have avoided like a pox. I would never have called myself a picky eater when I was younger – although my parents would have disagreed. Instead I would have said that I just knew what I liked and didn’t like. With hindsight I can trace the change in taste to my years at Smith College, but whether the transformations are a direct result of school or would have happened anyway I think depend upon the case but are mostly a melding of experiences. I am not particularly well-traveled but the adventures that I shared with my Smithies have been truly singular. In what we jokingly refer to as our snobbery, for example, while on Spring Break in Costa Rica we purposely avoided other gringo/as and definitely tried to eat the local fare rather than multinational corporate fast food, which I do in the States also.
So the point I am trying to get across is that I believe that trying new things is good. Finding more experiences, tastes, and smells that turn you on and get you going should only be celebrated. I am not innately an outgoing or a daredevil, but it’s not just adventure sports or the consumption of animal offal that I am advocating. Taking the everyday and adding a twist; make a new dish; adding an embellishment to a piece of clothing; this is where I find meaning. And that’s why I have decided to foray into the blogosphere. I think that based solely on convenience of writing, recipes and food will probably be the majority of posts (plus it’s fun to post pretty pictures of cookies and salsa, as will be coming soon).
I hope you enjoy.
~ B
