1/31/10

easy as pie


earlier today i decided to make cookies. or more scones. but i lost the will before i pulled the ingredients down from the cupboards.

ten minutes later i started thinking about this delicious pie i always get before and after i go to the doctor. and then discovered the place i get it closed. and then had to make berry pie.

i didn't have any berries, but i searched the freezer and borrowed some from my roommate, who was surprised i was making pie since i didn't have the energy to make cookies. but pie is way easier than cookies.

seriously. it takes like 10 minutes to make a pie, then you just have to wait for it to bake. and cool.

here it is:

crust:
1 3/4 c whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 c olive oil
1 t salt
3 T ice-cold water

take more than half of it and roll it out between two sheets of parchment or wax paper, then throw it in a pie plate.

filling:
1 bag of frozen berries (mixed is my favorite, i had strawberries today, and some cranberries)
3 T sugar (depends on how sweet the berries are. use less than you think you need.)
3 T arrowroot powder or cornstarch or something similar.

mix it all together - with the berries still frozen - and put in the pie crust, and top.

bake for like 45 minutes or so... take it out before the crust browns. let it cool for awhile or it'll be way too runny.

if it's not sweet enough, serve with buttery bourbon sauce and soy dream (if you didn't eat it all earlier in the week...)

i forgot to take a picture before i smashed through the crust to taste it. it was prettier, i swear.


1/28/10

grapefruit scones!

nothing lightens the winter mood than baking and cooking with citrus.

mix:
1 1/4 c soymilk
1 T grapefruit juice

separately mix:
3 c whole wheat flour
3 T raw cane sugar
2 T baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/3 c olive oil
zest from 2 grapefruit

mix together, break into 2 parts and flatten a bit, then cut each in six pieces like pie.

bake 15 minutes or so at 350

now the genius:
the glaze.
unfortunately, i haven't quite perfected it. i mean, powdered sugar is on my sister's poison list - you may've noticed the scone recipe uses whole wheat flour and a small bit of cane flour and olive oil instead of... well, every other oil that is bad for you. i aspire to make glaze using just cane sugar and grapefruit juice. but i didn't have time to mess around today - it's a stressful week. there's an election on tuesday.

so some day i'll melt the sugar and then add the grapefruit juice and make a better glaze. but today i used earth balance and powdered sugar and grapefruit juice, and it's heavenly.

lentil soup


a few months ago one of my go-to lunch spots around the corner from work - which i simply called "the falafel place" - shut down. it reopened almost immediately as... a falafel place. (the old owner sold it so he could focus on soccer full time. or something. i don't quite remember.)

the new falafel place does a couple things better - they have wheat bread, for one. and pickles for falafel sandwiches, which is not standard but which i love.

the down side is their lentil soup isn't as delicious, and you get less for more money.

no problem though - last summer when i was working out of a different office and craving my stand-by lentil soup, i tried making it myself. it was easier than i thought - i actually overspiced it the first time or two, and now i've got it down to a science. the key is salt.

1. chop half an onion, throw it into a pot with about a tablespoon of olive oil, cook until tender.
2. add about a tablespoon or two of whole cumin seeds* that you've pummeled with your mortar and pestle and stir until fragrant, then
3. add a cup of red lentils and about 5 cups water.
4. cook until lentils are soft - less than 20 minutes.
5. add about a teaspoon of salt (to taste) and a quarter cup of lemon juice (to taste).

blending is optional. a little blending is nice.

* you can also add a little fenugreek, parsley, or turmeric. no more than 1/4 t of the fenugreek or turmeric, i'd say. and the cumin is the key ingredient, so make sure you've got plenty.

this pic is unfortunately of the less delicious new-falafel-place soup. it's not horible, it just makes me want to cook my own lentil soup.

the nice thing about this soup is that i almost always have all the ingredients in my cupboard/refrigerator, and it doesn't call for vegetable broth, which makes me feel good.

1/26/10

ice cream


sometimes you don't want to cook but you do want to curl up in bed and watch really bad television.
this is when you need buttery bourbon sauce and vanilla soy dream.

together, they totally make soup.

buttery bourbon sauce:
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c earth balance buttery sticks
1/4 of soy milk
bourbon.
melt the buttery sticks and sugar in a pan until it's blended. add the soy milk. then add bourbon to taste. i prefer at least 1/4 cup, but some people think that's overdoing it.

a batch lasts me awhile because i generally don't crave sweets, so i keep it in a jar in the fridge, and a carton of soy dream in the freezer, for emergencies.

i recommend just pouring the sauce into the carton.


1/24/10

i was going to make dal makhani



i was following the recipe to the best of my ability:
2.5 ounces of dried black dal i didn't have, so i used green lentils.
i boiled them until done with a big thing of ginger.
then i started reading the recipe, which called for a little cumin and a little garam masala. boring! plus it called for cream - and i don't use cream.

so. i had the lentils, i added 1/2 a can of kidney beans like it said, and then i took the leftover onion sitting on my cutting board, only partially chopped, and threw it into a saucepan with a tiny bit of oil, added some garlic, and when it was almost done cooking i threw in a bunch of this spice mix a friend gave me 2 years ago and i have no idea what it is. salty though. and has cinnamon and some kind of chili powder, for sure, but who knows what else. and i added it to the simmering beans with a tomato i had.

served over coconut rice i made last week (just brown rice cooked with coconut milk.)

then i put some of the lime creme i'm going to talk about in my other post of the day - which was freaking fantastic. way better than expected. probably even better than my actual dinner. it's just cilantro, lime juice, and yogurt, which added tartness and cilantro and cool soothing awesomeness.

1/22/10

kasha sauerkraut stew


three years ago, when my then-vegan sister bought me a copy of "vegan with a vengeance" for christmas, i thought i'd found heaven, and that isa was an angel sent to save us all. i mean, here it was - delicious food that happened to be vegan, instead of the then-typical recipes for "meat"loaf and "cheeze" and... other not-food grossness.

but now i'm just tired of the entire post-punk-kitchen vegan domination, and (with exceptions) my new attitude is to look at their recipes as jumping off points.

i tried the "kasha phyllo pie" from veganomicon a while back and was delighted with the filling - kasha and mushrooms, and then a middle layer of sauerkraut right from the jar. (sauerkraut is my favorite vegetable.*) but i had to wonder - why anyone would ruin such a good stew by putting it in a phyllo crust? the flakiness of the crust conflicted with the heartiness of the filling. not to mention the clashing flavors. and, the filling slid out. (i think a buckwheat pie crust may've been there.)

anyway, tonight i started with a plan to make it soup. after a long day and the knowledge of an even earlier day tomorrow - *saturday* - (and after realizing after two hours of being a bit chilly that the heat was off and it was 59 degrees in my apartment)... i decided i needed some soup.
halfway through i remembered i don't like mushrooms floating around in soup, and so i kept it thicker - i was thinking more like a stew, but kasha is almost a grain so it's more like a pilaf. and, it's delicious.
so.
1. cook an onion and a stalk of celery and a carrot in some olive oil until they brown a bit (in retrospect i would've added more carrot). add a ton of cremini mushrooms and cook until they lose their moisture.
2. add a couple teaspoons of caraway and a teaspoon of coriander and about a cup and a half of kasha and mix it around real good for a couple minutes
3. then add your liquid - i added about three cups of water and one bouillon cube (but if i had to do it over i'd throw in a half cup of dark flavorful microbrew or a red wine) and the kasha soaked it up in a flash. in fact, i almost burned it because i started writing about it before it was done cooking. i never looked to see how quickly kasha cooks. turns out, it's fast.
4. add some black pepper, and throw in about half a jar of STRAINED sauerkraut - i can't emphasize enough - the secret of good sauerkraut is controlling the acidity - the amount of liquid you let in the final recipe! too much liquid and it's gross. but, if you wash it off it doesn't have that delicious kick.

alright, i've gotta go read some tolstoy before i lose this warm russia-loving mood!

* we put together a cookbook of my grandmother's recipes about a decade ago, and the first four recipes in the "vegetables" section were all sauerkraut. and although i do love sauerkraut at least five times more than the average person, it's not my favorite vegetable. i actually can't remember what my favorite vegetable is. i'll figure it out some day.


it's just salad.

my problem with making and therefore eating salad is that it's not actually cooking - what's the fun of chopping up vegetables if when you're done chopping them you're done cooking?

anyway, someone who had mcdonalds for lunch saw me open this salad and turned up their nose at it.

fresh carrots and tomato and spinach! what could be more delicious! the whole thing made me miss my sister.

tamarind potato salad


there are a couple of weaknesses in the motto i inherited from my granma - "i could make better at home." what about indian food? and pad thai? and injera? these are all questions that threaten my very being. i mean, i've made some pretty delicious dal, and i own pretty much every spice known to man (and if i come across something i don't have i have to buy it) but i'd always rather go to an indian restaurant than make some malai kofta (although it's probably because i would NEVER cook with as much cream as i know must be in the best malai kofta.)

anyway, i finally faced my fears and pulled out the indian cookbooks my sister gave me when she was downsizing to a backpack (she's visiting the world - currently in argentina?) and made a grocery list. the first thing i tried was a recipe for potato chaat. i selected it because it looked and sounded ridiculously delicious, and it was something i had so i couldn't actually be disappointed. and i got to use the tamarind paste i've had for like a year. there were four different things to prepare, and then they were added together upon serving:
1. baby potatoes - baked until soft (i had some that i picked in september hidden in the back of the vegetable drawer)
2. tamarind paste mixed with tomato sauce and ginger and other spices, mixed into the potatoes after they bake
3. something i would definitely call generic basic salsa - onion, tomato, green chilies, to add to taste over the tamarind potatoes
4. equal parts yogurt and water, to be poured over everything right before serving.

i was pretty excited to use the tamarind. unfortunately, it wasn't fun. i poured boiling water over it. i shoved it through a sieve, getting much of the tamarind out... but... well, there's got to be a better way to get tamarind paste. i'm going to have to try again. maybe i'll do some tamarind-paste-internet-research this weekend.

the other thing i didn't like was that the chilies i used - i forget their real name - they were the long skinny ones. i was going to grab jalapenos or habaneros but i wanted to try something new. i left in the seeds which was fine, deliciously spicy, but the long skinny ones have a rough texture that i didn't like. they would probably be good if they were cooked in a soup and then removed, but they were raw in the salsa and the tough texture was unpleasant.

also, i tend to cook a ton of stuff to eat throughout the week, so i threw everything together in one bowl, which was delicious, but much grosser looking than anticipated. my mother's #1 principle of cooking is plate appeal, which is reasonable when you're serving others, but i could care less when i'm eating it myself (if i know what's in it, i don't have to see it.)

anyway, it was alright. i'm constantly in search of good mayonnaise-free potato salad, and i think i could use the basic principles of this one - tamarind and yogurt and lime juice would be a good marinade for fresh-cooked-potatoes, and then add in a tomato and a fresh jalapeno (or roasted, that'd be delicious too.) i will persevere.

or, maybe i should go back to making soup.

1/19/10

parsnips


the order of events in cooking is to decide what to make, buy the ingredients, and then, you know, make it. which is exactly what happened with this parsnip soup. only there was a six week gap in between the purchasing of the parsnips and cooking of the soup, mostly because i ran away to missouri before my south american vacation that gave me the stomach flu.

and all i had in the fridge was an onion and tons of parsnips. i didn't think i wanted parsnip soup - ever - because it's one of those bland blended vegetable soups that are more like baby food than deliciousness. so i opened every cookbook i own looking for the recipe that got me to buy 2 bags of parsnips. and i knew it the moment i saw it:
1. brown an onion and tons of parsnips
2. add the spices and keep browning - coriander, cumin, turmeric, and cayenne
3. add 5 cups of water and some bouillon cubes
when it's all soft, add 2/3 c soymilk and blend.

that part's boring - i mean, not too shabby on the tastebuds, but not that awesome.

this is the awesome part:
julienne 2 cloves of garlic, and cook it along with 2 teaspoons of brown mustard seeds until it just starts to brown (it'll continue to brown after you take it off the heat, so be conservative.) the recipe has the spice mixture going as the garnish, but i just mixed it all in.

the brilliance of this soup is that the mustard seeds and crispy garlic add texture as well as amazing flavor. and, parsnips are one of those vegetables whose flavor is so great they're best left alone - the simplicity of the soup really highlights the delicious parsnipness.