salami says…

Homemade biscuits were the order of the morning last wednesday. I don’t know what possessed me to turn on the oven at 9 o’clock in the a.m., but I went with the flow. It actually took no time at all to whip these up because I have gotten into the habit of pre-mixing the dry ingredients of baked goods recipes (wheat bread, pancakes, cornbread, etc.) and storing them in plastic containers in the freezer. I highly recommend this timesaver; I usually store two or three containers of a few favorite recipes, which lasts us a while. Then, whenever the mood strikes, all I have to do is throw in the wet ingredients and bake off. Easier ‘n pie.

My original intended accompaniment for the biscuits was simply butter and some apricot jam. Along with a hot cup of strong black coffee, what could be better? Being no fan of jam, Housemate J had a different agenda. Driven by an unwavering obsession with breakfast sandwiches (he apparently hasn’t found a satisfactory one since we left NYC), he set off on what amounted to an hour-long kitchen frenzy (i.e. too many dirty dishes to count) for the ultimate handheld breakfast. The resulting masterpiece was a scrumptious compact omelet layered with ooey-gooey melted cheddar and jack cheeses, partnered with many slices of thick Niman Ranch bacon (you can find this awesome bacon at Trader Joe’s) and stacked between a split, warm, golden biscuit. Perfection indeed.

The pressure was on. Now I had to dream up something a heck of a lot more sophisticated than just butter and jam (plus, he was taking so long making his sandwich that I got bored and had to make one for myself!). Being that I am sort of a fanatic about sweets, my project was to make a breakfast sandwich to satisfy the dessert-lover in me. Since I had a boatload of strawberries on hand that were not very tasty (another generous produce endowment from my fruit-obsessed mother), I sliced and macerated some in a few shakes of sugar, then placed the syrupy fruit on a thick bed of mascarpone cheese smeared on a warm biscuit. A breakfast strawberry shortcake of sorts, and quite delicious!

I love beans. Refried, pureed into a dip, in salads, and especially with rice – it’s tasty and satisfying in any preparation, whether front and center or hidden in the shadows. There was a pound of dried red chili beans hangin’ in our cupboard (they look similar to red kidney beans, but were marked as “red chili beans” at Whole Foods), so I decided to cook up a very simple chili beans and rice dish inspired by a recipe found on one of my favorite food blogs, Simply Recipes.

I slow-cooked this dish in my little crockpot, which I really should utilize more – it is perfect for minimizing kitchen heat in the summer, and is THE easiest way to make homemade chicken stock (more on that in a future post, possibly). I understand that crockpots are supposed to be perfectly safe for unattended cooking, but I’m still paranoid that it will explode if I even set one foot out the door. I did end up prying myself away from the house for a few hours (can’t pass up Family Free Day at Kidspace!), and I am happy to report that it was an explosion-free afternoon – whew!

I customized the original recipe to suit my tastes, and also to use up what I had in my kitchen inventory. First, I sauteed some diced pancetta (pork fat good) in a bit of olive oil with diced onions, garlic powder (ran out of the real stuff) and a dash of salt and pepper before adding ground turkey (dark meat, please). After tossing the cooked meat mixture into the crockpot, I added the following: a 28-ounce can of Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes, for a bit of smokiness; a small can of mild green chiles, chopped; probably 3-4 tablespoons of chili powder; a few shakes of sugar; and about 3-4 cups of cooked red chili beans (don’t forget to precook the beans! Or you can use canned, of course). The whole lot was stirred together and crock’d on high for two hours, then low for four. I served the chili beans over cooked long grain white rice (the rice cooker is also an awesome appliance) with lots of fresh cilantro leaves and a squirt of lime juice. Oh, and if you’re into the fire-in-your-belly feeling, throw many many slices of super-hot pickled jalapenos on there as well. Yowza. Mmmmm.

My mom is a compulsive fruit buyer. Every time we visit my parents’ house there’s always a flat of some variety of fruit laying around on the kitchen or garage floor – “12-pack of strawberries! Only 23 dollars!” or “Two dozen mangos! Only 6 dollars!”. The Costco mentality is so firmly rooted in her shopping brain. This is where I come in, the beneficiary of all this fruit she has too much of and suddenly realizes she must give away – “Take some! We can’t eat it all!” (oh, ya think?).

A few weekends back, she loaded about ten mangos into a shopping bag and thrust it into my car as I was leaving her house. Even at the rate of one or two mangos a day that Dizzy devoured, we could not manage to eat them fast enough, and before we knew it the last few were looking mighty pathetic. Were they mangos or prunes??? I had to find a good use for them – fast. Well, off to sorbet heaven they go…

I used a simple lime mango sorbet recipe, which is a mixture of simple syrup infused with lime zest, lime juice and pureed mango. I churned it for a mere 15 minutes in the ice cream maker, et voila! Next time I may try it with the splash of tequila suggested in the recipe, just for an extra kick. It was, as a certain someone close to us always says, “DELISH”.

(Note: these were the yellow-skinned mangos that come from Mexico, not the ones with the variegated tones of red/green/orange; I personally find that the yellow ones have a better texture and superior flavor).

I made risotto for dinner a few days ago using Mark Bittman’s Vegetable Risotto recipe from How to Cook Everything. A few weeks prior to that, I had made an even simpler risotto using Jamie Oliver’s Basic Risotto Recipe. The two recipes were almost alike (after all, it can’t be varied all that much) save for a single, very significant (as far as flavor and texture go) difference: Jamie’s recipe called for 5 TABLESPOONS (yes, my friends, that is more than half a stick) of butter plus a full 4 ounces of grated Parmesan to be stirred into the risotto in the final few minutes before serving; Bittman’s recipe, on the other hand, read “2 tablespoons butter, softened (optional)” be added at the end.

Can you guess which version I (and my fellow diners) preferred? Let me tell you, I should have listened to my gut about using the extra butter called for in Jamie’s recipe, and applied it to Bittman’s; but of course the wanna-be health nut in me fought the gut, and won (nut vs. gut – haha). My conclusion after eating the low-butter version was that yes, it was still tasty, but heck if you’re going whole hog for comfort food, why would you bother to make it lighter OR healthier? So my recommendation is to try Jamie’s recipe (or if you’re really brave, try this recipe – it’s next on my agenda), and dig right in. And don’t forget to unbuckle your pants.

P.S. The risotto in the photo was topped with my first two garden zucchini, fresh off the plant; they were so small and cute! Such a shame to take them away from their momma…

Yeah, that sounds pretty gnarly. Forget the silly title – what I’m saying is: eat more tofu! Reducing meat consumption is something we’ve been trying to do for a while now (not for any humane reasons, mind you, but just cuz I’m cheap and most weeks I don’t want to pay these goshdarn crazy beef and chicken prices. Plus there’s the whole green issue), and tofu is the miracle protein I turn to first. Some folks disrespect tofu because of its lack of flavor, but that is exactly the reason others exalt it, since it is so versatile.

Lately I only buy Trader Joe’s Super High Protein (!), Extra-Firm (!!) tofu, so my lazy self can skip the draining part required for less firm tofus. Plus, this particular product is so dense it’ll go a long way – very important for the hungry mouths I have to feed. I was pleasantly surprised that usually a single block will be plenty for the three of us to share.

I usually cut the blocks up into 1/2-inch cubes and stirfry them with random veggies and oyster sauce (borrrinnnggg), but lately I’ve been taking it up a notch and dredging the l’il buggers in cornstarch and deep-frying them in grapeseed oil. This process yields nice meaty morsels with a crispy coating that can then be tossed into salads, noodle stir-fries, rice dishes, you name it – throw it anywhere you want some extra protein.

Having recently gotten over my fear of frying, this time I breaded and pan-fried the tofu cut into finger-food-sized sticks. Pretend it’s fish. Pretend it’s chicken. Whatever your fancy, boy, what yumminess.

To accompany the crunchy logs, I chopped up a head of romaine, quartered some leftover boiled new potatoes and tossed both in red wine vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. As with all fried foods, a dipping sauce was in order, so I made a sort-of-tartar sauce with mayo, hot dog relish, tabasco, and some Guinness whole-grain mustard (brought back to us from Ireland by our awesome neighbors), and dolloped it right on the suckers. The lightly dressed tang of the salad balanced nicely with the tofu sticks smeared with the creamy, kickin’ sauce. What can I say, we all licked the platter clean!

For weeknight meals, I am trying to make foods that are not too ordinary (pasta with red sauce – blecch), but that don’t require the culinary skills of a seasoned grandmother or five-star chef. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that making falafel was not as exotic or difficult as I assumed it to be. I know, I know – good falafel can be found at numerous holes-in-the-wall for just a few bucks – why bother making them at home? Here’s my answer: it’s actually kinda fun to fry up these babies, grab the crispy nuggets fresh out of the hot oil and pop ‘em right in your mouth (well, make sure you blow on them for a few seconds so you don’t burn your face off!). YUM.

I served this to my fellow housemates with minted yogurt sauce (homemade yogurt, garden mint, salt, pepper), whole wheat flatbread and heirloom tomatoes (can’t wait for my tomato harvest) tossed with sea salt and meyer lemon juice (from the tree out back).

Here is a great falafel recipe. I’m hooked. Enjoy.

I’ve eaten beef stroganoff maybe two, three times in my life, but for some reason it’s always in the back of my mind as something I should eat more. Consisting of buttered egg noodles topped with a creamy, beefy, stewy sauce, it fulfills all the requirements that qualify it as comfort food; well, mostly because it includes one of my favorite things ever – sour cream.

I decided to attempt a turkey version of this dish, since turkey is leaner and more importantly, cheaper. I didn’t have the leftover turkey or gravy that was called for in the recipe (note to self: try this recipe again after Thanksgiving!), but I did have a pack of turkey breasts that were defrosting in the fridge. Anyway, sometimes I get a big head and think I can easily improvise on a published recipe simply by throwing in this for that and just a smidge more of the other thing. It’s a perfectly acceptable and encouraged thing to do – that is how one learns to really cook – and truthfully it doesn’t backfire all that often. In this case, however, I really should have stayed faithful to the recipe, as I consequently ended up with a too sour-creamy sauce (not such a horrible end per se, but sort of the wrong mouthfeel and VERY fattening), that I had to doctor up with faux beef stock that ended up thinning the sauce WAY too much. Argh. There goes stewy.

As an accompaniment to the stroganoff, I prepared sweet and sour cabbage, and again made the mistake of adding something the recipe did not call for; in this case it was caraway seeds, which I like just fine in rye bread or cole slaw but should not have tried to mix into this dish, given its sweeter tendencies.

In the end, the meal turned out to be edible, tasty even. Dizzy inhaled the cabbage, mostly because it was crunchy, sweet and purple – who can resist that?

P.S. Forgive the not-so-great photo. By the time we sat down to din-din, it was getting too dark for pics!

I had two leftover broccoli stalks sitting in the fridge – remnants of last saturday’s fried tofu and broccoli stirfry (which was just okay-tasting. I’m still working on my wok skills), in which I utilized only the florets. Up until about last year, I had always cut about 3 inches or so down from the florets and (gasp!) thrown the rest of the broccoli away. What am I, nuts? Truly a waste of food.

I then read somewhere that you could just as easily cook up the stalks and I had a real “DUH” moment. Since then I cut off about 1/4 inch from the bottom of the stem, pull of the stray leaves, and use the whole durn thing for whatever it is I’m cooking, especially for an ultra-satisfying cream of broccoli soup. The stalks do need a once over with a good veggie peeler, just to get rid of any fibrous bits on the outermost layer.

Recently, I saw this recipe for broccoli pesto on the 101 Cookbooks website, and thought again DUH, why not make a pesto out of a good-for-you veggie? I was inspired. Since I only had stalks (as opposed to the whole head of broccoli called for in the recipe), I improvised a little by peeling then slicing the stalk into about 1/2 thick slices, boiling them till tender, and then pureeing them in a food processor with toasted pine nuts, a handful of parsley (to provide dark green color), garlic, kosher salt, fresh pepper, and olive oil to form a nice paste. Then I boiled up some wheat fusilli and tossed that with the pesto, more toasted pine nuts, and pecorino romano cheese. It was yummy. And what a great way to sneak some nutritiousness into a toddler’s tummy!