Heat wave!

New England is experiencing its first string of really hot weather this week; it was in the mid-nineties yesterday, supposed to reach that today, as well, and it’s quite humid. I can’t complain, as June has been just gorgeous, and tomorrow it’ll be only 85 or so before dropping into the upper 70s for the weekend. But I also can’t cook in this kind of weather, so a salad was in order. It’s a pretty plain-jane salad: it has romaine lettuce, a chopped plum tomato, half a chopped cucumber, some cheddar, and a little shredded smoked turkey. I ate it with a piece of Italian bread that I’d made and frozen a few weeks ago. Instead of using the vinaigrette I have in the fridge to dress it, I made a sort of French/catalina dressing. I wasn’t sure about it, but it was actually far better on the salad than when I’d tested it while making it. I think it’s something I’m going to have to tweak to get just right.

For it, you’ll need:
Just under 3 T ketchup
1-2 T sugar, to taste
2-3 T red wine vinegar, to taste
salt and pepper
1/2 t worcestershire sauce
1/2 t paprika
2 T oil

I used olive oil, but it almost gave it too much flavor–a neutral oil like canola might work better. But it’s at least a new and interesting dressing, one that’s creamy and a bit thick without gobs of mayo. It works for me!

What the World Eats

I came across this photo essay a few weeks ago and I found it just fascinating. It features images of families from around the world sitting with their average weekly food purchases. It’s remarkable to see what serves to sustain life in some parts of the globe as they compare to others, and to what degree some people eat packaged, prepared foods while others simply have sacks of grains and piles of veggies. Even more interesting is that each family’s weekly cost is given in both their native currency and it’s USD exchange. Check out the family with the endless half-gallons of orange juice–those are some thirsty people.

Birthday Cake

I bet you’ll never guess what kind of cake this is. I bet you’re scratching your head right now, wondering, golly, what kind of cake might this be? Surprise!–it’s a carrot cake. Shocking, I’m sure.

We’re throwing a surprise party for my mother on Sunday (by the time this posts, it’ll be over) and one of my jobs assigned by my li’l brother was to make a dessert. I offered to make the birthday cake, rather than some kind of crisp or fruit salad or whatever. My brother agreed.

While I can bake a cake just fine, decorating them is, shall we say, not something I’m good at. Kind of like reaching the top shelf in the grocery store, there are some things I should probably leave to other people. Instead of knocking macaroni on my head, I should ask a tall person for help. And maybe I should have let my brother get a cake at the grocery store. Because looking at it, you’d never know it was a birthday cake. It’s a cake in honor of carrots.

I made some cream cheese icing to go on the cake. I say icing because I added a little too much milk, so the consistency wasn’t terrifically firm; I had also added about as much powdered sugar already as one can and still remotely taste the block of cheese I’d toss in first. Thickening it with more sugar wasn’t much of an option. So I plowed ahead. At the grocery store this morning I bought a set of decorating tips that were all a little bit wide, so writing was pretty much out of the picture. So I made carrots. They’re fine looking carrots, and maybe someone will mistake them for birthday balloons. I’ll just put so many candles on it no one will be able to tell the difference.

The cake recipe, by the way, is a light one, with minimal oil and egg whites making up a good deal of the moisture. You can find the recipe here. I use just plain all-purpose flour for the whole thing, and substituted milk curdled with a little vinegar for the buttermilk. I’ve made it several times and it really is a very tasty cake. We’ll see how the party likes it!

Italian-Style Tofu

I’ve been cooking with tofu for a couple of years now and most of my recipes follow the same basic pattern. Fry tofu. Saute veggies. Add Asian-style sauce, serve with rice. While this is tasty enough, it was getting a little tiresome, so I put the call out on a forum I visit for some new recipes. I was a little anxious about making an Italian tofu, but willing to give it a go.

Here’s your tofu. I use the light firm variety; regular firm or extra firm will do. Drain the tofu and put in a shallow bowl; place a plate over it and weight that plate with something heavy, pressing out any extra water. This usually takes fifteen minutes or so. Then slice your tofu into four pieces.

In the background there is some sliced mozzerella off of that block we bought for the eggplant melts a week or so ago. I think I cut five or six thin slices. Or I tried to, anyway.

In a nonstick pan over medium, medium-high, add a few tablespoons of olive oil and a minced clove of garlic. When it’s hot, add your tofu, and allow to fry about 10 minutes per side. Keep an eye on it. The beauty of this method is that the tofu, which basically picks up the flavors of whatever it’s with, gets a good deal of roasted garlic flavor.

In the meantime, either open your favorite jar of sauce (I won’t look) or make your own. Here’s mine, bubbling away.

When both tofu and sauce are ready, put a bit of sauce in a baking dish, add tofu, and cover with sauce. Add slices of cheese and bake in a 400 F oven for 15 minutes, then briefly under the broiler.

Voila.

We had this with some rigatoni, and I have to tell you, it was delicious. It wasn’t heavy at all, since the tofu didn’t really crust up, and as such was much lighter than chicken or eggplant parmesan. We probably could have used less cheese, but that would really be sad. We like cheese. If you’ve never tried tofu before, you should give it a go! It’s healthy, full of protein, and very tasty.

Credit for this goes to one of the fine folks at Twospace, a woman who handmakes clothing and is a tofu master!

Kitchen Helper Extraordinaire

I realized the other day that it had been some time since I’d done a gadget review. Well, meet my second third favorite kitchen helper, after the mixer and the dishwasher. This is my sweet Cuisinart food processor. While I don’t use it every day and it uses an obscene amount of dishwasher space, it is a very handy tool to have. I had a little processor for some years, that was useful but not terribly strong, and which took eons to make a batch of pesto. This guy, on the other hand, whizzes through even the hardest ingredients. I used it this morning to shred carrots using the disk blade, and then tossed in the regular blade to make them a finer mince. It saved me probably 20 minutes of grating carrots and knuckles against my box grater. I use it to make pizza dough and pie crust in no time flat. So long, pastry blender. My heart is taken by my shiny friend.

I am a Bad Blogger

I promised you a recipe for tapas albondingas, and then promptly forgot. Oh, the humanity!

Ok, here’s first the spicy tomato sauce recipe, and then the meatballs. Hopefully you’ll forgive me and we can still be friends.

Recipes are from tapas by Richard Tapper. The picture is from amazon.

Zesty Tomato Sauce
1 T olive oil
1 onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb canned whole peeled tomatoes, pureed (I just squashed ‘em with my fingers, classy dame that I am)
1 small red chili pepper, deseeded and chopped (DO NOT TOUCH YOUR EYES) or 1/2 tsp dried red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat and saute the onion and garlic until fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Add all the other ingredients and mix well. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until it thickens, 20-30 minutes.

Albondingas (seasoned meatballs)
This recipe I modified–it called for the meatballs to be deepfried, and I was out of burners on the stove, patience, and a desire for more fried things. I baked them instead.
1 lb ground pork or beef (I used beef)
1/2 c finely chopped onion
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 T chopped parsley
1/2 c fine breadcrumbs
3 eggs
1 red chili pepper, deseeded and minced, or 1 tsp bottled chili sauce (I skipped this)
1/2 tsp ground white pepper (I only had black, so that’s what I used)

In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix thoroughly. Let it stand for at least a half hour for the flavors to blend. Shape into 1″ balls. You should get 45 of them. We only made a half-batch, and we still had, oh, 25 of the little fellas.

Place on a cookie sheet and bake in a 350F oven for 20 minutes. I broke one open to see if they were done, which gave me and Jason, who was helping me cook (along with Mr. Pea) a chance to eat one. Veeeeery tasty.

You can let these sit, if you have to, and just heat them up gently in the sauce. Serve together. They’re scrumptious.

Not so much cooking…

Well, that’s not entirely true.  What day is it?  Wednesday.  On Monday, we went grocery shopping, and Mr. Pea really wanted tacos.  We made some with turkey and a packet o’ seasoning and box o’ shells, as I was too tired to find my recipe for spice mix.  We also made a box of rice to go with it.  So, as you can see, our cooking wasn’t terribly ambitious.  Then yesterday I spent all morning waiting around the doctor’s office for my three-minute appointment (know what happens when you type all day and sew all night?  Your wrists hate you), so then I took myself out to lunch.  This isn’t something I think I’ve ever really done.  I’ve bought myself all manner of sandwiches, sure, and slices of pizza, but yesterday I actually went to a little restaurant with waiters and everything and sat for a while, letting them bring me lunch.  It was kind of fun!  I sat at Bangkok Bistro, a hole in the wall in Cleveland Circle, in the Brighton section of Boston, and read my book (Daughter of Fortune by Isabelle Allende, in case you’re interested).  I had a pad  thai combo plate, which included some very spicy soup I couldn’t finish, delicious pad thai, and ok spring rolls.  I like my rolls with more stuff–these mainly had mung sprouts, those tiny tiny rice noodly things.  I even got to watch a car accident, which, you know, was interesting.  But I was stuffed all day, and poor Mr. Pea had to get takeout for dinner.  At 8:30 or so I finally ate a bowl of cereal.  So, yeah, no cooking there, either.  But tonight I plan to cook!  I’m hoping to make a new tofu dish–something that’s not just a stir-fry.  So we shall see how that goes.

Well, I guess that’s enough rambling for now.  I am *thiiis* close to finishing my dissertation, so I should probably go back to that, eh?  Unless you want to finish it for me.  I’ll take any offers at this point!

Guilty Pleasures

I have to confess. I love Hell’s Kitchen. I love a lot of cooking shows in general, but Hell’s Kitchen is one of my favorites. It’s one of the few summer shows I can stomach (for example, last night ABC started “Age of Love,” where some 30-year-old guy has to pick a lover from between a group of “kittens” who are in their 20s, and a group of “cougars” who are in their 40s. Way to demand respect, ladies), and it cracks me up endlessly. Gordon Ramsey is a loudmouth, but he’s also usually right, and I like watching the egos deflate around him. Some of the guys on this season really have it coming, and my least favorite of the girls left last night. The other women are rather nasty, as well, picking on one, Julia, because she’s a short-order cook and not from some posh fine dining restaurant. I think their real problem with her is that she’s vastly more organized and a superior cook. So there.

I also enjoy (or, enjoyed, since it just ended) Celebrity Fit Club. It’s on VH1, and for some reason, I find it entertaining. Cooking shows and workout shows–both ends of the spectrum, I guess.

Anyway, enough rambling–I’ll leave you with this. It’s our cat, Tuesday, “helping” with the grocery list.

Citrus Twist

The other day I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Mollycoddle, and Molly there posted that she’d made a delicious lemon cake. I thought I’d give it a go, as well. It’s made with yogurt, canola oil, and the usual assortment of dry ingredients, mixed with some lemon zest. It rises beautifully, and after it cools, you poor a tangy glaze over the top.

The recipe is from Orangette, a fantastic cooking blog, and I made a couple of changes due to what I had on hand. First, since I didn’t have plain yogurt, I used lemon yogurt. I used the zest from an entire lemon. When I made the glaze, I upped the sugar by 1 T and used only one very ripe lemon, which made a lot of juice. The cake is tasty and light, and required the oven only be on for a half hour or so. Perfect for summer!

Today looks to be a lovely day, weather-wise; I am dying to just go to the beach rather than edit (my own) boring chapters. Oh, and if you have anything to do with the backhoe that is tearing up the road just down the street and making so much noise it’s hard to concentrate for the fourth time since May, I’d be really grateful if you’d just cut it out. Thanks!

Panzanella

It’s a beautiful day in New England, and breaking my tradition of No-Cook Friday (who wants to make dinner on a Friday night? Not usually me!), I decided to put a tasty meal together. I have a steak marinating in the fridge–a piece of shell sirloin that was on sale last time we went shopping–and I’ve made this panzanella.

We’ll be lucky if there’s much left by actually dinner.

Panzanella is an Italian bread salad and something I’ve always wanted to make. When we had tapas the other night, one of our friends brought over a loaf of Italian bread. We didn’t eat it all, so I used what was left to make the salad today. I also took a walk to the grocery store for the odds and ends we didn’t have.

This is adapted from a recipe at Epicurious.

You’ll need:
6 c of cubed day-old bread
2 tomatoes, cut into 8 wedges, or a pint of grape tomatoes cut in half and sprinkled with a little salt
1/3 medium red onion, cut into small bits (mine are tiny slcies)
1/2 medium cucumber, sliced thin
10 basil leaves, chopped
bit of mozzerella (an ounce or so?) chopped into small cubes

1/2 c olive oil
2 T or so red wine vinegar
fresh pepper

The first thing I did was slice my tomatoes, put them in the bowl, and sprinkled them with a bit of kosher salt. I added the other veggies as I sliced them, and made the vinagrette. This I poured over the salad and tossed, and then popped it into the fridge for a little while–maybe a half hour or so. Then I took it out and added the basil and mozzerella, tossed, and now it’s back in the fridge. From what I understand, though you can serve it right after you make it, the salad gets better with a little time to mellow. It’s already pretty tasty, so I’m looking forward to eating it later on. Yum.