I know you don’t come here for complaining but for recipes, but people, I’m losing my cooking mojo as I lose my sleeping hours. My upstairs neighbor is making my life miserable and as such, I’m falling behind on everything and at this point am so tired I feel nauseous. So that’s all I have to report today. Meh. Wah. Ugh.
Getting rid of bulk bin bags….
Since we now live in between two huge Whole Foods stores, we’ve bought a lot of stuff from the bulk bins. I love bulk bins because I can try something new without getting a ton of it. I can get 1/2 c of wheat germ for granola, as I always end up tossing out parts of the big jars of germ when they expire. Love the bins. I don’t, however, love the oodles of little green produce bags that end up in the cabinet under the sink. I like having some plastic bags under there–they’re good for tying up our soda bottles until we have enough to recycle at the store; they’re good for litter box duty. But those little ones are kind of useless. So I was thinking it’d be quick and easy to make some drawstring bags to replace them! I could even make them for produce, though I don’t know that the clerks would appreciate having to dig around for the codes for my fruit. And they wouldn’t work for really damp stuff, like the greens at the store always seem to be. Have any of you ever made your own bulk/produce bags? How would a cashier even account for the weight of your bag apart from your food inside? These are things I ponder when I should be grading…
aha! genius! http://wisdomofthemoon.blogspot.com/2008/01/cheap-easy-fabric-produce-bags.html
Food Books I wish the Book Fairy would Bring
If only there was a book fairy, I’d ask her for a handful of lovely food-related books for me to peruse, feet up on the ottoman, glass of wine in hand. If you know of a book fairy, please let me know and I’ll give her my address. I’d be happy to praise her in future posts!
Mark Bittman’s latest book is high on my list. Food Matters is, from what I’ve read, in the same vein as Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It discusses what we eat and why we eat, and the problem with the way most modern Americans get and consume their food. He emphasizes the current food chain’s impact on both the environment and the person, both points that Pollan explores. What makes this book distinct from Pollan’s is both Bittman’s writing style and his inclusion of recipes. It’s Pollan in action, without suggesting you hunt down your own mushrooms.
This book I’ve only heard of today. It’s a volume on gardening in tiny spots, which suits my apartment lifestyle just fine. In our old apartment we had a few inground gardens, though I grew herbs and tomatoes (poorly) in pots, and lettuce in a windowbox. This books is up my alley, since we haven’t broken ground at our new place except to dig out some dead pachysandra, and I’m not sure how long we’ll stay here (as you all know from my ranting). I might actually mosey to the bookstore for this one, unless the book fairy kindly offers it up.
That’s all for now. I hope Amazon forgives my borrowing of their cover images. More to follow another time….
Chicken Tikka Masala
When I decided to make Chicken Tikka Masala, an Indian/British dish last night, it didn’t even occur to me that it was Oscar night and that Slumdog Millionaire, a movie set in India, was a prime contender. Maybe it was my subconscious that drove me to look at Alicia’s Tikka recipe, which she’s blogged about a few times. At any rate, dinner was awesome and Slumdog was a huge winner, so things are good all around on that front.
Chicken Tikka Masala is pretty easy to make, so long as you’ve got a little time and like spicy food. We followed a recipe on allrecipes (Mr. Pea made the marinade, as I was pinned under a sleeping cat), but we made some substantial adaptations. Here is the link: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chicken-tikka-masala/detail.aspx
and here’s what we changed:
DON’T follow the salt amounts. We used only 1/2 tsp in the marinade, and a pinch in the sauce. It’s all you need.
We cut the cayenne in the marinade in half and it was plenty spicy.
We used curry powder instead of garam masala, as that’s what we had on hand.
I forgot to get a jalpeno, so I just added a good pinch of red pepper flakes to the garlic in the first part of the sauce recipe.
I used probably 9 or 10 ounces of tomato sauce (and almost exactly 1 lb of chicken) which was a good ratio–lots of sauce for rice, and naan, if we’d had any made up.
I used half-and-half instead of heavy cream. Partly because I’m cheap and already had half-and-half and partly because of calories.
Delicious! We ate our tikka with some brown jasmine rice and a box of frozen spinach, tossed in a saucepan and thawed, cooked a little, and sprinkled with curry powder and salt.
Quick and Easy Tofu Stir-Fry
Greetings, faithful readers! Last night I made a simple bok choy and tofu stir fry with linguine for noodles; I do want to report that instead of using my typical stainless-steel skillet, I used my cast-iron pan, and my tofu, in only a tiny later of oil, actually turned all golden and crispy and didn’t stick! Yay! What joy! I started by cooking the tofu and removing it to a paper-towel lined plate; then I tossed a chopped onion into the skillet and let it brown up a bit; I added a huge clove of garlic; then tossed in one bunch of organic bok choy, carefully cleaned (bugs, gross!) and roughly chopped, along with a pinch of red pepper flakes, salt, and black pepper. I added a few tablespoons of water and covered the pot with a cookie sheet, since that’s the only thing big enough to cover. I let it cook down a few minutes, tossed in about half a box of linguine, cooked, and added 1 1/2 T sesame oil, 2-3 T soy sauce, and 2 T rice vinegar. This was tossed, the tofu added back until warmed, and voila, dinner. We filled our bowls and slurped away, adding some Trader Joe’s Chicken Gyoza on the side.
Food for thought: A week without food shopping
Today’s New York Times has an interesting little piece about not going food shopping for one week every so often and surviving on just what you have. I think this is an intriguing thought: the author notes that he has enough pasta to “survive a nuclear war” and that most people have plenty of food in their cupboards and freezer for a whole week of eating, if perhaps the meals are a little uninspired. This appeals to me: not that I don’t want to shop once a week, but because I try to plan meals in some cases around what we already have. I’ve mentioned this a few times to you lately. It’s both cost-effective and eliminates waste, cutting down on some of your demands on the ol’ earth. Right now, for example, I’m eating some chicken pie with biscuit topping. The only thing I bought to make this wheat flour, as we were out. I already had leftover chicken (frozen from the big bird), half a box of frozen peas, carrots, and potatoes. This guy in the Times is talking about taking this idea well beyond my comfort level, but it’s interesting, indeed. It’s a food-for-thought concept, too, for those nights when you have no initial meal plan but don’t want take-out either.
Here’s the link: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/cooking-without-shopping/?ref=dining
What to do?
It’s nearly 4p. I’ve spent most of my day chasing around our niece and nephew and haven’t started class prep for the morn, nor worked on any of my upcoming presentations (though I am almost done with our taxes), and I have a little headache. Do I….
A) suggest on reheating some of the leftovers in the fridge for dinner?
B) cook dinner–a stir fry–as I like to cook, right?
C) call the Thai place down the block for dinner?
Bread that actually turned out well
Check it out! I made bread that actually turned out quite decently that wasn’t just one of those <a href=”http://sweetpeacooks.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/artisan-bread/”>speedy no-knead breads (and certainly those haven’t gone all that well in the past). This is a honey-wheat loaf I made by hand the other day. It’s a slow-rising, flour-wetting, hand-kneaded recipe in which I used honey from the next town over that was really quite tasty. What makes this bread different from some of the wheats I’ve made in the past is that this one held together beautifully. Oftentimes I have loaf tops that are saggy, which suggests lack of structure and overrising. When this happens, the crust frequently lifts away from the bread, making it hard to toast. I often also get really big air bubbles that leave holes inside the loaf. Again, lack of structure! Structure in bread is created by kneading it to release the gluten. The gluten forms strands and fibers that essentially create the scaffolding of your bread. Oftentimes I don’t knead enough, working until the dough is just supple. This is usually ok with breads that are mostly white flour, as white flour contains more workable gluten than wheat. Wheat flour is denser, making that gluten harder to form. So taking that lesson in mind, I kneaded the dough for fifteen minutes. I was pleased with the result, and figure I’ve sorted out what’s gone wrong with some of the less-than-stellar loaves I’ve made lately. The tops are pretty smooth and solid, the bread is hefty enough for sandwiches, and I could slice it into 1/2″ slices without it falling apart. This is my stack of slices getting ready for their egg bath so we could have french toast. (Which, incidentally, we covered with strawberry preserve syrup, my new name for that jam I made over the summer that never set up).
Because the dough had two long, slow rises (and I folded it again halfway through the first rise, another structure-creating move), the did get a good 1″ over the tops of the pans. They didn’t, however, grow with any oven spring. Oven spring to me pretty much seems like magic. I’ve gotten it once or twice in all the years I’ve been making bread. I’m going to do some digging and see if I can’t sort out why that is. I’m not complaining about these guys–they’re hardly hockey pucks and are tall enough for sandwiches, unlike some previous loaves I’ve made. But I do want to solve the mystery of why they only rarely pop up.
The recipe is here, so you can try it yourself. There are lots of helpful hints below it, as well; I used the one about folding during the bulk (first) rise, and swapped in regular 1% milk for the evaporated milk used here. In case you are wondering, since it’s hardly warm here yet on a regular basis, I let my loaves rise in an oven I’ve turned on for a couple of minutes and turned off. For the second rise–after the loaves are formed–I let them rise on the counter next to the stove as it preheats.
Ugh.
This post is not about cooking. I am not sure I even have enough brain in my head that is functioning enough for cooking right now. For two nights, I’ve barely slept, and for the most part it’s out of my hands. This makes me insane.
We moved into our place with high hopes last summer. Our apartment is lovely to look at, and in what seemed to have been divine providence, a realtor showing us another apartment had gestured at this one as we drove, saying it was a place she’d lived in when she’d just gotten married. Turned out it was the next apartment on our list to view. Instead of this being serendipitous, however, it was evidently some kind of omen. I’m not sure what kind, but some kind. When we first moved in, the shower was broken, and we found this out after heaving furniture around for hours when it was 85 degrees. Then the refrigerator broke a couple of months ago. Then a drain clogged so badly with, evidently, 80 years of hair, that a plumber had to come and our shower was all wonky. But the kicker–what makes this place borderline uninhabitable–are the neighbors.
We’ve called the cops once already for the loudmouth kid and his pals next door, having a 4 am party. I almost called another time, but they went in just beforehand.
Cars have pulled up to their place–their driveway is next to our bedroom window–with radios blaring at 2, 3 am.
There’s a known gang member who lives a stone’s throw from here. He’s always in trouble.
We live at a corner with a light, and we live on a sort of cruising avenue. So jerks pull up with their souped-up accords, music cranked so loud that our windows shake. OUR windows. Not just theirs. It’s awful in the summer.
And upstairs lives the Horse, who we can hear in her 3rd floor apartment all the way down in our first floor place. In the middle is Mr. Silent. He travels for weeks at a time–thank god–leaving his place blissfully quiet. When he’s not traveling, however, he keeps a really weird schedule that this week has included going to bed at 2 am. This would be of no concern of mine except that his bed is right above my bed, he has a strong step, the floor’s extraordinarily squeaky, and he seems to enjoy pacing. Saturday night I went to bed at 1:30 after our day of driving all over the state, and he went to bed at 2–the cat, slightly after cue, got us up at 8. I was tired. Last night I went to bed early–10–and was rudely awakened at 2 as he marched all over his apartment, stomp stomp, squeal squeal. It was so disruptive that Mr. Pea was awake until somewhere between 3:30 and 4 and I was awake until nearly 5. I have a hard time turning off my internal dialogue once it’s awake. On cue, Tuesday meowed for attention at 7:30. So now I’m up, having gotten 7 hours of sleep, but in two pieces with a giant middle section missing. I am exhausted. This is the third time in two weeks. It can’t go on.
And that’s why we started talking about moving at 3:30 this morning. This is not something either of us want to do, but this living situation is becoming untenable. I’m thinking of posting the following on craigslist:
In search of ideal apartment: one half of side-by-side duplex, hardwood floors, no wallpaper (as an aside–the cat will destroy both of those, so better to avoid them). Preferably, other half inhabited by quiet people who don’t like to crank music, watch loud movies, or have friends over at all hours, and who have quiet friends (ie, the elderly). Located on silent dead-end street. Yard preferred, with gardening rights. Rent reasonable, utilities included.
If you know where this place is, do give me a holler 
The Sorta Triumphant Return of an Old Friend
Many years ago, on my Christmas list, I asked for a cast iron pan. My grandmother had long used them and had hers for many years, and eagerly picked one up for me. And I used it a couple times. But it was heavy and a little cumbersome and ended up in our small kitchen at the bottom of a pile of pots, rarely to see light again.
That changed this week. I need a nonstick pan but don’t like teflon, and remembered my old buddy, the cast iron skillet. I took it out and realized it needed some TLC. In a desperate attempt to avoid working on anything else, I assessed the situation–it had some rust, but looked to be just surface-level stuff–and dug out a sheet of fine sandpaper, and went to town. I sanded, wiped clean, and sanded again, four or five times. The rust came off pretty easily. I then gave the pan a thorough washing and drying, coated it with shortening, and propped it upside-down in the oven, over cookie sheets, to season. Cast iron isn’t nonstick right away, you see–it needs to be seasoned, deliberately like I was doing, maybe a few times, and then just with use. It starts off shiny and silver and ends up black–and very little sticks to that darkened surface. I baked it in a 300 degree oven for an hour, then let it cool, and washed it.
My goal was to make a Spanish tortilla–a potato/egg omelette cake type thing–which you cook over low heat and flip. This was, however, more than the pan could handle on its first day out. You start by cooking thinly-sliced potatoes in oil for a long time until they soften, and then add eggs. I had a couple potatoes stick and didn’t think too much of it; unfortunately, they then stuck to my eggs, and burned, and there was no flipping, no lovely crust, nada. It was a bugger to clean, too. But that’s ok. The tortilla didn’t taste bad but only looked ugly. I washed the pan, heated it on a burner, and coated it with a little oil. Next time I’ll wash it again (for some reason–and I should probably investigate this–when I coated it with oil my paper towel got all brownish–this was after washing, and so I’m not sure why) and keep cooking. Give it half a dozen uses and it should be as good as grandma’s.
