Recipes I plan to try soon

Arugula pesto. Proportions can be modified.
Pipian verde.
Tomatillo-avocado salsa.

Tanjore Tamarind Rice

This recipe is also from Laxmi's. It was acceptable as a plain starch, but not rave-worthy. Following the recipe exactly resulted in overcooked rice and insufficient sauce to color and flavor all of it. Next time I'd halve the rice or double the sauce, and shave several minutes off the initial rice-cooking time. I got no complaints, probably because the tasting crew was distracted by the Frog/Commissary chicken curry.

Garlicky Smothered Bell Peppers

This recipe was from Laxmi's Vegetarian Kitchen, a cookbook that regularly disappoints me. Could be me, could be her recipes. Fortunately, this recipe turned out very well, with the right amount of tartness and savoriness and spiciness. Still, it required a lot of labor for a rather smallish, ordinary-looking result. The technique simply involves sauteing the usual onions/garlic/ginger/spices base; then roasting, peeling, and finely chopping a few bell peppers and throwing them in with a tomato for a few minutes. Salt, sugar and cilantro finish the dish.

Curried Chicken with Yogurt Sauce

This recipe is from The Frog/Commissary Cookbook, which never seems to let me down.
The yogurt sauce is easy enough; plain yogurt plus chopped garlic, ginger, and spices. The chicken is also easy; defrost, roll in a mixture of spices and flour (I used almond meal instead), dredge in a mixture of turmeric and eggs, and fry on high heat. I didn't bother to pound the chicken breasts or heat the tomatoes as they suggested. The sliced tomatoes themselves are a necessary ingredient. Finished recipe got excellent reviews from its mathematically-inclined tasters, fresh from a brief cricket excursion.

Butternut Squash Soup

This is very tasty and easy. I might double it and use it for the upcoming November Soup-Off.
I used two squash halves that I'd partly roasted and left in the fridge for a few days. This worked fine, but I think I should have cut back the simmer time (or temperature) a bit; when I checked them they seemed very cooked. I also added a small handful of cilantro to the food processor, which did well to cut the mushy sweet flavor. The nutmeg didn't come through much at all, so I might be more generous next time. Taster Matt recommends more rosemary, and I agree. Cream and rosemary salt was great on top; sour cream could work also.

Cranberry Applesauce

Recipe here. Also very easy to make. I used more lemon peel than called for and left some in for pureeing, without noticeable detriment. I think I cooked it longer than 15 minutes but no harm was done. I used less sugar and less butter; the fruit is sweet enough on its own and I didn't want this to be dessert. This would be good for Thanksgiving...

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Caramel Sauce

Recipe here. The cake is easy and delicious. I had to leave it in the oven 20 minutes longer than called for, but it didn't get burned or dry. Very rich, very fat, not excessively sweet. The recipe makes far more caramel sauce than necessary. I spread some on top of the cooled cake in a cute pattern but I still have a cup and a half in the fridge that needs to be used. I guess an apple pie is called for, or vanilla ice cream.

Butternut Squash Risotto

I used this recipe, switching in sage and oregano for chives and multiplying it by 4. As multiplied it was plenty of food for 8 people. The ginger softens up nicely during cooking and spices up the dish nicely, so don't be afraid to use a lot. Could've used more salt. Leftovers are great warmed up, but terrible cold on a rocking boat in chilly weather off the Pacific continental shelf.

Chicken Avocado Pizza

This recipe illustrates what should become the first rule of MarnKookery: never make eccentric pizzas. Eccentric pizzas may seem cute, they may seem like a good way to use up excess ripe avocados, they may seem like a healthy way to get your pizza fix, but invariably the results are unsatisfying at best and tragic at worst. I have a shameful craving for real pizza today, just to eradicate the memory of last night's misadventure.

I prebaked a round of frozen pizza dough I had lying around. This may have contributed to the tragic outcome, as this particular dough was part whole wheat and seemed "heavy" to Mr. CTM. The avocado puree tasted fine on its own, the chicken and tomatoes were great separately, there was nothing wrong with the cheese -- but after assembly this pizza miraculously became less than the sum of its parts.

I may be excessive in my criticism. Don't get me wrong; it was entirely edible, and I would dive right in if I came home from work one day and found it freshly steaming on my kitchen table. But to assemble this pizza from scratch is a waste of ingredients that could be put to better uses.

Marinated Buffalo Steak

At the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market on Saturday, the Taster and I picked up a couple of sustainably-farmed grass-fed buffalo steaks from the Prather Ranch Meat Co. I put one in a marinade of garlic, fresh ginger, crushed fresh rosemary, red wine, and orange juice for a few hours and broiled it. After three minutes per side it didn't seem done, so we threw it back for another two minutes per side, after which it shrank a bit and got a bit overdone. Still delicious, but we'll have to get used to a very-very-pink-inside steak next time.

Gourmet, via Epicurious, has this to say about buffalo: "Buffalo meat can be very red, even when cooked to medium-rare. Don't be alarmed — this is a naturally occurring phenomenon that has to do with the animal's diet and how little fat is marbled through the muscle." They also recommended four companies for buffalo meat: Wild Idea Buffalo Company, Jackson Hole Buffalo Meat Company, Arrowhead Buffalo Meats, and D'Artagnan. These companies appear to offer mail-order buffalo steaks, partly answering the question that CTM and I had, which was "how come we see only buffalo burgers in the store? where do all the steaks and ribs and things go? you almost never see them in restaurants, either..." But can mail-order really comprise the bulk of buffalo meat sales?

Warm Artichokes and Bacon Over Dandelion Greens

Recipe can be found here, courtesy of Emeril Lagasse and his Cajuniciousness, a cuisine I'll admit I don't entirely understand. The greens I had were relatively bitter, since it's pretty late in the season, so I blanched them briefly first and then stirred them into the sauce rather than pouring it over. I used just one strip of bacon and some jarred artichokes from TJ's. I expected this dish to be reviled, but oddly enough it was admired. Second helpings were even requested. Bacon makes everything wonderful!

I did a quick pubmed search on dandelions to see why they're reputed to be so good for you. It turns out that they have a number of amazing superpowers: they modulate blood sugar, they can restore experimentally-suppressed immune function in animals, they can restore experimentally-induced pancreatitis in animals, and they have antitumor and anti-oxidant effects (like just about every other vegetable, I suppose). As for the liver, which is supposed to benefit especially from dandelions, it appears that these greens increase the expression of hepatic antioxidant enzymes (specifically, superoxide dismutase and catalase) and decrease lipid peroxidation. The result is a decrease in total cholesterol and triglyceride levels and an increase in HDL cholesterol. Another study found that dandelion dramatically increased the activity of "phase II detoxifying enzyme UDP-glucuronosyl transferase" in the liver. Sounds delicious, whatever it is.

Sauteed Shiitakes

Olive oil, one sliced leek, a lot of fresh shiitakes, and a splash of red wine. This recipe is going to make me throw out my scratched nonstick pan; shiitakes and other mushrooms absorb unpleasant metallic tastes when cooked in aluminum or iron, and somehow they picked up enough aluminum from the scratches in the teflon to give them a marked metal-y flavor. The splash of wine helped a little bit, and I didn't really notice any metallic taste in the leftovers the next day.

It's difficult to saute mushrooms for too long, as long as you don't burn them. The longer they cook, the more water they release and the more rich and concentrated their flavor becomes.

Shiitakes have high concentrations of immune-stimulating polysaccharides, but this lovely bonus can cause digestive distress if you eat huge amounts of them at once like I did.

Pear Cranberry Cobbler

This recipe is also from Back to the Table and turns out okay. Not stunning, but serviceable. It's a pretty basic cup-of-cranberries, cup-of-sliced-pears, top-with-pastry recipe. I accidentally threw an extra tablespoon or two of sugar into the crust and it still seemed boringly bready. An excess of cornstarch in the fruit works out well. Nice leftovers for work the next day. CTM seems fond of it. I bet he has a cranberry fetish.

Fresh ingredients I need to use up

Lying around my fridge and kitchen are the following yummy organic things:

Lemon verbena
Fresh thyme
Fresh rosemary
Tomatoes
Green peppers
Zucchini
Leeks
Sweet potatoes
Swiss chard
Dandelion greens
Cherry tomatoes
Apples
Asian pears
Winter squash

If you have any recipe suggestions, feel free to let me know...

Pear Pecan Bread

This recipe is from Maida Heatter's Best Dessert Book Ever, but there's a close approximation of that recipe here. My attempt could have used a bit more baking but I wanted to eat some and go to bed. It's not the best way to use up pears, unlike Vanilla-Scented Pear Strudel, which is, as a matter of fact, the best way to use up pears.

Chard and Red Pepper Risotto

Here's the recipe; I substituted a bunch of rainbow chard for the broccoli rabe. I chopped the chard stems and added them at the same time as the onions; I reserved the red peppers and added them at the same time as the rice, hoping they would keep more of their color, flavor, and vitamin C that way. Using half Cheddar and half Parmesan doesn't seem to hurt the dish.

The finished product tastes deliciously of rosemary (I used two big sprigs in the broth). As usual, this took longer to prepare than the recipe claimed; I spent about 45 minutes stirring, total. Next time I will make twice as much, since the leftovers were delicious and scanty. It's fine as a one-dish meal.

The tasting panel recommended the addition of bacon next time, to counter and round out the bitterness of the greens.

Pesto Chicken with Tomato Relish

This is from Gourmet Meals in Minutes, a very pretty cookbook with very quick recipes. It's not incredibly versatile, and most of the dishes are not standalone (so you end up making several quick recipes rather than just one). I made the tomato relish first: three chopped tomatoes, a tablespoon of olive oil, two teaspoons balsamic vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper; mix and chill. A good accompaniment but not outstanding. The included pesto recipe was for a garden variety basil pesto. The recipe calls for whole chicken breasts pounded thin, spread with pesto and rolled up; I had TJ's breast tenderloins in the freezer so I used those, making miniature rolls. With larger breasts the recipe's step of roasting would have been necessary, but a good saute at high heat seems to have been sufficient for these small rolls. I have lingering doubts about their center doneness, so next time I'll be sure to saute them until golden on all sides. The pesto was marvelous and kept the chicken moist.

PseudoHalvah

At last, an answer to the age-old question, "What do I do with all these black sesame seeds that I bought on a whim once?" I know you've all been wondering. After skimming through some halva recipes on the internet, I came up with the following recipe, which tastes great. The "boil, reduce heat, simmer for five minutes" part is a post-experimental addition, which I added because the pre-experimental edition (in my head) simply read "heat the honey until it looks like it's probably pretty hot, then slather it on," resulting in halvah that has the consistency of honey with ground-up seeds in it. Heating the honey until it reaches what's known in these parts as the "soft ball stage" will result in more properly textured halvah. Or so I imagine.

Grind 1/4 cup black sesame seeds and 1/4 cup flax seeds to a coarse meal. Add 1/2 cup almond meal and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bring 3/4 cup honey to a gentle boil, reduce heat, and simmer for five minutes or so. Add honey to seed mixture and stir quickly. Scrape onto a plate or marble slab and chill until almost set. Cut into squares and chill until firm.

Tomatillo Salsa

For this I threw half a small onion, a clove of garlic, a small handful of fresh basil, half a teaspoon of salt, and a quarter teaspoon cayenne pepper in the Cuisinart and chopped it up finely. The Joy of Cooking suggests roasting the tomatillos before adding them, but this turns them nasty, squishy, and cooked-tasting. Don't do it. I roasted half the tomatillos and left half raw, throwing them all in the Cuisinart and chopping them coarsely along with half a tomato. The tomato was a bad idea; it makes the salsa far too sweet (and a bit too watery).

Chiles Rellenos

I looked up the chiles rellenos recipe in The Joy of Cooking and then simplified it. My version had two ingredients, poblano peppers and cheese. The poblanos came from our organic farm subscription and the cheese was an overpriced, but tasty, cheese from the yuppie cheese store on Cole. I roasted the peppers in the toaster/broiler until the skin blistered, peeled them, stuffed them with shredded cheese, and microwaved them for a couple of minutes until the cheese melted. Delicious. Spicy.

Blueberry Crisp

I was going to make Apricot Honey Cake but ran out of eggs after all the kasha-varnishing and challah-glazing. So I picked Blueberry Crisp from Art Smith's Back to the Table.

This dessert calls for 4 pints of fresh blueberries. I used a bag and a half of TJ's frozen blueberries instead, which worked out okay, but the skins stayed a little tough. Mix the blueberries with about half a cup of sugar and two tablespoons of flour and spread them in the bottom of a ceramic or glass casserole. In a bowl, mix a cup of flour, half a cup of white sugar and half a cup of brown sugar; then work in about six tablespoons of butter until you have a crumbly meal. Spread this over the blueberries and bake at 400F for about 35 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the blueberries are bubbling. I used about half a cup of almond meal for half a cup of the flour, and that was fine. I got impatient and pulled this out after about 25 minutes, when the crust was barely golden, so I could throw the challah into the oven finally. I liked the crust fine but CTM was looking for something a little crispier.

Hungarian Cucumber Salad

This was great. CTM made it while I was fussing around with other things, and of course, as with everything else he makes, it turned out perfectly. He's a much better cook than I am, he just doesn't know it yet.

Moroccan Veggie Stew

Most Rosh Hashanah main courses seem to involve beef (in tzimmes or brisket) or chicken (in soup, or roasted). I never have beef in the house, roasting a chicken would take too long, and I had chicken last night anyway. So I looked around for vegetarian main courses and came up with this. Not very traditional, perhaps, but tasty.

I skipped the couscous and raisins thing, since I had kasha varnishkes on the side. It's not very soupy as-is and doesn't really need an absorbent layer. The peppers should be added at an earlier point, since they take longer than five minutes to soften up; they can probably go in with the zucchini. I did the sweet potatoes first, not really believing that they'd cook as fast as the zucchini. Nevertheless this recipe was very quick.

As with all such tagines and stews I've done lately, slightly less cinnamon is needed than the recipe calls for (or else TJ's cinnamon is particularly potent). A little less cayenne would be good for me but the recipe's fine as-is in that regard.

Challah

The recipe I used is found here. I halved it and kneaded in some fresh rosemary and thyme at the end. The finished product definitely needs more salt. Upon re-reading the recipe, I have no memory of adding the salt, so I may have accidentally skipped that step. Previous loaves of challah I've made have been a bit dense, but I had time to let this one fully rise three times and the texture turned out very nicely. My oven runs a bit hot, and this loaf was done after about 15 minutes at 350, rather than 35 minutes. I forgot to grease the baking sheet (on top of forgetting the salt), so it stuck. Cooking on low blood sugar never works.

Kasha Varnishkes

So it was the New Year and all that, and since I was coming home early I figured I'd try my hand at some vaguely traditional foods. Not that these are old family traditions or anything; the only kasha varnishkes I've ever had were made by me. But there are arguments in favor of modifying one's diet over the course of the year in response to changes in weather, day length, and available foods, and traditional seasonal dishes provide ways to accomplish this. Christmas cookies, for example, provide extra carbohydrates that boost our serotonin production in the darker months of winter. Easter eggs provide easily-assimilable protein for the renewed muscle activity of springtime. Most traditional Thanksgiving dishes take advantage of seasonally-available produce. Anyway, all of this is obvious, but it explains why I sometimes attempt to follow established dietary traditions despite my lack of personal connection to any of them.

Meanwhile, the recipe I used can be found here.

I used whole-wheat penne instead of bow-tie egg noodles, and butter rather than chicken fat, and a touch of fresh thyme rather than the other fresh herbs, since that's what I have. I think it came out perfectly, and it was very quick. The Taster-In-Chief understands, I think, that buckwheat is kind of a weird taste that must be acquired, but so far I don't believe he's acquired it. Maybe after a few years of this...

Pita Bread

This was intended to go with the Chicken Tagine and green beans from the post below. Next time I should make rice for that dish. These pitas turned out more like naan bread, and rapidly lose their savoriness as they cool. I used the recipe from the Joy of Cooking and dumped everything into the Cuisinart with the bread blade to mix. When using the Cuisinart, don't run it too long or the dough will overheat, killing the yeast.

I used honey rather than sugar and threw in extra yeast, in order to get the rich yeasty flavor I'm looking for. The flavor was fine, but the heft and texture needs work. I was cautious about substituting whole wheat for white flour, but I don't think it would hurt to use more than the 30-40% I tried, and regular whole wheat instead of the pastry whole wheat I used. The dough must be rolled very thin. I cooked mine directly on the solid burner covers of my classy O'Keefe & Merritt over medium-high heat. The blackened bits on the bread are not problematic, though if I rolled the pitas thinner they might be.

I'm concerned that the bread becomes more cracker-like when I roll it very thin and bake it. I will try baking thinly-rolled pitas more briefly at a higher temperature next time, and see whether they remain soft.

Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemons

I made this on Sunday night for CTM and Andrew prior to their quaint little "boys' night out," which usually consists of shooting pool and talking about algebraic topology or something. Last time I went out with the girls we just sat around reading excerpts from Grundzuge der Mengenlehre out loud to each other and weeping over Hausdorff's unfortunate fate. I know, chicks are so emotional.

The recipe can be found here.

I used frozen thighs and breasts from TJ's, which was fine, though the breasts could be taken out of the oven sooner. I threw all the onions, garlic, and spices into the Cuisinart and pureed them together; it's extremely pungent when raw but mellows substantially in the oven. Don't chop the olives, and be sure that your lemons are small; I used 2 1/2 big ones and rather more olives than necessary, and the sauce was excessively salty.

To go with the chicken, I boiled some green beans (which I left in the water way too long, making them perfect for CTM and way overboiled for me. Since they were nice and organic and fresh, though, they retained a lot of flavor.) I melted about three tablespoons of butter and mixed in several spoonfuls of ground hazelnuts, about a tablespoon of lemon juice, and some salt and pepper, to go over the beans. This preparation was met with high praise, though I found it a little greasy. Less butter and maybe a splash of balsamic vinegar next time.

Coconut Brownies

This recipe is from page ?? of The Best of Gourmet 1995, a magazine compilation I picked up at the SF Public Library book sale for a dollar last Sunday. The brownies need four ounces of unsweetened chocolate melted together with six tablespoons of butter and then mixed with a cup of sugar, two eggs, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Add to that a cup of flour mixed with a teaspoon of baking powder and a quarter teaspoon of salt, then throw in 3/4 cup of shredded coconut and bake in a greased 8x11 pan at 375 for 17 minutes.

They will be thin and you'll have to spread them with a spatula to the edge of the pan, but it's hard to burn them. I way overbaked these, making them hard and dry once cooled, because the chunks I yoinked from the pan as it was cooling kept tasting raw-ish. This is okay. Stop baking these when your toothpick comes out dry and the sides start to pull away, and they'll be fine.

Chief Taster Matt ("CTM"), who likes coconut, thinks these had a cakey, crumby consistency, less enjoyable than fudgy brownies he's had.

Welcome to Marnk Ookery

Greetings, as-yet-unknown masses flocking to my superfluous cooking blog! This blog is intended to serve as a resource for me as I cook, and for anyone who is specifically interested in the things that I cook, although I suppose I already know who you are and can count you on the fingers of one hand. Anyway, after bouts of cooking I plan to post a link to the recipe I used (if possible), discuss substitutions I made (if any), talk about how well the finished product was received (if at all well), and suggest hints for next time (if there is a next time). Enjoy.