Cookbooks I have known...

I have a friend, a wonderful guy and an excellent cook, who eschews cookbooks.  He believes it isn't cooking, it isn't creative, if you're not figuring it out or making it up as you go along.  And I like his perspective, I do, and he makes some really delicious food and it's always a lot of fun to talk to him about food, and technique.

However, about the cookbooks?

 

That's not even all of them.  There's more.  So many more.

I also collect essayists and food memoirists such as MFK Fisher, Elizabeth David, Mark Kurlansky, Harold McGee, Judith Jones, Ruth Reichel, Gabrielle Hamilton...

(Years ago, my husband said to me, if you come home with one more pair of shoes, I'll know you want a divorce - He really could say the same thing to me about cookbooks these days. )

(not that I'd be able to stop - more likely, I'd hide my addiction a bit better...)

Anyhoodle...

I think I've said this before, but I often take a cookbook to bed with me and read it like a novel.  I love them, especially chatty ones.  My first chatty cookbook was that famous one by Peg Bracken, "The I Hate to Cook Book" - which was out on the counter in my mother's kitchen throughout my childhood.  I remember sitting belly to counter on the creaky old yellow stool skipping the recipes, but completely engrossed by Mrs. Bracken's practical, funny and self deprecating take on life as a woman in the 60s and 70s' suburbs.  My mom swore by her recipes.  I swear by her voice:

"Speaking of cooking, incidentally, and I believe we were, one of its worst facets is grocery shopping.  When you hate to cook, a supermarket is an appalling place.  You see so many things that they are all a blur, and you finally end up with a glazed look and a chop."

Though I don't hate to cook, certainly anyone who reads this blog with any regularity can see from the above quote why I love her.

That said - I tend to use a cookbook (or two) as a jumping-off place for my own creations.  I believe I mentioned in my last post that I'm currently addicted to The Smitten Kitchen -by Deb Perleman.  She's apparently addicted to pizza - and I recently made pizza with her dough recipe (although I used 2 tsp of sea salt instead of table salt).  This dough is very easy to double or even triple - which is what I did.  But since we don't eat cheese these days, I decided to make calzones.  Meatball calzones because, in honor of Emma's dairy allergy, I recently bought a book by Silvana Nardone called, Cooking With Isaiah-  and she'd put a large sticky on the page with meatball subs.  And meatball subs are good - but -

meatball calzones are better.  MUCH better -

You don't need cheese for meatballs - although a lot of recipes have you drowning the breadcrumbs with a splash of milk and adding parmesan for flavor and binding.  I've made meatballs without these ingredients for a while now.  You do need breadcrumbs and eggs for texture/binding and something that has some moisture in it - which is why people add milk.

I don't.  I add sautéed frozen spinach.

If you want to make Silvana's meatball subs, here's her recipe.

Ritz Crackers are nice because they have a fairly unique flavor -
which gives the meatballs an extra depth one wouldn't expect.

Mine are similar - except no milk, and since we aren't gluten free (yet) - and since I rarely have Rice Krispes in the house - I used Ritz Crackers instead of breadcrumbs.   (This is where I get all Peg Bracken-y.  I feel strongly that one should never, ever, rush out into the cold for an ingredient not in the pantry when another perfectly good substitute might be lounging around.  If you don't have Ritz, use saltines and cut back dramatically on the salt.  If you don't have saltines toast some bread and crumble it up - if you don't have toast then - god bless you.... )  And, of course, I'm way too lazy to add tomato sauce.  My best friend is a jar of Rao's.

Wow.  I've really been going on here - time to wrap this up and get to the food.  The last thing I'll say - when you are making the pizza dough for your calzone - make lots extra.  Cut the dough into 3rds and wrap two of the portions up in plastic, put them in a large ziploc or container and let them hang out in the refrigerator.  Then, check out my next post - I'll tell you what I did with my extras.  This dinner takes some time - therefore it is best made on a Sunday afternoon - a glass of wine at hand and a decent playlist going.






First: make the pizza dough. You can make Deb's, or you can do this:

1 cup of pretty warm water
2 tsp of yeast
1 TBLSP of brown sugar
3 cups of bread flour
1 TBLSP sea salt (I use fleur de sel) or 1 tsp of table salt
1TBLSP olive oil

Heat your oven to 200 degrees for 10 minutes then turn it off.  Dissolve the yeast and brown sugar in the warm water.  Whisk flour and salt in a large bowl, dump the yeast mixture in along with the olive oil and stir it up with a rubber spatula.  Or you can put everything in the bowl of a mixer with a dough hook and let it all run.  Either way, mix it up until everything is incorporated and comes together in a ball.  If it's in the mixer, let it run for 5 minutes.  Otherwise dump it out on a floured counter and knead until it is smooth - 3-5 minutes.  No need to get fussy with this.  If kneading annoys you, don't do it.  Wipe out the large bowl, spray it with oil, put the dough back in, spray the top of the dough, cover with plastic wrap and stick it in the warm oven for an 1/2 an hour to an hour (or more - I am often distracted by shiny things such as George Takei posts of Facebook or Kelly Oxford tweets)

Meanwhile... make yourself some meatballs

Saute the following:
1 stalk celery diced
1 small yellow onion diced

1 clove of garlic diced and crushed
1 cup of frozen spinach

Let this mixture cool and put it in a bowl with
1 cup of crushed ritz crackers

Add 
1lb of ground turkey or hamburger (if adding turkey, use a mix of thigh and breast)
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 TBLSP of sea salt or a tsp of table salt.
Grind in some pepper
1 egg lightly beaten
Squish it up with your hands.

form a bunch of small meatballs - whatever you like.  I sometimes use a 1 inch ice cream scoop so they're all about the same size.

Saute the meatballs in a pan with a few swirls of oil so that the outsides brown a bit.

TAKE YOUR DOUGH OUT OF THE OVEN (I cap this because I have forgotten to do this many times myself.  If you are one of the lucky people who have 2 ovens, obviously you don't need to do this) -

And preheat to 350

Pour your Rao's or any other kind of sauce you have - (or a can of crushed tomatoes if that's all you have) and  put it in a 350 for 20 minutes.

When the meatballs are cooked, and your dough is all raised, you're ready, take the dough out of the bowl, cut it into 3rds, wrap 2 of the thirds in oil sprayed plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator for another day.


Roll your dough out flat and sprinkle a little olive oil on top.  Pick it up and flatten it out again on a  parchment lined jelly roll pan.

Put your meatballs right in the center.  If you don't have a dairy allergy, this is when you can add

1/2 cup of mozzarella
1/2 cup of ricotta or crumbly goat cheese (my preference)
1/4 cup parmesan

Fold the dough in half, and squish the edges together.  Cut a few slits in the top so steam can escape and stick it back in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes or until it is all a lovely brown and crusty.  You'll have to let it sit a bit before cutting into it - but this should be easily sliced into 3-4 calzones depending on how hungry your horde is.

Honk If You Like New Drivers

So, I have one of these now:

When my nephew started driving, my sister cried.  The first time he left the driveway for a solo outing, she felt nauseous, a little shaky, and even though I wasn't there at the time, I like to imagine she ran to the liquor cabinet and thew back a bit of tequila once her son cleared the fence posts.

Many of my friends have new drivers in their households these days.  Many of my friends a just a little freaked out by this fact.

But not me.  I'm ecstatic.

Why?  Because when I first got my driver's license I was very happy to drive anywhere my mom wanted me to go.  And that anywhere included the grocery store.  I think you see where I'm going now.  Once she has her license, I figure I've got about 2 months before she figures this out.  Two months where I can casually say, hey, feel like driving to the store for me?  And then equally casually, hand her a list...

Today, after reading a facebook message from an old high school friend that I've recently reconnected with, I began to long for lunch.  He wrote beautifully about the lunch he'd made himself - and, because he lives is Switzerland now he ate all sorts of delicacies I can't get here.  Well, that's not true, I can get them here, but they won't be the same.  Years ago when my husband and I were on our honeymoon in, yes, Switzerland, we became completely besotted with the cafe au lait we were served with breakfast every morning at out hotel restaurant.  When we got home we went immediately to McNulty's - down on Christopher Street and bought a pound of Swiss roast beans which we lovingly ground ourselves, placed in our French Press, and over which we poured water just off boil.  After waiting the required four minute brewing time, we heated a little milk, poured the coffee, gently added the hot milk and prepared to relive our exquisite Swiss breakfast experience.

It was very depressing.  The coffee was too bitter, the milk too weak and we realized that what we had was nothing like our honeymoon - (not going to make the pun I could easily make here) - coffee.  Why?  BECAUSE WE WERE NO LONGER IN SWITZERLAND.  Sure, this is an easily made point, but what I'm really saying is that the coffee we were served was probably roasted nearby, the milk was full fat, unpasturized, and we could see the cow grazing out the hotel window.  Things taste best when they are locally obtained.  I'm just saying.  I love the local. (and JJ, I know you agree)  If my daughter were home (and if she had her official license - which she won't have for another few months - not until she's gotten at least 60 hours of driving under her belt) - I'd send her out for some locally made goat's milk cheese from the cheese shop downtown.  (You thought I'd never get back to that original point didn't you... ) and I'd make myself a local version of what my friend ate.

But, it's starting to do this:

And I am just too lazy.  

I've got eggs, I've got some lettuce, I've got a bit of dijon with some tarragon.  I've got a hoagie roll which I can toast. 

 And now, I've got lunch:

Eggs - They're What's For Dinner

Last night the girls were out with friends and it was just Smith and me hanging out - always a little bitter sweet, you know?  Now that Em is 16, we are very aware of the all too brief time we have with her living in our home.  However, it's nice to be just the two of us.  Now if we can only come up with things to talk about other than our kids...

Anyway - at about 7:30 Smith says, "what are we doing for dinner?"  Often on a Friday we like to go down to the Pub, have a burger and a martini and hang out with Tom the bartender, but we are thinking about a trip to Europe this summer and we are trying to save our dimes (as my grandfather used to say).    So, I trudged to the kitchen.  You all know I love to cook, particularly something grand and delicious (my new favorite cookbook is The Smitten Kitchen - I'll try to write more about that later) - but when it's just the two of us, sometimes the most I feel like doing is open a box of raisin bran and pour the milk.  Smith's default is a very large PB&J.  But it was cold out (finally!) and something warm was called for.

Oh, the last time I've been to the grocery*?  8 days ago.  Which meant I had a pack of bacon, a dozen eggs and a bunch of frozen stuff.

Easy peasy.

Because this is what I made:

Eggs...mmmm... bacon... - wait, what's that green stuff?  Yes.  Spinach.  And under those eggs?  YES - frozen sweet potato and regular potato TATER TOTS.  Mashed into a hash.  

Here's what I used:

6 strips of bacon

grapeseed oil - as needed

1 cup of frozen tater tots (regular)

2 cups of frozen sweet potato tater tots

1 cup of frozen spinach

tabasco

salt

pepper

2 eggs

Here's what I did:

Swirled a bit of grapeseed oil into my smaller cast iron skillet * and threw 2 strips of bacon in.  Cooked it to crispy then removed it from the pan and let it drain on paper towels. Then I threw my 3 cups of tots in the bottom of the skillet (add a bit more grapeseed oil if your bacon hasn't thrown off enough fat) and just let them sit there over a medium to low heat.  After they defrosted, and once they started to brown, I mashed them in to the bottom of the skillet.  This is when I added salt, pepper and several drops of Tabasco.  Cook until they are brown on the bottom then scramble them up - which in my opinion creates the perfect hash - crispy and not-crispy at the same time.  

Meanwhile, I preheated my oven to 450 and swirled some more oil in my big big big cast iron skillet and threw in the remainder of my bacon.  (Cooking bacon in the oven reduces clean up - I hate splatter because I'm lazy.)  Cooked the bacon in the oven.

In my third cast iron skillet (who needs All Clad when you can get pre-seasoned Lodge cast iron skillets for about $25 at the hardware store?) (Ok, I do have a couple of All Clad pans - but I swear to you I use my cast iron more frequently.) (Moving on.) swirled more grapeseed oil, dumped the cup of frozen spinach in and let it sauté a bit until it became unfrozen.  Then I made a little space right in the center and cracked in the two eggs.  Splashed a little more Tabasco around and let the eggs sit until they cooked.  Smith likes his very runny, so I took his out early.  I like mine cooked to a slightly runny stage - so mine hung out.  

Put a layer of hash down on the plate and gently place the eggs/spinach on top.  Once your bacon is cooked, you can either crumble it over the whole thing, or let it hang out on the side.  I know I've been lax about posting - but Smith pointed out to me post greedy silent consumption that this is exactly the kind of meal my blog is about.

Anyway, this kind of dinner should also promote a long and harmonious marriage - even if you have nothing to talk about once the kids have left the nest...

NOTE:

* I'm conflicted about blindly going to Whole Foods these days in light of this and this - I appreciate that he supports sustainable farming and small businesses - but he seems a little nuts.  I've heard this for years, but I must admit I turned a blind eye because there really isn't anywhere else yet to buy things like grass-fed or hormone free meat and poultry in my neighborhood.  Plus the organic produce in grocery stores like Giant are not of the same quality and are much more expensive than WF.  Does the good outweigh the bad? ... sigh.  I hate knowing too much.  This is why I hate the internet sometimes...

* I use grapeseed oil because it has a lower flash point - and because bacon fat burns at the drop of a hat I believe (probably erroneously - but whatever) that the grapeseed oil prevents the bacon from burning.  I like really crispy bacon, but there is a line that is sometimes hard to catch between bacon that's super crispy and burnt.

It's Not Easy Baking without Butter

I miss my butter.  Creamy, salty, comforting.  I've been perusing vegan cookbooks and blogs (my favorite right now is this one: Post Punk Kitchen because these women can write - they always tell a nifty story when describing their recipe odysseys) - and the savory is great, I do not miss butter there.  However, baked goods are frustrating me.  They come out too sweet for my taste buds because there is no fat to cut the sugar.  When I cut back on the sugar, cakes and cupcakes become tough.  I've tried substituting brown sugar, honey, molasses, but baked goods still come out, at least for me, with that sweetness that goes right to the frontal lobe and gives me a headache.  


But my dairy allergic girl loves her sweets and so I persist.  There must be some sort of an answer (well other than a lobotomy).  And for me, that answer is the incredible little egg.  Which is why I'll never be a vegan.  Well, that and bacon.  (I once had a friend who became a vegetarian except for pancetta fried up all crispy and who can blame her?)


The other day I was looking through a Nigella Lawson cookbook when I stumbled across a banana muffin recipe that used OIL and EGGS instead of butter and I hit my head Homer Simpson style emitting a big "DOH."  The mashed banana and the oil created a lot of moisture.  I substituted some brown sugar for half the white sugar which also adds moisture.  And, because I didn't have any overripe bananas, I substituted applesauce, and a yummy dairy free muffin was born.  
Here it is:
INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup canola oil
2 eggs
1 2/3 cups flour
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar firmly packed
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp table salt (not kosher or sea)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 1/4 cup of unsweetened applesauce (OR: mashed very ripe banana, or a combo of both)
1 cup of non-dairy Enjoy Life Chocolate Mega-chunks (if you don't want chocolate you can use any other kind of chip, butterscotch, peanut butter, or you can use blueberries or raspberries, but if you use fruit please see my note below)
HOW TO:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Drop some cupcake liners into a cupcake pan.  This recipe makes about 12 cupcakes.  (I always use liners, and when I don't have liners, I cut up parchment into squares, line the squares up over the 


Whisk oils and eggs together so they create a nice foamy emulsion. 


In a separate bowl whisk together all the dry ingredients, then mix in the eggs/oil.  

Using a wooden spoon, mix in the applesauce (or bananas or whatever).  After that carefully fold in the chips.  (Note: if you are using blue berries or raspberries don't add them now, wait until you are filling the muffin cups drop half of the batter into the muffin cup, sprinkle 3 or so blue or raspberries then top with another scoop of batter)


I like to use a 2 inch ice cream scoop to fill the muffin cups - but you want to fill each cup almost to the top.  Place in the oven for 20 minutes.

Dear Lord, It's April (stolen stir fry with curry)

I just realized my last post was in February - where I promised to write about my recipe for bread sans the beer.  Well, I'm still working on that.  I've been trying to bake a bread that's higher in protein so I can feel good about sending my daughters out the door in the morning with nothing more than a piece of toast in their hands.  I've been experimenting with adding things like eggs instead of oil, quinoa flour for half the white flour, whole wheat and then the pretty good King Arthur white whole wheat flour - but I can't quite get the crunchy crusty crust I'm looking for with my substitutions.  And you know what, dear readers?  You deserve perfection, and dammit, I'm going to give it to you - I refuse to post until I like the bread myself, and, perhaps even more challenging, until my daughters like my bread.  So there.  My bread still lives in the land of the experiment.  I wish I had one of those test kitchens like Martha Stewart and Chris Kimball have, but I don't.  I have a kitchen that has to make breakfast, lunch and dinner for my hungry horde.  And I don't have time to mess around for hours on end.  That's all I'm going to say about it for now.  I'm not bitter.  Not at all.

However, last night I will admit to making a darn good stir fry - and I'm hoping I haven't posted this one here before - or something like it.  If I have forgive me - it's because I'm still wrapped up in bread -

I took the basics from a Cooks Illustrated recipe for a Stir Fry with Curry Sauce, and then, because once again I didn't have most of the ingredients, substituted all sorts of things.  If you want the un-bastardized recipe, go to the link - but you can make it my way too -

1/4 - 1/2 lb or so boneless chicken breasts *see note
1TLBS soy sauce
1TLBS Marsala wine (cuz that's what I have - Cooks calls for sherry - I almost never have sherry.  A dry white wine would not be out of place here either.

Sauce:
3 TLBS soy sauce
2 TLBS Marsala wine
1/2 tsp refined sugar
2 TLBS low sodium chicken  or veg broth
1 Tsp of curry
1 tsp Garam Masala (ok, so here's part of where Cooks and I differ - they call for 2 tsp of curry - but I happen to have this jar of garam masala - which, I just want to point out that my auto correct wants to correct to gram nasal - you could happily go with the curry, or add another spice of some type)
1TBLSP of grated fresh ginger.  I keep a knobby ginger root in my freezer and just grate it frozen when I need it.

Vegetables
1-2 TBLSP of Canola or Peanut or Grapeseed Oil (all these oils can take high heat - I don't recommend olive oil, which can't)
1 sliced spring onion - kinda looks like a scallion on steroids, has a lot of the properties of a leek, but with a nice little fresh oniony bite
1 carrot, sliced
1 - 2 cups of a frozen vegetable medly, thawed in a sieve under running water.  I used green beans, peas,  broccoli and cauliflower- garbanzo beans would be good, what ever you have .  Most people have broccoli.
1 clove of garlic chopped fine

First - put the chicken in a bowl and toss with the soy and marsala and just leave it there to marinate while you get every thing else together.  (this works great with raw shrimp too)

Then make the sauce - dump all the ingredients into a bowl or a measuring cup.

Chop all the stuff that needs chopping.  Thaw all the stuff that needs thawing.

Take out a skillet or maybe a wok if you have one (I don't).  Get the skillet super hot so it's smoking a little.  Swirl the 1st TBLSP of oil in the pan and dump all the chicken and the marinade into the hot pan.  Make sure the chicken is all spread out so that every piece gets a nice sear.  If you have a lot of chicken you should do this in batches.  Let it sit 30 seconds or so.  Stir and let it sit again.  It should be cooked through after 2-3 min.  Take it out of the pan and put it in a clean bowl to sit.  Pour in another TBLSP of oil, let it get hot, tip your onions and carrots in, stir them for a while, until the onions are almost translucent.  Tip in all your veggies, stir them for a minute or so, then add your garlic.  Let this cook about 30 seconds, then return the chicken to the pan, and stir the sauce over all of it.  Cook about 30 seconds more, and serve ASAP  - it's not good if you let it get cool.  Serve with rice or rice noodles.

So sorry I don't have a picture.  It all got eaten pretty quickly.


*Note: so, these days, because I'm feeling cheap, I try to make one pack of 4 boneless chicken breasts last over several meals. One pack is about 2 whole breasts divided - and comes to about a pound or pound & 1/2 or so.  For this you can use as much or as little (or none) chicken as you like.  For this recipe, plumped the whole thing up with vegetables.  OF COURSE you can leave the chicken out all together and just go with veggies - And OF COURSE you can substitute Shrimp for the chicken.  In fact I think shrimp would be OUTSTANDING in this and I wish I'd thought of it last night because I have tons of frozen shrimp in my fridge and shrimp is one of my favorite foods ever.