Making pantry staples

Just a quick note before I head off to teach my last day of classes at Cornell, probably ever.

I've been haunted by this article from Slate for the last week which proves (okay, anecdotally) that most of our pantry staples could be cheaper (and way better) homemade. It's awful, just the sort of thing I love and at exactly the wrong time in the semester to do anything about. I've kept the article along with the recipe for bagels and Alton Brown's recipe for granola open in tabs on my browser since I first read it nearly a week ago and yet I have had no time for anything but grading and pottery in that whole stretch. Well, okay, we did make this tremendous batch of hummus (in both quantity and flavor) which I'll tell you about later but other than that it's been all tuna sandwiches and cereal all week.

This is the last big push, though, the last paycheck, and then for a long time in front of us it's nothing but dead air.

So expect more cooking soon!

Shrimp Tacos

Sometimes we--and by this I mean I--get so caught up in talking about meals that take a full day of cooking to produce that I forget how we actually eat. It might seem like it (even to us sometimes) but we don't spend every moment of every day cooking. I love to cook, I've occasionally considered trying to do this professionally, but I don't want to be committed to the process in that way. I can't think of an appropriate cliche to cite here so I'm going to make up a new one: hell is getting everything you thought you wanted all the time. So today I'm going to speed things up a bit here, to tell you something I've been hiding: sometimes when we cook a meal from scratch, we do it as quickly as we can.

So here's the meal we made in something like 40 minutes from raw plastic and air the other night: shrimp tacos with fresh salsa, black beans, and chips we toasted out of some corn tortillas.
The shrimp I marinated in a concoction of hot sauce, lemon juice, ground cumin, adobo, and some smoked paprika for a few minutes then dumped the whole bowl into a hot saute pan. We combined this with a simple pico de gallo (just tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and a smidge of garlic and red wine vinegar), leftover black beans (a staple in our household the last four or five months) and a couple of corn tortillas I wrapped in tin foil and threw over a medium flame for a few minutes. The chips we made by tossing quartered corn tortillas in our toaster oven with a little salt and some vegetable oil.

It was simple, it was fast, I made the shrimp entirely too spicy, and except for that it was exactly what we wanted to eat. I guess I should take this as a lesson. We don't always need to take a sick day just to eat at home. Some meals you don't need to be slow food. Some days, all that's separating us from a stomach full of homemade goodness is 15 minutes of actual work and 26 seconds of the most disgusting display of animal consumption you have ever had the bad luck to witness.

Bonus Pictures: Egg Dying

Apparently Justin did not particularly enjoy the Easter egg dying experience, but I thought it was pretty freaking fantastic. I tend to whip up my own egg dye (a little white vinegar, a lot of water and a few drops of food coloring), so I was pretty stoked that we happened to have neon food coloring in the pantry this year. I'd purchased the neon green for use in Eisha's birthday Key Lime Cupcakes, but it came as a set of four colors. The blue was probably my favorite, when it came to egg-dying.

I think I just associate Easter eggs with happy things - colorful baskets filled with green plastic grass, hollow, foil-covered rabbits and all sorts of saccharine treats whose promise of sugary goodness far surpasses any actual potential. Fun stuff. Kid stuff. Maybe I need to make egg dying more like that, with stickers and white crayons so we can decorate to our hearts' content. Or maybe we are getting too old for this. I sure hope not.

So tell me, how do you dye eggs?

No knead bread

I know a while back the New York Times recipe for No Knead Bread was a big thing in the blogosphere. Like, a long while back, maybe, but I go on blog reading binges sometimes and lose track of exactly what these "dates" at the tops of entries actually mean. So I'd seen the recipe a few times, had it loitering about the ill lit corners of my mind kicking stones and trying to smoke discarded cigarette butts for months now, but up until recently, when I wanted bread I wanted it immediately. I mean get out of my way I am coming for carbs and I will eat them through a hole in your chest if I have to. But then, as you might recall, we actually started making forays into bread baking not too long ago (sure, it lasted all of a week due to some disappointing baguettes (themselves alluded to in that challah post) but still, we started getting used to the idea that you can spend all day fostering gluten strands and doing all kinds of other inexplicable gerund verbs like bench proofing or folding or, I don't know, let's say zazzing a loaf) and this recipe for the no knead stuff had been slouching toward mental center ever since.

So when we started planning the menu of our Easter meal last week, I hemmed and hawed and occasionally threatened to make a loaf of challah, to start the slow cool rise of some sort of brioche, but never got around to actually putting together a pate fermentee on Saturday night with all of the egg dying, the ham basting, the cornballing that we had to do. But late that night, post-egg dye excitement (which, let's be adults about this, is never really as fun as you want it to be), pre super-disappointing episode of Saturday Night Live featuring young Zac Efron, it hit me that I didn't have to make anything quite as complex as the options I'd been listing. That, indeed, with very little energy and lots of time, I could follow the crowd at a distance of something like two and a half years and try my hand at this bread I'd been hearing is so easy a four year old couldn't screw it up.

So I put together the shaggy mixture of dough (3 cups of flour, 1/4 tsp yeast, 1 1/4 tsp salt, 1 5/8 cups of water) right before I put on my pajamas. Sunday, I folded the batch--which had tripled or quadrupled--into a messy little boule, got like a quarter of it hopelessly stuck to a dishcloth as it proofed, then dumped it into a sizzling hot 3 1/2 quart Le Creuset dutch oven, baked (half an hour with the cover on, ten or fifteen minutes with the cover off) and out came this gorgeous bread with a fabulously soft interior and crust so cracklingly tasty I think lightning shot from my mouth when I tasted it. I don't know. I blacked out.

Anyway: Awesome. Freaking. Bread.

Interesting sidenote: while we were slavering all over the fresh loaf, we let this baguette we had picked up from Wegmans go so completely stale it spontaneously shattered like crystal a few days later. This bread was so good it blinded us to the plight of other breads. We became inurred to breadsuffering. In this way the no knead bread is tasty but also dangerous.

I whipped up another batch of the stuff last night and, though I maybe burned the bottom of this loaf a little bit (I think 450 is too hot for the time listed), it still turned out as beautifully and as easily as anything I've ever baked.

Hurrah for simplicity! Huzzah for bread!

Mini Carrot Cakes

Easter is a great excuse to whip out The Silver Palate and attempt a few of its insidiously buttery recipes. This particular carrot cake is always on our menu - it manages to be moist and rich without that gross brick-like density. As delicious as this recipe is, though, we don't have large enough Easter dinners to justify an entire cake.

Rather than getting stuck with half a cake the day after Easter, I decided to make a dozen miniature ones to pawn off on guests, neighbors and friends. Here's my modification of The Silver Palate Carrot Cake. (Note: you must have a jumbo muffin tin for this recipe. I mean, come on, all the cool kids own one.)

Minature Carrot Cakes (makes 12)

• butter, for greasing muffin tin
  
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
• 1 1/2 cups shredded coconut
  
• 1 1/3 cups pureed cooked carrots
• 3/4 cup drained crushed pineapple
• cream cheese frosting
  
• 1/2 cup toasted coconut
• 1 small bag of egg shaped Easter candy
  

1. Peel a pound of carrots, chop into 1/4 inch chunks and boil until soft. Puree in food processor and set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two jumbo muffin tins.

3. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl. Add oil, eggs, and vanilla. Beat well. Fold in pecans, coconut, carrots and pineapple. Your batter will look like barf, that's okay. It's supposed to look like that. Don't you trust me?
3. Pour the batter into the muffin tins until they're about 3/4 full. Bake approximately 20-25 minutes. They should look something like this:
4. Flip muffin tin upside down and let the cakes cool completely, top-side down. When cool, use a serrated knife to carefully cut off the muffin-top-like portion of the cake. I recommend saving these pieces, as they are delicious.

5. Put the side you cut face-down on a dessert plate, and frost with your cream cheese frosting of choice. I prefer this recipe, but it's up to you.

6. Make a nest of toasted coconut on top of each cake and top that with an egg-shaped Easter candy. In this case, I used an M&M. Also in this case, I "toasted" the first batch of coconut until it was a charred, solid mass that billowed black smoke out of my toaster oven. Don't do that. Toast it gently, keep an eye on it, and enjoy the delicious finished product.

Wraps

Before our wedding last May, Dana and I spent months getting in shape and trying to break the old habits that had led to our steady weight gain. We'd grown anesthetized to the food choices we'd been making, paid no thought to what it meant that we rarely kept anything in the fridge, hardly ate more than cereal or a sandwich at home. And even on the off chance that we would cook something, it was likely to be sodium and oil heavy enchiladas encased in enough layers of cheese to approximate the earth's crust (these were not the enchiladas we just posted about but an earlier much-less-tasty incarnation made from cans of enchilada sauce and very little love. We weren't always the cooks we fancy ourselves now), and greasy full-fat pizza. A lot of the time we were out gorging on huge portions of oversaturated fries and Dr. Peppers on trips to the local Chili's (feel free to shudder if you like) or downing huge grotesque burritos that stretch out in memory like the legs of a statue you're standing right beneath, their tortillas bloated and white as an ancient grub.

When it came time to slim down, we joined the gym and started overhauling what we put in our bodies. It was a tough process but not because we wanted to eat what we were eating, we were no happier eating at Chili's so often than we would have been gnawing our way through a box of staples, it was more about learning that it really didn't take a lot of time or effort to make a meal we wouldn't want to throw up after. It wasn't about preference, it was about commitment. Now, I couldn't imagine going back to the way we were eating. We've always been avid eaters, but we had lost the joy of food. Lost the care which comes with approaching food wisely. It's not all about consumption or blood sugar maintenance, it's about passion. About choosing the things we want to eat instead of eating everything in sight.

One of the first things we discovered, and one of the things that has stayed a regular on our rotation since then, was the humble wrap. I know I know. Ithaca is to wraps as water is to wet, but they were kind of a revelation to us. This is a dish we could whip up in twenty minutes after work or have as a lunch that would actually hold us for hours. This is what health is about to us now, making good food easier and tastier than going out to a cheapo restaurant. Plus the money savings don't hurt, either.

So here, in honor of the sixty or so cumulative pounds we lost in 2008: our wraps.

Up top we've got boneless skinless chicken breast marinated in lime juice and cooked in white wine, paprika, and chili powder, below we have fresh tilapia filets baked with lime and chopped chipotle chilis. There's some romaine lettuce, some sunlight. Sliced onion. A simple vinaigrette with dijon mustard and champagne vinegar. All of it wrapped in a flour tortilla toasted in the flame on the gas stove.

It's hard to beat that with a plate full of onion rings you don't want.

The Food Dialogues

Dialogue 1/25/08

JUSTIN: (finishes reading a short story)
JUSTIN: (pushes away from the table in disgust)
JUSTIN: And then, in the end, it was all a DREAM!
JUSTIN: (glares)

Later, while reading a food blog...

JUSTIN: (agitated) First, she deep fries a corn tortilla.
JUSTIN: (increasingly agitated) Then, she pours "Mexican" tomato sauce into a bowl of refried beans and spreads it on the tortilla.
JUSTIN: (even more agitated) She puts cheese on it, and then another tortilla, and more beans, and more cheese, and ANOTHER tortilla, and more beans!
JUSTIN: (completely disgusted) She finishes it off with a little shredded iceberg lettuce and a huge amount of sour cream and calls it a tostada.

DANA: I really have no way of predicting what's going to upset you.

Roasted Tomatillo Chicken Enchiladas

Having grown up in California, Justin and I both have serious addictions to Mexican food. Fish tacos with fresh pico de gallo and homemade corn tortillas? Sounds great! Refried beans made with lard and smothered in cheese? Yes, please. Sweet, creamy glass of horchata? Count us in.

We are, put simply, addicts. And to make matters worse, we were unprepared for the serious withdrawals that came with our move to New York state. The lack of real Mexican food in Ithaca was probably the greatest hardship we endured when we moved across the country - and considering the very real and difficult differences in climate between California and Upstate New York, that's saying a lot.

The positive? We've dedicated the last four years of our lives to learning how to cook great Mexican food at home. We've had several misadventures in enchilada-making, including one attempt at a Mark Bittman-inspired recipe, but when we discovered Tyler Florence's recipe for chicken enchiladas, it was all over. This weekend we had a dinner party and spent the evening impressing our friends with homemade salsa, guacamole, black beans, salad and these magnificent roasted tomatillo enchiladas.

Roasted Tomatillo Chile Sauce

• 1 pound tomatillos, husked
• 1 white onion, peeled, sliced, quartered or whole
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 jalapenos
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro leaves
• 1/2 lime, juiced

Enchiladas

• Extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 medium onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups chicken stock
  
• Chopped cilantro leaves
• 2-3 chicken breasts, cooked in lime juice and shredded
  
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 10 large flour tortillas
• 1/2 pound Pepper Jack cheese, shredded

1. Roast the tomatillos (as well as the onion, garlic & jalapeno) at 400 degrees until their skins have exploded, turned brown, shriveled and oozed all over the tray - approximately 40 minutes. Scoop the vegetables and all juices into a food processor, and blend with cumin, salt, cilantro and lime juice. Set aside.
   
2. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium flame, then add onion and cook until carmelized. Throw in the garlic and cumin, cook for another minute, and then add flour, stirring quickly. Make sure the flour doesn't burn, then slowly add the chicken stock a little bit at a time, continuing to stir. What you're making here is called a velouté. Think roux, but with chicken stock. Simmer this mixture and continue stirring until it thickens into a sauce (this will be the base of your enchilada filling). Once thickened, turn the heat off and add half of the roasted tomatillo mixture to the saucepan, along with a little bit more chopped cilantro and all of the shredded chicken. It should look like this when you're done:
3. Reduce oven to 350 degrees and start putting together your enchiladas. Spoon a little bit of the tomatillo sauce into the bottom of a large Pyrex baking dish and spread it around. Flash the flour tortillas on the open flame of your stove and then fill with chicken mixture and a sprinkle of pepper jack cheese. Roll up and tuck, side-by-side, in the baking dish. When you're done, spread the rest of the roasted tomatillo sauce on top and cover that with the rest of the cheese. Bake, uncovered, until the cheese is melted and bubbling on top - about 30 minutes.
   

Of course, it'll taste better if you have good company, which we did.

And it tastes even better than that if your company brings a Mexican-chocolate-inspired cake with melted chocolate topping and fresh flower garnishes, and if you eat said cake with champagne.

Trust me, dudes. It just doesn't get any better than that.

Bonus Picture: This House, These Cats

In case you're wondering how this relates to food, that's Justin in the background, reading a copy of Bill Buford's book Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.

Apparently it paints a very hedonistic portrait of Mario Batali, and also made Justin never want to work in a real kitchen. Needless to say, it's on my to-read list.

St. Patrick's Day

My dad's family is Irish in the "we use it as an excuse for family drunkenness" sort of way. On the rare occasions that we did enjoy a St. Patrick's Day meal while I was growing up, it was eaten at a vaguely home-style restaurant with a name like "Country Harvest" or "The Wooden Spoon." My mom, on the other hand, claimed to not be Irish and refused to even wear green that time of year. (Later, I learned that I'm Irish on both sides, despite my mother's vehement denials - maybe she just didn't want another holiday to cook for?) In any case, I didn't have a home-cooked St. Patty's meal until I'd moved out and gone off to college.

This meal came courtesy of Nicole, my then-roommate and still-best friend, and it consisted of corned beef so red it could almost be described as kissable, of salty boiled cabbage with just a bit of crunch to it, and of soda bread that, though soft on the inside, had just the right amount of crusty goodness on the outside when you bit in. Thanks to Nicole, St. Patrick's Day has quickly become a staple holiday meal in our household, and one that I look forward to above most others.

You can imagine my happiness, then, to spend this year's St. Patrick's Day at Nicole's apartment in Oakland, partaking of the above-mentioned delights, as well as Bailey's pie, berry pie and a chocolate cake so decadent that the Catholics in attendance had to confess about it later.

In the end, it didn't matter who was Irish and who wasn't, who grew up eating corned beef and who had never had it before. We all sat down and had a good dinner, too many drinks and a nice respite from a screwed up economy. After all, isn't salted meat, boiled potatoes, home-made bread and a pint of beer exactly the right meal for times like these? I'd like to think so.



Updated: please visit this post for an Irish Soda Bread recipe.