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January 31, 2012

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Making no knead bread

I recently stumbled across this recipe from five years ago, published in the New York Times about how to make bread without kneading. And it includes yeast. I had never made bread with yeast other than in a bread maker before and I was anxious to try this method after getting a dutch oven as a gift.

My new dutch oven is 3 quarts and the recipe makes reference to a 6 to 8 quart dutch oven so I decided to try to divide the recipe in half. I tried this twice. The first time was a disaster after just halving the ingredients exactly. The second time I used more yeast and more water and had better results. However, I decided that it would be better with actual bread flour instead of whole wheat flour and that I should use fresh yeast. After getting the new ingredients I went straight for the whole batch the first try. Huge difference! The 3 quart dutch oven worked just fine. I also only let the dough sit for about 6 hours instead of 12 before kneading it just a bit and letting it rise for about 3 hours instead of 2. It was hard to work the bread’s schedule into my schedule this weekend.

Initial dough – it’s a bit shaggy:

After kneading into a round shape and allowing to rise under a cotton towel (in a bowl so that the dough rises up instead of flat):

After baking, the bread is beautifully crusty:

The crust is quite thick, but after wrapping in foil and refrigerating the loaf, it wasn’t quite so hard. Just out of the oven:

You can see the bread is light and fluffy inside. Very chewy and quite delicious especially when toasted:

I definitely plan to make this again! Probably will try adding some herbs like rosemary or thyme sometime soon.

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Laura

Posted on

January 23, 2012

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cooking, Food & Drink

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Making miso soup

For a while I’ve had some miso in the fridge. I knew I wanted to try making something with it again so I settled on making soup. I found this recipe from Vegetarian Times that appealed to me because of the variety of vegetables it includes. Of course, I made the decision to change it up so I got extra cremini mushrooms in addition to the oysters, an extra white onion, a poblano pepper, and went for mustards greens instead of spinach since they were particularly pretty at the store and they’re a winter crop. The grocery store also conspired against me by not having any fresh ginger OR frozen edamame. The nerve! Of course I also doubled or perhaps tripled the recipe so that it would last all week (and then some it turns out, must remember that I’m only feeding two people).

Anyhow, my version went something like this:

Slice 3 large carrots, one poblano pepper, onion, scallions (AKA green onions), and mushrooms and cook in minimal oil for a few minutes.

Add lots of water to the pot, bring to a boil. Add frozen peas in place of edamame, continue to cook for a few more minutes

Add mustard greens since they are a little tougher than spinach and I assume take longer to cook than the spinach called for in the recipe. Cook a few minutes.

Reduce heat, add rice noodles that had been soaking in water and powdered ginger. I just tend to wing it with ginger since I’m a fan of the spice.

Blend a bunch of brown miso in some warm water with a mini whisk or fork. Add miso, sesame oil, and soy sauce to pot. Allow to simmer for a while. Taste and adjust flavors as needed. Of course, soups are always better the next day. We ended up adding sriracha to our individual bowls to make them a bit spicy.

Turned out pretty well, overall. Definitely more flavorful than many other soups I’ve made. And probably pretty healthy with all of those pretty veggies…

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Laura

Posted on

January 17, 2012

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Food & Drink

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Edamame hummus, a delicious color of green

The thing I like best about edamame hummus (or spread if you insist hummus is only made of chick peas) is its beautiful light green color. OK, really what I like best is the taste but the color is a close second, especially since my kitchen is basically painted the same color. It’s also seriously easy to make since I don’t add any extra flavoring.

Ingredient list:

Frozen edamame
Olive oil
Plain yogurt
Garlic cloves
Squeeze of lemon
Sea or kosher salt
Herbs to taste (I used parsley and thyme)

Instructions:

Cook edamame according to instructions. I buy the kind that steams in the bag in the microwave. Add the entire bag (or less if you want to use edamame for something else) to your food processor. Also add minced garlic – I used 3 big cloves, which is pretty garlic-y, juice from a quarter of a lemon, a drizzle of olive oil, salt and herbs to taste. Add about 3 dollops of yogurt and turn on the food processor for about a minute. Check the hummus. Continue to add yogurt and run the food processor until you reach the desired consistency.

Before processing:

After processing – yum!

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Laura

Posted on

October 16, 2011

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cooking, Food & Drink

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Spaghetti squash, my new favorite squash

At some point I realized that Alamo Drafthouse, the awesomest of movie theaters, included a dish on their menu called “spaghetti squash and pomodoro sauce”. Since the dish was both vegetarian and featured a new to me squash I had to try it. I think I’ve now eaten it on 3 out of my last 4 Alamo trips because it is delicious. It’s basically squash topped with mushrooms, sauce and parmesan.

Well this week I decided I wanted to make my own spaghetti squash dish, so I did. I got a giant squash at the grocery store that fed two of us for two nights. I sliced it open and cleaned it out, kind of like a pumpkin. It then had to go into two separate baking dishes – I baked it for about 50 minutes, sliced side down, with a bit of water in the bottom of the pan.

While the squash baked, I assembled my ingredients, sauce, mushrooms, onion, and a red pepper. If you’ve never tried Newman’s Own “Sockarooni” sauce, I highly recommend it. It has a slight fresh garden and spicy flavor and is just plain good. Newman’s Own also donates their profits to charity so that makes me happy.

I sautéed each vegetable separately in a touch of olive oil, being careful not to over cook them.

After all of that, the squash was about done. I could tell because when I scraped the inside with a fork, the squash easily pulled apart into spaghetti looking strands.

I served a quarter of the squash topped with the mushrooms, onion, red pepper, sauce and cheese. It was quite delicious. I really like the slightly crunch texture of the squash strands.

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Laura

Posted on

October 9, 2011

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cooking, Food & Drink

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My first canning results in watermelon jelly!

So you may have gathered from my previous post that this week we ordered some local produce from Greenling, a grocery delivery service here in Austin. We ordered from Greenling so that I could get a local watermelon because I LOVE watermelon. Especially juicy ripe watermelon which is what I figured I would get from Greenling.

Unfortunately, my watermelon turned out to be light pink when I cut it open and seems to be no where near ripe 😦 Sad for me, big time.

I used about half the watermelon making watermelon jelly, a recipe I saw on the Greenling blog. Hopefully it turns out tasty with underripe melon.

I got all my supplies for canning and started the process.

Melon, lemons, sugar, pectin, jars, and cheesecloth:

I then chopped up about half of the melon and pureed it in the food processor. The pulp was strained through some cheesecloth to get the juice:

While that drained, I went about the process of sterilizing the jars. This was my first canning experience and I think an extra pair of hands would have been handy.

First the jars, lid, and rings were washed in hot soapy water. Next, the jars went into a pot of boiling water, the rings into a separate pot, and the lids into a bowl and had boiling water poured over them. After the jars were done boiling, they went into the oven set to 200 degrees so that they stayed clean.

Sterilizing the jars:

After the watermelon was done draining and I had squeezed all of the juice out of the pulp, I added lemon juice and pectin and brought it to rolling boil. Next, the 6 (!) cups of sugar were added and the mixture brought back to a rolling boil for one minute:

The next part was the messy part. I had to ladle the watermelon mixture into the clean jars. It was not pretty. The instructions said to wipe off the jar threads and rim which made sense as I spilled the mixture all over them. Putting the hot rings on the hot jars was also an adventure. I just hope the jelly wasn’t contaminated. After the jars were assembled, I placed them in the boiling water to process for 5 minutes. Luckily my husband had a set of jar tongs specially designed for canning, so I used them to remove the jars when they were done.

I ended up with 3 pint jars, all properly sealed. Let’s hope the jelly is good!

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Laura

Posted on

October 6, 2011

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drinks, Food & Drink, infusion

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Infusing more vodka…with armenian cucumbers!

When I learned that local food delivery company Greenling had local watermelons available, I knew I had to have one. However, to get one of those beauties I had to order $25 worth of food. There was plenty of local produce to select from and I ended up with some armenian cucumbers. I remembered seeing this Kitchen Konfidence post about using armenian cucumbers to infuse vodka. I love cucumbers! I bet I will also love these Cucumber Lime Basil Martinis.

Lovely armenian cucumbers:

Infusing some Tito’s Vodka:

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Laura

Posted on

September 8, 2011

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baking, bread, Food & Drink

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Zucchini bread tastes like fall!

Well, only in Austin do we call the high 80s / low 90s “fall-like” temperatures. After months of well over 100 degree temperatures, this coolness is odd. Baking in the hot hot summer months is rather impractical, but now that my AC doesn’t have to strain as hard, I decided it was time for some zucchini bread.

I’m not sure what makes zucchini bread quite so delicious as the only flavors are cinnamon, vanilla, and zucchini. Some how these combine with the ordinary ingredients to create pure deliciousness.

As I like to pretend that my baking is healthy, I used this recipe from Cooking Light. However, I didn’t have any applesauce so I used plain yogurt instead (as I do in banana bread as well). I also used 2 real eggs instead of egg substitute and added extra cinnamon.

Beside the step where you shred the zucchini, this recipe is extremely easy to make. You don’t even have to break out the mixer, you can mix the ingredients by hand.

Shredded zucchini draining on paper towels:

Zucchini, egg, yogurt, and vanilla combined:

The instructions say to hollow out the center of the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients to combine, so that’s what I did:

And then mixed it all up:

The end result:

This turned out so well that when I told my husband to eat as much as he wanted, he ate almost half of a loaf!

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Laura

Posted on

August 28, 2011

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cooking, Food & Drink

It’s hatch green chile time!

Here in Austin, the grocery stores get excited each year at this time for hatch green chiles to arrive from Hatch, New Mexico. I have no idea if this is a thing in other parts of the country or not. The grocery stores offer both fresh and roasted hatch chiles and a variety of other hatch flavored foods. Chuy’s even makes a special menu that we always go check out.

For dinner this week, I decided I wanted to make something with hatch chiles for the first time in my 9 years in Austin. I decided on a play off of chicken salad that uses tofu instead. I combined extra firm tofu, patted dry, with diced red onion, roasted hatch chiles, sunflower seeds, and mayo. We ate the tofu salad as an open faced sandwich on a slice of sourdough bread topped with a slice of heirloom tomato. Man, did they turn out spicy! I used 6 roasted chiles, 3 of them mild and 3 hot. On the side, I made roasted cauliflower tossed with olive oil and rosemary from our garden. It’s really the only thing left alive.

I decided that while the 110 degree air outside probably could roast the cauliflower and chiles, it most likely would take too long. Instead, I fired up the grill and roasted them myself.

Cauliflower and chiles, ready to roast:

After roasting:

I then had to remove the skins from the chiles because they are quite crisp. Luckily my husband mentioned that because I was ready to leave them on.

Tofu, onion (at the bottom) and the chiles ready to go:

Mixed with mayo and sunflower seeds:

Served open-faced with a slice of heirloom tomato:

All in all, a quite tasty sandwich. Sometimes I feel that food made with hatch green chiles isn’t all that exciting. However, I definitely enjoyed this sandwich, especially after my mouth stopped burning.

Posted by

Laura

Posted on

August 23, 2011

Posted under

Food & Drink

Making some random foodstuffs…

This week I tried making some strange food. Last week I encountered a recipe for Caramelized Peanut Butter Banana Quesadillas posted to the Craftzine blog. Bananas, marshmallows, and Peanut Butter – some of my favorite foods from when I was 12.

We just happened to have some left over tortillas and a looming bike ride so I decided to try this for breakfast. However, my adult self decided the marshmallows and butter would be too much. I took a single tortilla, covered it in a thin layer of peanut butter, sprinkled on some brown sugar and added a layer of banana slices on half of the tortilla. I folded it in half and toasted in in a frying pan. It came out quite tasty this way. Next time I won’t bother with the brown sugar, it just made a mess and didn’t add anything.

The second random food I made this week was a blueberry dessert. We had some blueberries that weren’t all that exciting to eat so I decided to try to make them into a blueberry crumble dessert. I made the mistake of just winging the topping. I used oats, flour, yogurt, and honey. I accidentally poured too much flour in and the mixture got too doughy and didn’t turn out so great. Next time I’ll make more of a dry topping because the blueberries were tasty underneath.

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Laura

Posted on

July 31, 2011

Posted under

baking, bread, Food & Drink

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Making the most delicious banana bread

Have I ever mentioned that I love to eat bananas? To fuel my habit of eating them, I almost always buy more than I can eat before they go bad. Rather than putting them out into the compost where the rats will eat them, I throw them in the freezer once they are over-ripe.

Then every so often, I make them into some of the best banana bread I’ve ever tasted. I always make two loaves at a time. The best part of that banana bread is the fact that it’s semi-healthy because you use yogurt instead of butter. To make this delicious bread, I follow a recipe from Craftzine but I go heavy on the bananas, lighter on the nutmeg, and heavy on the cinnamon and ginger. The ginger gives the bread a nice bite.

First, I defrost 8 or more bananas (in case some aren’t good enough to use). I used to peel them while frozen but after a while my fingers were way too cold.

Eww… frozen and now defrosted bananas