ummm, hi. hello. sorry i'm late. do you know i've posted 11 times in 2010? yup, blogger FAIL. my bad.
it's not that i haven't cooked... well, i didn't more or less all summer because my darling husband can (and WILL) grill an. y. thing. (nom.) when we moved, we got a new grill to go with our new patio-- a full-height camping grill. beats the one that sits six inches off the ground. and it gets a full-sized propane tank. HOORAY. he also got a cuisinart griddler for our anniversary. so much grilling.
um, yeah, anyway.
lately i don't want to blog without pictures, i guess, so i just don't blog. but while my parents were in paris, france, europe the past couple weeks, we got their csa and i've been cooking some interesting stuff. like butternut harvest soup.
ingredients:
1 butternut squash, peeled, gutted and cubed
1 granny smith apple, peeled, cored and cubed
2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 leeks (white and light parts only) cleaned and chopped
2 tbs butter
6ish cups chicken broth
salt, pepper, nutmeg
greek yogurt
prep:
peel, gut, core, chop, cube
actual cooking:
saute leeks and carrots in butter until tender
add broth and bring to a boil
add apple & squash and simmer until squash is easily pierced with a fork
remove from heat and blend in a food processor or with an immersion blender
season with salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg if you like
stir a heaping tablespoon of greek yogurt into each bowl
so, this was the first of 4 soups i made over the course of two weeks. i also have a massive fail (with pictures) to blog and a pretty awesome seat-of-my-pants dinner. i will try very hard to blog them.
amidst the madness of grad school, bill, audrey, gus, penny, the library and i relocated to a sweet first-floor unit in a triplex three towns over.
you guys, it has a separate dining room.
also: a tiny kitchen.
one of my courageous space-saving efforts is a no-nukes experiment. we're hanging on to our microwave, but trying to see if we can avoid using it for a month. after that? who knows.
as children of the eighties, we've lived our whole lives with the convenience of zapping radiation into our leftover and then eating them. YUM-O! but so far this week, the option has been unavailable.
the result? so far, so good. i've warmed up (french pressed) coffee in my kettle, and mu shu veg, curry chicken and angel hair on the stove top. soon, i'm sure i'll venture to use the oven.
also soon, i'll be back. i'm planning cooking & baking projects on my study days, and the switch from electric to gas should be... a gas.
i'm sure lots of people would love to make a salad of their mother-in-law, but i happen to be blessed with TWO mothers-in-law who are both positively delightful. this is a salad my husband's mother threw together when we arrived at her home in tampa two weeks ago. i recreated it at home when i realized i could over-pay for a small quantity of queso fresco at trader joe's.
ingredients:
1-2 heads of lettuce
1 diced avocado
3 seeded, diced plum tomatoes
1 diced cucumber
8 ounces diced queso fresco, basket cheese or, if you must, fresh mozzarella
1/4 red onion, jullienned
grilled chicken (about 3 ounces per diner)
sliced olives
olive oil
the juice & zest of one lemon
prep:
grill, dice juice, zest & tear as needed
actual cooking:
combine
oh, it is soooooo goooooooooood. i can't even tell you.
(daddy, mama, michael, nardo, kevvie, j, bill, sue, mary, frankie-baby, james, moi, joseph, jim & joe. mara & col were gone by then and old greg graciously took this one for us. and i have no idea where steven was. i kept asking and never got an answer.)
this past weekend, we had my favorite annual tradition: gaining four pounds in two days while the ice in our drinks melts way too fast in the sweltering northern virginia august. also known as the hughes cousins convention at uncles jim & frank's.
after a solid year of emails and obsessive, mouth-watering discussion, jim & i finally got to make our zuchotto. bill recorded it for posterity. because by the time it was unveiled, jim & i were SEVERAL margamaritas in. what? they're GOOD.
zuchotto is a dome-shaped confection compromised of layers of pound cake "bricks," whipped cream with roasted hazelnuts and whipped cream with chocolate chips, all generously doused with booze and set in the fridge for several hours.
so, basically, you line a bowl in cheesecloth, spray booze, then line it in bricks. which you spray with booze.
does my family turn it ON when there's a camera, or what? this was about 10am. if mama didn't do it, kevvie would have had to, but he was busy JUMPING OUT OF A PERFECTLY GOOD AIRPLANE at the time.
then a floor of whipped cream with whichever mix-in. you want to alternate. then bricks. then booze. repeat as necessary.
we used about five 8" pound cakes, 2 quarts of heavy cream and... um... some nuts & chips. and booze.
young james was SUPER helpful with disposing of leftover bricks. spread with nutella, natch.
did i say REAL whipped cream? cause: REAL. and unsweetened. trust me.
after a good spraying, wrap her in cheesecloth, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 7-24 hours.
perfect!
and HUGE. cutting through it wasn't doing my tendinitis any favors, let me tell you. so uncle jim took over and people started sharing cause-- whoa-- my uncle cuts a serious piece of cake.
(i mean, he DID jump out of a perfectly good airplane that morning!)
oh, hai! how do you like the detail on that picture? can you practically taste the beery goodness? or perhaps your screen isn't hd. mine is. because i have a new! fast! laptop! and a new! shiny! camera! and a new! fancy! mobile! hotspot! thus, i am blogging in bed and drooling over the pics of this irish porter bread which i actually made with a milk stout. mmmmmm. in order to keep myself in fancy technology upgrades, and creatively fulfilled, i'm back in the kitchen making sure daddy & bill still love me enough to give me fancy, spill-proof keyboards and a better camera than the one i gave a shower to. okay, TWO showers.
ingredients:
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon EACH ground cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon. and allspice if you have that. i don't.
1 cup unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1/2 a bottle of porter or stout
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 beaten eggs
prep:
warm up your beer
grease 2 8-inch round cake pans
preheat to 350*
actual cooking:
combine flour, salt & spices
work in butter with a pastry cutter or your hands
add sugar
make a well in the mixture
combine beer & baking soda
pour the liquid & eggs into the well and still until just combined
divide between pans
bake for 20 minutes and then reduce heat to 300*
bake for another 40ish minutes until bread pulls away from the sides of the pan
enjoy warm or room temperature with the rest of the beer
so... my camera? is still deadish. oh, yeah, i do have a warranty. and... i did call. okay, and they have sent me the shipping label, but... go to a ups store? oh, that sounds like a lot of work.
on top of that, geesh. i've got so much to do. first and foremost, i have to finish reading the discworld books before i start grad school. and yes, i DO MEAN that that project is a high priority. i'm doing a bunch of other boring life stuff, too, like gearing up to move (eventually), paying down student loans, fafsa applications for NEW student loans, et cetera, et cetera.
but! don't feel sad! blogging isn't the only thing i'm not doing much of! i'm also not COOKING much! yes! really! bill cooks dinner almost every night lately, and, let me tell you, i may never tire of grilled meat & grilled veg dinners. SO. GOOD.
i did make a spinach lasagna last night, though, which makes me feel good because it feeds us for three days so that's almost like i cooked THREE dinners. plus, it's vegetarian, low-fat, high-protein, super-easy and recession-friendly ($13 for three dinners for 2 = less than $2.50 a meal). and freaking yummy.
so... you can make one, too.
ingredients:
about a half package of no boil lasagna noodles
a jar (25 ounces or so) of your choice tomato gravy
a 20-ounce bag of frozen spinach
8 ounces shredded part-skim mozzarella
15 ounces part-skim ricotta
1 large egg
prep: gloriously none!
actual cooking:
beat together the egg & ricotta
coat the bottom of an 8x13 pan with gravy
add a layer of noodles
add a layer of ricotta
add a layer of spinach
add a sprinkle of gravy
add a sprinkle of mozzarella
repeat the whole layering process twice more, topping with noodles, gravy & mozzarella
bake for 45-60 minutes covered in foil (until the last 10 or so) at 350*
this was so long ago that i can't actually remember when it was. sure, i could have checked the timestamp on the picture just now but... i didn't. get over it.
bill & i stopped at a deli in swarthmore in the hopes that we could grab some nice beer (the italian deli by our place offers a nice selection) and basically hit paydirt. bill took a while browsing the beer, so i wandered into the other room-- the actual deli room-- and lo! there was fresh everything-you-can-imagine. including "springfield brand garlic & basil napolitano's pasta" which is manufactured at 186 saxer avenue, springfield, pa 19064. this is so local that i actually know where it is. and that's big, cause i'm... not directionally inclined. (except when it comes to parking in center city. that i rock at.)
SO. i wanted to experience the pasta as fully as i could which meant keeping the recipe simple:
pasta (water & salt for cooking)
butter
grated cheese
i followed the package instructions for cooking (6 minutes in boiling water), tossed with butter and sprinkled with cheese.
it was... fucking amazing. really. and LOCAL! points for greenness.
... so. why the radio silence? oh, lots of reasons. i'm gearing up to go to grad school at OMFGDREXEL. bill's just submitted his application for grad school at OMFGDREXEL, only to him it's more like, oh, just drexel, because he's been there before. additionally, we're watching out eating AND our budget here at chez bitchy, so the meals sort of run together. plus, christmas totally burned me out and my camera is dead. we're on the hunt for the 3-year service plan and really hoping a lot that "i forgot to close my water bottle before i stuck it in my purse and why no i don't use a protective cover for my camera, as you can see by the scratches and smudges!" doesn't void it.
but i'm working my back, slowly. i promise, mommy.
(also known as: blogger bail-out. because my mother hates to see me be lazy on the interweb.)
The Red Recipe Binder
My mother (Clare’s Mimi) says that I “couldn’t find the kitchen” before I got married, which is true. I lived at home. My grandmother did all the cooking. My only kitchen chore was drying dishes once in a while.
So when I got married and moved out of state I had to learn to cook or face a lifetime of what my new husband had eaten in his starving-student days. Fortunately, his cousin Beth gave me The Joy of Cooking, as shower gift. I read it like a novel, all 900+ pages. And I decided that maybe the Tuna, Noodle and Mushroom Casserole on p. 215 (subtitled “An excellent emergency dish”) was something I could tackle.
That’s where it all started. We didn’t have no stinkin interweb back then. We had home delivery of the daily and Sunday paper, and Mimi has always favored magazine subscriptions as gifts. So every month I would read Redbook and McCall’s and Good Housekeeping and cut out the recipes I wanted to try. And every Thursday I’d read the Food Section of the paper so I could cut out those recipes, too.
I scotch-taped each recipe onto a page of looseleaf paper and filed the pages in a 3-ring binder with sections for each of the chapters in Joy, starting with Beverages and moving on to Hors d’Oeuvre, Salads/Soups, Vegetables, Fish, Meat, Poultry, Breads and Coffee Cakes, Pies and Pastries, Cookies, and so on. I left out Canapes and Tea Sandwiches, Game, and Canning, Salting, Smoking and Drying.
The scotch tape is all dried out now, and a lot of the pages are ripped on the edge where the 3-hole-punch used to be. Paging through the tattered remnants of my homemade cookbook, it’s easy to see what foods fascinated and frustrated me in the 70s. There are a dozen different pie crust recipes, lots of fancy dinner party dishes like Coquilles Saint Jacques (which I am absolutely certain I have never cooked). There are five carrot cake recipes, including the definitive version from the first “new” Philadelphia restaurant, Steve Poses’ Commissary. The Frog-Commissary Cookbook http://www.amazon.com/Frog-Commissary-Cookbook-Steven-Poses/dp/0940159732 didn’t come out until a few years later, but somebody at work had the Commissary calendar (1979?). It was a pinup page-per-month calendar, with a hand-lettered recipe for each month. Porn for office girls.
If a recipe turned out especially well, I drew stars on the clipping. Like this one, which I’ve been making ever since.
Chicken and Sausage
Ingredients
1 broiler-fryer chicken, cut up (now I use skinless, boneless thighs)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1 tablespoon salad oil
¾ lb sweet or hot Italian sausages, cut in 2-inch pieces
1 can (28 oz) whole tomatoes, drained, reserving ½ cup liquid
½ cup dry red wine
1 cup sliced onions
2 medium green peppers, sliced
1 tsp basil, crushed (now I use fresh or fresh-frozen)
Pinch sugar
1 ½ cups sliced fresh button mushrooms (this was before we knew about portabellas)
1/3 c. flour
3 tablespoons water
Prep
Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Slice everything up and have it ready.
Cooking
In large skillet, heat oil. Add chicken and cook until well browned on all sides, about 5 minutes. Remove chicken and set aside. Prick sausages with a fork and brown in the same skillet. Remove and pour off excess drippings. Add chicken and sausages back to the skillet. Add tomatoes, wine, onions, green peppers, basil and sugar and cook for a few minutes, stirring up browned bits from the bottom. Return chicken and sausages to the pan. Add mushrooms and stir until well combined. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 35 to 40 minutes, until chicken is tender. Push chicken and sausages to one side of the skillet. Combine flour and water until smooth; stir in ¼ cup of pan juices. Add to the skillet and cook until sauce bubbles and thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Stir to mix everything together. Better the second day.
ummm, hi. hello. sorry i'm late. do you know i've posted 11 times in 2010? yup, blogger FAIL. my bad.
