Thoughts, and a good movie!

This is the last post today, don't worry!

It is my goal in the near future, to cook at least 1 thing per week... to do it mindfully and sincerely, and to write a thoughtful post about it.  Structure is good, and will be good for me - otherwise I'll end up writing sporadically and inconsistently.  I do need some more structure in my life, and I'm quite excited about it!  (I write this AFTER I bang out 3 late posts!)

I watched this movie today: How to Cook Your Life, about zen chef Edward Espe Brown.  It was absolutely fascinating!  He had some really great things to say and to pass on from the person he learned from.. a couple things I liked were when he had asked for some advice, his teacher told him,

"When you wash the rice, wash the rice; when you cut the carrots, cut the carrots; when you stir the soup, stir the soup."

He also talked about giving your hands something to do - when you cook with your hands, knead bread, chop vegetables, they are fulfilling a purpose...

There were a lot of things I noted that I want to work on - patience, anger, mindfulness, being sincere..  it's all a journey, a process, and it's important to delight in that process.

I also want to work on not wasting a single drop..  he said many times in the movie, to treat cooking tools, pots and pans, and the food like it was your eyesight.  I really like this thought - everything is precious, and attention must be paid.



As for my blog - I'm in the middle of figuring out what works well, what doesn't work, how many pictures to post, how much to write... this is a learning experience and I really hit the ground at a trot (I wouldn't say running because I've been quite sporadic)... 

For now, I raise my glass of iced tea (sweetened and with a spot of milk)... cheers!

Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

I know, I know... 3 posts in one day??  Just wait, I have one more after this, where I will resolve to be more consistent! 

These Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies are the 2nd cookie in the cookie section, that's the reason I chose them (they come right after the choco chip cookies I've made twice now!).  I made these mainly to feed other people with them - I probably only had 2 of them, but I enjoyed them immensely!  They were chewy but also had a slight crunch! 

I couldn't decide which picture looked better - with or without a flash, so I'm posting both!!

Ingredients:  all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, unsalted butter, light brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, old-fashioned rolled oats, raisins

I was glad to use a bunch of oats I have but don't frequently use!

I did have a baking mishap - the recipe is on the same page as the choco chip cookies, so I started with the flour, then used baking soda instead of the baking powder!  Palm to forehead moment!  I scooped out the soda because I hadn't mixed it in yet thankfully!

Everyone who tried these cookies enjoyed them (so they say!).  I would definitely be open to making them again... but I tend to be a chocolate sorta girl, so I'm guessing my next cookie will be chocolatey!

Gomba Leves (Mushroom Soup) with Rustic White Bread

For my birthday I received 2 cookbooks!
One of them is a Hungarian Cookbook, and I tried out the Gomba Leves (Mushroom Soup)!

I think a good cookbook should be used a lot and "loved".. that is to say, it's cool by me to have things written in the margins, highlighted, food splatters here and there.. it's great character!
Needless to say, I took my pen to this recipe, not that it's bad, just when you have a real live Hungarian in the kitchen with you (who is an excellent cook by the way!), I tend to take his many years of advice!


For starters I forgot to pay attention to the recipe and went out and bought 2 pounds of mushrooms when the recipe called for just 1/2 a pound!  For some reason I had trouble adapting the rest of the recipe to my mushroom indulgences and probably added too much onion... too much oil to start, not enough roux, maybe too much sour cream.. but the end result was marvelous!! 

 The recipe called for beef stock or canned beef broth and water, but instead I just used water!  Perhaps the broth would give it a nice flavor but I didn't miss anything myself, by using just water.

I also had to make a roux (in Hungarian it's a rántás) - my first one ever!  Luckily Gabor was there to guide me and I did it a bit differently than the recipe said.  It turned out well, but I was a bit frantic about it, having seen enough roux's go so wrong in the past.....

While cooking the soup, I made a loaf of Rustic White Bread.
 I find it strange that I'm not a very big fan of eating bread, but I have a certain affection for baking it, I always have.  Every time I bake bread it feels like I'm doing a really special thing, and I try to pour my heart into it.

In our household, when we buy bread, we get "the good stuff".. you know, loaves that are from 2, 3, 4 bucks a loaf...  it gets pricey but it's better for you and better tasting..

In a perfect world, I can envision myself baking some bread every Sunday to eat for the week ahead.. that is, after I get lots better at baking it!  I suppose I could just start now, however, baking some bread each week.. I'm sure to get better soon enough!  And the bread that doesn't turn out well, we'll eat anyways!

I got some good kneading tips from this movie "How to Cook Your Life" (I'll write something about it today!)

I don't think I'll make this specific recipe again, it's different from the way I've done it before and turned out too sweet for our taste... I will continue my search for the best bread recipe though!  I have a few more in my pocket, but I gained some great tips as always, from baking it!


Ingredients for the soup:  mushrooms, onions, lard or cooking oil, beef stock or canned beef broth and water, salt, pepper, flour, parsley, sour cream
Ingredients for the bread: bread flour, all-purpose flour, instant or rapid-rise yeast, salt, warm water, honey or sugar

Crispy Chicken Fingers

I made these chicken strips last week.  Of course they're all gone now but seeing the pictures of them make me hungry for them again!  It's been difficult to find a good chicken strip at the store or in a restaurant.. last month I went to a place I thought should have good food and... the chicken strips were bland and boring!  And the frozen things from the supermarket have an ingredients list longer than this blog post...!
 
I've made chicken strips before, they turned out great!  I followed the ATK recipe closely and these turned out equally as great!  It went smoother than the first time I made them - this is going to be a perk of cooking more.. getting used to doing things, finding the best way to do it..

Ingredients List:  flour, eggs, breadcrumbs, boneless skinless chicken breasts, salt & pepper, vegetable oil


Whenever I fry something up, nearing the end of the cook, the oil gets really frothy... I think next time I will filter the oil halfway through.. perhaps it's food remains sitting in the oil...

Fruit Topped Rice Pudding

This is a favorite dish of Gabor's.  It is a very light snack that can be eaten before bedtime, it also makes a great dessert!

You can use any kind of fruit available, with or without whipped cream, chocolate, anything goes!

Here we used raspberries, a dollop of whipped cream and some mouse poop (okay, they're chocolate sprinkles).

You just make rice using equal parts milk and rice (say, 2 cups of each), taking care to stir so the milk doesn't burn.  Add the rice when boiling, cook it through, then add sugar to taste.  We put some vanilla sugar also. 

Spoon out and top with fresh fruit!  Voila!

Banana Bread

First time making banana bread!  I keep having all these firsts and realize how inexperienced I am!  It's great fun though, to try out all these different recipes, learning from scratch, I love it!

My folks had some bananas that were very ripe, so I took them home and made banana bread last Sunday.  The baking went without a hitch ... almost too smoothly ...

Ingredients are flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, bananas, unsalted butter, eggs, plain yogurt, and vanilla extract.


I would put the finished product picture right here, BUT... I think it is on Gabor's phone, so I will write the post and put up the picture later!


It got great reviews from all who tried it.  The recipe called for plain yogurt, but I used that plain Greek yogurt instead, it was good stuff!  Much better than the flimsy regular nonfat plain yogurt I saw at the store...



Now, the cookbook has a section about butter, how it's very important to add the butter exactly like the recipe says.  This one, for example, says "6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled".  So what I've been doing is melting the butter in the beginning, then sticking it in the freezer so it cools in time.

Yesterday, I made another batch of the choco chip cookies because I had a hankering for them.  They require the butter melted then cooled as well.  I went to stick the butter in the freezer and.. what the heck??  There's a saucer of frozen butter already in there!!  My mind immediately traced back to the last thing I baked... the banana bread!!  So it turns out, there was NO butter in the banana bread!  Nobody even noticed!  I think because the recipe had yogurt in it, it kept it moist and made it seem like normal...
I'll just use this as an excuse to make the recipe again with the butter.. yum!


**Edit August 14th - here's a picture finally!  Not the best but.. next time!

Classic Pound Cake

On July 27 I baked a Classic Pound Cake, my first ever!  A few years ago I tried some pound cake made by Starbucks...  it was delicious.  It was flavorful and moist (yes, moist).  I have longed to have that same pound cake, and have tried a few store bought ones over the years but none could even compare...

     ...until the ATK Classic Pound Cake.


It was excellent!!  I had a great time making it, it was really simple, not many ingredients...  I look forward to trying out the different variants they have listed (ginger pound cake, orange pound cake) and possibly creating one of my own!

I received great reviews from Gabor and from my workmates... all these great reviews though, I hope people are telling me the truth about the food..  I can take it, really.. if it's less than good, I want to know!  It will help me improve! (improve my cooking as well as my taking of criticism)

Ingredients are: cake flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, unsalted butter

Aye, the picture is super sloppy, BUT it was a late night and I was quite tired, so just said this'll do...
AND, I'm bummed because later someone asked me if it weighed a pound.. I didn't even think to weigh it!  Guess I'll have to bake another one! 

Big and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

 I'm discovering it's really hard to follow the directions precisely.  I seem to think I know better (I don't!)(not yet anyways).  In history, it's been rare that I follow a recipe 100% perfectly...  but I'm learning, and forcing myself to do it!
I'm a little impatient, perhaps a little too liberal with measuring... I shouldn't deviate too much if I don't even know how it will react or don't even know what it will produce as it's written! I have churned out some damn good cookies in my time, but I swallowed my thoughts and followed the recipe to a T.  (what does that expression mean anyway?)

All in all.. I had a great time making these cookies and .. they turned out... absolutely... AMAZING!!

This picture doesn't do them justice - I actually have more snapshots but they are locked away on my boyfriend's phone, he forgot to send them to me!  If I remember, I will put another one up later.. (and yes I"m still using our phones as cameras - I need to locate the digital camera battery charger!)

Everyone who tasted them said they were delicious - I took them to work, they were a hit!

 I actually had an uneventful cooking session..  I didn't get flour everywhere (like usual), the egg breaking went well.. cookies all stayed on the sheet... Success!

Ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt, butter, light brown sugar, sugar, eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, semisweet chocolate chips!


**Edit on August 4 to put this cool picture!

Creamy Stovetop Mac 'n' Cheese

Last week I made Stovetop Creamy Mac 'n' Cheese. It took a long time to decide what to make, as I flipped through the pages and pages of ATK. I've been having trouble making decisions lately, what to do, what to eat, what to cook... I finally decided on this recipe because it looked easy and fast.

I had a few more "firsts"... first time overall making homemade macaroni and cheese... first experience using dry mustard - it was amazing, I mixed equal parts dry mustard and water, it smelled just like mustard! (I'm easily amused!)
It was also the first time I've dropped an egg on the floor.. classic! I actually saw the egg falling in slow motion and I remember thinking - maybe somehow, some way, it will land without breaking, bounce a little, then come to rest unharmed - and then it landed and broke all over the floor....

I cooked up the macaroni pasta without a hitch, drained it and added the rest of the ingredients... for the cheese I used that Mexican Four Blend cheese instead of cheddar because, well, it looked really good at the store. As I was mixing the cheese into the noodles it reminded me of melting the marshmallows for rice krispy treats, yum!

The ingredients are: macaroni, salt, eggs, evaporated milk, dry mustard dissolved in water, Tabasco, pepper, butter & cheddar cheese!

This recipe turned out how it was supposed to turn out, I presume.. though I feel like there is something missing from it - possibly different spices, or meat, or toss in a vegetable, I'm thinking tomatoes might be good...

BUT - this is labelled as a fast basic recipe, and as always it was a learning experience. Start with the basics!



Sidenote - a couple days later I had some leftovers and mixed in a Hebrew National dog - extremely delicious!!

This is a recap of the other night...  I've been procrastinating in writing... it's only the beginning and I gotta get used to the flow of things!

First I made Black Bean and Mango Salsa.  I've never worked with mango before, it's weird and I didn't quite know if I was doing it right, nor if it was ripe!!  I grabbed one at the store the other day because I'm watching Lost and they were eating mangoes all the time.  So I browsed through the cookbook and found something using mango!

The cookbook illustrated how to cut up a mango, and I followed it, but it was slimier than I expected, and had a different inside section than I expected as well!  I guess I expected some sort of seed, like an avocado or something... Another first for myself!!

It contains black beans, mango, red bell pepper, red onion, pineapple juice, lime juice, cilantro, jalepeno chile, cumin, salt & pepper.

I think it turned out well and it got a good review by all who tested it, but I must confess, if I want some salsa, I hunger for tomato salsa or pico de gallo...
So I also made Fast Tomato Salsa!  This contains more tomato than I usually use, as well as less onion, less garlic, less peppers..  I suppose that's why it's "fast" and "tomato" salsa!
The recipe called for canned tomatoes and I was going to go with it but I checked out the canned toms and they have salt added, so I opted for fresh tomatoes, which are probably better anyway!
This recipe contains tomatoes, red onion, cilantro, lime juice, garlic, jalepeno chile and salt.
It was very tasty!!

Unfortunately the only chips I had in the house were sort of stale, but they worked out just fine (if you're not too picky!).

I capped the evening off by making a random Smoked Salmon Mousse.  It was quick and easy, especially with a food processor.  Yum, yum, yum!!  I will definitely make this again.  How do I know?  I picked up some smoked salmon at the store again today and will hop into the kitchen to make another batch tonight!
The recipe has smoked salmon, shallot, cream cheese, lemon juice, sour cream, salt & pepper to taste.

I didn't use any salt or pepper, it was extremely tasty without it!

Later that night.......  perhaps I'm the only one, but I simply must remember when I work with jalepeno peppers, I should wear gloves.. or take out my contacts before preparing the food...  Here's a friendly warning for those who chop up spicy peppers and then reach into their eyes to remove contacts... it burns!!  Seems as if no matter how much I scrub my hands, the essence of the pepper sticks around on my fingers!  Fortunately the burning eventually subsides, after a good round of tears :)  All is well.
Carry on!

Green Goddess Dip

A blank page.  Where to begin (again)...  I want to continue with the feel of my first two posts (from September '09)... I am very excited about cooking, and want to cook every recipe in my America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.

I haven't laid out how long I will give myself, or the rate at which I will cook things.. I do know that I want to start, get life rolling, and figure things out as I go.  If I wait for everything to be "just right", I might never start!  Bear with me as I go - and I am always open to suggestions!

The adventure begins with Green Goddess Dip! 
This recipe contains sour cream, mayo, fresh parsley, chives and tarragon, lemon juice, garlic, salt & pepper...  I've never used tarragon - already a first, it's very interesting!  I ran into a bump with the chives, 2 grocery stores were out!  So I bought dried chives and used ATK's handy emergency substitutions chart:

1tbsp fresh herbs = 1tsp dried herbs

I'm never really confident handling herbs... do I cut off the thick part of the stem and use the rest?  Or do I pluck all the actual leaves off and discard the whole stem?  I will do some research and get back to myself on that one.  For now I've been doing the in-between.. getting rid of most of the stem... 

I chopped up some celery, carrots & cucumber...  I have resolved to use the entire celery stalk this time.  Every time I buy a big thing of celery, I end up throwing a large portion out.  To ward this off, I cut up the entire thing into dipping sized pieces and will be eating them until they are gone!  I simply must!

The dip is very good!  3 out of 3 people say so!  I would definitely consider bringing this dip to a potluck or gathering.  The tarragon is an interesting taste, almost has a hint of mint?  

I'm certainly no expert - I simply want to create, explore, examine and enjoy things!

Afterthoughts

One reason I want to cook more is so I can eat better, and eat out less during work hours.
I also enjoy taking pictures.. I hope to get better at that during this as well.  For now I am taking the pictures with my phone camera.  It's not horrible but could naturally be better.  Onward!