Carrot soup

Summer is a particularly difficult season for me to fully enjoy food, whether it's cooking or eating (Please see here as I complained almost exactly the same way a year ago to date).  And I guess it should be the opposite because we have farmers markets everywhere (albeit most of their hours are inconvenient as all hell to people who hold 9-5 jobs and do not have summer vacations) and fresh produce and all that jazz.  It's not though.  It's mostly too warm and too humid in this city and on this coast to properly enjoy eating, walking or standing outside for food, and the same goes for my kitchen.

That being said, on a down day where my meat thermometer does not read 95 degrees in my kitchen, I will partake in some leisurely cooking, especially if it involves eating said product in a cool air-conditioned environment.

I like making soups because they are easy, develop a depth of flavor over time and can taste complex as all hell with a few ingredients and proper seasoning.  The flavor and complexity of taste are intensified if you use your own broth/stock.  Plus, you are then even more impressed with your own work when you know exactly what went into it.  I use packaged broth/stock interchangeably and honestly have no preference for any kind or brand, except I avoid canned vegetable broth/stocks in particular and would rather use a chicken broth/stock anyway or a fake chicken alternative.  I find that the veggie ones always have this strong tomato-like essence or coloring and fuck up your main objective.  That's just me.

On Sunday afternoon, I made a variation of Bon Appetit's Moroccan Carrot Soup from April 2010.  I wanted a carrot soup, looked up one on epicurious, found this recipe, and then came home to follow the recipe from the actual magazine, and low and behold I had already folded the fateful page for this soup recipe approximately two years ago.  And never made it until yesterday.  Oops.

The recipe calls for a handful of ingredients, all of which are fairly common: butter, white onion, carrots, chicken broth, cumin seeds (I opted for ground cumin), honey, lemon juice, allspice (omitted) and yogurt (also omitted).  I was a little wary of the honey/lemon addition, but it adds a serious "What is this taste?" to the soup (in a good way), and the cumin is vital into even making it Moroccan.  I'm sure the sauteeing of the whole cumin seeds and finely grinding them in my mortar and pestle would have been better than just adding the cumin to the pot, but for a soup this simple, I'm more of a "Why bother?" type gal.  So I didn't bother.

The best part of this soup though?  It was fucking orange as orange can be.  Like, ROYGBIV type orange.  Fucking awesome.  The below picture does it no justice, as it is taken under the harsh, depressing fluorescent light in my office.

This is how it looks as leftovers with rosemary sourdough croutons made from an old Whole Foods boule.  And I'm not talking "day old," I'm talking at least four days old - stale as hell until cut up and toasted on an iron skillet or sliced and served with cheese.

Stew for a crew

This is the chicken thighs and reduced marinade

The whole concoction, simmering

The finished product

I made a stew tonight that is beyond awesome. I dare say, bring two pairs of fat pants when you eat it, because you will surely soil the first pair.

I think my pot is right at 5 gallons and this about filled it. If you have a crock pot, that will work, too. Feel free to reduce portions and adjust as needed in case you live in a hotel room in the middle of Nowheresville, California, and only have a hot plate to cook on.

My carton of chicken thighs was 8-fold. I started by making a marinade of BBQ sauce, ketchup, brown mustard, bacon hot sauce (yeah, that's a thing), black pepper, cayenne pepper, salt, cumin, Mesa (It's a 16-spice poultry rub by Bobby Flay. I'm probably doubling up some spices, but oh well), tumeric, a big spoonful of better, vinegar, a little canola oil and a beer. Add enough water to cover the chicken. Knife some holes in the chicken and let that bad boy sit for at least 30 minutes.
I'm a big believer of spicing in the moment. This is just what I had on hand and felt like adding, but spice however you feel!
Heat a thin layer of canola oil in a frying pan and remove the chicken and brown in the pan. You'll probably want to add a little more salt and pepper and maybe butter on each side of the chicken. While the chicken is browning, Put the pot on high heat and reduce the marinade until it is thick and syrupy. The chicken took two batches in my pan. Don't cook it all the way through, though. Let the inside be a little raw so it finishes cooking when you add it back to the stew.
Cut up the chicken into bite-size pieces, throw the bones back into the marinade, and set the chicken bits aside until the marinade is reduced. Add the chicken and reduced marinade back to the frying pan and put on low heat.
Now to start the stew. I got a pound or so of soup mix from the store. It's basically a bunch of beans and a little rice. Add 4 diced potatoes, 5 chicken bouillon cubes and some spices if it's a bit bland. I ended up adding more black/cayenne pepper, cilantro, cumin and bacon salt. Once the taters are soft, add everything you've got in the pan (both the chicken and marinade) and put on medium heat until the chicken is cooked through.
If I had it, I would have thrown in some parsley, chopped onion and maybe some celery. 

A sad, sad, sad little dinner

ugh. microwave pho. could it get any sadder? why yes. Klamath Falls has(had) one vietnamese place, but apparently it shut down. along with both sex shops in the area, huge bummer. now all there is is a safeway, a fred meyers, and a walmart ... where did all the little guys go? at least the yoga place is open... until walmart finds a way to open a chain of gyms!

the least i could do was gussy this up with some cilantro, fresh shiitake, and a squeezeroni of lime. and a side of avocado. (nostalgia for picking avos right off the tree in hawaii in 3... 2... 1...)

Hotel Cooking

Hey guys. I know it's been dead around here, but a LONG time ago I promised you posts after I was to get out of a hotel, but that never really happened. Mostly because I currently live like a nomad bouncing from hotel to hotel for 9 months of the year and live like a hippie for the other 3 months. So here is some hotel cooking for ya'll!

I have 2 pans (1 frying pan, 1 soup pot) and 1 hot plate. Tonight for dinner (and this will be dinner for quite a few nights as well) I sauteed some sweet potato and a golden beet with ginger, soy sauce, coriander, olive oil, onion, and garlic. When that was done, I cooked up some chicken, mushrooms, basil, salt/pepper, ginger, asperagus and cherry tomaters and called it a day!

Cooking takes an incredibly long time when you only have one burner, it's a bummer. I was going to throw some couscous in here too but realized that I wasn't going to be able to fit all the leftovers in my teeny tiny little hotel fridge, so I left that for another day.

It's taken a long time, but I feel like after a lot of practice, I'm just as good at cooking hotel meals as i was cooking home meals! It's mostly a matter of timing and washing my frying pan multiple times per meal.

Hope you all are doing well. let's start posting again!
-vmoneyyyyyyyyy

ps. golden beets are the BOMB

It's too hot to cook.

What does everyone else do in the kitchen when it's literally over a 100 degrees?  Because me?  I do nothing.  I barely even step in there.

I am sweating as I sit in my air conditioned apartment, and the thought of turning on my oven makes me sick.  I did promise my co-workers a chocolate pie as a thank you this Monday for their help while I was on vacation.

Minimal baking though.  I mean, a ready made pie crust?  Does that even count?  I've only made a few pies in my time, but always from scratch.  Did you know you're supposed to use pie weights with a store bought crust?!  Not me... if only I had watched more of the she-devil Sandra Lee.

Smoked Paprika

IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.

I bought smoked sweet Spanish paprika a few weeks ago, but hadn't used it until today.

I don't know the last time I have been this excited by a spice.  I roasted a chicken, rubbed with some butter, salt and pepper inside and out, with a few garlic gloves in the cavity, and then roasted baby potatoes with cherry tomatoes, tossed in salt, pepper, olive oil and the paprika.  My life has been changed.

so guys (particularly The Kleins)(or is it The Kliens?)(not sure of the spelling)

when you go out in The Bruns for "The Soup" ... where do you go and what is it called? im dying to know here.


also, i am living in a hotel for the past month and for another month, so the most cooking i get done is when i microwave spinach. not fun or blogworthy. im sure i'll be posting like crazy when i finally get back to town and a stove.


EDIT: oh, double ps. post by vanessa. but logged into matt. call me lazy, but i'm not signing in/out just to post a blog about how i dont cook.

Butchering a Chicken, part f'real

Where is the action in this blog?

I used a youtube tutorial and my own novice skills to butcher a chicken a few weeks ago and used a variation of this recipe for Portuguese Chicken.  Since it was so long ago (it honestly may as well be years), I can only tell you what I remember: it was not that difficult.  The recipe or the butchering.

I have a very short attention span and could barely make it through the tutorial and then just decided to start the process and 'feel' for where to slice.  It worked out just fine thank you and was a lot easier than expected.

Butchering a chicken, part two (as in not really)

I never got around to butchering the chicken, and it's currently resting in its entirety in the freezer.  I will definitely try to record the process - although it may be too embarrassing to want to share.

I was recently gifted an iPhone as a belated birthday/Christmas gift, and let me tell you - I am pretty amazed at the photo quality/video.  That being said, I did record a video of a sitting potato au gratin.  Listen to the beautiful soundtrack of steaks sizzling!

p.s. did you know Le Creuset calls this casserole dish an Oval Au Gratin?  So fancy.  Thanks, Marshall's!

Butchering a chicken

I'm going to butcher my first chicken in the next few days.  In the past year or two, I feel like I have conquered roasting a chicken and using the carcass to make chicken stock, so it's only appropriate.

Who's done it?  I'm going to rely on a Bon Appetit pictorial, as well as youtube.

I should quit my job and become a butcher or a fishmonger.

:(

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/dining/26mini.html?ref=style

Late Night Pizza

I made the Master Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day on Sunday, and it's been proofing in a bowl in the fridge since then.  I put the grill pan on high, turned the broiler on high, and rolled out a mini-pie for myself.  I grilled both sides of the dough, slathered on some homemade tomato sauce (which is one of those things that will never taste better from a jar), tossed on fresh mozz, and then let it finish in the broiler for a minute.

Took about the same time as your average frozen tv dinner.  And much faster than making a loaf of bread from a book that is the ultimate lie.

This has been posted in The Pineapple Spoon Rest too.

p.s. You know there is a specific line in my lease about NOT using knives directly on the counters?  Because there is.

Pasta and Bread

I've been in sort of a cooking funk recently, but two of my friends were coming over tonight and I knew I needed to come up with something.  I don't typically do pasta dishes for guests, but like I said, cooking funk, so I made Mark Bittman's multi-grain pasta with butternut squash and ground lamb.

The recipe calls for packaged cubed butternut squash, which baffles me for a lot of reasons.  Can't someone just do some of the tedious prep work the night before instead of wasting money?  Cripes.  Order take out or cook for real.  Anyway, I didn't take any pictures, but my friend Chris did so maybe I will post those another time.  The dish was pretty delicious and hearty, and the flavors were described as "subtle."  I could tell with Adam's first bite he was wishing it was covered in a heap of tomato sauce.  This is not that kind of pasta dish - how could it be with cinnamon and cumin?

I served it with some homemade bread from the Master Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which is a recent addition to my culinary library.

After Meredith asked me to start blogging here, I realized I liked writing about food a lot and started my own blog called The Pineapple Spoon Rest.  I recently wrote a very brief entry about the sham that is bread in five minutes a day. After baking and eating mini-boules three nights in a row, I can say it's delicious, but five minutes?  PLEASE. I read the introduction for the book after I got in the mail, and already forgot what it said (oops), so maybe it described what they actually meant by five minutes (the ease in having fresh bread once you make the initial recipe and can lob off chunks of dough while you're prepping the real dinner), but I don't get how twenty minutes of preheating/dough resting and half an hour of baking equal five minutes.  They should rename the book Easy Artisan Bread and call it a day, and then I would be a lot less agitated.

Oh It's Good to be Sixty

My birthday present from my scuba-diving brother was seven succulent tails of lobsters he caught in the ocean off the coast near San Diego. He sent them via Fed-Ex on dry ice with the dates and locations they were caught. We are going to feast on every one. Tonight, a beauty caught a few hundred yards off the shore at about 35-40 feet was sauteed with vegetables and a black bean ginger sauce and eaten with fresh Chinese noodles in front of the fire. The roses were a present from my husband Larry, the chopsticks were a gift from the Benders and the Gifts of the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh was from my colleague, Jocelyn. It's good to be sixty. You have something to look forward to.

This was supposed to be about Indian food.

I try to bring lunch to work every day, and I try to cook dinner Monday through Thursday and Sunday. I do not often cook from a box or bag, and I try to make everything relatively healthy. But Friday and Saturday are no holds barred, and I love my local Chinese take-out spots. Like, love them. I guess that's how some people love pizza - in all its disgusting, congealed mozzarella glory. I like pizza enough, but I only really love it when it's grilled. There was this place in New Brunswick called Jack 'N Grill, and they used to make really awesome grilled pizza. The problem is they only ever made this awesome grilled pizza once, and every other time it sucked so bad that until Adam and I finally gave up and moved on to Tido's (note to self: discuss Tido 'n His Junkyard Dogs at another point in time).

Al Forno in Providence, RI has the most amazing grilled pizza, which is what the restaurant is famous for. It's topped with strands of scallions, and it's BANANAS. I celebrated my 27th birthday there, and now that I'm heading deeper into my late 20's, I realize how important it is to mark your birthdays with memorable food experiences.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about bringing lunches, cooking dinners, and how I've cooked Indian food twice in the past week and how much I love it, but then I got distracted by pizza. I'll save my green chicken masala for another time.