Playing With Fire

Tags

cooking, habanero, NaBloPoMo, pepper, pineapple, salsa, vegan, vegetarian

I’m a worrier. I worry a lot.

It often isn’t really for any good reason either.

Like, if I eat at this really popular restaurant by myself, are people going to notice and judge me? Of course they don’t give a shit, they’re there to have a nice time and enjoy their food. It’s also highly unlikely that I would be the only solo diner. I know this, but it’s like a battle between right and absurd.

Not every worry is socially-related, though, and I usually make myself go through with things anyway. Last week I acquired eight little habanero peppers from the farm. I can handle a decent amount of spice, but having never cooked with or even handled a habanero, I was sort of nervous. What if I made something and it was unbearably spicy? And what do I make with so many of them? They were part of my work-share, so it’s not like I’d be wasting money if I didn’t use them. Since I also received tomatoes and cilantro, I just decided to do the obvious and make some salsa. Seems like a pretty good way to gauge heat, right?

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The Key to Quiche

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baking, cooking, custard, Julia Child, NaBloPoMo, pie crust, quiche

Quiche is one of those things that I always think I can wing without a recipe. It’s just a matter of scrambling some eggs and throwing some fillings into a pie crust, right? This is probably why I’ve never made a very good one.

A few weeks ago, I wanted to make a quiche and decided to actually use some guidance. Who better to trust than Julia Child? It turns out that it’s really easy to make up your own awesome quiche using her custard ratio.

Favorite Veggie Recipes

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cooking, NaBloPoMo, recipes, vegetables, vegetarian

So with the constant supply of vegetable earnings, I have been cooking a lot. Often this just means I sauté some veggies and top with an egg or toss with pasta. That gets boring pretty quickly, so then I look up recipes, especially when I have somewhat unfamiliar produce on hand.

Here are a few keepers that I loved. Yes, they’re summery, but maybe I’m just looking out for our friends in the other hemisphere.

Turnip Return

Tags

blogging, cooking, fall, NaBloPoMo, soup, turnips, vegetables, vegetarian, winter

So we’re one week into December, and I have to say that while it’s been nice not making myself post every day for NaBloPoMo, it’s also been weird. More often than not, I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a funk, though not entirely because of not blogging. NaBloPoMo did often feel like a struggle, but having the daily purpose/accomplishment made up for it, which was something I noticed last year. I did need the breather, though. Last weekend I washed an absurd amount of dishes due to baking for Austin Bakes, so there wasn’t any real cooking or baking for the next few days to write about anyway.

I’m not sure what led to this realization, but it occurred to me the other day that I had never (knowingly) had a turnip. How had this not happened? I am 31 years old. Turnips are pretty basic, right? I seem to think of them as “northern” vegetables, along with the somewhat equally foreign parsnips and rutabagas. They are all available here, so I guess it’s more that my family never ate them. In my quest to try pretty much anything once (and to also pull myself out of mopey-ness), turnip soup needed to be made.

Turning Ramen into Gnocchi

Tags

cooking, David Chang, instant ramen gnocchi parisienne, Lucky Peach, Momofuku, NaBloPoMo, ramen gnocchi, vegetarian

If you’ve seen the first episode of The Mind of a Chef with David Chang, you know what this is about. If you haven’t and don’t have a Netflix account, he makes a batch of gnocchi out of instant ramen noodles for Anthony Bourdain in, like, seven minutes. (His recipe is also in Lucky Peach Issue 1.) I knew I had to attempt this trickery at some point, which brings us to today.

Making ramen gnocchi is a strange experience, and yet, the final dish is not weird at all. It’s just that you start with packs of crunchy ramen noodles and end up with a plate of crispy, creamy dumplings. Noodles are soaked in milk and blended with egg yolks, and then the resulting pâte à choux is piped into dumplings, boiled, and then finally sautéed in butter. Seems easy enough, and yet…

Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Cannelloni!

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bechamel, cannelloni, cooking, Daring Cooks, Italian, parmesan, pasta, ricotta, spinach, vegetarian

Manu from Manu’s Menu was our Daring Cooks lovely June hostess and has challenged us to make traditional Italian cannelloni from scratch! We were taught how to make the pasta, filling, and sauces shared with us from her own and her family’s treasured recipes!

I recently learned about the ulnar nerve, or rather what it was called. The rolling out of fresh pasta dough with my French rolling pin are what led to my enlightenment. After about 30 minutes of trying to roll the life out of the dough get the dough thin enough, I noticed that the outer edge of my right palm and pinky had gone numb! In response to my tweet about this, Victoria said it was the ulnar nerve: Point of Enlightenment. 25 out of my 30 years have been spent making music with my hands and I was unaware of this term. Now which makes you smarter, cooking or music?

Kale for Beginners

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basil, cashews, cooking, kale, parmesan, pesto, pizza, recipe, spring, vegetarian

Kale (r) feat. its pal, Basil (l)

Nothing quite makes one want to hide in a corner with a heaping plateful of healthy greens like seeing an ad for nacho cheese-drowned Cheetos on a gas station window right after yoga class. But maybe that’s just me.

Either way, you’re getting a post jam-packed with leafy goodness.

I’m sure most people have gotten on the kale train by now, but if you’re still intimidated by it, I’m here to hold your hand. Not literally…that would be weird. Instead, I will share/remind you of some recipes I’ve posted in which kale is featured, but isn’t the tough, bitter thing that haunts you in your sleep. But you really don’t have nightmares about it, right?

I might recommend a smoothie to those most freaked out by kale, which may be ironic since green drinks could potentially seem the most repulsive. But you can’t even taste it in this TropiKale Smoothie, I promise! Just pretend it’s green from the kiwi.

Help! What are your freezer-friendly favorites?

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cooking

Hey, hey, hey...look who's got a bun in the oven!

Rachel and Josh’s kid will be here soon! Sooner than predicted actually, so I need to start whipping up some dishes for their freezer, stat. This experience will be interesting as I’ll be cooking with meat for the first time since November 2009! gulp.

So, help me out, omnivores: do any of you have favorite recipes or suggestions to share? You know, casserole-type dishes? Please link to them in the comments!

Some possible contenders right now include my dad’s meatloaf and/or my grandma’s chicken ‘n dumplings (remember my vegefied version?). mmm…

Spicy Purple and Sweet Potato Gratin with Coconut Milk

Tags

chipotle, coconut milk, cooking, dairy-free, easy, gluten-free, healthy, kale, paleo, recipe, shallots, vegan, vegetarian

If I could go back in time to just last year, I would thank myself for one thing: coconut. I spent all my life hating it, but after putting myself through a year of trying it repeatedly, it’s quickly high-tailing it to my list of favorite things. I keep reminiscing about a recent coconut margarita, and have you experienced coconut ice cream? If not, change that ASAP.

Always seeking out new things to try, one of the most recent adventures involved the purple potato via a curry. Ever since then, I’ve been wanting to pair it with sweet potatoes. This may mostly be for aesthetic purposes because, come on, you know one of the main reasons you visit food blogs is for the food porn. However, the purple spuds are actually little antioxidant powerhouses which I thought would make an awesome duo with their also nutritious orange cousins.

Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Patties!

Tags

black beans, cooking, Daring Cooks, patties, recipe, vegetarian, veggie burgers

The Daring Cooks’ February 2012 challenge was hosted by Audax & Lis and they chose to present Patties for their ease of construction, ingredients and deliciousness! We were given several recipes, and learned the different types of binders and cooking methods to produce our own tasty patties!

You could maybe say that I’m on an uncommitted search for the best veggie burger. So far the winner is the Garden Bean Burger at La Tuna Grill in San Antonio. They make it with refried black beans and then top it with cheddar, guacamole, roasted salsa, and tomatoes. Sounds kind of like a chalupa on a bun, right?

Naturally this challenge gave me the impetus to try to make my own black bean burgers in hopes that they’d be half as good as the ones at La Tuna. Having never made a veggie burger before (what?!), I looked up recipes and found one that used refried black beans…but by “refried”, they mean “smashed”. Probably most bean burger recipes involve smashing…