Curried Butternut Squash with Red Chard

It's almost the end of the semester! Final projects and final exams are everywhere sucking up time like giant time vacuums! I don't even know what a time vacuum is, but maybe it removes all the trash in your time, like browsing the internet, watching TV shows and the like? With final project time vacuums, none that useless stuff is left! Success! Or something like that.

Anyways, you know what the time vacuums have not sucked away? Time spent making food. I made some pretty darn delicious food yesterday. At some point in the past month, I saw mini butternut squashes at Safeway (they call it Vons here, but really it's Safeway), so I jumped on the opportunity to buy squash that I wouldn't have to spend multiple weeks eating. This week, I finally got around to cooking it. I first roasted the squash Sunday night:

Roasted squash! I couldn't help but try a spoonful

On Tuesday night, I actually got around to preparing the squash for consumption. Since my friend had some extra coconut milk, I decided to prepare it curry-style with ginger, cumin, turmeric, curry powder, cardamom, and a good spoonful of Thai red curry paste. I heated some oil in a pan and fried the spices to "release the aromas" (as they always say on America's Test Kitchen).

I sliced up the squash, and added it to the spices. I let it cook for a while.

And then added about a quarter cup of coconut milk and mushed up some of the squash pieces. 

At SafeVons, I also found a beautiful bunch of red chard, so I decided to try it out by simply sautéing it in a bit of oil.

Yay balanced meals! The squash was super delicious, with the ginger, curry, and cardamom being the strongest flavors. The chard was chard-like, which I liked.  Also, I can make rice now....

Apple Salad

I'm back from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing! It was awesome. Check out this lab's research on prosthetic retinae.

The food at the conference was definitely not the emphasis though; dinner on Wednesday consisted of a dry and vegetable-less turkey sandwich with a cookie. My dinner tonight is much tastier. I got a giant acorn squash from Trader Joe's yesterday, and I was totally going to cook it tonight. Then Laziness struck. So instead I made a quesadilla and salad.

But the salad. It is a special salad. I started with an apple. I don't usually put apples in salads, but my friend had me try apples with dressing a couple weeks ago, and I had to agree that it works well. I chopped up an apple into my usual mustard-olive oil-vinegar dressing. Then I added some romaine and some kale. To add color, I chopped up some of my ever-present baby carrots. When I tried my creation, it was good, but was missing some creaminess and tang: crumbled goat cheese brought the salad to a new level.

Tomato-Jicama-Avocado Salad

It is what it sounds like! I'm back at school and I'm making my own dinners this semester, so I'm learning to cook from what I have. This evening, I looked in my fridge and saw cabbage, plums, and baby carrots. Eh. Then I saw the tomatoes I had gotten at the farmer's market last weekend, and the jicama from 2 weeks ago. Maybe I could make a salad. After all, I had been wanting to try the avocado I got last weekend.

I made a quick vinaigrette with mustard, cider vinegar, and olive oil. I chopped up three small tomatoes, and about a sixth of a jicama. I cubed half the avocado, and added some cubed cheese for good measure. With some salt and pepper, a slice of toasted bread, this was a very passable dinner. The cheese (part skim mozzarella) and the avocado did not pair very well though. A crumblier cheese like
queso fresco or feta would probably have worked better.

Sriracha Ice Cream

For the past year or so, I have had the idea of savory or savory-inspired ice cream churning in the back of my mind. Pun Intended. Although I don't think I'll go as far as "clam raisin," mentioned in David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, I do have a list of flavors building up:

• Curry, perhaps mixed with rice like a rice pudding ice cream
• Guacamole
• Avocado-Bacon
• Corn/Corn-Bacon
• Pepper
• Goat Cheese (perhaps with honey)
• Pho sorbet
• Lemongrass
• Tomato-Basil soup
• Butternut squash
• Sriracha

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, I started with the bottom of the list. This sriracha ice cream is more "savory-inspired" than actually savory; it contains sugar and vanilla.

The ice cream is sweet, hot, and salty. The first bite is very weird, but I found that I liked it more as I continued to eat it. The spiciness doesn't build up until the third or fourth spoonful, and it never gets unbearable because of the sugar and cream. This flavor is definitely worth trying if your are a Sriracha fan.

When I brought this to the dorm lounge, I got mixed reactions. My roommates actually liked it, but one of my friends literally spat out the ice cream, drank some soda, spat that out too, and then had a cookie to make sure all traces of the ice cream were gone. It was quite a show. I recommend offering this ice cream to people under the name "Mango Ice cream" and taking pictures of their faces as they dig in enthusiastically.

You may be wondering, how does one make this strange ice cream? Since I don't have a kitchen this year, I opted for a "philadelphia-style" cream. That means that instead of making a custard by cooking egg yolks in milk, I just added some flavor to cream and froze it. I went off of the recipe I found here.

Sriracha Ice Cream

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup milk (fat percentage is not very important)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2tbsp to 1/4 cup sriracha (rooster sauce), to taste
• 1 tsp vanilla

1. Make sure the frozen part of your ice cream maker is frozen.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, sriracha, and vanilla. 



It looks like blood-spattered snow...

3. Stir well.






4. Add the cream and milk, stir until the sugar is dissolved






5. Add more hot sauce or sugar to taste.
6. Put in the ice cream machine and churn for 20 minutes.
7. Transfer soft serve ice cream to a container and freeze for at least 3 hours.

The freshly churned cream is much lighter in color than the frozen ice cream (top)

The churned ice cream will have a strange sticky texture, but it will feel fine when eaten. Enjoy! (Or psych out your friends.)

Garlic Bread

... is basically at the top of the list for foods both delicious and quick to make. I mean, who doesn't like garlic bread? (Many people, I am sure, especially those who dislike garlic.) But I cannot resist the warm combination of fresh crusty bread, melted butter, and garlic.
Of course, like all inherently simple things, there are many different recipes, each claiming to "be the very best" (that no one ever was??) My suitemate, for example, simply kept a bowl of garlic-butter on the counter (for some reason unrefrigerated) and whenever he wanted garlic bread, he would spread a thick layer of butter on a slice of sandwich bread and microwaved it until the butter was melted. I must say, it was delicious. Some people put cheese or zest or their garlic bread, which is delicious too. The main debate I have seen is olive oil vs butter. But hey, this recipe uses both, so anything is possible.I am personally a fan of butter garlic bread, probably because I am a fan of butter.

But why am I talking about garlic bread anyways? Well, the other night we had family friends come over for dinner, and my parents (Hi parents!) basically assigned me to make the dinner they had planned: clams and fish cooked in a tomato-chorizo-roasted red pepper-garlic-onion sauce and garlic bread.
So how did I make this garlic bread? Well, I opted for the "melt butter with garlic and brush/pour on top of the bread" method.

Garlic Bread (serves 6-8)

Ingredients

• 1 baguette
• 3 tbsp of salted butter
• 4 medium garlic cloves
• Parsley (opt)

Tasting the melted garlic butter :)

Method:

1. Cut the baguette in half to make 2 short baguettes
2. Cut each of those in half like you are splitting them for a sub sandwich. The goal here is to have have access to the crumb of the bread.
3. Use a garlic press or knife to mince the garlic and place it in a small microwaveable bowl.
4. Add the butter to the bowl and microwave the contents until the butter is melted and bubbly.
5. Use your communism skills to distribute the melted garlic butter evenly among the pieces of bread (on the not crusty side). 
6. Sprinkle on a bit of chopped parsley if you want to.
7. Slice the bread into the number/size of pieces you desire.
8. But the bread pieces crust down on a baking sheet and stick under the broiler until the edges of the bread brown.
9. Serve warm!

Spring Break 1: Roasted Cauliflower with Indian Style BBQ sauce

Today is the last day of Spring Break. And apparently to me, spring break means time to make delicious foods! (And read A Dance with Dragons)

I started out the break relatively simple: Roasted Cauliflower with Indian style BBQ sauce (based off of this recipe.)

  

Cauliflower is really pretty.

  

Roasted cauliflower is really tasty.

I thought the recipe's ingredients for the bbq sauce had way too much ketchup, so I just made something up:
I heated together

• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1 tsp thai red curry paste
• 1 tsp tamarind paste
• 2 tsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp ground cumin

in some oil to bring out their flavors. Then I added

• 1/4 ketchup
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp bbq sauce.

 If I had ginger, I would have added it.

 

Roasted cauliflower with this sauce is even tastier.

According to Epicurious, someone called roasted cauliflower "veggie candy." I wholeheartedly agree, I could eat this stuff all day.

Crêpes!

Crêpe with onions, mushrooms, ham, and cheese

On Tuesday we celebrated my brother's birthday again (his actual birthday has not yet happened) with a crêpe party! In my family, "crêpe party" means that we pull out the gridle that has six holes for small crêpes so that each person can customize his or her crêpes and the meal goes on.

For our crêpe batter we use half wheat (not whole wheat) flour and half buckwheat flour. Traditionally, savory crêpes (called galettes) are made with 100% buckwheat flour, but the lack of gluten makes the batter hard to work with, and my family's hybrid crêpe batter lets us use the same batter for savory and sweet crêpes!

To make crêpe batter for 4 people (+ leftovers for breakfast the next morning):

Ingredients:

• 100g all-purpose flour
• 100g buckwheat flour
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp salt
• about 360g milk
• water

Method:

1. Mix the flours with the salt in a large bowl. (For some reason my family has a designated crêpe bowl)                                                           
2. Add the eggs and mix with a spoon            
3. Add the milk slowly, stirring between each addition to avoid making lumps (if you do get lumps, give the dough a whirr with an electric mixer)
4. Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
5. Add water to the dough until it is liquid enough to run off the spoon quickly (if the dough is too thick to spread when you start cooking crêpes, you can always add more water)

To cook crêpes:

1. Heat your pan with some oil. 
2. Add a small ladle of batter to the pan and either use the bottom of the ladle to spread out the batter or rotate the pan so that the batter is very thin but not broken.
3. Cook one side until the bottom is browned, then flip.
4. Add desired topping if toppings need to melt.
5. Cook until bottom is also browned.
6. Adjust the temperature for the next crêpes if they are cooking too fast or too slowly.
7. Serve.

Remember: the first crêpe you make in the pan is always a failed crêpe. Don't sweat it.

For our savory crêpe toppings we had caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, ham, cheese, and eggs. For dessert toppings we had nutella, honey, sugar, butter, bananas, and canned pears.

 

The classic "crêpe complète"  is ham, cheese, and a fried egg. I add onions and mushrooms because onions and mushrooms make everything even more delicious.

 

And of course, as crêpes (galettes) are from Bretagne, they must be eaten with apple cider. My dad found some legit unfiltered and unpasteurized cider at Piazza's that supposedly went very well with the crêpes. (As I am under 21 I obviously did not have any ;)

 And the great thing about making crêpes for dinner is that you get to eat the leftovers with nutella the next morning!

Asparagus Quiche

The weather last week was quite Spring-like, so I decided to make some Asparagus Quiche! (Although the weather as I am writing this is decidedly not spring-like.)
Quiche, as I am sure you all know, is a French dish that is at the intersection of Frittata and custard tart. It has a pastry shell and is filled with a savory egg based custard. The traditional Quiche Lorraine has bacon and gruyère, but I made this quiche vegetarian with asparagus, onions, and gruyère.

First I browned the onions in olive oil with some red thai curry paste.

And then I added the garlic and cooked it for about 30 seconds.

And then I added the asparagus (first I cooked the stalks, and then I added the tops, because the tender tops cook more quickly)

To cook the asparagus I added some water to the pan and let the asparagus simmer until it was soft, adding water as necessary. I wanted it to be soft rather than al dente to meld better with the texture of the custard.

Then I made the custard with 5 eggs and a cup of milk. I then added about a cup of freshly grated gruyère as well as some salt and pepper (and a little bit of chili pepper).

I poured the custard into my blind baked pastry dough, and added the asparagus to it.

I then baked the quiche for about 20-30 minutes.

The quiche was quite tasty, although it could have used either a bit more salt or some more cheese. I served with a bright salad to contrast with the butteryness of the crust.

Carrot Ribbon Salad

I am a big fan of carrots, and I am a big fan of salad, but I could never figure out how to combine them in a satisfying way. Cutting the carrots into round slices just made them too thick and woody in comparison with the lettuce, and shredded carrots tend to clump up unattractively. But, when I was peeling carrots, I realized that the peels were the perfect thickness for a salad. So I just kept peeling, even after the skin was long gone, to make carrot ribbons.

I used 2 carrots to get about 1-1.5cups of loosely packed ribbons (I would use a third carrot if I made this again). To continue my salad, I decided to add a small handful of cranberries and toasted pecans to add a bit of interest, and I topped it with a box of spring greens.

For the dressing, I made a mustard vinaigrette with a large spoonful of mustard, a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, a larger spoonful of red wine vinegar (too much balsamic makes a salad cloyingly sweet instead of light and refreshing), an equal amount of olive oil, and a crank of freshly ground pepper.

I brought this salad to a Track pasta feed (where we feast on carbs the night before a race) and it was a nice change from all of the pasta and cookies. At the pasta feed, my friend and I actually ended up making a lemon-olive oil dressing with the hosts home-grown lemons for some of the plain pasta people had brought, and it was delicious: lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, mustard, and "italian seasoning" tossed with pasta.

Tomato Sauce and Carrot Cardamom Cake

Tonight, my parents went out, so my brother (who is home for spring break) and I decided to make some ravioli and carrot cake!

Above is the tomato sauce I made to go with the ravioli. It has onions, garlic (which I sliced rather than crushed), red thai curry paste, some of my mom's mystery spices, canned tomatoes, jarred tomato sauce, and peas. 

This is Spiced Carrot Cake, but really should be called Cardamom Carrot cake, because cardamom is its only spice. It was, however, delicious. 

And I successfully temporarily fixed my camera! Unfortunately, as I had to duct tape the piece that holds the batteries in, I'm not sure how I will change the batteries... But until then I can still take pictures!

Soupe de Légumes au Pistou (Vegetable and Pesto Soup)

Hi ya'll!

I know it is a bit strange to be making soup just as the sun is finally deciding to go into summer mode (kind of), but this is actually a very spring-y soup (not in the rebounding sense.) The ingredient list seems long and random, but, believe it or not, it is actually from a real, published recipe. Yes, bok choy and arugula in a Provence-style soup may sound strange, but it is delicious.

This recipe uses a bouquet garni, which is a bundle of herds tied together. The point of tying them together is to make it easy to remove the herbs before serving, but it fell apart in my pot from the stirring.
So, I think you should decide for yourself whether you want to tie up the herbs or not. One solution would be to wrap the thyme branches and bay leaf in some cheese cloth (because they are unpleasant to eat) and just leave the parsley in the soup.

a bouquet garni

Soupe de Légumes au Pistou (from Envie de... Cuisine Végétarienne)

Ingredients (serves 3-4 as a main course)
Soup:

• 1 Litre water
  
• bouquet garni: fresh parsley, thyme, and 1 bay leaf
  
• 3 carrots, chopped
  
• 3 leeks, chopped
• 2-3 branches of celery, chopped
• a small handful of baby potatoes, halved
  
• 1/2 can of large white beans
• 1/2 cup of peas or lima beans
  
• 3 heads of bok choy, rib separated from leaves
  
• 150g arugula (1 box) <- this seems like a lot, but it actually shrinks dramatically when cooked
• 2 tsp coarse salt
• pepper

Pesto:

• 2 large handfuls of basil
• 1 jalapeño pepper (no ribs or seeds), chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 4 tbsp of olive oil
• 3-4 tbsp of freshly grated parmesan (I strongly recommend you buy a hunck of parmeggiano and grate it yourself, then you can use the parmesan rind to flavor the broth)

Method of Preparation:

1. Make the pesto: Blend the first 4 ingredients together, stir in the parmesan.
   
2. For the soup: In a large pot, combine the water, herbs, carrots, leeks, celeri, potatoes, and the white part of the bok choy. (And a parmesan rind, if you want to)
3. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and let simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Add the beans, peas, and let simmer another 10 minutes.
5. Add the bok choy leaves and the arugula, as well as the salt and pepper.
6. Let simmer another 3-5 minutes
7. Add 3/4 of the pesto to the soup and mix it in.
8. Serve with a spoonful of pesto in each bowl.

You can easily make garlic croutons by toasting some bread and rubbing garlic onto it.