A Pile of Green

Unfortunately lack of posts does not equal lack of meals. It's officially well into swimsuit season and I've put on 20 pounds, which is not attractive on anyone. I've decided it's time again for the dreaded D-word to make an appearance--diet.

Luckily for my mouth dieting to me only means not having seconds...and maaaaybe inserting some veggies into my diet instead of the constant parade of carbohydrates and meat (they're just so delicious!).

The following recipe is something that I pulled together while browsing Fairway. I actually meant to make gumbo out of this okra yesterday, but Fairway was out so I bought this today in sort of a delayed gratification. I know the infamous sliminess of okra is a bit of a you-love-it-or-hate-it camp; personally I love it, but for the haters this risotto hides it well.

I also want to note that I had wanted to use Maitake mushrooms in this recipe, but Fairway didn't have any non-bruised specimens since I tend to go an hour to closing, so I just used regular brown button Criminis.




Asparagus, Okra, and Mushroom Risotto

1 cup Arborio rice
4-5 cups broth
1/2 lb mushrooms, chopped
6 asparagus spears, cut into 1" pieces
1 cup okra, trimmed and sliced
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp garlic, chopped
salt
pepper

~Melt 1/2 tbsp butter over medium heat and brown the mushrooms. Add the asparagus and okra and saute until bright green and al dente, salt to taste and set aside.
~Bring the broth to a simmer, cover and keep warm over low heat.
~Heat the remaining butter and oil in the pan on medium heat and add garlic, saute until fragrant; add the rice and stir quickly for one minute until the rice is coated and opaque.
~Stirring frequently, add the broth a ladle at a time, letting it absorb before adding more until the rice is tender and glossy.
~Stir in the veggies and lemon juice; season the risotto with salt and pepper before serving.

Holiday Hens

Merry Christmas! I enjoy the winter holidays even though I'm not the least bit religious. As my boss A puts it, "The version I celebrate involves only a red fat man, and has nothing to do with religion". I don't bother to correct him that the original Saint Nicholas was a Greek Bishop.

On the menu for tonight:

Mushroom Corn Chowder

Cumin and Paprika Roasted Potatoes

Cornish Game Hen with Garlic and Rosemary Butter

Spiced Pumpkin Pie

I was a little nervous about the hen--I've never cooked a whole bird before, and I think such things always garner a little apprehensiveness the first time around. It all turned out alright, though, and the hen was savory and juicy.

Mushroom Corn Chowder
 
4 cups assorted mushroom, sliced
2 cups frozen corn kernels
4 cups chicken stock
1 large onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup heavy cream
3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp fresh thyme
salt
pepper

~Put the butter, onions, garlic, mushrooms, and potatoes in a large pot and saute over medium-high heat until the onions turn translucent.
~Add the chicken stock and thyme and bring pot to a simmer. Cook until potatoes are tender.
~Add heavy cream, and simmer uncovered to thicken, then add corn and cook until heated through. Salt and pepper to taste, and serve steaming hot with crusty baguette.


Cumin and Paprika Roasted Potatoes

4 medium red potatoes, cut into 1" pieces
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp sea salt

~Whisk olive oil, cumin, paprika, and sea salt in a mixing bowl. Toss potatoes in the dressing to coat evenly.
~Heat oven to 450˚F. Spread potatoes on a baking tray in a single layer and roast until the edges are brown and crispy, about 30 minutes.

Cornish Game Hen with Garlic Herb Butter

2 Cornish game hens
3 tbsp salted butter, softened
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
1 clove garlic, minced
1 lemon, cut into wedges
1/8 cup white wine
1/8 cup chicken broth
1 tbsp olive oil
sea salt
pepper

~Strip one sprig of rosemary of leaves and chop finely. In a small bowl mix the butter, chopped rosemary, thyme, and garlic.
~Rub hens with the butter mixture; make sure to rub butter under the skin as well.
~Place a lemon wedge and sprig of rosemary in each chicken, and season lightly with salt and pepper.
~Heat oven to 450˚F. Place the hens breast-up in a baking dish and roast for 20 minutes.
~Whisk together the white wine, chicken broth, and olive oil, and drizzle over the hens. Reduce heat to 350˚F, and roast until the meat thermometer reads 165 degrees when stuck in the thigh, about 25 minutes, basting every 10 minutes with pan juices.
~Drain any drippings and reserve for gravy or dipping; tent foil over the hens and let them rest for 15 minutes before serving.

Spiced Pumpkin Pie

Crust
1 1/4 cups flour
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cubed
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
ice water

Filling
1 15oz can of pumpkin puree
3 large eggs and 2 egg yolks
1 cup evaporated milk
2/3 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of maple syrup
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 ground cloves
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp salt

~For the crust, whisk together flour, sugar and salt until well mixed.
~With a pastry blender, cut in the cold butter until the butter pieces are the size of small peas.
~Drizzle 1/4 cup of ice water over the butter and flour mixture; use a silicone spatula to press the dough into a ball. If needed, add more ice water a tablespoon at a time until the dough comes together.
~Knead the pie crust gently until the dough becomes smooth; try not to knead in the lumps of butter--this is what will make a flaky crust!
~Roll out the dough about 1/8" thick on a floured surface and drape to fit into pie plate; trim the excess crust to 1/2" beyond the edge of pie plate and fold excess under itself. Make a fluted edge with your fingers, or use a fork to press a pattern into the edge.
~Refrigerate pie plate for about 15 minutes until the dough is firm.
~Line pie plate with a sheet of parchment paper and fill with weights (glass marbles, dried beans, uncooked rice, or pie weights) and blind bake the crust for 15 minutes at 425˚F; take plate from the oven, gently remove paper and weights. Brush crust with beaten egg and return pie plate to oven, reducing temperature to 375˚F, and bake for another 5 minutes until the crust is golden.

~To make the filling, whisk evaporated milk, eggs, and yolks together in mixing bowl.
~In a pot, mix together pumpkin puree, salt, sugar, maple syrup, and spices and warm up over the stove on medium heat. Whisk in milk and eggs mixture until smooth, and pour in warm pie crust.
~Bake filled pie at 400˚F for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 300˚F and bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until the edges are set.
~Remove pie from the oven and let cool at room temperature; residual heat will finish cooking the filling, so don't put it in the refrigerator.
~Serve with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream!


I hope you enjoyed my Christmas Dinner...till next year!

Fluffy

Frittatas are an awesome breakfast option for someone like me who doesn't have time to cook every morning: they can be made in advance and refrigerated, and are easy to heat up. Plus, they can be a fully balanced meal, as well as being delicious. What's not to like?

Breakfast For Everyone Frittata

8 eggs
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2 cups baby spinach
1 large potato, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
5 basil leaves, chopped
salt
pepper

~Beat eggs in a mixing bowl, salt and pepper to taste.
~Heat olive oil in the pan over medium heat. Add garlic, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, salt and pepper; cook until potatoes are soft, about 15 minutes.
~Use a slotted spoon to scoop potato mixture to a bowl; leave the oil in skillet.
~Pour beaten eggs into the pan and cook until bottom is golden and edges have begun to set, ~5 minutes.
~Add potato mixture to the pan, sprinkle cherry tomatoes on top. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
~Place baby spinach on top, and cover the pan to wilt. Cook until eggs are completely set.
~Serve in slices.

Butter makes Everything Better

"Is there anything better than butter? Think it over, any time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's in this?' the answer is always going to be butter. The day there is a meteorite rushing toward Earth and we have thirty days to live, I am going to spend it eating butter. Here is my final word on the subject, you can never have too much butter." -Julie Powell, Julie & Julia.


This morning, I made a grocery trip to M2M, my local Korean food market. Along with a 5-pack of Shin Ramyun, russet potatoes, butter, rice, and strawberries, I also got a carton of baby portobella mushrooms.

I love mushrooms. The Boyfriend hates them. Hates them. He tried one spoonful of my Wild Mushroom Soup (after much coaxing) and pronounced "tasty, but I don't like mushrooms" and refused another sip. It's vexing because I could very happily eat mushrooms in every meal.

Part of my mushroom love is because they are very easy to cook and to make delicious. I've already had mushrooms with my Shin Ramyun for lunch today...but they were so delicious I couldn't help but pick them for a late-night snack again. And what better to make a compliment to mushrooms than the food of all foods, butter?


Mushroom Bruschetta

4-5 baby portobella mushrooms, sliced
2 1/2 tbsp butter yes, it's a lot of butter. the amount of butter applied is directly proportional to the deliciousness of the finished product. not for the fainthearted.
1/6 of a small red onion, diced
the green part of a green onion, chopped
1 slice of bread

~Heat up pan over stove. Melt 1/2 tbsp butter in pan.
~Saute onions until golden brown.
~Unceremoniously dump mushrooms and green onion in pan, add another tbsp of butter to pan and saute until brown and about half their original size. that's the sad thing about mushrooms, actually. their water content is so high, when cooked they shrink as the water evaporates.
~Spoon mushrooms and onions out of the pan into a bowl and set aside.
~Melt the last tbsp of butter in the pan, and use it to fry the piece of bread.
~Spoon the mushrooms and onions onto the toast. Indulge in buttery, mushroomy deliciousness.

The Idiots Who Can't Cook and Marinara Sauce with Fresh Basil

It's been a few days since I've made a post. No, that does not mean I haven't eaten anything since my last post. I took the train back to my house to pick up a few things and slept over at The Boyfriend's house with a few friends, and my diet on those days consisted mainly of Philly's cheese steak and Papa John's pizza.

I would like to take this moment to crown Papa John's as the best restaurant/takeout pizza you can get. Why this bold declaration, you ask?

*It's not super-greasy. Many restaurant pizzas have so much oil floating on top of the cheese that it could be soaked up with a sponge.
*The cheese is not burnt, it is perfectly soft and melted.
*The tomato sauce is not just salty, it is sweet and tastes deliciously of tomatoes.
*The dough is soft and bread-y.
*The crust is crisp, but not hard.

Yes. I love my pizza, and Papa John's has appealed to me for all of the above reasons.

On Monday morning, my dad dropped me off at Princeton Junction Station. After I took the NJ Transit back to New York, and rode the subway to 1st Avenue, all the while lugging a duffel bag that I swear weighed about 80 pounds (I'm 105 lbs., so you see why this is a problem.) and carting a plastic crate loaded with even more stuff, I was too broken in body and spirit to even attempt to make myself dinner. So I caved and ran to the nearest CVS and bought myself a few cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli. (Oh no she di'nt!)

Anyway, onto food that I actually made. I have had a package of linguine sitting on my desk shelf since I moved in (if you squint at the picture of my desk I posted on August 20th, you'll see it sitting next to the bag of rice), and since Mi and E had invited a friend, J, who lives on the 1st floor of our dormitory building, up for dinner tonight, I figured tonight would be a good opportunity to use it. So on our way back from Orientation, we stopped by Whole Foods and grabbed a jar of 365 Everyday Value Classic Marinara pasta sauce, frozen okra, and some Canola Oil (we looked for olive oil, which I prefer, but all they had was Extra-Virgin for like $10 a bottle and we're too poor for that).

Back in our cramped dorm room kitchen, I was about to start cooking when...dun dun duuuun! Disaster strikes! The fire alarm starts blaring, for the second time that day (we were gone for the first time). My room is on the 11th floor, and during fire alarms we aren't allowed to take the elevator, so it was down 11 flights of stairs we went. By the time the fire trucks had pulled away, it was 6:45 and dinner was late.

Okay, as I was typing this, the fire alarm just went off AGAIN. And apparently the reason for these THREE alarms in one day was because some people kept burning stuff on the kitchen stove, which created so much smoke that it set off the alarms. What the fuck? (this is probably a good time to mention this blog is not for young impressionable children.) It is not difficult to keep from burning things on an electric stove. If you're really that bad at cooking, you should probably either have someone teach you how to avoid burning things, or just stay the hell away from the kitchen. I'm getting tired of walking down 11 flights of stairs in the midst of a piercing fire alarm.

ANYWAY. On to the recipe. Before walking down 11 flights of stairs for the second time today, I would have said this isn't going to add any kind of extra wisdom to one's mental library of culinary knowledge...but now I think otherwise. So without further ado, I present spaghetti for dummies.


Twice-Interrupted Linguine with Marinara Sauce and Veggies

4 servings of linguine (about 2 oz. per person)
1 1/2 cup of marinara sauce
1 large tomato, diced
1 onion, diced
1 cup okra, chopped
1/2 cup button mushrooms, sliced
1 tbsp oil
a few sprigs of fresh basil, chopped

~Toss the linguine in a pot of water with a pinch of salt and set it to boil.
~In a large pan, heat up the oil and put in the chopped basil leaves and diced onion and stir on medium heat until the onion is lightly browned.
~Add the mushrooms, okra, and tomato, and push it around some more until the tomatoes become mushy.
~Tip in the marinara sauce, and stir it until it's hot and the entire kitchen smells like an Italian restaurant.
~The linguine is done when you throw it at the wall and it sticks. Do not overcook it. I prefer my pasta with a little bite--al dente, for all you cooking geeks, meaning to tooth. Cooking this particular pasta to al dente should take about 10 minutes in boiling water. Drain your linguine and divvy it up into four bowls. Pour the sauce and veggies over it and enjoy!

Makes enough for 4 people.

Sauteing the onions and basil.


This is J.



























You can also basically do this with any other type of pasta. I intend on making it with shells, which is my favorite pasta shape because the yummy sauces can hide in the little "bowl" the shell makes, and each bite contains a burst of tomato-y goodness.

A Trip to the Farmer's Market and Tomato Mushroom Scrambled Eggs

I can see this is going to become a regular thing. All the better.

Today after Orientation ended, Mi, E, and I stumbled upon a farmer's market on the way back to our dormitory. It's an odd concept for me, chancing upon vegetable/foodstuffs stalls in the middle of the city, because...I mean, would you expect to find people hawking fish and produce in the middle of NYC?

Well, maybe you do. I suppose since farmer's markets are the new hottest thing for "green" living, and New York City is one of the first to pick up on trends...

Anyway, Mi, E, and I walked through the farmer's market. Mi bought a bag of onions (different varieties--I think red and Italian being a few), and we also bought a small basil plant. Because fresh basil is awesome, and I'm totally going to attempt to make margherita pizza in our microwave oven at sometime. Wish me luck.


We checked out the tomatoes in the farmer's market also, but most of them were pretty pricey--$3-3.50 per lb., because they were all fancy heirloom varieties. Eh. For those who can afford it...we ran into Whole Foods across the street instead and picked up cheap tomatoes, button mushrooms, and a pack of 3 chicken drumsticks for me to make into curry later this week.

When we got back, it was past lunchtime, so E whipped up some Korean-style fried rice with last night's leftover white rice, eggs, scallions, and one of the small onions we'd just picked up. I don't have any pictures of this, unfortunately, because when I ran to get my camera I discovered the batteries were dead. So I had to wait for it to recharge, and of course by then all the fried rice was eaten. Oh well.

Anyway, on to dinner. Steamed white rice and scrambled eggs with tomatoes and mushrooms was my favorite dish when I was little...


Tomato Mushroom Scrambled Eggs

1 large tomato, chopped into large chunks
3 large eggs
3/4 cup of button mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp oil
salt and soy sauce to taste

~Crack the eggs into a small bowl and beat them until they are well mixed. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a pan, and pour the beaten egg in when it's hot. We want the eggs to be in larger pieces than for the fried rice, so leave it alone longer until the "skin" that forms on the bottom of the pan is quite thick, but it is still liquid on the top. Break it apart with a wooden spoon and push it around until the egg is entirely cooked--it's alright to brown it a little in this recipe. When the egg is done, put it aside in its bowl.
~Heat the second tbsp of oil in the pan, and use this to fry up the tomatoes and mushrooms. Now is the time to add a little salt and soy sauce.
~When the tomatoes have began to turn mushy, add the eggs in and cook for a minute or two longer.

Makes enough for 3 people.

Mi (right) and E waiting for me to finish cooking. All in due time...

Along with our tomato mushroom egg dish, we opened a tin of peppered tuna and some kimchi. I have grown to really like kimchi; the sour spiciness is oddly appealing. Yum. Usually I've not been very good at handling spicy foods, but living with two Korean girls, I suppose it's inevitable that I eventually get used to eating spicy food...