Kitchen Nightmares

A couple weeks ago I had an interesting cooking experience.  And I mean interesting as in, my smoke detector should have gone off (hmm, I wonder why it didn't?).  Everyone needs those stories though - about how you almost burned the house down or accidentally used salt instead of sugar - they make things interesting, and the successes more meaningful. 

One time I was making some pasta with a salmon cream sauce (one of my go-to dinners), and I had accidentally bought a carton of skim milk instead of whipping cream, which I didn't realize until I poured it into the pan.  At first I just thought the cream had separated in the carton, so I kept pouring.  But alas, I had mistakenly picked up the light blue carton which means skim milk for the generic Jewel brand, but whipping cream for Dean's (a brand of milk in Chicago). Why anyone would bother packaging skim milk in a pint container I will never know.  I thought I could salvage the dish by adding some butter, so I went to open a new package of butter and gave myself a nice deep "paper" cut with the corner of the cardboard package.  With blood everywhere I decided to call it quits for the night and scrapped the project.  The story continues with my search for a band-aid but I won't go into it because it's rather PG-13.

This more recent event was less traumatic, but still definitely a learning experience.  I decided to roast some chicken thighs, using oven temperatures and cooking times from this Williams-Sonoma recipe.  Remembering a Barefoot Contessa show where Ina rubs the chicken skin with butter, I decided to switch out the olive oil for butter, forgetting that butter has a rather lower burning point than olive oil. My Pam spray must have gotten lost when I moved so I greased the pan with the room temperature butter I had lying around.  Pretty much immediately after putting the chicken in the oven I realized my mistake as the butter started to burn and my oven started smoking. I turned down the oven a little, but the chicken still came out with a distinct smokey flavor - a smokiness more evident when the smell in my apartment cleared and I microwaved the leftovers for lunch the next day. 

My second mistake of that meal, was in the conception of my risotto. Maybe I'm just discovering I don't care for risotto much, but this attempt was starchy and boring. I went for the monochromatic, using onions and fennel. I was underwhelmed.

This project did give me an excuse to practice my picture taking skills. What do you think?

Until Next Time Chicago

I had the most amazing weekend in Chicago! The weather was perfect (I've been back in Cleveland for less than 24 hours and it has already rained) and I got to do lots of exciting things, like get all dolled up and go to the opera on Monday night. On Saturday I met up with some college friends who are all busy being important and making money. I finally got my first Big Star taco, and I already want more. During the day Jacob and I went to a garage sale and I bought some wall art so my walls will be less bare. Unfortunately they are still in Jacob's basement because they were too big to bring on the bus.

On Sunday night, we went to Girl and the Goat for a late dinner with our friends Mike and Sam. The moment I had been waiting for! Here are some of the yummy things we ate, photos courtesy of Jacob:

chickpea fritters

hamachi crudo

scallops, with pumpkin brandade and fried brussel sprouts

ham frites

pig face

confit goat belly

Greek Yogurt

Back in my elementary school days my mom used to put yogurt in my lunch just about everyday. It was usually the Trix kind...yes, like the cereal. I kind of grew tired of it once I figured out that the texture was unlike anything else: decidedly goopy. So I've spent the last 10 years of my life yogurt-free, until about two weeks ago. I finally cashed in on the Greek yogurt fad and I was pleasantly surprised! The texture was creamy and smooth, like ricotta cheese, and it had the tangy yogurt taste without too much added sweetness. My favorite is the blueberry flavor of Fage, which comes in a cute package with the yogurt on one side and the blueberry syrup in the other, reminiscent of the Dunkaroos and "cheese and crackers" of my childhood (you know the ones...with the fake cheese and the little red plastic spatula for spreading the weird cheese-like substance). The only problem is that these individual yogurts cost at least $2 a pop if you're lucky. Kind of an expensive snack. So I decided to opt for buying the big container of plain yogurt and making my own syrup to go with it. Here's a really easy recipe for raspberry syrup:

Ingredients:
1 pint raspberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Bring all ingredients to a bowl in a saucepan and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until sugar is dissolved and raspberries start to break down. Do not over-stir.

Remove from heat and refrigerate.

What you end up with is a delicious and healthy alternative to a bowl of ice cream after dinner!

Relaxation Techniques

Hi all!

I have been descending into midterm writing mode. I have a paper due right after fall break and I am hoping to get it done painlessly before leaving for break, instead of the night before it's due. So I won't write much here, but I do want to leave you with some pictures.

Relaxation Technique #1:

The label says it all on this Hey Mambo wine. I took one sip and was like, "Oh yeah! That's what good wine is supposed to taste like." My palate was accustomed to $3 wines. I bought two bottles, mostly for cooking purposes...but I did get to enjoy them a bit!

Relaxation Technique #2:

A lit candle is somehow good company while "burning the midnight oil." This is one of the best smelling candles I've come across: a little citrus-y, a little floral, a little sweet, and not overpowering at all. Plus, I have noticed a significant decrease in my apartment's weird odor! Win-win.

Easy Lentil Soup with Kale

Funny how the busier you seem the more productive you are. This week has been a nice respite from playing in the orchestra at school and as a result I've been a little lazy with things like making reeds and blogging. Of course, it doesn't help that I have two big papers with looming deadlines, and the more time I have to work on them, the less I feel like actually working on them. I figured I'd take this afternoon to go to a coffee shop and do some research and start writing. So naturally I am writing a blog post instead!

This one goes out to the vegetarians and health buffs. I don't think anything I've blogged about yet has been meat or dairy free. This isn't either, but you can easily substitute vegetable stock for chicken and the world will go on turning.

I've been thinking about lentils ever since Real Simple profiled all the trendy healthy foods in an issue last year. I think it must have been in the Jan 2011 issue, written for all those people whose New Year's resolution was to eat healthier. I always find those types of articles entertaining, because you can make an argument for anything being healthy. The prime example is how people go crazy for avocados. It's the fattiest vegetable in existence, but it's the "good kind" of fat. There's always an upside. The upside is that they're clearly delicious, but if you don't like them you shouldn't eat them just because they're "good for you."

This article actually made me give eggs a second chance. I always hated the idea of eggs. The idea of ingesting runny, unfertilized chicken ova didn't exactly appeal to me. But I've been eating a pretty protein deficient diet so, I figured I'd give them a shot. People have mixed feelings about eggs too.  Half of them think they are cholesterol-laden fat globules and the others think they are one of the most efficient ways to get your protein.  They're both right.  It's up to you whether you want to eat them or not. 

Anyway...kale and lentils were both on this list of healthy super foods. And it just so happens that both are really cheap! Perfect for my college student budget. Lentils have protein and kale is...well, green. I need some green in my diet too.

This soup was super easy to make. All it takes is a little chopping. (I'm becoming a chopping pro, by the way. I'm just practicing my knife skills for that day I'm on Masterchef!) I used a little curry powder to give it a little different flavor. I doubt that curry powder actually exists. Curries are made from ground up chiles which form a paste, not a powder. So...I'm pretty sure this curry powder is something McCormick made up to make money. You can probably substitute cumin if you have some on hand.

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 carrots, small diced
2 celery stalks, small diced
1 cup lentils
48 oz. chicken or vegetable broth
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp curry powder
about 3 cups kale, coarsely chopped or torn, stems removed

Directions:

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. Add the onions, carrots, and celery and saute until translucent, about 15 minutes. Add the lentils, broth, salt, pepper, and curry powder and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 40 minutes, or until lentils are tender.

Turn off heat and stir in the kale. Kale will wilt but not overcook.

...Aaaand, that's about it! It's so easy!

Butter: An Argument for Whole Foods

Since acquiring a car, I have taken a few too many trips out to Whole Foods. I'm not one of those organic-obsessed folks, but I am making an effort to reverse Whole Foods' stigma of being more expensive than traditional grocery stores. Organic or not, Whole Foods just has fresher produce, which is what I really care about, and it's not always more expensive.

Yesterday, I went to a conventional grocery store and had a shamefully high bill, higher than any of my trips to Whole Foods. I think this is because when shopping at Whole Foods, you are in a sense shopping as your best self -- the frugal, health-conscious, non-wasteful self. At regular grocery stores, you are just another consumer, buying whatever is on sale, and with a lot more temptation. If at Whole Foods your indulgent snack purchase is a big bag of apples that are on sale and staring you in the face as you walk in, no harm done really. But at other places it might be a buy one get one free 12-pack of coke, or that 10-pack of buttered microwave popcorn that was only a little more expensive than the 3-pack. And pretty soon you have a $60 cart-full of junk food.

Back to Whole Foods being cheaper than regular grocery store prices. If there's one thing I make a point of buying at Whole Foods, it's butter. It sounds a little contradictory to make a point of buying what is essentially milk fat at a store where it's hard to distinguish between bird feed and people feed. However, at a normal grocery store, a pound of Land O' Lakes butter can be upwards of 5 dollars. A pound of Whole Foods brand butter is usually priced at $2.99. And it's rBGH free, if you care about the hormones you consume. If you want more growth hormone for your buck, go ahead and buy that Land O' Lakes butter.

At regular grocery stores leeks are considered a specialty item and are therefore more expensive. I got a huge leek for 89 cents at Whole Foods. Red bell peppers are insanely expensive wherever you go, usually priced by the pepper, not by the pound (a bit misleading because often grocery stores will use the same price-per-pound for green bell peppers, and when they're shelved right next to each other, it can be confusing). Whole Foods non-organic red bell peppers are $3.99 each, which I am pretty sure is a dollar cheaper than most stores. I can't prove this at the moment but when buying ingredients like fennel and celery root, Whole Foods is the way to go. I'll have to price check the next time I go and publish the results, but for sure, more people buy these specialty items at Whole Foods, meaning the supply is replenished more often, meaning that what you're getting is actually fresher.

One thing that Whole Foods lacks is a chicken stock or chicken broth that actually tastes good. I go with Swanson every time. I guess if you're shopping at Whole Foods you're going to be making your own stock from scratch, but I don't have time to cook anything that's not going to immediately gratify me.

I love that every store is different, showcasing local farms, breweries, and artisans. This particular Whole Foods seems to have an affinity for Icelandic products for some reason. Not exactly local, but I love Iceland more than the average person, so I'm ok with this. They have Icelandic lamb and Icelandic skyr (similar to Greek yogurt, which is more popular in the U.S.). The dairy isle features this Icelandic butter, which is quite flavorful. (Ok, so you can splurge a bit at Whole Foods too). The butter is $2.99 for a half pound, and tastes kind of similar to Kerrygold Irish butter. It's vivid yellow and has a kind of glossy, waxy consistency. Pick up some of this butter and a baguette, warm the baguette in the oven, and you have the easiest, most heart-warming snack ever. Carbs and fat! They sell those at Whole Foods too.

Think Like a Chef

Well, it's officially fall, and the rainiest September in recent memory has ushered in a chilly and gray October. Our new autumn weather has put me in the mood for changing leaves, fresh apples, and pumpkin spice lattes. I have this Bath & Body Works soap in my bathroom that smells like Macintosh apples and every time I use it, my taste buds go crazy for some crisp apples.

When I bought the chicken thighs to make the Chicken with Tomatoes and Peppers while Jacob was visiting, I could only find a family pack, so I stuck half of them in the freezer for the next time I made that recipe. But the idea of braised chicken thighs had my mouth watering (I don't think I eat enough protein regularly).

I caught sight of a cookbook on my shelf, Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef, which my brother had gotten me for Christmas. I hadn't really used it much (just drooled over it) because it features a lot of ingredients not readily available to me: morels, ramps, sorrel, etc. But I remembered that the main premise of the book is teaching universal cooking techniques and leaving the ingredients up to the "chef." Immediately, I fixated on the idea of braising chicken in hard cider.

But then I remembered the popular gastropub dish of moules frites, or mussels and fries which Chicago restaurants have modified to use Belgian white ales, celery, and bay leaf instead of the classic white wine and garlic version. I cast my net out on facebook taking a poll on which - Belgian white or hard cider - would taste better with chicken and I got pretty mixed results. But by asking the question I had given myself the "right" answer: my favorite beer, Unibroue Ephemere!

Ephemere is a Belgian white ale made with apples, but doesn't have the intense cider flavor. Instead, it is delicate and floral, with all the usual orange peel and coriander notes usually found in a Belgian white.

Once that was settled, I just had to wait until I found time to work on my culinary "experiment." In the mean time, I read Stephanie Izard's cookbook and found extra inspiration to combine unusual ingredients and marry the savory and the sweet. That's when I decided that ordinary mashed potatoes to accompany such a dish would be a wasted opportunity to do something really fun! And thus, a recipe was born!

Ephemere Braised Chicken with Sweet Potato-Celery Root Puree

For the Chicken:

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 oz. prosciutto, coarsely chopped
4 chicken thighs
1 leek, sliced about 1/8 inch wide (white and light green parts only)
2 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, coarsely chopped
1 12 oz. bottle Unibroue Ephemere
1-2 cups chicken stock (enough to surround, but not cover chicken)
2 bay leaves
bunch of fresh thyme
salt and pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Rinse chicken and pat dry. Season with salt and pepper just before ready to brown.

Heat oil in Dutch oven and cook prosciutto until browned. Remove the prosciutto and set aside.

Place the seasoned chicken skin-side down in the same pot and brown 5-6 minutes a side over medium heat. When brown on both sides, remove and set aside.

Add leeks, carrots, and celery to the rendered chicken juices and sautee until beginning to become tender, about 10-15 minutes. Add the Ephemere (minus a swig), bay leaf, and prosciutto and simmer until reduced by about half, about 7 minutes.

Place the chicken skin-side up on top of the vegetables and pour in the chicken stock to surround but not cover the chicken. Season with salt and pepper (about 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper). Nestle the thyme in the center. (If you don't have kitchen string to tie the thyme in a bundle for easy removal, find a long piece of thyme and carefully tie it around the rest of the bunch. It should hold.)

Bring to a boil on the stovetop and then place in the oven uncovered. Let it braise for 1.5 hours, keeping an eye on how much liquid is left. You may have to place the lid on it and/or add some more chicken stock.

For the Sweet Potato-Celery Root Puree:

Ingredients:
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into large chunks
1 celery root, peeled and large diced
2 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 cups chicken stock
3/4 cup apple cider
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp butter
1/4-1/2 cup half and half

Directions:

Place first 6 ingredients in large pot and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes or until tender. (Cut celery root into smaller pieces because it usually takes longer to cook).

Drain and mash immediately. Add butter, half and half, and season with black pepper.

Assemble your dish!