Short rib technique

Tonight we had short ribs braised in coffee and mulled wine with dried chilies and horseradish cream (horseradish, yogurt, and heavy cream). The sides were roasted green beans and polenta with spinach, toasted hazelnuts, and cheese.

I've braised a lot of short ribs by now, and this is what I've decided:

-cook it in the oven, not on the stove. I did it on the stove this time, because Mark Bittman did it, but it's just not a good idea. It didn't cook evenly enough and the meat was less tender than it would have been if I put it in the oven.

(Sarah: "If Mark Bittman jumped off a bridge, would you?"

Becca: "Probably." )

-if it's in the oven (and it better be), cover the pot with tinfoil, then put the cover on. That will keep the braise from evaporating.

-Three hours minimum. Ideally, I like it 1 hour past the time it takes for the meat to fall off the bone.

My favorite part about short ribs is the fat. I got an extra fatty one that had a half-inch layer of fat wrapped around the meat and it was divine. I wouldn't eat fat by itself, but I like fat and meat together so much that I would have a hard time choosing between perfectly marbled meat and a million dollars.

An ode to dried procinis

I LOVE mushrooms, which is why I hate "mushrooms." I love strong, earthy, mushroom flavor, but the white button mushrooms that are most commonly available at grocery stores are horrible. They don't taste like anything except diluted bleach. 

Dried procinis are great-- they leave behind a beautiful broth of big mushroom flavor when reconstituted. I reconstituted them in broth and half a can of PBR, and made risotto from it. 

Mushroom Tart

I am picky about starches. When we made spanakopita, I was more interested in the fillo dough than the filling. I like the chocolate cookies better than the cream filling in an Oreo. When I was growing up I would often only eat the wonton skins and leave the wontons in the bowl. I never liked pie, but I love pie crusts. What makes one pie better than another for me is the quality of the crust.

All of this is just a long way of saying that I made two tarts: one with a prepared pie crust from weshop, and one with a scratch-made yeasted tart dough. The one with the yeasted tart dough was superior in every way. Since I'm such a starch connoisseur, I should have known. What makes one tart better than another is the crust.

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. There's also the roasted garlic puree in the custard, and chanterelles.

hummus, baba ghanoush, and 96 cookies

The thing is, I'm not really a good cook. Aside from still not reliably being able to chop an onion, I can never do the thing where you take whatever's in the fridge and somehow magically turn it into delicious and interesting dinner. I look at what's in fridge and turn it into scrambled eggs on toast. I'm not good at improvising. What I do, though, is get an idea in my head for a cooking project that renders me unable to think about anything else. My thought process tends to go like this:
Me 1: What can I make for dinner?
Me 2: I dunno, but how about making lime curd instead?
Me 1: Sounds good. Hey...wait a minute! There is still no dinner!
Me 2: So? Lime curd!
Me 1: Fair enough.

The Food
Tonight's project was baba ghanoush, which I've wanted to make for a while, but hadn't connected the dots between the eggplant slowly going bad in our fridge and potential cooking experiments until this week. And since I had a can of chickpeas in the pantry, I extended the thought to hummus.

hummus + sriracha and cayenne pepper = spicy hummus

My dad sent me a bar of nice white chocolate with my last package, which was nice of him. Unfortunately, I'm not a huge white chocolate fan, so eating it straight wasn't really appealing. However, I am a fan of combinations invovling white chocolate and cranberries, so I decided to make white chocolate cranberry oatmeal cookies. This was a good plan until my dyslexic self swapped the measurements of sugar and flour in the batter. Basically, 1 1/2 and 1/2 look very similar when you aren't paying attention (and, in the interest of full disclosure, I may have been cooking a teensy bit under the influence). So, basically I accidentally tripled the amount of sugar in the batter. Oops. I didn't have enough butter to triple the batter (thank God for that), but I did have enough to double it. What I should have done is dump batch one (sugar is cheap) and start over, but instead I just decided to make two batches' worth so that they'd each have about 1.5 times the correct amount of sugar. This is how I spent my entire Friday night baking eight dozen cookies. I know baking is a science, and I was really worried about the structural stability of the cookies, but consistency-wise they came out fine. Definitely sweeter than I'd like, especially the batch with the white chocolate, but on the other hand, if I didn't know I'd added the extra sugar, I don't know that I would have noticed on my own.

The People Who Ate It
No pictures, sorry, but the diners included me and miscellaneous housemates and their friends, and maybe even...you. Seriously, I have hella leftovers (eight dozen cookies, people!). Please help me out here.

Curry Scurry

The Food:
Yum curry yum! Chicken, plus veggies, plus curry equals easy and delicious. Also paneer cheese, which makes me an unlimited amount of happy.
A no-fail one pot wonder! (now we sound like we are advertising it)

The People:
Perfect date night dinner! I dined with the lovely Becca Worby - always a treat!

Shrimp and black beans

Still living off of our Whole Foods purchases, tonight we decided to make shrimp. The only two ingredients we had decided upon were shrimp and black beans, so I challenged us to do something non- Mexican influenced with them. We both went off to our computers to look for other ideas. The majority of the food names we found online were Mexican related, but they just sounded so delicious that we couldn't resist and swung back in that direction.



We cooked the shrimp in one pan with lime zest, and in another mixed together the black beans, a tomato and a green pepper. We then squeezed the lime that we had zested over the top of the completed bowl.


Our shrimp had not been preshelled but I learned that the shrimp shell can be eaten, and also that it contains Chondroitin, an enzyme which is important for joint health. The shell supposedly also helps lower cholesterol levels.

We unfortunately didn't get a picture of the people who at it, who were Sarah, Julia and me.

Basking in the Post-Market Afterglow

The Food:
Selfishly, my favorite thing about the farmers' market is that it exists as a place where I can go buy delicious ingredients for my cooking endeavors. This week I bought some baby arugula, a half round of aged french-farmstyle goat cheese, a nutty gruyere by Cato Corner, baby kale, maple syrup, a baguette by Wave Hill Breads and a porterhouse steak.
Today for lunch with Emily, I tried to incorporate a lot of this local goodness. We had a bistro style lunch: lobster bisque and a baby arugula salad with grated carrot and a slice of fresh gruyere. So the soup obviously wasn't local, but the salad certainly was. The tart arugula took me back to when I was a kid squatting in my mother's vegetable garden and nibbling on her plants. We were also able to enjoy another market treat with the meal: some delicious wave hill bread that we used to dip in our soup!

The People:
Technology failed me today. My camera wasn't charged and Avi's didn't have a memory card. I took a picture of the food with my cell phone camera, but you are going to have to use your imagination to fill in me and Emily eating it!

Ojja Merguez (kinda)

Since coming back from Tunisia I have been trying to find merguez sausages. I wasn't even sure if they were available in the U.S., but when I mentioned them to someone they seemed to think they are somewhat common. I still haven't been able to find any, so until today all of the Ojja I've made has been vegetarian.

Then we went to Whole Foods, and though they didn't have any merguez, they did have some other lamb sausage, which I decided was good enough.


Ojja is this tomato sauce type thing that you eat with a baguette.

Here's what you need
1 onion
2 chopped green peppers
3 fresh chopped tomatoes or 1 can diced tomatoes
2 tbsp. tomato paste - which we forgot to buy today
cumin - put in more than you think you need, cumin is not a spice to use sparingly
merguez or other sausage, or shrimp
harissa - a smoky flavored Tunisian chili paste - you can try something else spicy or forget it all together
2 eggs

Since I had never cooked sausage before I put it in a separate pan until it was cooked through.
In a larger pan saute the onion, then add in the cumin, harissa and tomato paste, followed by the green pepper. After the pepper starts to soften add in the tomatoes and cook it they become more mushy like a tomato sauce. Then add in the sausage - chopped, followed by the 2 eggs. I try to clear off a space in the pan for the eggs to start cooking before mixing them in with the rest of the sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. Eat by scooping up the Ojja with a chunk of baguette.
Serves 3

Lamb sausages are not as close to Tunisian merguez as I would hope, but they definitely get the job done.


And the people who ate it

lamb tenderloin

The Food:
Today was impossibly cold, the kind of day where you try to bury yourself in your jacket as you scurry around campus. I had my hood sinched up tightly and moved from place to place as fast as I could. At the end of my very busy Tuesday I wanted something warm and hearty. You know, the kind of dish that has been bubbling along all afternoon. Unfortunately, I only had 20 minutes....AND the only vegetable in the house was an eggplant - something I had never cooked before. Going without the vegetable was unthinkable; I grew up having a veggie, a carb, and a protein on my plate each night around the table with my mom and brothers. This meant I had a challenge on my hands - a new food and very little time.
Luckily, under Avi's tutelage I have learned to pull my nose out of the cookbook and start cooking creatively. I made up a satisfying recipe on the fly. Sauteeing garlic, eggplant, and diced tomatoes yielded a deliciously hearty sauce.


The sauce was thrown on top of some pastina (adorable star-shaped pastas for those of you who haven't had it). This was then topped with lamb tenderloin. I had this unusual cut of meat for the first time over winter break and found it to be succulent and delicious. I was thrilled when I saw them at Whole Foods! This is definetly a cut to try - very easy to cook and a large payoff.
The People Who Ate It:

Sarah, Xiaoxi, Avi!
The Whole Foods Conquerers

Quick Lunch

Since I sometimes only have an hour for lunch, I have gotten pretty good at 15 minute meals.


This is just some mushrooms, onions, garlic and spinach which I sauteed for a few minutes, and then added the leftover brown rice and barley into the pan with an egg, some soy sauce, salt, pepper, ginger and mustard powder. It was pretty good and I had enough time left over to watch an entire episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Yay!

Chipotle brownies

For rehearsal tonight I made a double recipe of chipotle brownies. They turned out well and the spices work great, but unfortunately the chipotle makes it harder to devour many brownies in rapid succession, which has always been my method of choice. Some other people might consider this a perk of the recipe.

I got the recipe from Smitten Kitchen, except I also toasted some hazelnuts while the chocolate was melting and then added them to the batter.

And the thing that ate the brownies:

Sweet Potato and Broccoli Quiche

Quiche is one of my favorite foods of all time. Its a great way to use any leftover vegetables you have lying around. We usually had it at least once a week when I was younger, and I pretty much use my mom's recipe as a starter.

One of the great things about not living in a health conscious household is that unlike with my mothers quiche, I don't need to use skim milk and low fat cheese.

For this Quiche we used a mixture of cheddar, gouda, and Connecticut raw hard sheep's milk cheese. We also are part of a raw jersey cow milk co-op, and I threw some of that milk in as well. I pretty much make up the ratios as I go along, the only constant being the use of 2 to 2.5 eggs per quiche, so that it stays together but isn't too eggy, which I didn't even realize was possible until trying the quiche at Red and Black - the campus bookstore\cafe.

I sauteed the sweet potato and broccoli for a few minutes before adding it in, just to make sure that it would be cooked the whole way through at the end.

Besides the normal salt and pepper, I usually add a bit of vinegar into my quiches. This is because once when I was younger I had salad with balsamic vinegar on the same plate as my quiche, and some of the vinegar drifted across the plate. Ever since then I've been pouring a little bit on top of my quiche, and now that I make my own I can add it in before baking. I also added a bit of mustard powder, an ingredient I have been fooling around with a lot with lately.

I baked the quiche at 350 for 35-40 minutes. It is important to remember after taking it out to let it sit for at least 10 or 15 minutes, otherwise it might not have competely thickened, and it won't stay together as well once cut.

Here it is plated:

( I don't know why but we seem to be on a green bean binge lately)


And here are the people who ate it:

From right to left: Ruby, Sarah, The Buck, Bill, Ben, The Berk, and me


One thing that I try to do while cooking is to find the good in any ingredient, and to use things that may not be considered sexy or sophisticated in creative ways. For example I added instant coffee into the sauce I made for the chicken a few posts ago. I wanted more of a watery bitterness then a full bodied coffee flavor.

Other times however, this is completely unnecessary and we must appreciate the deliciousness of processed food in their original state:


There is nothing better than a box of brownie mix. (except that no pudge fudge stuff) Its so simple to make, and yet so versatile with all of the different things you can add to it. Just don't follow the instructions for "cakey" rather than "fudgy" brownies... ewww
Here we have Duncan Hines brownie mix with chocolate frosting and mini candy covered chocolate things.

Midnight snack

Food:
Like Becca mentioned in her blog post, I stress cook. The actual soup was pretty simple (I put a short rib with two leeks, an onion, three cloves of garlic, half a can of corn, half a cup of brown rice, a dollop of reserved beef fat from the last time I made short ribs, spices, salt and pepper, and a bunch of water. That part took 10 minutes. After three hours, I chopped the beef into small chunks and mixed it back in), but there's an art to stress-cooking. Briefly, these are the rules:

1. Make something delicious that you wouldn't feel guilty eating, because you're probably feeling guilty already about cooking instead of working.
2. Only use what you have in your house already, because leaving the house will cross the threshold between benevolent procrastination (much-needed break) and harmful procrastination (waste time and cause you more stress later).
3. The recipe should be low-maintenance (for example, risotto is not a good stress cooking project because it requires too much attention)
4. The recipe should be fool-proof. Soup is good because you can add anything you want to it and it will always be delicious (case-in-point: rock soup), so it's stress-free to make. That is not the case with souffles.

and The People Who Ate It:

Things I Ate Today

"I feel like such a heifer. I had two bowls of Special K, 3 pieces of turkey bacon, a handful of popcorn, 5 peanut butter M&M's and like 3 pieces of licorice."
-Cher from Clueless

I will let her list stand in for mine because I am not screwy enough to count M&M's (although I'm fairly sure I had between 14 and 17). But let it be known that a house full of party leftovers is a dangerous place, especially when you live next to the kitchen and it's rainy outside and you don't want to do your work. Will I ever want spanakopita again? Probably. Will I ever write the Sensation & Perception reaction paper I've been putting off all day? Less likely. Will Sprite Zero kill us all? Maybe. So many questions, so many pretzel sticks. Is this tea caffeinated? Do I know you? Why do I want to bake again? Why does Xiaoxi stress cook? How's that midnight snack soup coming? Why is Blogger still in Spanish when I haven't blogged from Argentina in over a year? Todavía tengo mi español? What am I doing with the rest of my life? Do I want kids?

Avi, you have done a dangerous thing. You have provided an outlet for... this. I hope you're happy.

I need to learn how to take good pictures of food

Tapenade Crusted Chicken Thighs

Tonight we made chicken thighs with some leftover Bayit Chicken

We marinated it in balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, and agave for a couple of hours, then dipped it in a egg and heavy cream wash.

The crust is made from olives, avocado, lemon juice, nutmeg, and homemade breadcrumbs.

We took the remaining marinating juice, and reduced it with some white wine, mustard powder and instant coffee.

On the side we had some broiled green beans, and baguette with baba ghanoush- not homemade

And here are the people who ate the food

Avi, Olivia and Sarah

adventures in making things that usually come made

The Food:
Our campus food store, Weshop, does not sell creme fraiche. What's more, they don't sell buttermilk either. I was planning on baking an artichoke tart, but the tart called for 1/3 cup of creme fraiche. So what is a cook to do? Go out to the store and buy the necessary ingredients? Of course not! Obviously, I had to make the buttermilk to make the creme fraiche, which meant that I also had to make butter.
So it was- I put cream in a jar and shook it for half an hour until the butter separated from the buttermilk. I only realized later that I could have done it in a food processor or with a handmixer, both of which we have. No matter, now I know that wherever I am, if I have a jar and some cream, or a jar and a cow, I can make every dairy product ever. And in fact if there was no refrigerator involved, the stuff might actually taste better. Next time I will let the cream sour slightly before shaking it, to add some depth to the flavor.
I made creme fraiche by combining a spoonful of buttermilk and half a cup of cream, and letting it sit in a jar on top of our microwave for a day and a half.
Then I used the rest of the homemade buttermilk, homemade butter, and cream to make scones. These turned out fluffy, rich, and fantastic. Apparently the secret to great scones is to make the butter and buttermilk from scratch.

And the People Who Ate Them:
I brought the scones to rehearsal (I'm writing an opera), where they received the highest praises and were quickly devoured. Apparently the secret to a great rehearsal is to make scones with butter and buttermilk from scratch.

Recipes:

For homemade butter/buttermilk:
1 pint of good organic cream (makes 6 ounces/ a stick and a half)
large pinch of salt

Let the cream sour first- leave it at room temperature for 24 hours. Shake the cream until butter forms and separates from the liquid: You can do this in a food processor, or with a hand mixer, or in a jar (20-35 minutes), OR, hang it from the back side of your covered wagon and the butter will form as you make your way across the continent on the Oregon Trail.
Strain the butter in a fine sieve or with a cheesecloth (save the buttermilk for another use), and run it under water until liquid is clear.
With a spoon, smash the butter around in a bowl and mix in the salt, pouring off any more liquid. Form into a block and wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours before using, allowing the flavors to develop.
Afterwards, you can use it in:

Chocolate Pecan Scones (adapted from Everyday Greens)
1 tablespoon orange zest
1/2 cup of chocolate chips or chunks
1/4 cup of shaved chocolate (optional)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
6 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 stick homemade butter, chilled and cubed
2/3 cup chopped pecans
1 cup heavy cream
½ cup buttermilk
Pastry egg wash:
1 egg yolk and 2 tablespoons milk or heavy cream, mixed until smooth

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and set the oven rack to the middle position.

Shave some chocolate- the shaved chocolate will meld into the dough and impart some sweetness and add some interesting flecks of color on the scones, but otherwise it's not necessary. I only did it because my housemate got a solid block of milk chocolate for Valentine's day and it's impossible to eat in its original form.

Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix in the butter pieces until it resembles coarse meal. A pastry blender or something with a paddle attachment might help, but if you have an opposable thumb and a few extra fingers, you're good to go. Transfer to a large bowl and stir in the pecans.

Combine the zest, chocolate (shaved and chips), cream, and buttermilk. Add to the dry ingredients and gently mix together just until it's capable of holding a shape. Don't overwork the dough!

Sprinkle the work surface lightly with flour and shape the dough into an 8-inch round, about 1 inch high. cut the round into 8 wedges and place 1 inch apart on a baking sheet. To prevent the bottoms from burning, consider putting two baking sheets on top of each other, or use a pyrex cake pan (what I did). If nothing with a thick bottom is available, don't sweat it. Burnt, crunchy bottoms on scones can be quite nice.

Make the egg wash and brush it over the scones.

Bake for 30 minutes. Rotate the pan and bake until golden and cooked through, 10-15 minutes more.

Valentine's dessert

So since we only decided to make the blog yesterday, and have been cooking in this house for around 6 months now, we decided that retroactive posts are okay as long as we have pictures.

Last week for Valentine's day we had a party with a wide selection of desserts.



I happened to be watching Food Network Challenge when the party was suggested, and decided I needed to make a fondant covered cake. It ends up that fondant can be really easy to make. The recipe i found just involved melting marshmallows and adding lots of powdered sugar and crisco. The cake itself is red velvet.



Anna came over to help decorate



Also on the lovely dessert table above are
Angel Food cupcakes with chocolate frosting - made by Sarah Jeffrey
Valentines sugar cookies - made by Sarah Weisbuch
Seven layer bars - Also made by Sarah Weisbuch

I first had Sarah's seven layer bars when she was living in the Bayit sophmore year, and they are basically the most delicious thing ever. There's chocolate, coconut, graham crackers, butterscotch chips and I don't even know what else, and they're amazing and addictive.

First Post

Hey All!

So for the past year I have been talking with my housemates and others about creating a food blog to post meals that we ate whenever we found them to be particularly exciting and remembered to take pictures. I decided the only way for it to actually happen is to make the blog, so that we will feel obligated to post.

And we have quite a meal to start to start the blog with

Today Sarah, Xiaoxi and I took a field trip to Whole Foods in West Hartford to find exciting things to buy and cook. We had a very successful trip, and you will probably see many of the ingredients we bought in the weeks to come.





Swordfish with Caramelized Fennel, Broccoli Rabe and Brown Rice with Barley


This was actually my first time cooking and eating swordfish, so I didn't want to do anything too complicated. Since we got it home just in time for dinner, we weren't able to marinate. Instead I just threw on some salt and pepper, lemon zest, Herbs du Provence, and the green leafy part of the fennel. We broiled it for around 5 minutes on each side. -This is very important. As Sarah's father told us when broiling lamb earlier this week "put it under the broiler for 4 minutes on each side, then take it out. You're gonna look at it and want to put it back in for another minute and this probably won't stop you, but DON"T DO IT. The meat will be overcooked and you will be disappointed."
Of course we did it anyway, for both the lamb and tonight's fish, and now hopefully we have leared our lesson.

The Fennel was sauteed in some butter with garlic and Vinho Verde - wine made from unripened grapes. Broccoli was basically steamed with a bit of salt and more garlic, yay!

Sarah's new thing is cooking brown rice and barley together in our rice cooker, and its pretty delicious and worked really well with the fish.




The secondary aspect of the blog with hopefully be the people who ate it. And here they are:

From left to right- Aliza, Becca, Sarah, Xiaoxi, Sarah, and I was in the empty seat.

We finished the meal off with some vanilla ice cream with a hot salty butterscotch sauce.

Hopefully there will be many more entries to come!

-Avi