Fried Quinoa (like Fried Rice)

The other day I made a very large batch of quinoa for making this dish, and had a good deal left over so I put it in the fridge. I needed a meal idea and had chicken on hand so I looked around for recipes to use leftover quinoa and found this one.

The breakdown is really simple, if you've made fried rice it's the same.  Rice/quinoa for frying is best chilled overnight, if you cannot cook it and spread it out on cookie sheet and put it in the freezer.  The chilled starch is the secret to making amazing fried rice/quinoa at home.

Make two eggs dice and set aside
saute your protein, then the onions, garlic and ginger
add diced up eggs, quinoa, peas cook a few minutes then add soy sauce and fish sauce (I used Sesame ginger salad dressing instead)

I liked this better than fried rice, because it was lighter in texture and really packed a flavor punch.  In all I think prep and cook took about 15 minutes, so if you've got some left over quinoa this is really good.

Icecream fever at Saveur

The last week my feed from Saveur has looked like this

How to make 25 ice cream toppings including rich caramel icing, butterscotch sauce and hot fudge.  Then how about some books on ice cream making, followed by ice cream cone taste testing, some list of 25 ice cream and gelato recipes, how to make ice cream, how to make ice cream by hand.  Then for kicks how about Fig ice cream recipies, Onvi ice cream, Ice cream cookie sandwhiches, Mexican ice pops, and some strawberry shortcake bars.

Any how you get the picture; and Saveur we get it.  It's hot as fuck on the east coast, shut up already.  It's the middle of Juneuary here in the PNW, and I'm pretty sure we haven't gotten over 80 yet this "alleged" summer.  I bet you will never guess what was bought yesterday in my house?  Ice cream bars and then we went out for Froyo, so yeah posting about heat apocalypse soothers for your East coast brethren is probably awesome for page views but you're making me fat(er) over here.


Fuck it, I'm going to get some gelato.

D is for drunken grapefruit

So technically this is probably brandied grapefruit, but Gizmodo has a video post (with no way to embed sorry) for how to make a sweet brandied baked grapefruit.  Short story is below


-Cut grapefruit in half, and segment the... uh... segments, with a grapefruit knife (awesome gadget).
-Cover with 1 ounce (two tablespoons) of brown sugar.
-Pour some brandy on top until it's full and let it sit for 30 minutes.
-Put the grapefruit in a pre-heated 350-degree (F) oven for 20 minutes.
-Remove them and add enough sugar to cover.
-Turn your oven to Broil and put the pan in the broiler for about 5 minutes or until the sugar caramelizes.
-Remove from oven. Let it cool a little, and enjoy.

Gumbo

When I was in college there was a little hole in the wall Cajun place up the street from the campus called From the Bayou.  The food was pretty amazing for being right next to a college, and the flavors where just not what you would expect to find in the northwest.  Between the great flavors and the fact that my (now wife) and I had our first date there, well southern cooking has a soft spot in my heart.  They had a lovely chicken and andouille sausage gumbo that is still the best I've ever had.  We had the good fortune to get our rehearsal dinner catered by them, but sadly the restaurant has since gone out of business and I still miss having gumbo every now and again.

I'm working off of this recipe from NewOrleanscuisine because it has the things I can identify as what was in the gumbo I loved, and I felt like he had some great tips on both the roux and the rice.  It was good, but I got scared near the end of the roux and started adding broth.  My advice is go into making roux with the knowledge that you may have to throw it out and ride that train as close to burnt as you dare.

Smoker at home

A few weeks ago, I started on a really masochistic streak with my cooking and tried to smoke a Corned Beef Brisket on my barbecue on a week night.  I got it on the coals by 6pm and didn't finish until about 2 in the morning the next day.  It turned out pretty good, but still needed another few hours to be truly fall apart tender. I cheated around midnight and put it on a roasting pan in the oven at 250 so I could try to sleep rather than having to check the coals every half hour or so, but the experience got me thinking about ways to achieve that smoked flavor without all of the work.  Wouldn't you know it Saveur had my back.

Long weekend experiments

So apparently long weekends (yeah presidents day) mean that I choose to cook strange things.  First up I started a sourdough culture from Goldrush Sourdough Starter.  In the past I've tried a so called spontaneous sourdough where I tried to let wild yeast start fermenting in my kitchen, but there are two problems with this.  1 I always want to start this in the dead of winter, and 2 my wife and I don't tend to run the heat very high.  Both of these things conspire to prevent the yeast from taking off.  Having a kid now we run the house much warmer than we would if it was just us, so the yeast had a fighting chance.  It is sort of hard to tell, but that is sour fermentation going on there in the picture.

I also tried the dried apples I wrote about here.  They taste good, but I think that you need a mandolin slicer to get thin enough to have a prayer of getting the store bought quality.  I sliced them as thinly as I was able by hand, but they are still too thick.

Dried Apples

So one of the blogs I'm following is trying to kill me, I will not be posting about that other blog or the beignet recipe that I am studiously pretending I didn't read about today.

Instead I will post about dried apple slices and the how healthy and delicious these look see here is a picture

Oh sweet jesus help me, I'm weak and those fried dough balls call out to me with the force of 100 fat kids.

Seriously checkout the apple thing though, that looks pretty do able without needing a dehydrator and apple chips are the most delicious things.  That dough is making me drool on my keyboard just a bit, but you should totally make the apples instead.

The Parsley Thief

I follow several food related blogs Saveur being one, but they sometimes link to other blogs.  The Parsley Thief was one they linked to a while ago and I've been following her ever since.  This recipe is one of the reasons you might consider following her.

Black Bean, Chicken and Rice Bowl with Apple Salsa

It sounded good to me on paper, but the Apple Salsa blew me away.  It had that quality that Pico de Gallo has where nothing in there is spicy, but it tastes spicy.  I didn't have a lime when I started this little journey but I am so glad I didn't use lemon juice, I drove to the store and bought a lime.  That flavor sealed it as far as I'm concerned.  If you look really close you will see that I clearly spent way too much time getting the apple diced finely but the texture was worth it.  Everything took a little over an hour to chop, prep and cook for me (plus driving to the store like an idiot time) and I'm fairly fast with a knife so your results will vary.  As Katie (the parsley thief) notes the apple salsa can be made ahead of time as the citrus keeps the apple from oxidizing.  Even 3 days later it still looks pretty in my fridge, so take the time to chop it down into tiny beautiful squares and just toss the bowl you make the salsa in into the fridge.

arbitrary title

So I'm a pretty huge fan of whole grain cooking and I love Cooking Light (magazine and blog), so when they posted this recipe for Quinoa Salad with Asparagus and Orange, I knew I needed to make it.  I've reproduced it here, because their page layout sucks so badly when you try to print that I thought I'd save you all the work.  I suck again and forgot to take a picture, but the tiny bit of heat from the Jalapeno played off the citrus in the dressing and and the orange.  It didn't say to, but I chopped the orange slices up so they weren't so huge, just my opinion though.  If you follow the instructions and are decently quick at food prep the timing worked out really well for me.  If you are slower at chopping you might start the chopping and have the asparagus ready to steam when you cover the quinoa.  When the asparagus is done you can run it under cold water to quickly "chill" it and that was good enough for my taste.  Hope you enjoy!

Quinoa Salad with Asparagus, Dates, and Orange

Salad:

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/2 cup finely chopped white onion

1 cup uncooked quinoa

2 cups water

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup fresh orange sections (about 1 large orange)

1/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted

2 tablespoons minced red onion

5 dates, pitted and chopped

1/2 pound (2-inch) slices asparagus, steamed and chilled

1/2 jalapeño pepper, diced

Dressing:

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon extravirgin olive oil

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 garlic clove, minced

2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

Mint sprigs (optional)

Preparation

1. To prepare salad, heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add white onion to pan; sauté 2 minutes. Add quinoa to pan; sauté 5 minutes. Add 2 cups water and 1/2 teaspoon salt to pan; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes. Remove from heat; let stand 15 minutes or until water is absorbed. Transfer quinoa mixture to a large bowl. Add orange and next 5 ingredients (through jalapeño); toss gently to combine.

2. To prepare dressing, combine juice and next 4 ingredients (through garlic) in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Pour dressing over salad; toss gently to coat. Sprinkle with chopped mint. Garnish with mint sprigs, if desired. Serve at room temperature.

Saveur is trying to kill me

I've suspected it for some time now, but this post proves it.  Saveur is trying to kill me. With food.  Dead.

Hot Crab Dip with Pita Chips

 Fuck.

 INGREDIENTS
3 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 red bell pepper, cored and finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, finely diced
2 tbsp. flour
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup grated parmesan, separated
Juice and zest of one lemon
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp. Old Bay seasoning
¼ tsp. celery salt
1 lb. lump crab meat, cleaned
1 scallion, finely sliced


INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter the inside of a 8" x 8" baking dish. 
2. In a 12" skillet, melt the butter and olive oil over medium-high heat. Cook the bell pepper and shallot until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the flour and cook, stirring, to make a roux, about 3 minutes. Whisk in the heavy cream until the mixture comes to a boil, about 1 minute. Reduce to a simmer, cook until thickened, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add 1/3 cup parmesan, lemon juice and zest, salt, pepper, Old Bay, and celery salt. Gently fold in the crab. 
3. Transfer the mixture to the buttered baking dish. Sprinkle the top with the remaining parmesan and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the top is browned and the dip is bubbling. Garnish with the scallions and serve with pita chips. 

 NOTES: To make your own pita chips, cut fresh pita pockets in wedges and toss with 4 tbsp. of extra virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper. Cook at 400° for 12-15 minutes.

Frozen Banana desert

Sometime ago I stumbled on a recipe for making a healthful 1 ingredient cool desert.  I probably should post this in the summer, but what the hell it sounds good to me right now so here you go from thekitchn.com

1. First freeze some bananas,
2. Slice said frozen bananas and pop them in the food processor or blender
3. Blend until smooth
4. ?
5. Profit!

I have made it a few times so I can attest to how close to ice cream the texture is, and for a "healthful" desert it is pretty good.  My problem now is my food processor is broken so I haven't been able to make this in a while, but it's fun and usually surprises people with how good it is.  To make it less healthful I would add some Nutella or just straight up chocolate syrup.

Soup and pictures

A little late but fuck it we'll do it live!  First off the soup recipe


ROASTED GARLIC SOUP
3 slices stale bread, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 T olive oil
1 T fresh herbs chopped each: 

• marjoram leaves/stems
• rosemary leaves
• savory leaves/stems
• tarragon leaves/stems
• thyme leaves/stems
• oregano leaves/stems

3-5 heads garlic, roasted and pureed
2 bay leaves
1 t black peppercorns
Kosher salt
1 C dry white wine (drink remainder while cooking)
8 C Basic Vegetable Stock (see below)
4 C cream
8 oz Gruyere cheese, grated for garnish

Preheat oven to 550 F and sip wine.

1. Toss bread cubes with 2T olive oil. Spread out on baking sheet and toast until golden/crispy for 5-10 min. Sip wine.
2. Add herbs, pureed garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, pinch of salt, wine (continuing to sip the remainder) and stock to soup pot. Mix well and let it reach boil over med.high heat. Once boiling, lower heat to med. low and simmer 30 min.
3. Pour soup slowly through strainer and into storage container. Discard herbs from strainer. Clean out soup pot. Refill with strained soup. Add cream, stir well and let soup reach a simmer. Sip wine.
4. Serve topped with few croutons and nice portion of grated cheese.
5. Open new bottle of wine to serve with soup.

So first up some pictures of roasted garlic and thoughts.  If you read around on the internet you find people recommending your roast your garlic in muffin tins.  I will say that it does make the cleanup pretty easy, but the garlic cloves in contact with the outside edge gets over done and very brown.

Here is some of the garlic peeled and getting ready for the soup pot.  I roasted the garlic the night before so that I could get the soup done more quickly for company.

Once the soup and bread crumbs are in the bowl I put the cheese on top and put it into the oven on broil.  It turned out less bubbly than I like but I had to turn down the oven to do my candied pecans for the salad and didn't wait for it to heat back up to melt the cheese.   The salad was a spinach salad with craisins, candied pecans and a strawberry vinaigrette.

Anthony Bourdain

Chef Bourdain is getting a graphic novel?  If you're a fan of No Reservations or have read any of his books you probably know who this guy is.  If not, I really enjoyed his show on traveling and world cuisine.  He really, really wanted to be an author and call an the cool roots of various writers with dark personalities, but over time his own voice came out of the experience of traveling the world and finding people's culture through their food. It is great to see him progress as a person, and interesting to see how experiences can change you.  I would definitely read the novel for novelty sake alone, so here's hoping its good.

Fun trivia fact, I had tickets (not cheap tickets mind you) for a show Anthony did here in Seattle a few years ago, that happened to land on the night of the wedding of a good friend of mine.  We never managed to find anyone to use the tickets and we never left the wedding so I've already spent a good deal of money to not watch a show by this man.

I'm making the Garlic soup so I will post pictures and the rest of the recipe tomorrow.

Roasted Garlic soup round 1 - The stock

A few years ago we discovered an amazing soup at a local restaurant that really knocked our socks off. It is presented much like a French onion soup with Gruyere melted on the top of it. We where very enamored, but they only server it during December so we set out to make it ourselves. It turns out that the mother of friend of mine had a copy of the now out of print cookbook that this restaurant had put out so we went to work recreating it. I've made it several times now, and everytime we learn something about the process and how to make the final product better. The stock is the most labor intensive part of the process so decided to make a tripple batch of it recently so we could make it for ourselves during the winter and spring.

The recipe is as follows:

2-3 yellow onions (skins on) washed and quartered

2 shallots (skins on) washed and quartered

2 med-large leeks, including green parts, washed and roughly chopped

2 heads garlic (skins on) washed and broken up

6-8 bay leaves

1 bunch each, including stems,washed:

• oregano
• parsley
• thyme

2 T kosher salt

1 T black peppercorns

2 C dry white wine (a third bottle in this process)

3 carrots, washed

1 bunch celery, washed, leaves, heart and bottom included

1 parsnip and 1 turnip, washed and quartered

1. Assemble 10-quart stockpot, colander/strainer, cheesecloth and 6-8-quart storage container(s).
2. Place onions, shallots, leeks, garlic with 2 C cold water in stockpot. Cover pot and place over high heat until water begins to boil. Reduce heat to med and simmer 15 min or until vegetables become soft.
3. Add herbs, salt, peppercorns, and wine to pot (take a swig). Once water is boiling, reduce heat to med-low, keep partially covered and allow to simmer 2-2-1/2 hours.
4. Once liquid has turned dark brown color, remove from heat and strain through colander into storage container(s). Allow contents of pot to drain a few minutes before discarding remains from colander.
5. Clean soup pot and place strainer lined with cheesecloth over it. Slowly pour stock through cheesecloth. Stock is finished. Have some wine!
6. You can use stock now or cool in an ice bath, whisking until it cools sufficiently for storage in refrigerator or freezer.

Here you can see my 7½ gallon pot loaded with vegetables and getting ready to boil.

To make the processing more effective I choose to use a stick blender to break the vegetable pieces down for straining.  I started straining around 8pm and while I wasn't "finished" I was done working on it around 3am.  It is probably close to 3 gallons of stock, not all of it is fully processed the lightest color in the bottle is what you are aiming for, the darker colored containers on the left are still in need of processing.  I froze everything and will strain the dark ones as they are thawed, but I estimate that each stack of broth should feed 4 people.

I'll post the recipe for the soup later, I was trying to find a picture of the finished product somewhere but apparently I didn't ever take a photo of it.

Sugar High

So this is a little old but I have to clear out these gd drafts that haunt me.  Gizmodo posted a gallary of images for keeping your sugar high going.  One called to me with the power of a thousand fat kids.  I give to you:

I know what your thinking, my arteries screamed out for mercy too, but damn it I love me some mini-doughnuts.

Tomato Sauce

So those hipsters in New York are at it again, making me want to cook somewhat odd things. This time they had a story about a 3 ingredient tomato sauce which sounds boring from the title, but if you read the gushing reviews of the sauce made me give it a second look. I looked around for various posts about this sauce and given the exceptionally little work involved decided to give it a go myself.

 One of the posts I read clued me into the origin of the sauce and I think I may have to get one or both of those cookbooks.  Either Marcella's Italian Kitchen or Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking both from Marcella Hazan.

I don't think the gushing reviews oversold the sauce.   At all, it was really that good.  If your in the mood for a rich tomato sauce for this fine fall we are having do yourself a favor and burn the 45 minutes to simmer this.  You figure the onion is like $1 and a can of tomatoes is like $5, you beat the store price on a can jar of sauce and this is so much better.




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On the health of your digestive tract

On of the followers of this blog made an observation in a previous post that got me more worked up than it should have and I posted a comment on my own blog (gasp!), but the point bears repeating in a longer thought.

Badscribbler said that he wouldn't drink something that had been sitting out for 2 months as a matter of principle. It got me thinking about our distance from food production and how little most people know about how food is made. Salami for instance is dried and aged in a cool, but not cold environment 50-60°F, an aged steak is in a similar environment and that white stuff on the outside of your salami (actual artisan stuff not the shit you buy in your local grocer) is a healthy kind of mold, Yogurt is filled with probiotics but ultimately these are bacteria. Cheese is made with Renet(stomach acid) and and active culture (more bacteria). The manufacture of food, and USDA's insistence that food last for an eon has lead to the introduction of preservatives or chemical additives that kill the healthy cultures that make up and make our food. Ever stop to wonder the reason blue cheese stinks? These are living pieces, and they help us digest and are vital to healthy systems. We used to eat much more fermented foods, but the funk fell out of favor for sweetened and murdered by processing food.

Now you will have to pardon me, because I am a tiny bit passionate about these types of things and they are a very big part of my hobbies. I haven't made cheese in a while because it really is pretty expensive and the preggo shouldn't eat it(listeria will kill the baby, even if it just makes her sick). But when compared to buying living and beautiful artisan cheese some of the amazing cured artisan meats around here the cost of my hobbies is surprisingly less than it seems like it would be. The reason it is less is they mostly take time, so if it is time you are willing to spend, then they are not as costly if you value your time in different ways then producing your own food is incredibly expensive. We have a immersion bath for making yogurt, and are waiting for my wife to not be pregnant to use it, I am saving to buy the meat grinder for the kitchenaide and will produce sausages in due time. My wife is disgusted by it, but I plan on making sauerkraut this winter in a Red Wing crock no less!

In short I think knowing where your food comes from is important, and I am working on being a locovore (eating food that is from near me) and for the things it doesn't make sense to make I buy and try to buy it from producers in my state. I cannot buy a Pineapple from Washington obviously, but temperature/climate sensitive items aside with a little work you can find things produced near you, and the premium is relatively modest now but as gas prices continue to go up I think you will start to see parity and even declining prices for locally produced foods.

Zuppa Toscana

If you've ever gone to the Olive garden you have no doubt had the Zuppa Toscana because it is awesome. I like the soup, like some bread sticks and love the crack Alfredo dipping sauce. Because I love the soup so much I thought I would give it a whirl I found this recipe online and gave it a go.

You could say that it was awesome, but that would totally be underrating it. My wife wasn't excited about the soup (she prefers other soups at The Olive Garden) and said mine was better than there's. Things I did differently from the recipe, I made it in a dutch oven and didn't use any bacon. Really the world doesn't need more bacon, it's gotten to be shorthand for "rich" or "decadent". Used judiciously it can be good, this recipe doesn't need it. I browned the sausage in the pan and removed it using the grease from the sausage to saute the onions and garlic. I have chicken broth ready to go, so I just added 4 cups of that rather than base and 4 cups of water. I also sliced my potato up to the texture I remember from The Olive Garden and followed the directions as they where written.

That's my sandwich

It was damn good.  I inhaled the smoked paprika sandwich, but managed to restrain myself long enough to snap a photo of half of the Salumi salami sandwich.

Charcuterie

As a change of pace, I thought I would tell you about the most amazing lunch ever. In just one hour it is going to be in my mouth.

Salumi artisan cured meats is a local legend here in Seattle.  It was started by the father of Iron Chef Mario Batali, and has been featured on the Travel Channel shows like No Reservations.  It lives up to the hype, seriously.  I will try very hard to remember to take a picture of this before I stuff it into my face hole, but not gonna lie my brain sort of switches off in the presence of this food.  For reference, I have to walk about 2 miles round trip to eat at this place and normally end up standing in a 30-90 minute line and still rave about this place.  I'd walk there in the rain.  Any local places that are worth the wait near you?