I don't watch many cooking shows. Virtually none, actually. My addiction to Top Chef really stems from my reality TV addiction, not my interest in food.
Whenever I watch the Food Network, I get annoyed at the personalities, which really seem to get in the way of the interesting stuff. Alton Brown and that-cloying-Paula-woman-that-is-freaking-everywhere are the two most annoying right now. Rachel Ray comes close, but I've somehow managed to avoid her for the most part.
But I decided to give it more of a shot. I grabbed a few with interesting names from the TiVo on-line guide that I hadn't looked at before, just to check them out. I then added America's Test Kitchen, on PBS, when I noticed the mention on the cover of Cook's Illustrated (a magazine as good as everyone says it is, by the way).
So, while nursing a headache early last Sunday afternoon (weather change/sinus - NOT a hangover), I watched a few.
First up was Everyday Italian with some DeLaurentis. I assume that this Giana person is relative of the infamous Dino. Like with the others I've seen, her personality gets in the way. Too much gushing about how much they love a certain flavor or how easy something really is. I only lasted for 1/2 of the show. The Orange Pound Cake she made did look good, though. I can't find the recipe on-line, which is a shame.
I then caught two episodes of America's Test Kitchen. Wow, this is my new favorite show, particularly during the writer's strike. Informative, interesting and intellegent - this felt like going to a really good class. There's a lot of information packed in and they keep the pace moving. I quickly added this to my Season Pass.
Finally, I decided to give How to Boil Water a chance. In looking on-line, I think I'm the last person to find out about Tyler Florence. The guy has at least three shows, it seems.
The episode I saw was about Roasted Chicken with Roasted Root Vegetables and Gravy. This was prety interesting. Enough that I think I'm going to give his method a shot. It's a little bit different from my Chopping Block experience and lighter on the butter (which they love over there), which should make the gravy easier to deal with.
I don't know if it's having a "beginner" on set with him or what, but he's not as "on" as the other Food Network hosts. Granted, he is also easy on the eyes, so I may be cutting him some slack he doesn't deserve. It's getting a Season Pass for a while.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Roast Green Beans
Ugh.
I'm going through all of my old cooking magazines (95% Bon Appetit and Gourmet), tearing out the keepers and pitching the actual magazines. In the process, I had skimmed an article in a recent Cook's Illustrated (which is a new subscription and, being so content-heavy, will NOT be purged any time soon) on Roasted Green Beans.
I had about 2 pounds of beans in the fridge and we needed a vegetable for dinner on Sunday. I absolutely love wrinkled green beans from Chinese restaurants and this article mentioned that effect came from (or perhaps can come from) roasting. I didn't want to spend any time on this, so I skimmed the recipe and got this:
Put rinsed green beans on a baking sheet. Season with olive oil, baslamic vinegar, salt & pepper. Roast for 10-12 minutes @ 450F, toss and continue for another 10-12.
Well, they were basically underdone. fine. Perfectly edible, albeit crunchy. but I had a lot, so I put half back in for another 20 minutes (they seemed about 1/2 done) to see what would happen. Honestly, not a lot better.
I have to sit down and actually read the article. There must be something I missed in my fast read. These being something healthy that I really like, it's worth a bit of investment of time to figure this out.
I'm going through all of my old cooking magazines (95% Bon Appetit and Gourmet), tearing out the keepers and pitching the actual magazines. In the process, I had skimmed an article in a recent Cook's Illustrated (which is a new subscription and, being so content-heavy, will NOT be purged any time soon) on Roasted Green Beans.
I had about 2 pounds of beans in the fridge and we needed a vegetable for dinner on Sunday. I absolutely love wrinkled green beans from Chinese restaurants and this article mentioned that effect came from (or perhaps can come from) roasting. I didn't want to spend any time on this, so I skimmed the recipe and got this:
Put rinsed green beans on a baking sheet. Season with olive oil, baslamic vinegar, salt & pepper. Roast for 10-12 minutes @ 450F, toss and continue for another 10-12.
Well, they were basically underdone. fine. Perfectly edible, albeit crunchy. but I had a lot, so I put half back in for another 20 minutes (they seemed about 1/2 done) to see what would happen. Honestly, not a lot better.
I have to sit down and actually read the article. There must be something I missed in my fast read. These being something healthy that I really like, it's worth a bit of investment of time to figure this out.
Revisit: Gnocchi with Tomato Sauce
Not truly a do-over, but Sunday night we had our friends Chris & BJ over to watch a movie (Paris, Je T'aime - awesome). I was planning to make more of the tomato sauce and decided to serve it with the gnocchi I had frozen from the last time.
I was a little unsure of how the gnocchi would turn out, this being the first time I've prepared the frozen from the homemade recipe before. I was a bit concerned about the centers not being cooked, or being too dense, or something. Turns out they cooked just as evenly as the fresh stuff, took just a few minutes longer.
The tomato sauce was a quadrupling of the same recipe from the Chopping Block, using a Pinot Noir instead of a white wine. It came out orangish again. Even Chris was surprised that this was not a cream sauce. Hmm. No matter. It was, again, very, very good. And I had 2 quarts left for later use. The wine flavor again wafts through lightly and was recognizable as a red.
I'm now confident enough with this that I'm going to start trying different recipes. I was leafing through my Inside the Eastside cookbook and saw a marinara that looks pretty good, so I'll give that a try next.
I was a little unsure of how the gnocchi would turn out, this being the first time I've prepared the frozen from the homemade recipe before. I was a bit concerned about the centers not being cooked, or being too dense, or something. Turns out they cooked just as evenly as the fresh stuff, took just a few minutes longer.
The tomato sauce was a quadrupling of the same recipe from the Chopping Block, using a Pinot Noir instead of a white wine. It came out orangish again. Even Chris was surprised that this was not a cream sauce. Hmm. No matter. It was, again, very, very good. And I had 2 quarts left for later use. The wine flavor again wafts through lightly and was recognizable as a red.
I'm now confident enough with this that I'm going to start trying different recipes. I was leafing through my Inside the Eastside cookbook and saw a marinara that looks pretty good, so I'll give that a try next.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Fennel Seed Tastes Nothing Like Cumin Seed
God damn it.
I finished up the gnocchi at lunch today and wanted to make Keema Mutter again, using turkey for the lamb and, for the first time, adding plain yogurt to make a sauce to account for the relative dryness of the turkey.
For some insane reason, I apparently had put some fennel seed in an old cumin seed bottle and threw that in without checking. I didn't realize my mistake until I tasted it at the end. Jesus. I vaugely remember doing that with the bottle at Thanksgiving, but I'll be damned if I can remember why.
On the upside, the yogurt part worked really well. I also added about a cup total of chicken broth as well. This is also the first time that I made this recipe from Razzaq's Indian Lowfat Cooking without any other alterations - I've before taken spices from other recipes, but I wanted to see how this would work on its own.
Obviously, I still don't know. But the result is tolerable enough that I will eat it rather than throwing it out. But just barely.
I had just been thinking of those two times on Top Chef when guys had grabbed salt instead of sugar and vice versa, thinking to myself, "God, they were dumbasses."
Welcome to the club, Hal, welcome to the club.
Update: I just had some for lunch today and it's actually okay tasting - much better than I expected. Won't be doing this on purpose any time, but it's a step above "I'm going to have to choke this down so that I'm not wasting food."
I finished up the gnocchi at lunch today and wanted to make Keema Mutter again, using turkey for the lamb and, for the first time, adding plain yogurt to make a sauce to account for the relative dryness of the turkey.
For some insane reason, I apparently had put some fennel seed in an old cumin seed bottle and threw that in without checking. I didn't realize my mistake until I tasted it at the end. Jesus. I vaugely remember doing that with the bottle at Thanksgiving, but I'll be damned if I can remember why.
On the upside, the yogurt part worked really well. I also added about a cup total of chicken broth as well. This is also the first time that I made this recipe from Razzaq's Indian Lowfat Cooking without any other alterations - I've before taken spices from other recipes, but I wanted to see how this would work on its own.
Obviously, I still don't know. But the result is tolerable enough that I will eat it rather than throwing it out. But just barely.
I had just been thinking of those two times on Top Chef when guys had grabbed salt instead of sugar and vice versa, thinking to myself, "God, they were dumbasses."
Welcome to the club, Hal, welcome to the club.
Update: I just had some for lunch today and it's actually okay tasting - much better than I expected. Won't be doing this on purpose any time, but it's a step above "I'm going to have to choke this down so that I'm not wasting food."
Gnocchi in Tomato Sauce
With the discovery of a bag of potatoes in the cupboard, it was time to give gnocchi a second try. I ended up making a double batch to use all the spuds before they went bad.
On the sauce front, my general need to practice the tomato sauce from my Sauces 101 class was spurred on by the recent NPR story about the high sodium levels in processed food. Not that it should have been a shock, but the fact they cited that you often can't even taste the stuff gave me pause. If I'm going to eat something bad for me, I should at least get something out of it. Sure enough, my stand-by jarred marinara, Classico, is packed with the stuff.
The potatoes in question were Yukon Gold again, leftover from the holidays where I had planned to mash them. The recipe I used, from Becoming a Chef, called for Russet. I had my own reasons for not liking using the Yukon - when mixing yellow egg yolks with yellow-tinted potatoes, it's really hard to know when you're done. But at a Thanksgiving party, I learned from our friend and Trib Good Eats editor/writer, Joe Gray, that the real reason was that the Yukons are too waxy. Hmm. I never knew that there were qualities to potatoes varieties like that. Time for more reading. In regards to their suitability for gnocchi on that basis, I don't buy it. Aside from the prep issue, these batches again tasted great with almost perfect texture. I froze the second batch for later. I had tried refrigerating some uncooked ones last time and they almost immediately fell into a horrible, gloppy mess.
I also learned how to better roll the dumplings with a fork. When you chop up the rolled-out dough into pieces, the chunks are sort of squared off at the knife cuts. My trick is to grab one of the corners of the pieces with the back of the fork and roll the piece towards you, dipping the tines into the dough when they're on top. I do think that my pieces are about twice the size they should be, so next time, I’ll dial the chunks down, but they worked great. They were longer, rather than thicker, than they should be, so they cooked up just fine.
With the tomato sauce, I tried to go my usual route: the first time making anything, I try to follow the recipe verbatim. I make exceptions for doubling the quantities or beefing up a given dried spice if it's been on the shelf longer than it should. But 6 tb butter? Yikes. One of the points was to make a healthy alternative to jarred. That dairy was swapped for olive oil, but the volume stayed the same. Not only is olive oil generally better for you, it supposedly helps release the cancer-preventing components of the tomatoes.
I don't quite remember how it turned out in class, but I was pleased with the results this time. While cooking, the white wine gave a great, succulent aroma and taste to the reducing stock. Kind of like what I love about the veloute’ sauce. I used my still-new-enough-to-be-exciting immersion blender to puree it in the pot which worked great. The only “change” I made to the recipe was that I used about 1.5 tsp of dried oregano where they say to add spices at the end.
The resulting sauce was very tasty. I held off on adding salt (only about 1 tsp) or any more spices, as there was a fine delicate flavor that I didn’t want to mess with. The flavor of the wine came through in the finished product very subtly.
The pureed sauce also had sort of an orangey color with a hint of creaminess, more like a vodka sauce than a marinara. This makes a bit of sense since the red roma tomatoes were mixed into the beige wine and stock mixture, but seemed a bit “off” in a way. The tomatoes were definitely ripe, so I don’t think there was anything wrong with it. Next time, though, I may try using a red wine instead of the white (this was a pinot grigio) for the color and I will definitely extend the recipe even further (4x) so that I have more for use later.
Interestingly, the sauce didn’t have as much flavor when served with the gnocci and large diced broiled chicken breast. Both of those are bland enough that I was surprised, but the sauce by itself was a delicate flavor. However, I made the sauce on New Year’s Day and when I had the leftovers for lunch and used the last bit with angel hair tonight, the flavor had popped a bit, as you might expect.
On the sauce front, my general need to practice the tomato sauce from my Sauces 101 class was spurred on by the recent NPR story about the high sodium levels in processed food. Not that it should have been a shock, but the fact they cited that you often can't even taste the stuff gave me pause. If I'm going to eat something bad for me, I should at least get something out of it. Sure enough, my stand-by jarred marinara, Classico, is packed with the stuff.
The potatoes in question were Yukon Gold again, leftover from the holidays where I had planned to mash them. The recipe I used, from Becoming a Chef, called for Russet. I had my own reasons for not liking using the Yukon - when mixing yellow egg yolks with yellow-tinted potatoes, it's really hard to know when you're done. But at a Thanksgiving party, I learned from our friend and Trib Good Eats editor/writer, Joe Gray, that the real reason was that the Yukons are too waxy. Hmm. I never knew that there were qualities to potatoes varieties like that. Time for more reading. In regards to their suitability for gnocchi on that basis, I don't buy it. Aside from the prep issue, these batches again tasted great with almost perfect texture. I froze the second batch for later. I had tried refrigerating some uncooked ones last time and they almost immediately fell into a horrible, gloppy mess.
I also learned how to better roll the dumplings with a fork. When you chop up the rolled-out dough into pieces, the chunks are sort of squared off at the knife cuts. My trick is to grab one of the corners of the pieces with the back of the fork and roll the piece towards you, dipping the tines into the dough when they're on top. I do think that my pieces are about twice the size they should be, so next time, I’ll dial the chunks down, but they worked great. They were longer, rather than thicker, than they should be, so they cooked up just fine.
With the tomato sauce, I tried to go my usual route: the first time making anything, I try to follow the recipe verbatim. I make exceptions for doubling the quantities or beefing up a given dried spice if it's been on the shelf longer than it should. But 6 tb butter? Yikes. One of the points was to make a healthy alternative to jarred. That dairy was swapped for olive oil, but the volume stayed the same. Not only is olive oil generally better for you, it supposedly helps release the cancer-preventing components of the tomatoes.
I don't quite remember how it turned out in class, but I was pleased with the results this time. While cooking, the white wine gave a great, succulent aroma and taste to the reducing stock. Kind of like what I love about the veloute’ sauce. I used my still-new-enough-to-be-exciting immersion blender to puree it in the pot which worked great. The only “change” I made to the recipe was that I used about 1.5 tsp of dried oregano where they say to add spices at the end.
The resulting sauce was very tasty. I held off on adding salt (only about 1 tsp) or any more spices, as there was a fine delicate flavor that I didn’t want to mess with. The flavor of the wine came through in the finished product very subtly.
The pureed sauce also had sort of an orangey color with a hint of creaminess, more like a vodka sauce than a marinara. This makes a bit of sense since the red roma tomatoes were mixed into the beige wine and stock mixture, but seemed a bit “off” in a way. The tomatoes were definitely ripe, so I don’t think there was anything wrong with it. Next time, though, I may try using a red wine instead of the white (this was a pinot grigio) for the color and I will definitely extend the recipe even further (4x) so that I have more for use later.
Interestingly, the sauce didn’t have as much flavor when served with the gnocci and large diced broiled chicken breast. Both of those are bland enough that I was surprised, but the sauce by itself was a delicate flavor. However, I made the sauce on New Year’s Day and when I had the leftovers for lunch and used the last bit with angel hair tonight, the flavor had popped a bit, as you might expect.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Beef Stroganoff
In trying to decide the menu last night, I remembered I had a bunch of egg noodles left. I'd been curious about Beef Stroganoff for a while, as I've always liked it the few times I had it. Of course, for a basic like this, I went to The Joy of Cooking. I chose the new one just in case.
I was happy to see that it has a nice sauce component, for practice. The sauce starts with a roux which is then reduced a bit. The only difficult part of the process was picking the beef out the onions. I don't mind them and these were awfully tasty. But the recipe said to keep them out and Channing hates them, so I lost this round. I think I did use a too-expensive cut of beef, but the result was very good. The knife skills with meat are very different than vegetables. The clean, rocking motion we were taught just doesn't work the same.
I was happy to see that it has a nice sauce component, for practice. The sauce starts with a roux which is then reduced a bit. The only difficult part of the process was picking the beef out the onions. I don't mind them and these were awfully tasty. But the recipe said to keep them out and Channing hates them, so I lost this round. I think I did use a too-expensive cut of beef, but the result was very good. The knife skills with meat are very different than vegetables. The clean, rocking motion we were taught just doesn't work the same.
Monday, December 10, 2007
"Did I Miss Something?" you ask...
If you're not reading this through an RSS aggregator, you may not have noticed a lot of new posts in the last few days. Or you may have seen posts that seem older than the latest suddenly appearing. No, you didn't miss anything, they're actually new.
I'm trying to keep this record somewhat chronological, but Blogger is really strict about posting order (at least, as far as I can figure out so far). Once I put a stake in the ground with a Draft, that's the time and date that's stuck to it, regardless of when I publish it. So, it's a double-edged sword. Everything is in order, because I dropped in the stubs as drafts. On the other hand, it looks like there isn't any new content.
So, just keep an eye on the December posts for new stuff. All of the Thanksgiving stuff should be there in a few days, complete with recipes as well as new different sutff. I currently have 11 posts in Draft stage, which will be filled in one or two a day, as I take breaks from working on the last draft (finally!) of my mysterious book chapter.
I'm trying to keep this record somewhat chronological, but Blogger is really strict about posting order (at least, as far as I can figure out so far). Once I put a stake in the ground with a Draft, that's the time and date that's stuck to it, regardless of when I publish it. So, it's a double-edged sword. Everything is in order, because I dropped in the stubs as drafts. On the other hand, it looks like there isn't any new content.
So, just keep an eye on the December posts for new stuff. All of the Thanksgiving stuff should be there in a few days, complete with recipes as well as new different sutff. I currently have 11 posts in Draft stage, which will be filled in one or two a day, as I take breaks from working on the last draft (finally!) of my mysterious book chapter.
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