leafing through

About the hardest part of making baba ganoush is finding tahini. That’s to say, this dish is very simple to make.

• 2 big globe eggplants
• 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 3 Tbsp tahini
• 3 or 4 cloves of finely grated garlic paste
• Juice of 1 lemon (I didn’t have any and used 2 limes instead)
• 1 teaspoon of (Kosher) salt
• cayenne pepper
• 1/2 cup cilantro
• 1 teaspoon of ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

Prick the surface of the eggplants all around with a fork.  Under the broiler, char the eggplant for 20 minutes on each side.  You want it to be shriveled and mushy.

In a vessel big enough to mix the baba ganoush,  (I love saying that, baba ganoush), throw together all the dry ingredients: salt, cayenne (to taste), cumin, cinnamon.

Then scoop in the tahini, add the chopped cilantro, garlic paste, and olive oil.  I forgot the olive oil this time but it tasted delicious anyway.  To make up for it, I poured it over the top to keep it from drying out.

Mix it all together and there you go!

It’s great with pita bread, crackers, by itself.

I got this recipe from Pioneerwoman.com and Simplyrecipes.com and just changed it a bit combining both of their ideas.

So in making this dish, I learned something new.  Pyrex glass, though heat proof, isn’t broiler proof.  I laid two eggplants in a Pyrex dish and the broiler shattered it.  Luckily, the eggplants were unscathed.  It just made cleaning the broiler a big pain in the butt.  I think at least once a month, I’m cleaning up glass in the kitchen.  I’ve broken so many dishes, jars, whatever left and right I’m kinda’ getting good at cleaning up glass now.  That’s how I make more space in the cabinets and fridge.  I break shit.

Left the house today at 9:30 AM and returned at 7:30 PM. It’s now close to 12:30 and I am plumb worn out. Started the day with brunch at a friend’s house to meet her family and have lunch with them. We had bagels and cream cheese, something she made called “Christmas Bake” (bacon, eggs, cheese… need I continue?) and spinach kugel. They have a mean cat, a super affectionate dog, and 2 cute little boys, 4 and 1. The 1 year old is a cuddlebug and couldn’t care less if you were a stranger or not, he’ll come up and cuddle or hug you. After that, it was shopping from one store to another. Balducci’s. Costco. An Asian market. Dinner at Cava (delicious!). Home Depot. Office Depot. Then after I returned it was Olympics and cooking. I have to shorten the description of my shopping because reliving it is tiring. As much as I enjoy cooking and shopping most of the time, doing these marathon shopping trips can be tiring. Especially the part about Costco on Saturday.

I wanted to make a few dishes tonight so they could marinade in the sauce over night. I’m hoping the flavors will have a chance to absorb and blend better.

The first was a bean salad. Canned beans (any kinds you like), chopped red onion, lime juice, salt & pepper, Adobo (optional), cilantro, olive oil. The recipe had called for edamame but all the ones sold at the Asian market were from China and you know I’m not gonna eat that.

The next dish was this curry which started out small and wound up being a potful as most of my dishes generally turn out. This came from desultory thoughts.
In a blender: ginger, onion, coconut milk, garlic, lime juice, salt, and curry powder. Or food processor. Add cayenne too if you want a bit of spicy.
Cook the chicken until it’s just done, set it aside, saute some onions, add curry sauce and more curry powder, then add carrots and peas, any other vegetables then chicken. Simmer.

Being the lazy cook that I am, I didn’t set aside the meat. I just pan fried it in oil. Then added onions, then the vegetables, then poured in the food processor sauce.*

Oh, look. From Home Depot. Them chinchillas are chewing on the wood around their room! But it was either the painter’s tape or …
This! Do I hear a collective “Awww…”? The wooden house chew toy has cut down on the chewing a bit but Marco is unstoppable, as shown here.

*Update on the curry: Veggies in the curry will add a natural sweetness to the sauce. Add some cayenne to balance it out. I like a bit of spicyness to my curries anyway. If you like a thicker sauce like I do, use some corn starch. Also, next time I might add lemongrass. And go ahead and make a ton of curry for extra leftovers. It seems to get better the next day, and the next day, and the day after that. The flavors just meld and absorb more.

Just kidding. Too much food is more like it. Busted open a huge hulking leg of ham yesterday. Already I’ve eaten too much of it and feel ill. I’ve OD’d on ham!   It’s so tasty though.  The hardest part about planning a menu while being trapped indoors is trying to keep fresh produce on hand. Fresh fruits and vegetables ripen or rot. So I had to eat all of that first. I’m down to a few apples, half a cut up pineapple, frozen vegetables and onions. Hence, fried rice for dinner yesterday. Besides, there’s no way I’m going to finish an entire ham without changing it up a bit. Today, ham and bean soup. I can tell I’m going to be hammed out. Oh wait, I already said I already ham. Ahh-hahaha!  This is going to be like Iron Chef, the secret ingredient is: HAM!

Recipe for the Slow-cooker ham and beans:

• The bone of the ham with most of the meat carved off and some chopped pieces of the meat.
• Soaked beans (you can pre-boil them) – any dried beans will work
• Black and white pepper
• Ground mustard
• Garlic – fresh or dried.  I used dried because my garlic press broke and I’m too lazy to chop.
• One chopped sweet onion
• A drizzle of maple syrup or brown sugar (whatever you have on hand)
• Broth or water or a combo

I soaked the beans for about 5 hours and I put in all the ingredients except for the onion and chopped ham pieces into the slow-cooker last night.  This morning, I added the ham and onions and I plan to let it cook until dinner time.  I may or may not add salt once it’s done cooking.  I mean, ham is salty enough isn’t it?

Update: Don’t add any salt.  The ham and ham bone makes the soup plenty salty enough.

For anybody who just crawled out from under a rock, this year’s Superbowl (XLIV) will be played in Miami, Florida. The teams competing are the Phoenix, AZ Colts and the New Orleans, LA Saints. That is all I know. I hope the commercials are good.

Oh and the breakage continues. This time it was the garlic press. Darned Made in PRC again! It was for a good cause though. Beef ribs. One rack, dry rubbed overnight, in the oven. One rack also dry rubbed overnight, in the slow cooker with vinegar, sugar, garlic, beer, chili peppers, and cocoa powder.

The dry rub, courtesy of texascooking.com (this will yield a ton of dry rub, save the rest in the freezer or make less):
1 Tablespoon of:

• Black pepper
• White pepper
• Sugar
• Brown sugar
• Cumin
• Garlic powder
• Oregano
• Salt

2 Tablespoons of chili powder

4 Tablespoons of paprika (sweet)

1 Teaspoon of dry mustard

2 Teaspoons of cayenne

If you can make rice krispies treats, you can make granola bars. They’re that easy. I’d been stocking my desk at work with Kashi granola bars but I wanted to try making my own. Again my measurements are imprecise but it’s the ingredients that count. For this recipe, even the ingredients list doesn’t count for much because you can add almost anything you like. Almost… I kinda’ messed these up because I substituted a very important ingredient. Still, it’s tasty and I’ll just have to try again!

• 3 cups of oats
• 1/2 cup of flax seeds
• 1 cup dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, mango, chopped dates)
• 1 cup nuts or seeds (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, crushed peanuts, almonds)
• 1/2 cup honey, molasses (your preference)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (nutmeg, pumpkin spice mix)
• 3 tablespoons (unsalted) butter
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

You want a decent mixture of nuts and dried fruits for added variety.  Also you can control the sweetness depending on your preference.  However, you do need to have enough sticky liquids to hold the bars together.

In a large shallow pan, toast oats and any raw nuts in a 300 degree F oven for 15 minutes.  Stir every 5 minutes to keep it from burning.  Be careful not to burn the nuts.  Some of the nuts I got came pre toasted or roasted.  I left those out of this cooking process.*  Once they’re done, toss together the toasted oats, nuts, and dried fruit in a buttered a mixing bowl.

Melt the sugar, butter, vanilla, salt, spices and honey in a saucepan and pour the syrupy mix over the dry ingredients.

Stir well to combine, then lay out the mixture on a flat pan.  I would’ve preferred the flat glass pans but one’s in the freezer holding a lasagna and the other was in the dishwasher.

Take a rolling pin, or two buck chuck and compress the granola.  You want them to hold together.

Once cooled, cut them into bars.  You can individually wrap them or store them in a sealed container.

*Option: Mix everything together then bake the bars after.

Oops!  Generally, substituting ingredients is fine.  But with granola bars, it’s necessary to have something very sticky that can bind the ingredients together.  In this case, honey or molasses.  I didn’t have either so I used maple syrup.  Needless to say, maple syrup can’t bind worth shit.  So I got a lot of crumbly granola bars and essentially, it works out better as cereal.  Now I know, so you know too!

Ingredients:

• Lasagna pasta
• Ground turkey (2 .5 lbs)
• Ricotta cheese (the big tub)
• Eggs (2-3)
• Mozzarella cheese
• Flat-leafed parsley (1 bunch)
• Onions (3)
• Tomatoes (3)
• Spinach (1 box of frozen)
• Garlic (10 cloves or a whole head)
• Oregano and basil
• Cooking oil
• Spices: salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon

Start by boiling salted water to cook the pasta. While that’s going on, wash and chop everything up.

Next, I took care of the ricotta. Beat 3 eggs first, add the chopped oregano and dried basil (or fresh, if you are too good for the dried stuff), then stir in the ricotta. You can do this step after cooking up the meat too if you want.

Then you cook the turkey with the following seasonings: chili powder, dried basil, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper, and cinnamon. If you’re anything like me and can’t measure worth a bag of beans, this is where you might run into the issue of pan-not-big-enough.

So I could only cook the garlic with the meat, while the onions, spinach, tomatoes, and parsley had to go in a separate pan.

Then you stir them together with the tomato sauce.

Layer as you please.  I don’t know if there’s a correct pattern.  Sometimes I start with pasta, sometimes with meat.  Sometimes I end with pasta, ricotta, mozzarella, sometimes I end with meat and mozzarella. Bake until the cheese browns a little at 350 degrees F.

This recipe is very similar to my last one. I changed a few things however.

1. 3 eggs to the ricotta rather than two to make it a bit richer, as well as freshly chopped oregano and basil. It smelled so good!
2. I remembered to add the flat-leafed parsley this time. It disappears when you stir it into the meat so it’s good to get a big bunch.
3. Cumin and chili powder to the ground turkey rather than using a roll of pre-packaged pork sausage. Although one of the packages of ground turkey was pre-seasoned with Italian seasonings, whatever that means.
4. A box of frozen spinach to the meat-tomato sauce.
5. I couldn’t find whole wheat pasta that didn’t need pre-cooking so I had to use regular whole wheat pasta.
6. Jarred spaghetti sauce and 3 fresh tomatoes. I think I read somewhere that canned tomatoes contain bpa because they’re lined with plastic. I didn’t verify this. Did you know cooking tomatoes can cut down smells in your house kinda’ the same way skunked people bathe in tomato juice? If you add garlic and onions though, I dunno. Again, not verified.
7. Three onions instead of one.
8. I forgot the order of layering and jacked it all up. For the first, I did meat, pasta, ricotta, mozarella twice. For the second, I did pasta, then 2x – meat, pasta, ricotta, mozarella. Basically, I’m a sloppy imprecise cook. I don’t measure anything so really all you need is the ingredients list to follow this recipe. Especially if you don’t want to wind up with two large lasagnas. Though after you taste it, you maybe want two after all. I add in so many fresh ingredients it comes out delicious!

By the way, I don’t plan on eating 2 humongous lasagnas one right after the other. After it cools, you can plastic wrap it, foil it, then freeze it for at least three months. I did that with the last one and it was still as good as ever. If you’re going on vacation or know you will be busy in the foreseeable future, this is a great way to pre-plan. That way, when you come back from vacation you don’t have to worry about grocery shopping and cooking for a while.

Chili is just the right food for this kinda’ weather. And this time, instead of making cornbread out of the Jiffy box, I tried it from scratch.

• 2 cups of corn meal
• 1 cup of wheat flour
• 1 tsp each of salt, baking soda, and baking powder
• 1 egg
• 1 can of creamed corn
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup of oil
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 2 or more Jalapenos

Mix the dry ingredients first.  Then add the wet ingredients save for the pat of butter.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.  Heat up a cast iron skillet over the stove melting the pat of butter all around it.  While the skillet is hot pour in the batter.  Put the whole thing in the oven and bake it for 25 minutes.  The edges come out crispy.  It was so easy I won’t be making cornbread out of the box anymore.  Man just writing this makes me wanna have another piece.

Eons ago, when I was in the 4th grade, we made latkes. I sort of remembered how to make them from that experience but I looked up a few recipes online anyway.

Sprinkle salt on the grated potatoes and wring them dry before mixing all the ingredients together, except the oil. Heat the pan with a tablespoon or so of oil and then spoon the potato mixture in and cover the pan. Fry it until it’s golden brown and crispy on one side, then flip it over and do it again. Serve with applesauce.

This salad is very easy to make.

1. Soak dried seaweed – be careful you don’t soak too much. It grows when rehydrated.
2. Boil it for a minute, if that long.
3. Strain it and put it over chopped scallions so the heat semi-cooks them and takes the edge off the onion.
4. Mix soy sauce, vinegar, sesame seed oil and sesame seeds.
5. Pour it over the seaweed and toss. And done!

Aside from wine, I consider bloody mary’s a sort of health food of alcoholic beverages. There’s V8!

I just made one but it didn’t turn out as tasty as the last one I had last Christmas. Maybe I missed some key ingredient since I was limited to what I had around the house. V8, vodka, cayenne, and hot sauce. What’d I miss??

I just made a second one, this time with a bit of Worcestershire sauce. Thank you Internet, it’s better!