January 2007 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Makin’ Crackers

Homemade Crackers

The other night I found myself with a serious craving for crackers and hummus. See, I don’t have a sweet tooth so much as a salty carb tooth, and I really wanted crackers. Alas, I was also so poor I couldn’t even afford a packet of saltines, but I did have some flour in the pantry. Ding ding ding! I could make crackers!

Well, the only recipe I found in The Joy of Cooking that night involved yeast and rising times, and since I didn’t really want to wait until midnight for crackers, I forgot the whole idea and finished watching my movie, snackless. The next day, though, I went onto the interwebs, and lo! with the wonders of technology I found plenty of yeast-less cracker recipes of all types.

What I decided to make is a variation of a recipe for sesame wheat crackers. I didn’t have sesame, and what I really wanted were rosemary crackers, so I just did a little changing and a little tweaking, and in less than an hour I had my own homemade and carb-craving-satisfying crackers.

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Mini Croques-Monsieur

Baby croques

Mr. X had a brilliant Sunday morning breakfast idea for the leftover ham: Miniature Croques-Monsieur! Despite being a relentless francophile and ham lover, I had never actually had a croque-monsieur before. Now I am fully ready to acknowledge that this might be the most brilliant sandwich idea ever. My internet searching tells me that the croque-monsieur isn’t much different from the monte carlo, which I thought was the most disgusting sandwich I’d ever had, but maybe that’s only because I ate it at Bennigan’s.

Mr. X’s version was simple and perfect. And miniaturized, because everyone loves tiny food. Despite their tinyness, they certainly filled me up for the rest of the day. And convinced me that I shouldn’t eat anything but soup and carrot sticks for the rest of the week (which hasn’t been hard because I literally have $0 in my bank account until tomorrow). If you’re feeling indulgent some weekend morning, though, break out the baguette and cook yourself up some croques-monsieur. Then, walk around for the rest of the day with a bad french accent.

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Some sprouts, some potatoes, and a Cauliflower Gratin redux

Sprouts and pots and caulis

Eunice had been wanting to cook up a ham for quite some time, and we finally managed to set a dinner date this past weekend. Eunice brought over the ham, and Mr. X cooked up some greens, and, in response to Eunice’s requests, I made, once again, a Cauliflower Gratin. Of course, I couldn’t make the same Gratin twice, because that would be boring. There were many variations I considered, and there is a good chance you will see them here at some point (where did this newfound love of cauliflower come from anyway?). But this time around I put together a Cauliflower Gorgonzola Gratin.

I’m really not sure what possessed me. I don’t even like Gorgonzola. Perhaps I am trying, through some kind of desensitization therapy, to appreciate moldy cheese. I just thought I might as well give it a shot, and both Eunice and Mr. X love the Gorgonzola. And shouldn’t I really be thinking of who I’m cooking for sometimes?

Despite an initial mishap resulting in the smell of moldy cheese before the moldy cheese was even out of the fridge, it really wasn’t that bad. I might be able to tolerate Gorgonzola after all. Mr X. made some excellent Brussel Sprouts and Potatoes, which I think I should be able to detail for you here. If I get it wrong, perhaps he’ll be willing to step in and make corrections. And the ham? The ham was awesome.

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The Ultimate Tuna Noodle Casserole

I have a strange weakness for casseroles. I’m not really sure where it originated. We certainly didn’t eat them growing up. In fact, I think they were almost banned. I seem to recall something about my dad being a little, er, overexposed to casseroles in his 1960s childhood, and the casserole subsequently enjoying least favored nation status in our house. The only childhood casserole I recall is the traditional Thanksgiving Green Bean casserole, but that almost doesn’t count, as Thanksgiving is incomplete with that dish. There were no hamburger pies, no cheesy chicken chili bakes, no turkey tetrazinnis in my past. So why do I get so excited by the thought of a Tater Tot Casserole now?

If you think about what most casseroles actually are, it’s hard for me to understand why people don’t like them. You basically have meat, pasta, and tons of cheese, all mixed together and baked into one-dish perfection. What could possibly be wrong with that? This was supposed to be the winter of casseroles, and it didn’t occur to me until this week that so far, there hasn’t even been one! Of course, there hasn’t really been winter until recently, either.

So tonight is the night. The night of the Ultimate Tuna Noodle Casserole.

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I’m making real bread; or, Laura Kneads Some Dough

Mmmm…bread

I don’t know why I got it into my head that the Lahey/Bittman No-Knead Bread wasn’t real bread, but I became determined, after making two or three knead-free loaves, to make a more traditional loaf. I wanted to see how they compared, and to better understand how this No-Knead phenomenon actually worked.

Where else to go for a traditional, basic bread recipe but The Joy of Cooking. I know some people who shun this omnipresent kitchen staple of a cookbook, for being too basic, too boring, for being (how could they say it!) actually wrong. But I love my copy. Whenever I’m cooking something new, I first consult with Irma, just to get a handle on the basics. I suppose it’s true that I rarely follow the recipes from the book word for word, but the book helps me lay a nice foundation. It’s comforting, somehow, sitting up there on my shelf, full of instruction on just about any food item in existence. Obviously, I’m going to check in with The Joy of Cooking before I make my first loaf of “real” bread.

After reading page after page about using the right materials, and measuring properly, and kneading, and scoring, and batards, and couches, I finally felt ready to make some bread.

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Butternut Squash Lasagna

Because I seem to be on a roll of concocting very messy things in my kitchen, why should tonight be any different? At first glance, Butternut Squash Lasagna doesn’t seem like it should be the messiest project, but you just try grating slightly mushy butternut squash pieces, and then we can talk. Oh, the squash eventually got grated, but so did my fingers.

I realized as I was constructing my lasagna that in all my reading about pasta, and traditional Italian foods, I’d never really come across any information about lasagna. Was it, in fact, an Italian dish, or just another American concoction for the red-checkered tablecloth crowd? I decided to do a little research.

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Artichoke Ravioli with Tuna Caper Cream sauce

Artichoke ravioli with Tuna Caper Cream Sauce

Friday night I got the chance to play executive chef a little bit, and order Mr. X around in the kitchen. Alright, I didn’t really order him around so much as tell him my idea and watch him expertly pull it off. And I mean expertly. This was a tasty dinner. I will do my very best to re-create his methods here, and hopefully, he will correct whatever I get wrong.

We made the artichoke ravioli last weekend. The filling for this was pretty damn simple, and aside from the minor problems I discovered earlier in the week (gummy pasta, not enough filling in each ravioli) they were lovely–light and lemony and almost summery. Which was nice, considering that it was something like 11 degrees here all weekend.

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Roasted Vegetable Risotto, or: Risotto, Take Two

Roasted Vegetable Risotto

I figured that risotto was one of those foods with an undeserved reputation for being near impossible to get right. I thought that with some patience, and time, and attention to detail, I could definitely handle risotto. My first attempt proved that it was harder than I thought. That was several months ago, and while it was edible, even delicious, it was not really…right. It wasn’t creamy, the grains had too much bite, it wasn’t…heavenly.

After some research, and lengthy consultation with other risotto cookers, I decided to give it another go. My problems seem to have been that I cooked it much too quickly, at too high a temperature. I thought this time around, I’d go very, very basic. I still had about a pound of leftover roasted vegetables from Tuesday night’s chicken roasting, which would add a bit more interest to a basic risotto without affecting the actual risotto cooking process, thus giving me a chance to perfect my technique.

I think it still needs a bit more perfecting.

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Balsamic Portabello and Brie Ravioli with Roasted Tomatoes and Broccoli and Truffle Oil

Raviolis and Roasted Veg

Homemade ravioli: simultaneously easier and more difficult than I expected.

We assembled our ravioli on Monday night, and I was surprised at how (relatively) easy it was to make the dough, and get it into the right shapes, and put all the yummy stuff in, and keep all the yummy stuff from falling out. They looked so lovely, and tiny, and the dough was silky, and it was all so tactile and fun. And good smelling.

Last night we decided it was time to cook up one of the two batches we made, and while they were very, very good, something was not quite 100%, and we all know what a perfectionist I am. I am now determined to master the art of ravioli making.

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Salami Roasted Chicken

Chicken and veggies

I have roasted a fair number of chickens in the past year, and I’m always looking for something a little different from the traditional herbs-butter-lemon method. I think I have found it. I would never have thought of roasting chicken with another kind of meat in it (well, other than in a turducken kind of way) but as I perused my cookbooks, trying to find something new, I happened across Jamie Oliver’s “fantastic roast chicken” recipe.

Jamie Oliver does not use salami. He uses prosciutto, but I didn’t have prosciutto. I had salami, so I thought I’d just run with it. Add in a bag of pre-cut root vegetables from Trader Joe’s, a couple potatoes and carrots, and voila–a roast chicken dinner. With salami.

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