laura k – Page 23 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Mozzarella Olive Bread

I have been having dreams about baking bread for a week, and yesterday I finally had some time to do it. I wanted to try something different, something inspired by one of my new cookbooks, Margaux Sky’s Beautiful Breads and Fabulous Fillings. This cookbook, though…this cookbook I have some problems with. Every single recipe calls for Lowry’s Lemon Pepper. And for some kind of crazy complicated sauce. Everything looks beautiful, but when I sit down and read the recipes, I realize I don’t want to go to all the trouble. I suspect that this book will serve mostly as inspiration, which is exactly what it did yesterday. I didn’t even end up using her basic bread recipe, because it called for all kinds of stuff, like half and half, that I just didn’t have in the house. Simple is my bread-making motto.

Instead, I tried another new bread recipe: Jamie Oliver’s. I couldn’t find the recipe on his website, but it was published in The Return of the Naked Chef (which was the first grown-up cookbook I bought). Reading through the recipe, my first thought was it seemed to require a lot of yeast. A lot. But as a novice bread maker, I went ahead and followed directions. I added a lot of yeast. And I ended up with monstrously large bread. I actually shouted out when I opened the oven door and realized it had expanded to three times its size!

I also ended up with some pretty delicious bread. The crust is near perfect. The cheese formed a lovely ribbon of melty salty goodness straight through the middle. The olives did decide to take a trip down and out through the sides of the bread, but the olive taste suffused the rest of the loaf, and when you do get the occasional meaty kalamata bite, it’s a bit heavenly. I will definitely be making this bread again, though I might cut back on the yeast a bit. Or a lot.

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Spaghetti Squash with Swiss and Pancetta Bechamel

Spaghetti squash was a staple in my house growing up. My mom baked it in its shell with meaty marinara and a thick, melted layer of mozzarella, all nice and browned on top. I’ve made it a few times, myself, and it’s always a failproof favorite in the household. And I’ve always done it the same way: marinara and mozzarella. This time, I decided to try something different: I baked it with a swiss cheese and pancetta bechamel.

No matter how many times I make spaghetti squash, I can never remember exactly how to cook it. Steamed first, then shredded and filled with stuff? Shredded and filled, then baked? A few calls to the mom, and interweb searches, and I have my duh moment: The squash should be cooked, and then the sqaushy inside is shredded with a fork into its familiar spaghetti-like form. Then it can be topped with yummy things and broiled. This time around I didn’t quite get it right, but the recipe below will detail the way it should have been done, not the way it was done.

I’ve always served spaghetti squash as a main dish, because it’s so filling on its own. You could probably serve it as a side, at a big dinner party or something, with chicken or a roast or fish or…whatever else people serve at big dinner parties. Either way, it is my favorite of all the squashes. Any vegetable that can masquerade as pasta gets five gold stars from me.

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Orecchiette with Spicy Sausage and Broccoli Rabe

Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli Rabe

My kitchen quieted down a lot toward the end of last week, for various reasons. I spent way too much time out of the house, eating bad fried foods at the pub, and re-heating leftovers out of extreme laziness. But this week I have some fun food projects planned, so another weeklong absence will not have to be endured by my faithful readers (ha!).

I bought this broccoli rabe over a week ago, and I was a bit afraid that it had gone bad. There was an air of old greens smell coming from the bag, but I took a chance, and rinsed it all off to see what could be salvaged. Turned out, almost all of it. I’d never cooked broccoli rabe before, and in fact, had never even seen it. The handy dandy interwebs, unfortunately, didn’t help much as I tried to figure out how, exactly, one preps broccoli rabe. Everything I read said to trim the stems and quarter it. Quarter it? It’s mostly leaves! How do you quarter leaves? What?! I ended up just chopping it into roughly two-inch pieces, and I think it turned out just fine.

This is one of those simple, classic Italian pasta dishes that I’ve been seeing everywhere lately, and for good reason. It was quick, and the minimal number of ingredients really ensures that the flavors can stand out. It was a good choice for a first broccoli rabe cooking experiment, because there was sausage to save the dish, if I hated it, but I could also actually taste the broccoli rabe enough to realize that I don’t hate it at all.

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Making my own Marinara

Marinara in a jar or two

Since I’m working from home today, I thought it was a good day to make marinara. I think I was inspired by one of my new cookbooks, Giada’s Everyday Italian. Most of her recipes start with a basic marinara, and I think I would feel like something of a wimp if I started writing posts about how I doctored jarred marinara. It seemed like an easy and important staple to have in the refrigerator, anyway, and today, I had plenty of time.

This was, in fact, so easy that I suspect I’m going to have to make it regularly, kind of like chicken stock, just to have on hand. I changed up Giada’s recipe a bit, but essentially all marinaras are the same, right? Mirepoix, tomatoes, herbs. You can’t go wrong.

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Fish Tacos with Chipotle Tortillas

Fish Tacos

I first started making these fish tacos in college. I think I found the recipe in some local newspaper or something, I don’t remember where. Of course, there are more fish taco recipes in existence than I’m capable of counting, and people have strong preferences about whether the fish should be fried or sauteed, or topped with cabbage, or with white sauce or salsa or just lime juice and on and on and on. I like this recipe because it’s incredibly simple and light. Growing up in San Diego, I don’t recall eating fried fish tacos, but then again, I didn’t eat many fish tacos at all. I didn’t really cultivate a taste for fish until I was much older.

When I’ve made these in the past, I didn’t actually serve them topped with anything, but the white sauce recipe from The Paupered Chef sounded like an excellent addition. I also used their recipe for tortillas, the same recipe I used last time I made them, with a slight modification: I added some chipotles for some color and a little kick. This was a super excellent dinner.

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Risotto, Conquered: Roasted Asparagus and Ham Risotto with Truffle Oil

Asparagus, Ham, Peas, Risotto

This past weekend, I decided to tackle risotto once again. My previous attempts had been abject failures, but I’m the kind of lady who is determined to figure things out, at least in the kitchen. Thankfully, this time I cooked with Mr. X, who’s masterful knowledges lead the way to risotto victory. This time, it was perfect: creamy and flavorful, and actually cooked all the way through, which is something you generally want with grains, I think.

What was my problem? A lack of recognition that restaurant low-level heat is a lot different from home kitchen low-level heat.

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Mayan Chocolate Brownies

I have been using the same brownie recipe for years. I mean, since I was about 8. It’s from a kid’s cookbook that is still on my shelf, and is still used, because frankly it’s pretty awesome. The brownie recipe is a stand-by, an old faithful. I even did a science experiment in eighth grade that revolved around this brownie recipe. I’ve never used another one, until today.

I was prompted to abandon my old friend for a few reasons: I only have unsweetened cocoa and unsalted butter in the house, and really didn’t feel like getting into conversions and substitutions and figuring how much extra blah blah blah. And I came across this recipe yesterday that involves a pretty interesting technique I’ve never really used before. And I realized that maybe, after almost twenty years of cooking the same brownies, it might be acceptable to try something new.

I also had an inclination to try to recreate my new favorite ice cream flavor in brownie form. The Haagen-Daaz Mayan Chocolate ice cream is pretty spectacular. I’ve taken to eating a spoonful after dinner pretty much every single night. I can’t stay away. It seemed natural to turn it into my favorite chocolatey dessert: a brownie.

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Potatoes on Pizza is Genius!!!

Potato, Sage, and Rosemary Pizza

One of the best and most ingenious pizzas I’ve ever had is a Bella Luna speciality, the Manny’s Grand Slam: mashed potatoes, cheddar cheese, bacon, scallions, and sour cream. It is good. It is immediately what I thought of when I saw a recipe for a Potato, Sage, and Rosemary Pizza in this month’s Bon Appetit. While I have never tried to re-create the Manny’s at home, I realized that I had all the necessary ingredients for the Bon Appetit pizza, and that the magazine also featured an easy-looking pizza dough recipe. Gilmore Girls and pizza Tuesday night seemed like an obvious combination to me.

This is one of the only times I’ve ever followed a recipe exactly. I didn’t add anything, I didn’t leave anything out, I didn’t substitute or get inventive at all. It sounded so good as written, and I do believe it was one of the best dinners I’ve made in awhile. The flavors blended perfectly. The pizza dough really was insanely easy to work with, and cooked up evenly (though it’s not as flaky as I like; I’m still in search of the perfect recipe). Both my housemates gave it many thumbs up, and I was right–pizza is a perfect complement to Gilmores. Of course, I can’t imagine Lorelei and Rory eating any pizza with potatoes on it, but I, for one, think potatoes on pizza is genius.

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February Chili, warming up before the storm

February Chili

The first chili of the season, back in September, was so insanely spicy it was almost inedible. It caused our dinner guests to request hair dryers and towels, they were sweating so profusely. It was accidental burn-your-face-off chili because I had never used chipotles before, and added in about twelve of them. Yeah.

I decided it was time for another batch of chili this week. The temperatures have been below freezing for the past 2 weeks, and tomorrow we’re supposed to be hit by the first monster storm of the winter. Even without the chipotle overdose, my chili tends to be on the hotter side, and this time around I wanted to see if I was even capable of toning it down a bit. I also tried out a new secret ingredient, and went 100% vegetarian, so housemate #2, Alex, could indulge and warm up with us. I have to say, I think this is one of my better versions–without the excess of spice, you could actually taste the other things in there! Of course, I’m sure I’ll never reproduce it exactly this way again. I don’t think I’ve ever made the same chili twice. But this one will go down in my memory as one of the best.

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Making English Muffins isn’t as easy as I thought.

Softballs or muffins?

I don’t know why it got into my head that I wanted to make English Muffins. I kept seeing various blog postings about making them, and it seemed intriguing. Plus everyone kept saying how easy it was, so it seemed a natural for a dough newbie like myself. Oh, and I love English Muffins; they are a long-time breakfast staple in my world. How awesome would it be to have English Muffins I made myself? Well, I’m not entirely sure what I did wrong, but they are not so awesome, as it turns out.

I ended up with non-nooked and crannied, dense and heavy, burnt-on-the-outside-and-uncooked-in-the-middle English Muffins. It was such a sad moment! It was the first time I’ve ever had to throw away half of what I had just cooked! I have a few guesses about what I did wrong: the skillet I used probably wasn’t heavy enough, and I think I should have chosen a different recipe. I also didn’t give the dough a second, 15 minute proofing rise, which might have improved them a bit, though I’m not entirely sure what that does.

What I was left with is certainly not inedible. In fact, they are pretty tasty. They just aren’t what I think of as English Muffins. I will definitely be trying this again.

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