The Kitchen Illiterate

Super Spicy Shrimp and Red Onion Pasta

UPDATE: I re-made this dish in 2010, after I learned a few more things about cooking. Don’t forget to check out the much better version.

In my quest to eat more healthier things, I ran an epicurious search for foods not filled with butter. It didn’t come up with a lot, but a recipe for Spiced Shrimp and Red Onion Saute caught my eye. It looked fast, it didn’t require a ton of ingredients (other than spices, which I already have), and it looked relatively light. Plus, I love shrimp. I decided this would be an excellent Tuesday night meal, served over pasta, and with a little spinach thrown in, for greenery and extra vitamin purposes.

Well, it was very fast, and I’m assuming pretty healthy, but it was also so spicy I could hardly eat it. I also think I needed to add more shrimp, more spinach, and less onion, all of which alterations may happen in the future, because overall I think this was a pretty good dinner. Below, the recipe as followed, with my parenthetical alterations.

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Sesame Chicken; or, Drunken Garlic Chicken Mishaps

Sesame Chicken and Broccoli

There are many reasons I should not be allowed to cook after a few or five beers, and Saturday night’s dinner involved several of them. I tend not to read recipes very well, and then I tend to immediately forget what I just read. Thus, what was meant to be Garlic Chicken didn’t actually have any, um, garlic in it. Yeah, I don’t know how that happened.

It did, however, turn out pretty darned well, and if I hadn’t already told Mr. X I was making Garlic Chicken, I could have gotten away with pretending I had been planning to make Sesame Chicken all along. The chicken was nice and tender and the broccoli wasn’t too mushy, and I amazingly managed to cook the rice perfectly, even though I didn’t pay any attention to how long I was actually cooking it. Maybe drunken cooking isn’t really so terrible, after all.

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Good thing, because I can’t afford to put expensive wine in my spaghetti sauce

I just read this article at the New York Times and I feel a bit vindicated. I have long held that the adage to never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink should not be the kitchen gospel it is. First, you’re putting it over hot fire, which immediately renders it a different glass of wine altogether. Second, you’re mixing it with other things that are likely more flavorful than the wine itself, and you don’t really want the wine to stand out that much, anyway. Third, I’m poor and can’t afford to go pouring the good wine into the sauce, instead of into my belly, where it belongs.

Julia Moskin does some extensive kitchen experimentation to prove, to my mind beyond a doubt, that cheap wine in your risotto (and whatever else you’re cooking) is a-ok.

Avocado Baby

One thing I miss the most about California is ripe, delicious avocados. Sure, you can get avocados here in Massachussetts, but they are invariably rock hard, stringy, and tasteless. When you do find the occasional good looking avocado, it’s insanely expensive. I’ve resigned myself to a lack of avocados in my life, which has been sad, because one of my favorite snacks in the world is avocado with soy sauce.

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Warm Potato and Chicken Sausage Salad

I had been planning to make this all week, and for one reason or another it just didn’t happen. Which is ridiculous, because it was ridiculously easy and took maybe about twenty minutes. It’s also pretty healthy: I found the recipe in Eating Well. I think in the future I might cut back on the vinegar, but Mr. X thought it was perfect as is, so what do I know? The arugula adds a great peppery sharpness, and the chicken sausage I found, Al Fresco Roasted Garlic Chicken Sausage, was super excellent and juicy. I suspect there will be more warm potato salads in my future.

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Artichoke Tapenade and Chicken Pizza (or, Not-Quite-Homemade Pizza)

Artichoke Tapenade and Chicken Pizza

I debated whether to even put this up here, because I didn’t actually make anything you see in that picture above (oh, except the chicken, which was leftover from a roast I made a week ago). I bought the pizza dough, and the tapenade, and the cheese, at Trader Joe’s, because I was feeling a little lazy. I decided to write about it, though, in the spirit of a review, and because it was such a good combination of ingredients that I had to share.

I am an unapologetic lover of Trader Joe’s. When I first discovered it, in my college years, I was immediately addicted. They have great prices on staples, like olive oil, and luxury stuffs, like champagne vinegar and truffle oil. When I didn’t have time to cook, their frozen dinners were much better than anything I could find at the local supermarket. They had all kinds of meats and cheeses that were otherwise hard to find, and I could get a big canister of delicious dark roasted coffee for $3.99! Despite the fact that coffee is now $5.99, and that I have to beg Mr. X to drive me or walk seven loooong city blocks during my work day to get there, I still love Trader Joe’s. I went yesterday because I needed coffee, and was completely tempted by the vision of an interesting pizza dinner that floated into my head when I caught sight of the Artichoke Roasted Red Pepper Tapenade.

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Campanelle with Spicy Tomato Sauce, Trout, and Haricots Verts

It took me a long time to figure out what to call this particular pasta dish. I told Mr. X I was making trout pasta for dinner, and the look on his face made it very clear that “trout pasta” would not be an appropriate name. But if it were to appear on a restaurant menu, how could it be made clear that the trout is actually in the pasta sauce, not served on the side or anything? I’m not sure that my choice is perfect, but I guess the name of it isn’t that important, either. Because it was really super good! Way better than even I was expecting, and certainly better than “trout pasta” might connote.

I spent all day trying to think of what to do with the trout fillet I picked up at the hippy mart Monday. I’m not usually a big fan of just eating a piece of fish on its on, but I’m trying to get more of it into my diet, since it’s supposed to be healthy or something. I even thought for a minute about putting it on pizza, but I feel like I’ve been making lots of pizzas lately. Eventually, I figured it would just flake it into some pasta sauce and hope for the best.

But what kind of pasta sauce? I’ve seen recipes for trout topped with pesto, or salsa, and I’ve cooked other fish mixed into cream sauces, but none of that seemed right. Plus, I didn’t want to make a trip to the market again. So after rooting around in my larder (ha, I’ve always wanted to use that word) I came up with a hodge-podge of randomness, and crossed my fingers.

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Veggie Riot Stir-fry

I have never been that interested in Chinese food. I’ve stir-fried things before, but it was always just a random conglomeration of ingredients, with no specific sauce, and usually served over pasta. Chinese cooking seemed to rely on an entirely different collection of methods and ingredients that held no particular appeal to me at all.

Until I bought a new wok. I’m not really sure what the power of this wok is. I’ve owned woks in the past, and never felt compelled to toss together Kung Pao Chicken or Beef with Broccoli. This wok, though, immediately sent me to various Chinese cooking websites (not having a single Chinese cookbook in the vicinity of my kitchen) to learn to put together an actual Chinese-style stir-fry. I searched and read and took a trip to the hippy mart, and eventually ended up with this: a crazy mix of delicious vegetables and a soy garlic stir-fry sauce. I ended up with something that actually resembles Chinese food!

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At least I know I can always make excellent Beans and Rice.

Delicious Beans and Rice

I fell in love with beans and rice during my brief attempt at vegetarianism, in high school. My mom discovered that together they make up a complete protein, and I’ve been eating them ever since, even after I renewed my relationship with hamburgers. I’ve experimented with multiple variations, I’ve used mixes from a box and from scratch, I’ve added chicken and sausage and beef, but no matter how I put it together, it is always deeply satisfying. When I was in college, this was a meal I made at least once a week, and it occurred to me the other day that it had been quite awhile since it had graced my kitchen. More significantly, as the one dish I’ve perfected from countless experiments, it was a dinner that has been surprisingly absent from this website.

The version I made last night was actually different from any I’d made before, and I think one of my very best. I had some leftover portobellos, which I’d never used before, and I decided to add tomato paste and red wine: both new additions. I also tossed in a dash of some kind of creole seasoning, which has been on our spice rack for who knows how long, but I suspect that it didn’t really add much to the overall taste, so I left it out of the recipe. I should probably remove it from the spice rack, too.

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Perfecting Pizza Dough with a Portobello Spinach Pizza

Portobello Spinach Pizza

I have a cookbook shelf crowded with recipes for pizza dough. They are all very similar: yeast, flour, oil, sugar, salt, water, or some combination of the above. They vary mainly in proportions, or in rising time, and in how much pizza dough each recipe will make. The last time I made pizza, I used Giada’s recipe from Bon Appetit, and I quite liked it (which I suppose proves that occasionally Giada and I can get along). I wanted, this time, to try something new, so I pulled down a cookbook I haven’t yet had a chance to use: Peter Reinhart’s American Pie. (Well, I guess I have had the chance to use it, I just haven’t.)

What immediately frustrated me is the quantity of pizza dough all the recipes make. This is a problem I have with other bread cookbooks as well. I do not need four loaves of bread, or six 10-inch pizzas. I have enough problems with leftovers as it is. Why, oh why, do cookbooks tend to assume you’re cooking for a family of twelve? Despite the fact that Reinhart offers a gajillion different dough recipes, I didn’t want to fuss with any of them, because I just didn’t want to have to do all the crazy math calculations to reduce the recipes. Back to Giada is was. I did, however, pick up some great tips.

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