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Dal, Chilean-Style

Elizabeth Williams — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:19:34 +0000

Okay, so right now, my stomach is filled with lovely Fat Bastard Shiraz, so I’m in no mood — or ability-level — to type a long ranty entry that no one reads anyway, so I’m just going to cut right to the recipe. I found this via NPR and their “How Low Can You Go” segment about cooking a meal for under $10. A few notes, though. This meal feeds at least four adults, so reduce accordingly. Also, brown rice and naan bread go a long way toward cutting the spice and adding other flavors and textures, since it’s pretty much all just hot and bland at the end. Finally, this meal did not cost $10 to make. Maybe $10 per person but at that point, you might as well go to a fast food place, though this is at least vegan and packed full of healthy, fresh veggies and legumes, so the health thing is totally on your side. Still, if all you care about is cost, this isn’t going to keep your wallet slim. I spent $2.99 on tomatoes alone, another $1.25 on the potatoes and $1.99 on cilantro. That’s only three ingredients. The wine (which, I admit, I’m still guzzling) was $7.99, and that was at Wegman’s. The local store sells it for $10.99. Oh sure, you could use some cheap crap like Sutter Home and reduce the price there, but trust me, Fat Bastard is a fat bastard of a wine, and cooks wonderfully. Plus, there’s a cute little hippo on the bottle!

Dal, Chilean-Style

Courtesy of NPR

3 cups of lentils
2 cups of chopped potatoes
2 chopped carrots
3 chopped tomatoes
1 hot pepper
1 small onion chopped
2 gloves garlic chopped
16 ounces tomato sauce
1 tsp cumin
a little beer or sherry
a little red vinegar
olive oil
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
salt and pepper

1. Soak and cook lentils till soft. Drain and rinse, set aside.
2. Sautee onions, garlic, hot pepper, and cumin in olive oil. Add beer or sherry.
3. Add potatoes and carrots, cover with water, bring to boil.
4. Add tomatoes and cook till potatoes are soft.
5. Add lentils and tomato sauce.
6. Salt and pepper to taste. (I sometimes add more water or beer if it’s too thick, or vinegar if it’s too sweet.) Add more cumin or hot sauce if you like it really spicy.
7. Throw in the cilantro, take if off the heat. Serve after a few minutes.

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Turkey Burgers with Grated Zucchini and Carrot on Light Brioche Buns

Elizabeth Williams — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:05:08 +0000

Okay, it’s the summer, so I’m going to be honest with you all right now — I really do not enjoy cooking during the summer, especially not during 90 degree days when my pale white ass is going to turn lobster red if I even step foot out of my front door. And don’t get me started on the futile battle that is running an air conditioner and oven fan at the same time! So, you could be forgiven for assuming that I’d do very little baking during the typically hottest months of the year.

But you’d be wrong.

If there’s one thing I will cook in the summer, it’s burgers; too bad most burgers are packed with fillers such as bread crumbs. Hell, I once came across a horrible recipe that suggested cornmeal in your hamburger patties. Ugh! And then there’s the seasonings, the dressings, the “flavor enhancer” (read: MSG) that my mother’s side of the family insists has to be present for a burger to taste right. Gag.

This recipe, from my brief time subscribing to the mind-numbingly simple-minded Real Simple magazine, however, has been a favorite of mine for at least two years now. It’s packed with veggies in a sneaky, Deceptively Delicious or even The Sneaky Chef and has no white carb — or any wheat-based carb — filler, which means you’re eating meat, egg, and veggies with a bit of healthful garlic and flavorful thyme, so it’s great for those watching their weight and those with wheat allergies or Celiacs disease.

Having said that, there are some caveats. First, the moisture of your burgers — and subsequently how well they hold together — is going to be determined by how large you interpret the “medium” carrot and zucchini (courgette for you English-types!) to be. Even after making this recipe over many summers, I still grate too much zucchini or too little carrot and end up with delicious burgers that fall apart in the pan if they’re not half-way cooked before flipping. This is remedied easily enough by making sure that you don’t flip until the meat is white half-way up the side of the burger, the meat on the bottom is very brown, and you’re not getting a lot of blood out of the burger when you press down. (Yes, most of the time you shouldn’t press down on your burgers, as it decreases the moisture. This is NOT a problem with these.) Also, because of their fragile nature until cooked, you must(!) cover your grill with foil — you cannot do these babies over an open flame without losing a burger or two to the gas/charcoal gods — and well-done is the only way to serve them.

Now, since I’m on a “Ewww, is THAT what’s in my processed food?” fixation right now, I decided to couple my healthy burgers with homemade rolls, and The New York Times came to the rescue by covering gourmet burger joints. What excellent timing!

Once again, there are a few things you should know about these delicious and perfect rolls.

The original recipe’s directions seemed pretty straight forward, though labor intensive. Luckily, I had my trusty KitchenAid Artisan 5-Quart Stand Mixers, which I’ve used on everything from pizza dough to French bread without issue. After the recommended 10 minutes, however, the dough was not silky (though it was stretchy) as promised, but was instead a bit sticky.

This could have something to do with the fact that instead of mostly bread flour with a 1/3 c. of all purpose flour, I used 3 and 1/3 cups of whole wheat, vitamin-enriched flour, you know, for health! However, this greatly altered the texture of the dough, so against advice from the New York Times, I lightly floured a cutting board and smacked that dough around in the flour for a minute or so.

That showed it. Or, at least, it did for the time being. 2 hours later it was more-than doubled in size…and sticky again. So back onto a lightly-floured cutting board it went.

The next problem — and the one most visible in the photo of the finished rolls — is that the recipe was specific. Let rise 1-2 hours. Cut into 8 pieces. Roll into balls. Put on parchment paper. Let rise another 1-2 hours, then straight into the oven. Unfortunately, after 2 hours, the rolls had spread out into round, bubbly disks and looked a bit more like individual ciabatta breads than plump hamburger rolls. I started to throw the whole tray into the oven, assuming they’d magically plump up into rolls or something, but my baker’s instinct took over and I snatched four rolls off the tray, re-rolling them into balls, covering them again with a damp cloth, and letting them rest while the first batch cooked in the oven.

Can you see the difference? Yeh, I thought you could. So the recipe has been modified to that effect.

Still, the flat rolls have made delicious bread for sandwiches all week — both a grilled chicken breast sandwich and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich were greatly enhanced by using the flat, ciabatta-like rolls, so it’s still pretty much a win-win if your rolls are more bread than bun.

Light Brioche Buns

Liberally adapted from The New York Times

3 tablespoons warm milk

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

2 1/2 tablespoons sugar

2 large eggs

3 cups bread flour

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened.

Combine warm milk with 1 cup of water and sugar. Add yeast and stir to moisten. Allow to sit in a warm, draft-free place for ten minutes.

While proofing the yeast, sift flours and salt into a bowl. Add in butter and cut to combine with a pastry blender or dough hook until pea-sized balls form.
Using a mixer with a dough hook, add yeast mixture to flour and stir until moistened. Set the mixer on the lowest setting and let it knead the dough for about 10 minutes.
Spray a clean bowl with non-stick cooking spray. Transfer dough from mixing bowl to oiled bowl (If dough is sticky, coat hands with flour first and knead by hand for a minute or so to incorporate a bit more flour.) Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 1-2 hours.
Dump dough onto a very lightly floured cutting board and cut into 8 equal pieces. Roll into balls. Place on a parchment-paper covered cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart; cover with a damp kitchen towel; and allow to rest and other 1-2 hours.
Remove rolls from parchment paper and roll into balls a second time. Return to cookie sheets and place another warm, damp kitchen towel over them.
Place a shallow tray of water into the oven, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
After about 15 minutes (or when the oven is heated to 400 degrees, whichever comes later), place the rolls into the oven and bake for 15 minutes, until golden brown.
Remove from over, transfer to a wire rack, and cool at least 5 minutes before serving

Turkey Burgers with Grated Zucchini and Carrot

From Real Simple Magazine

3/4 pound ground turkey
1 medium zucchini, grated
1 medium carrot, grated
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 large egg
3 tablespoons olive oil

In a mixing bowl, mix together turkey meat, carrot, zucchini, garlic, thyme, kosher salt, black pepper, and egg.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Scoop meat into the skillet, pressing down once to form a patty. Cook for five minutes per side, or until it reaches an internal temperature of 170 degrees, the meat is no longer pink in the middle, and juices run clear.

Furlough Day: Homemade Pizza

Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:41:41 +0000

In almost every cookbook sitting around my apartment right now, there is at least one recipe for pizza dough – seriously, every one of them. Jamie Oliver, Tyler Florence, Isa Chandra Moskowitz — even Julia Child at one time or another weighed in on the fine art of pizza dough making. Though there are little variations to the recipes (one says throw basil into the crust to make it rustic!) the thing that makes pizza great is that it’s simple, quick, and easy. There aren’t a lot of fancy ingredients — it’s pretty much flour, water, and yeast plus whatever you put on top — and while it’s the sort of thing you need a few hours to make, the hands on time is probably about fifteen to twenty minutes total. It also involves punching and beating the crap out of the dough, which is why it seemed like the perfect project for me on my second unpaid day off due to The Great Recession of 2009! (Please, can we stop with that already media people? Great! Thanks!)

Pizza Dough

Adapted from multiple sources (see below)

Ingredients

1/4 oz (1 pkg or 2 1/2 tsp.) dry, active yeast
1 c. warm water
1 tbsp. sugar
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
3 c. flour.

Directions

Proof yeast: dissolve sugar in water and add yeast. Stir to moisten yeast. Let sit for ten minutes until incredibly foamy. (Your mixture should double in volume. See the first picture in the set above.) If you get a couple of bubbles but no real foam, pour it out and try again with a new package of yeast.
In a good, sturdy mixer with a dough hook (I love, live, and die by my KitchenAid Artisan 5-Quart Stand Mixer) sift together flour and salt. Add in yeast mixture and olive oil and mix until a dough forms. Now, set your mixer to low speed and walk away for ten minutes while it does its thing. Alternately, if you’re the old-fashioned type, you can dump the dough out onto a clean workspace and kneed this yourself for ten to fifteen minutes until dough is very elastic and smooth. I’d recommend having someone else on hand to jump in after the first five. Hell, I recommend just buying the damned mixer..
After kneeding, pull the dough off the hook and place on a clean surface for a second. Every time I’ve ever done this dough, I’ve found that the bowl is pretty much spotless because the dough works itself around the hook. Use this to our advantage. Instead of dirtying a second bowl (as you’d have to if working by hand), you can spray the mixer bowl with some spray-on olive oil (or, if your cooking spray is some chemical junk, just wipe olive oil into the bowl) and return the dough to the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or a warm cloth and walk away for an hour while you do something nice for yourself — though I wouldn’t recommend a manicure, cause you’re not done yet.
After an hour, come back to your dough. It should have at least doubled in size and be nice and fluffy, like a marshmallow. Now, gather up all your anger and aggression, find that repressed rage you feel at a world that’s turned against you, and just punch that sucker (the dough, I mean! Not your boss!) in the gut to deflate it. There, feels good, doesn’t it? Now, dump the dough out on the counter and knead that sucker a little more.
At this stage, I usually cut the dough in half, throw half of it into a freezer bag, and stick it in the freezer for another day. You can do this with both halves if you’re making dough for future use, or you can work with just one half, the way I usually do. Or, if you have a particularly big family, you can make two pizzas now. Whatever you decide, let the dough rest at least another 30 minutes or so to get back into springy shape.
After 30 minutes, turn your attention to the stove. Preheat it to 500 degrees or as high as you can get it to go.
I am not a throw the pizza in the air and twirl it around my back kinda pizza maker. I’m more of a rolling pin kinda girl. First, sprinkle a bit of cornmeal or flour on the stone to prevent sticking. Now, plop your dough on a pizza stone (or cookie sheet, if you must) and roll that sucker out. I recommend rolling it, then turning the dough so it doesn’t stick to the stone, then rolling it some more, until you get to the desired size and thickness.

Now is the time on Nom-Able when we ~~dance~~ smother our pizza in toppings. I’ve put almost anything and everything you can think of on a pizza, so I have a few words of wisdom on the subject. First, don’t put too many dense things on your pizza, or you’ll be better off folding it in half and just calling it a calzone. On my first pizza (pictured above) I decided leftover ricotta from a lasagna would be good along with mozzarella and pesto, just like the gourmet pizzaria pizzas, right? Ha. I couldn’t even lift a slice without everything sliding off of it because, in my zealous love for pizza, I’d put way too much on. If you’re going to do something heavy like ricotta or pesto, spread it thinly in layers, not gooped on in spoonfuls, unless you want to eat pizza with a fork and knife, you classy, professional-looking devil, you!
Once your pizza is ready for the oven, throw that sucker in there and bake it for 8-12 minutes until the crust is crisp and golden and the cheese is melted and bubbly with a few brown spots. Enjoy!

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Nom-able: Calling In Sick Edition

Elizabeth Williams — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:34:54 +0000

It’s rare, the days when I actually feel so terrible, so under-the-weather, that I do not go into work. Rarer still, however, are the days when I feel so terrible that I can’t be bothered doing anything other than curling up with some tea or coffee and sleeping most of the day away.

The last three days, have been worse, the kind of days where just sitting in a training for my day job has left me feeling so drained, I slept through most of the night. Monday night, David was forced to call for pizza, because I physically couldn’t move myself from bed or lift my head up. Yesterday, we made the journey to our nearest IHOP for Pancake Tuesday and enjoyed free pancakes, but then immediately returned home for sleep. Tonight is my third night of feeling too tired to move, much less to venture to make Green Thai Curry, which was my plan for the evening. Even after David pressed the tofu, I still couldn’t bring myself to do anything with it that would require effort, let alone digging out the food processor.

The thing about learning to cook–and by learning, I mean by buying quite a few cookbooks and just diving into them head first–is that you eventually figure out what goes with what, and how to throw items into a pot and come up with a satisfying meal. Since I was ill, I wanted something light but spicy, to ungunk the sinuses, something with fiber so I would feel full, but nothing heavy. And because it’s Ash Wednesday (and because I gave up animal products for Lent…more about that tomorrow) it needed to be free of meat.

Luckily, during my college years, I stocked up quite the collection of ramen, and managed to stumble out into the kitchen to the stove. Without setting myself on fire in my half-dizzy, half-delirious state of flu, was able to start the pot of water boiling. But just water plus flavoring plus noodles wasn’t going to do it for me tonight. So I ditched a cup of water and replaced it with a cup of veggie stock. To this, I added about a clove of minced garlic, a teaspoon of ginger paste, a tablespoon-ish of soy sauce, and a head of broccoli, which I pulled apart rather than chopped, as I’m feeling so crappy, chopping anything would have probably resulted in a few missing digits.

I brought all of this slowly to a boil, then threw in the noodles. Three minutes later, I poured the broth, noodles, and broccoli into a bowl and topped it with some asian chili sauce.

Quick, easy, and animal-free, plus it hit the spot. And it was all whipped up without a recipe.

The secret, my dears, is that I’ve been working on quite the number of Asian recipes recently. And when you’ve made enough of any one type of food, you start to learn what goes with what. Like my mother-in-law and her spag bol, which she rarely refers to in the cookbook any more, you start to learn through repetition what ingredients go with what to make the flavors you’re craving. This, of course, can be dangerous — you can get into a rut of making the same old thing the same old way by making the same old recipe over and over again — but if you learn to rely on gut instincts instead of recipes, the results can be a pleasant surprise right when you need them.

And by the way, within twenty minutes of eating tonight, my stomach felt a hundred times better, so feel free to steal my vegan cold and flu remedy whenever you need it.

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Book Review: Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Elizabeth Williams — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:14:06 +0000

This may be surprising to some of you, but apparently they now allow omnivores to eat vegan food with out a license or registration or visits from PETA–a fact that was incredibly relieved to discover when I purchased this book with nary a stop nor request for papers. Indeed I, the vegetarian who flirts with meat eating like an abusive boyfriend I can’t be rid of, was free and clear to buy this book and cook recipes from it to my little heart’s content.

You see, I’m an omnivore with vegan tendencies — which is to say when I’m trying to cut costs, I’ll do a week or two without eggs, butter, milk. One pound of cage-free, grass-fed, organic chicken is $8; one pound of tofu is $2.99; butter is $4 a pound, margarine is $2.79. You do the math. And sometimes, when I’m broke or simple have run out of animal lactate or chicken menses to put in my distended gut, I want to have cupcakes.

OH, the joy of cupcakes! So small, so delightful, so full of awesome, goodness, and win wrapped in a teeny, tiny package! But alas, without animals, I will have no sweet treat tonight! Right?

That is where you’re sadly mistaken, my friends. For, you see, vegans have been making cupcakes without animal input for quite some time! And now, they’re letting us have their secret without converting from our barbaric ways! No, we do not have to buy soy yogurt (though some recipes call for it) or some weird, crusty, goopy, crunchy weirdness to have cupcake batter we can eat without fear of salmonella! Oh no, and I tell you this with all truthiness and sincerity I can muster — these cupcakes are NORMAL. They use normal ingredients like shortening, sugar, flour, oil, and margarine — and come on, what dieter doesn’t have margarine in the fridge and isn’t also DYING for some cupcakey goodness, I ask you?

So the secret is out: cupcakes that are animal free, cruelty free (well, except for when you grate your knuckles zesting limes, which I just did) and delicious. And the best part is, you do not — repeat DO NOT — have to be vegan to enjoy them. Yes, omnis among us, you CAN buy this book! No one will stop you! And if it is that slippery slope, that gateway into vegetarianism or…further still you slide…veganism, then animals and your wallet will thank you oh so much!

But not your stomach–put aside any notion of the thin, fainting vegan; I’ve gained ten pounds from this book alone, I swear. Of course, the house being filled with cupcakes every day for the last few months while I worked my way through the book from cover to cover probably didn’t help my waistline either.

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Coconut Lime Cupcakes

Elizabeth Williams — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:04:18 +0000

Once upon a time, there was a girl who got revenge on her snitching, teetotal, asshole of a boss by baking margarita cupcakes (with real tequila in the frosting and batter) and almost getting him drunk at the office with them.

This is not that story — mostly because whenever I make a batch of Margarita Cupcakes, they’re gone before I get the camera out.

However, this is the story of the cupcakes I told my boss I’d made for his birthday celebration: coconut lime cupcakes. If you are having a summer party, and you don’t want to play with tequila — either because you’re feeding these to children or because you don’t want to shell out $40 for a bottle of Petron, my tequila of choice — these are a very close second to the awesomeness of coconut lime cupcakes. The flavor is light and crisp, with the tang of lime that makes you feel like you’re off in the Caribbean somewhere, sipping a lime-flavored drink and cooling off in the ocean breeze — and the lack of eggs and butter in the recipe make the cakes themselves practically weightless. They’re not as spongy and light as an angel food cake, but that’s actually a good thing. They have just enough substance that you know you’re actually eating a dessert of substance, unlike angel food cake, which never actually feels like a dessert as much as something to sandwich around a dessert.

Trust me, when summer gets here, you’re going to ~~want~~ need these cupcakes.

Coconut Lime Cupcakes

From Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule

Ingredients

1/3 c. coconut oil
3/4 c. granulated sugar
1 c. coconut milk
1/4 c. soy milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp finely grated lime zest
1 c. flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 c. unsweetened coconut

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cupcake pan with liners
Melt the coconut oil in a small saucepan over very low heat.
In a medium bowl, mix together the coconut oil & sugar. Add the coconut milk, soy milk, vanilla extract, and lime zest. Mix to combine.
Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix until smooth. Add the coconut and mix to incorporate.
Bake for 23-25 minutes, until the cupcake top springs back when touched and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Cool completely before icing

Lime Icing

Ingredients

1/2 shortening
1/2 c margarine
3 1/2 c. confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 c. lime juice
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

Directions

Beat shortening and margarine together until well combined and fluffy (Ed. Note: about 3-5 minutes).
Add the sugar and beat for 3 more minutes.
Add the vanilla and lime juice, beat for another 5-7 minutes until fluffy. Add the zest and mix to distribute.
Heap frosting onto the cupcakes. Place flaked coconut onto a plate & gently roll the cupcakes in the coconut. Refrigerate until serving.