In the meantime, remember Cookbook Exploitation Month? yeah, totally fell by the wayside. My focus seems to have shifted a bit from the kitchen to knitting - I'm working on a sweater, and am watching copious amounts of Veronica Mars.
Showing posts with label Cookbook Exploitation Month. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cookbook Exploitation Month. Show all posts
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Meanwhile, back in real life
Yep, still planning the trip to New Zealand - it's shaping up a little, but I think a lot of our decisions will be made on the fly. We'll have a cell phone, a map, and a car from Sunday to Wednesday so we may just wing it. Should be great.
In the meantime, remember Cookbook Exploitation Month? yeah, totally fell by the wayside. My focus seems to have shifted a bit from the kitchen to knitting - I'm working on a sweater, and am watching copious amounts of Veronica Mars.
Yesterday I ran some errands, then went to a short class on preserving cherries, presented by the farmer/pastry-chef couple who own Frog Hollow Farm. What a blissful union of foodies! I'm excited to do some u-picking and preserving when I get back from my trip. I got a jar to take home with me, and I just love the vibrant cherries. I'm actually glad it wasn't processed in a water bath, so I "have" to use the contents within about a month.
In the meantime, remember Cookbook Exploitation Month? yeah, totally fell by the wayside. My focus seems to have shifted a bit from the kitchen to knitting - I'm working on a sweater, and am watching copious amounts of Veronica Mars.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Report from the kitchen: CEM, part two
Previously on this blog: I decided to cook two recipes from Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2006, my choice for Cookbook Exploitation Month. I already wrote about wandering vigorously off-course for the broccoli soup. Well, I also had to punt for the other selection: Sour Cream, Cheddar, and Green Onion Biscuits (page 63).
To recap, it was a cruddy rainy night and I was commited to NOT going out to the store. I almost immediately realized that I didn't have any green onions, but that was easy: I kept a quarter-onion out of the soup, and sauteed it to add sweetness. I already knew I was subbing yogurt for sour cream: Yogurt, Cheddar, and Sauteed Onion biscuits were a BIT off course but not too bad. Only after I finished making my Broccoli (-spinach) Soup did I realize I'd used up all the milk... and remember that my recipe called for 1 cup of buttermilk as the main liquid source! (I'd intended to cheat and sour it with lemon juice.)
I'd already measured out the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda). I didn't have milk. I didn't feel like cutting butter into the dry ingredients anyway, AND I'd loaned a friend my cookie cutters. All in all this recipe had to be scrapped.
I got lucky on the first shot, pulling out my trusty old Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home (the absolute best in their series). There was a recipe for Savory Scallion Biscuits, which did NOT use milk or butter! Of course their recipe didn't call for onions or cheddar, but I stuck 'em in anyway. Once you have a feel for muffins and biscuits, you can fake them pretty well (witness my Company-Worthy Muffins!).
In the end they came out GREAT. In fact I had trouble eating only one!
Semi-Improvised cheddar-onion biscuits
Preheat oven to 400
2 cups flour
1 T sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 T oil
3/4 c shredded cheddar
1/4 onion, sauteed until soft
~3/4 - 1 cup non- or low-fat yogurt
Mix the dry ingredients; add the wet ingredients. I added the yogurt in 1/4-cup increments until the dough hung together without being too wet and used a bit less than one cup.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, put the dough on it, pat into about 1 1/2 inch thickness, cut into 8 pieces, and separate the pieces from each other. Bake for 20 minutes.
To recap, it was a cruddy rainy night and I was commited to NOT going out to the store. I almost immediately realized that I didn't have any green onions, but that was easy: I kept a quarter-onion out of the soup, and sauteed it to add sweetness. I already knew I was subbing yogurt for sour cream: Yogurt, Cheddar, and Sauteed Onion biscuits were a BIT off course but not too bad. Only after I finished making my Broccoli (-spinach) Soup did I realize I'd used up all the milk... and remember that my recipe called for 1 cup of buttermilk as the main liquid source! (I'd intended to cheat and sour it with lemon juice.)
I'd already measured out the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda). I didn't have milk. I didn't feel like cutting butter into the dry ingredients anyway, AND I'd loaned a friend my cookie cutters. All in all this recipe had to be scrapped.
I got lucky on the first shot, pulling out my trusty old Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home (the absolute best in their series). There was a recipe for Savory Scallion Biscuits, which did NOT use milk or butter! Of course their recipe didn't call for onions or cheddar, but I stuck 'em in anyway. Once you have a feel for muffins and biscuits, you can fake them pretty well (witness my Company-Worthy Muffins!).
In the end they came out GREAT. In fact I had trouble eating only one!
Semi-Improvised cheddar-onion biscuits
Preheat oven to 400
2 cups flour
1 T sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 T oil
3/4 c shredded cheddar
1/4 onion, sauteed until soft
~3/4 - 1 cup non- or low-fat yogurt
Mix the dry ingredients; add the wet ingredients. I added the yogurt in 1/4-cup increments until the dough hung together without being too wet and used a bit less than one cup.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, put the dough on it, pat into about 1 1/2 inch thickness, cut into 8 pieces, and separate the pieces from each other. Bake for 20 minutes.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Report from the kitchen: CEM, part one
Reader, I tried. I have a really hard time sticking to recipes!
As I noted earlier this week, a few years ago a blogger decided to call April Cookbook Exploitation Month (hereinafter referred to as CEM). I decided to play along this month, and chose Cooking Light Annual Recipes - 2006.
Tomorrow is my day to bring lunch for lunch group (by the time I finally write about that, anyone with half a brain will have figured it out, and indeed it's no secret). I decided I'd get a jump on this CEM-thing, and picked not one but TWO recipes: Broccoli Soup (page 13) and Sour Cream, Cheddar, and Green Onion Drop Biscuits (page 63).
It's a rainy, drear evening and I wound up running a wine-group-related errand with a friend after work. I was home by 6:30, not terribly hungry but low on fuel. I'd planned to roast asparagus for dinner, but I don't feel like asparagus in weather like this, and I ignored the fact that I had no Plan B. Instead, I started cooking!
The recipe calls for 6 cups of small broccoli florets. I immediately discarded that as a suggestion: I had leftover roasted broccoli from last night (perhaps 3 cups). I also had a bunch of uncooked broccoli, and wasn't about to throw away/compost all those stems when I could sneak them into soup that was going to be pureed anyway. I suspect the recipe calls for small florets to make it a faster-cooking meal.
The recipe also calls for 2 cups chicken broth; instead, I defrosted 32 ounces of home-made chicken stock, then also put in maybe 4 cups of water and some concentrated chicken flavor made after I roasted a chicken. Slowly my food-deprived brain let me know that I was WAY off-course with this recipe - I'd used at least double the broccoli and triple the liquids called for. But, by the time I figured that out, it was too late, so I figured I'd fudge it. Once the liquid was hot, I cooked the broccoli for a total of maybe 10 minutes (cleverly putting in the stems for a while, then the florets, and then the already-roasted broccoli!) before using my immersion blender to puree the heck out of it.
The next part of the recipe calls for 2 cups of milk with 2T flour; I emptied the carton into a measuring cup and found I had about 2 3/4 cups, so I boosted the flour a bit. Finally, I realized I could eat soup for dinner (duh.. told you I was short of brain power) so I chucked the spinach I'd been wilting into the soup and pureed it as well. I added a dash of nutmeg and called it good.
So, my take on the Broccoli (+spinach!) Soup:
~6 cups liquid, at least some of it broth of some sort
~8-12 cups broccoli, chopped - put the stems in first to give them a head start cooking
~3/4 of a medium-sized onion, diced
~1/2 pound spinach, sauteed/wilted
cook the broccoli & onion in the borth until the broccoli seems done; puree; add the spinach.
In a separate bowl, combine:
~2-3 cups milk
2-3 T flour
then add them to the soup and let it cook a while longer. Sprinkle in just a bit of nutmeg. I used about 1/4 tsp for my monster vat of soup. Consider adding salt and pepper. Tonight I added Cheddar cheese.
I have been dying to find a use for some really interesting toasted pumpkin seed oil I found, so I may bring that for people to use as a little topper.
Stay tuned for part two of my attempt to cook from a recipe!
As I noted earlier this week, a few years ago a blogger decided to call April Cookbook Exploitation Month (hereinafter referred to as CEM). I decided to play along this month, and chose Cooking Light Annual Recipes - 2006.
Tomorrow is my day to bring lunch for lunch group (by the time I finally write about that, anyone with half a brain will have figured it out, and indeed it's no secret). I decided I'd get a jump on this CEM-thing, and picked not one but TWO recipes: Broccoli Soup (page 13) and Sour Cream, Cheddar, and Green Onion Drop Biscuits (page 63).
It's a rainy, drear evening and I wound up running a wine-group-related errand with a friend after work. I was home by 6:30, not terribly hungry but low on fuel. I'd planned to roast asparagus for dinner, but I don't feel like asparagus in weather like this, and I ignored the fact that I had no Plan B. Instead, I started cooking!
The recipe calls for 6 cups of small broccoli florets. I immediately discarded that as a suggestion: I had leftover roasted broccoli from last night (perhaps 3 cups). I also had a bunch of uncooked broccoli, and wasn't about to throw away/compost all those stems when I could sneak them into soup that was going to be pureed anyway. I suspect the recipe calls for small florets to make it a faster-cooking meal.
The recipe also calls for 2 cups chicken broth; instead, I defrosted 32 ounces of home-made chicken stock, then also put in maybe 4 cups of water and some concentrated chicken flavor made after I roasted a chicken. Slowly my food-deprived brain let me know that I was WAY off-course with this recipe - I'd used at least double the broccoli and triple the liquids called for. But, by the time I figured that out, it was too late, so I figured I'd fudge it. Once the liquid was hot, I cooked the broccoli for a total of maybe 10 minutes (cleverly putting in the stems for a while, then the florets, and then the already-roasted broccoli!) before using my immersion blender to puree the heck out of it.
The next part of the recipe calls for 2 cups of milk with 2T flour; I emptied the carton into a measuring cup and found I had about 2 3/4 cups, so I boosted the flour a bit. Finally, I realized I could eat soup for dinner (duh.. told you I was short of brain power) so I chucked the spinach I'd been wilting into the soup and pureed it as well. I added a dash of nutmeg and called it good.
So, my take on the Broccoli (+spinach!) Soup:
~6 cups liquid, at least some of it broth of some sort
~8-12 cups broccoli, chopped - put the stems in first to give them a head start cooking
~3/4 of a medium-sized onion, diced
~1/2 pound spinach, sauteed/wilted
cook the broccoli & onion in the borth until the broccoli seems done; puree; add the spinach.
In a separate bowl, combine:
~2-3 cups milk
2-3 T flour
then add them to the soup and let it cook a while longer. Sprinkle in just a bit of nutmeg. I used about 1/4 tsp for my monster vat of soup. Consider adding salt and pepper. Tonight I added Cheddar cheese.
I have been dying to find a use for some really interesting toasted pumpkin seed oil I found, so I may bring that for people to use as a little topper.
Stay tuned for part two of my attempt to cook from a recipe!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Be it Resolved that April is Cookbook Exploitation Month
Like so many of us, I have a lot of cookbooks. I do try to weed them occasionally (when I worked in a public library, I was the type of librarian who loved getting rid of unused books), but I just counted and I have over thirty, plus an accordian file full of both tried and untried recipes collected over the years.
I recently came across this Casual Kitchen blog post, declaring that April is Cookbook Exploitation Month. The idea: pick an underused cookbook from your collection, and vow to cook at least once from it each week in April.
Well, my vote is in, and I will be using Cooking Light Annual Recipes - 2006 edition. I spent some time flipping through it, and I like that it is rich in indexes! Aside from the usual alphabetical index, there's also a menu index which seems to reflect regular features in the print magazine, such as Simple Suppers, Casual Entertaining, Vegetarian, and Global Kitchen. Another index lists the recipes by title, and yet another groups the recipes as they appeared in each month's issue, organized by the article or feature that they appeared in. I think that may wind up being especially helpful for me when I want to cook seasonally.
So far my complaints are two: lack of photos (though there are some, and at any rate should be expected in an annual compilation!) and that there is not a good way to find all the vegetarian offerings, which are what I would use for lunch group. Still, I've already bookmarked a couple of recipes, and am bound to find more! I will probably start with Polenta with Spinach, Black Beans, and Goat Cheese. Hmm, or maybe I'll do Orecchiette and Arugula with Creamy Ricotta Sauce. OR Pasta Risotto with Fennel?
So many ideas!
I recently came across this Casual Kitchen blog post, declaring that April is Cookbook Exploitation Month. The idea: pick an underused cookbook from your collection, and vow to cook at least once from it each week in April.
Well, my vote is in, and I will be using Cooking Light Annual Recipes - 2006 edition. I spent some time flipping through it, and I like that it is rich in indexes! Aside from the usual alphabetical index, there's also a menu index which seems to reflect regular features in the print magazine, such as Simple Suppers, Casual Entertaining, Vegetarian, and Global Kitchen. Another index lists the recipes by title, and yet another groups the recipes as they appeared in each month's issue, organized by the article or feature that they appeared in. I think that may wind up being especially helpful for me when I want to cook seasonally.
So far my complaints are two: lack of photos (though there are some, and at any rate should be expected in an annual compilation!) and that there is not a good way to find all the vegetarian offerings, which are what I would use for lunch group. Still, I've already bookmarked a couple of recipes, and am bound to find more! I will probably start with Polenta with Spinach, Black Beans, and Goat Cheese. Hmm, or maybe I'll do Orecchiette and Arugula with Creamy Ricotta Sauce. OR Pasta Risotto with Fennel?
So many ideas!
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