A brief review of food magazines and salmon in chermoula and Israeli cous cous

A brief review of food magazines and salmon in chermoula and Israeli cous cous

18 May, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

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I subscribe to a number of food-related magazines: Real Simple, Better Homes and Gardens, Cooks Illustrated and Food & Wine.

I think, this year, I’m going to trade Real Simple for Rachael Ray’s magazine. I’ve been thoroughly unimpressed with the general lack of flavor in Real Simple’s food section, even though I really like the concept of a magazine dedicated to organization.

Anyway, if I had to personify these magazines — personifying inanimate objects is, after all, one of my favorite pastimes — Better Homes and Gardens would be the hippy, organic-only, down-to-earth friend that is best sought out for hiking or an outdoor arts fest. Real Simple is the Type A, completely put together friend who gives the best logic-filled advice. Cooks Illustrated is the super intellectual, museum-g0ing, lover of science. And Food & Wine is the snobby, rich, designer-clothes-wearing friend who throws the best parties and is most fun after a few glasses of wine.

Food & Wine likes to put fancy names on their recipes and use the most expensive, hard-to-find ingredients out there. They also like to use the most involved cooking methods out there.

I rarely make a recipe of theirs, because 1) I probably haven’t even heard of half the ingredients listed so there’s no clues as to how the dish will taste, and 2) I don’t have the time to search through 16 specialty grocery stores, located miles from each other, for freaking wheat berries or whatever .

But occasionally, I realize that a recipe isn’t as scary as it sounds, and I might know where to find all the ingredients, and then I’ll go ahead and try it.

Such as the case with this salmon (original F&W recipe here). Basically you marinate this salmon in chermoula, which is, specifically an Algerian seafood marinade, and then you grill it, and serve it atop this fancy cous cous.

I daresay this is the best salmon I’ve ever cooked. Perhaps it’s because I forgot it was in the fridge, and let it sit in the marinade for over a week. Perhaps it’s because it was grilled to perfection. I don’t know. Whatever it was, I’m going to do it exactly the same the next time I make it.

The recipe includes a sauce composed mostly of ground up cooked mushrooms, tahini (which is a paste made from sesame seeds) and dill. I made up my own sauce, after I didn’t love the F&W version. I found theirs too bitter. Mine is still full of mushrooms, tahini and a bit of dill, but I tried to soften the flavors a bit, so it didn’t over power the salmon infused with the delicate herbal marinade.

So I started by putting my fish fillets into a baggie with the chermoula  — made with fresh cilantro, oil (I used sunflower, but you could use canola or vegetable),  freshly minced garlic, freshly minced ginger, salt, paprika, turmeric and cumin.

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Filed Under: Fish, Gluten-free, Sauces & Dips
Caesar dressing

Caesar dressing

27 April, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

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I know you’re busy. I know you have a zillion things going on in your head, and you need more sleep, and you work long, intense hours. I know that your job sucks sometimes, and you really need a vacation. I totally get it. I know that coming home on Friday night after a long, hard week where you spent the last five days barely catching your breath, is not the time when you want to spend time in the kitchen. I know it’s easier to buy a bottle of salad dressing on your way home and pour it over bagged lettuce — still in the bag. I totally get it.

You just have to trust me and push through. But it will be quick and it will be painless.

You’re going to have to mince garlic and measure things and whisk. You can totally have a glass of wine in your hand while you do it.

And when it’s all over, you can still use the bagged lettuce, but you’ll have something fresh and wonderful, and it will taste more amazing than anything you can buy in a bottle. I promise.

You just have to trust me.

Caesar dressing has nine ingredients. Most of them you probably already have in your kitchen. They are: minced garlic, Dijon mustard, vinegar, olive oil, mayonnaise, S&p and anchovy paste. All of them are equally important. Don’t leave any one out. I don’t care how much the thought of anchovies turns your stomach. Remember this post is all about trust. Don’t leave it out. (Anchovies add the umami!)

So I whisked the nine ingredients together and out came Caesar dressing. I promise it’s worth it. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sauces & Dips, Soups & Salads, Weekday quickies
Slow cooker boneless chicken in osso buco sauce

Slow cooker boneless chicken in osso buco sauce

22 April, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

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“Osso buco” is Italian for bone with a hole. Typically made with bone-in crosscut veal shank, the juices leach out of the bone marrow and flavor the meat and the sauce. Even though Better Homes and Gardens calls this dish osso buco, it’s totally not. For starters, it’s made with chicken and not veal. And my adaptation used boneless, skinless chicken thighs so there’s not even a bone there to have a hole in it.

However, the sauce flavored with tomato sauce, white wine, lemon juice and thyme is typical in modern versions of osso buco.

I started by adding flour, salt and pepper to a gallon-size resealable baggy. The chicken thighs went in there too, and I closed the bag and shook it up so the thighs were lightly coated in the flour mixture. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Pasta, Poultry, Sauces & Dips, Slow cooker, Weekday quickies
Homemade Alfredo sauce > jarred Alfredo sauce, always

Homemade Alfredo sauce > jarred Alfredo sauce, always

16 April, 2013 by · 1 Comment

I had my first wedding-freakout-related dream two nights ago. I think it’s because The Knot sent me an email that said “five months to go!” Like, that should not induce some sort of panicky dream.

So I dreamed that it was the morning of the ceremony and I had forgotten to do the hotel welcome bags, and I was running around our house searching for Pennsylvania-related items to throw into some bags to make them last-minute. A.J. and my parents were there trying to convince me that it was too late to do them, and it was OK that I forgot them and no one was going to be disappointed that there wasn’t a welcome bag to greet them at the hotel. And I said, “BUT WE NEED TO HAVE WELCOME BAGS!”

So let’s all hope that by the time Wedding Week arrives, I’ll still be able to respond to arguments full of logic and facts.

And I’m hoping you all will respond to the logic and facts as to why you need to make your own Alfredo sauce. It’s so easy, you guys. There’s something about jarred Alfredo sauce that really freaks me out. It tastes metallic, and I don’t understand how something that’s supposedly full of dairy could have a room-temperature shelf life. And making your own is so easy. And it’s so delicious. Like, people will notice that this isn’t jarred sauce-delicious. Like, you’ll wonder why you haven’t done this your whole life-delicious. Like, you’ll be able to discern whether a restaurant is using jarred or homemade-sauce delicious. Like, really, really delicious.

I adapted this recipe from 100 Days of Real Food, which is this awesome blog that talks about moving from a diet of highly processed items to more whole-grain, whole-food, natural consumption.

I started with a few tablespoons of unsalted butter and whole cream into a sauce pot over medium heat until the butter melted. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Pasta, Sauces & Dips, Vegetarian, Weekday quickies
Slow cooker peppered beef shank soaked in red wine

Slow cooker peppered beef shank soaked in red wine

2 April, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

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I always say how much I love my slow cooker because of how fast and easy it is to prepare a home-cooked dinner. And that’s true most of the time. But it also can be used as a cooking tool for more involved meals.

I made this slow cooker peppered beef shank soaked in red wine tonight. The recipe is involved in the beginning — it’s not going to save you on dishes or time — but the slow cooker is used to create tender pieces of meat and drain the marrow from bones for flavor.

Also, I feel like it’s important to note that this recipe calls for an entire bottle of wine. I feel like anytime a whole bottle of wine is involved, it’s a recipe I want to make.

I adapted this recipe from thekitchn.

The original recipe calls for 2 to 2 1/2 pounds of crosscut beef shank, a portion of leg that has tendons, muscles and bone. I could not find that in my local grocery store, so I ended up buying two leg bones and 2 1/2 pounds of boneless chuck eye. Brisket would work fine, too, I think.

I added the bones to my slow cooker. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Beef, Gluten-free, Sauces & Dips, Slow cooker
Beef and mushroom ragu over fettuccine

Beef and mushroom ragu over fettuccine

6 February, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

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For lunch today I had apple slices, cheese and crackers, which is my absolute favorite snack/meal ever. But I found myself wishing there were leftovers of this beef and mushroom ragu that we ate for dinner last night. If I’m willing to choose anything over apples, cheese and crackers, you know it must be good. Unfortunately for me, it was so good that we ate it all!

I adapted the recipe from Real Simple’s. Sometimes I’m really disappointed in their recipes because I feel like they lack flavor, but this was a good one!

I started with my main ingredients: ground beef (from a local farm!), sliced mushrooms, one chopped onion and a couple minced cloves of garlic.

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I also got a pot of salted water boiling on the stove and added my fettuccine. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Beef, Budget-friendly, Pasta, Sauces & Dips, Weekday quickies
A burning house and roasted red pepper ravioli sauce

A burning house and roasted red pepper ravioli sauce

22 January, 2013 by · 6 Comments

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There’s this blog in the world called The Burning House. Basically people take pictures of the things they would want to be sure to grab if their home was on fire.

The photos are usually very artful and beautiful, but what I especially like about the blog is the diversity of people who submit their own photo and list.

People of all ages, professions and from all corners of the world submit posts, which goes to show the fear of a burning house, and thoughts of what you would take with you, is something that really unites us as humans.

(That’s another reason I love food blogging. Everyone has to eat and cooking something over fire or heat is an ancient ritual that has withstood the test of time for most of society.)

And what people pick on their burning-house lists is so interesting! Some people are very practical, such as Sweedish student Zina Shareef, and choose their shoes and sunglasses, and other people are more sentimental such as Brazil journalist Jessica Fiuza who includes a bottle of whiskey and a tattoo machine in her list.

Anyway, I’ve never submitted anything to The Burning House, mostly because gathering all my favorite things in one place to photograph seems like too much work, but here’s my list, assuming that A.J. is not injured, and I have arms free for things. (Sidebar: if he was not able to walk, I like to think that I would become one of those women who gets superhuman strength when someone they love is in danger, like the moms who can lift cars off their children.)

  • Our cat and his favorite possession a broken basket that he sleeps in.
  • A cookbook that my mom made for me containing about 50 handwritten recipes from her and my childhood and an apron my mom made for me that I wear every time I cook or bake.
  • Two quilts that my mom made of my grandmother’s clothes and my soccer jerseys
  • My Macbook, its charger and my electronic hard drive
  • My phone and its charger
  • A “You did it card!” that was the last thing my grandma ever sent to me
  • A poem that A.J. wrote and framed for me for my birthday last year
  • A bell ornament that A.J. had engraved for me from a famous Mt. Pleasant glass cutter
  • A flask decorated with graphics and articles that I wrote for my college paper, The Maneater, that my friend made for me
  • My engagement ring, my green coat and a pair of socks and shoes that I’m presumably wearing
  • A leather bag that I use every day that my dad bought for me
  • And if we’re living in fantasy land where I have unlimited strength and time, probably my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer, my food processor and some cash

So now I’m totally curious what’s on your list. Leave a comment below and tell me! Do it!

If I had a way to bottle and preserve this roasted red pepper sauce, I would do it. We would have cabinets full of roasted red pepper sauce. And I would consider hauling that out of our burning apartment too.

What I’m trying to say through a poorly executed extended metaphor is that this sauce is so good. So good. It’s such a surprise sauce, because it looks sort of bland but it’s absolutely bursting with flavor.

I adapted this sauce from Your Homebased Mom.

The key is roasting the red pepper. Do not skip this step. Roasted red pepper is a whole lot better than regular red pepper.

To roast, I halved and seeded the bell peppers and poured some olive oil over each of them. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Pasta, Sauces & Dips, Vegetarian
A kitchen diaster and delicious beef stroganoff pizza

A kitchen diaster and delicious beef stroganoff pizza

12 January, 2013 by · 3 Comments

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On New Year’s Day, A.J. returned to our home to find a note on our door from our landlords. Apparently while he was celebrating New Year’s Eve with his parents, the line connecting the toilet in the apartment above us broke. Water rained down into their apartment, into ours, into the shop below us and pooled into the basement of our building.

Water that had been running for at least two hours, and probably longer, had saturated the carpet and ceilings and walls in the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom.

Thankfully, most of our personal items remained unharmed a family heirloom jewelry chest that I inherited from my grandmother that I had been keeping in the bathroom.

This week, the insurance-provided contractors began gutting our apartment. They tore out the floors, ceilings and walls down to the stacked timber frame that was glued together with brick mortar when the building, constructed in 1924.

While I’m super excited that our apartment is getting a facelift (including the permanent elimination of carpet in the kitchen and bathroom), our house is completely upside down. Everything from those three rooms is stacked against two walls in the dining room and we’ve had to shower at our gym for the last week.

So obviously I can’t cook very easily. I’ve been trying to use the crockpot more because a) it’s easier especially while working during the week and b) I don’t have too long to navigate around all sorts of construction machines scattered around everywhere.

The night before the construction started, I made this beef stroganoff pizza, and I think A.J. and I are both hanging onto its delicious memory in order to make it through last week and next week.

I’m not sure what made me think beef stroganoff on a pizza crust would be a good choice, but man, was it a good choice. Perhaps one of the best food-related choices I’ve ever made.

The crust replaces the egg noodles over which beef stroganoff is typically served. And then there’s a ton of cheese on top, which isn’t part of traditionally stroganoff, but totally added to the pizza version.

So I started with a 1 1/2-pound cut of tender beef. This was tenderloin. I trimmed the fat off of it and then cut it into really thin strips.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Beef, Sauces & Dips
DIY pumpkin coffee creamer

DIY pumpkin coffee creamer

5 January, 2013 by · 2 Comments

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I stopped buying coffee creamer a few months ago. It was getting too expensive and had too many preservatives in it. Since I like a little coffee with my cream, instead of the other way around, we were going through, like, a regular-sized bottle each week.

I found a recipe on Pinterest for homemade vanilla coffee creamer that used all natural ingredients: one 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, five tablespoons vanilla extract and one can of water. After a few weeks, I felt like I was spending the same amount on vanilla extract than I was on the coffee creamer, so I cut that out and just used the sweetened, condensed milk and water, which was fine. It wasn’t as good as the coffee creamer you buy in the store, but it was sufficient for our morning coffees.

As a special treat, I decided to make pumpkin coffee creamer using the same sweetened, condensed milk base. Oh man, this was the life changer. This ensured that I would never go back to regular store-bought coffee creamer again.

It’s made with all-natural ingredients and tastes better than any coffee creamer I’ve ever had. Also, it can be customized. For example, I like my pumpkin coffee to have more spice and less pumpkin, which is why I hate Starbucks’ pumpkin-spiced lattes. But if you like more pumpkin and less spice, add less spice or more pumpkin or both!

I started with my base: one 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk in my shaker container. (We store our coffee creamer in one of those protein powder nutritional drink containers like you buy at GNC.) [Read more...]

Filed Under: Beverages, Sauces & Dips
No time for breakfast? Egg (rolls) for dinner.

No time for breakfast? Egg (rolls) for dinner.

6 December, 2012 by · 4 Comments

When I was younger, my mom used to stand at the bottom of our stairs and yell my name in an attempt to get me out of bed for school. This happened every day. Probably because she got tired of walking up the stairs no fewer than 1,000 times to remind me how many dwindling minutes I had to get ready.

I’ve always been a terrible waker-upper. It’s the worst part of my morning every single morning, but I know it’s better than not waking up.

Now, I’m sort of an adult, and I still have a terrible time waking up. Sometimes I’ll stay up all night, just to avoid waking up the next day because I know it will be a struggle or that I’ll simply sleep through alarms.

While we were eating egg rolls for dinner tonight, I told A.J. I wanted to be at work no later than 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. He laughed and then I laughed because we know there’s little chance of that happening if my head touches the pillow before then.

He tries valiantly to wake me up gently every morning, but I usually stir and groan and grunt and then go right back to sleep like nothing ever happens. Or yell at him.

“I’m getting up at 5, so I’ll poke and prod you until you wake up,” he said.

“OK!”

“But you’ll hate me.”

“Only temporarily,” I replied.

“It will be a short and intense hatred.”

I would love to be the kind of adult that wakes up early, bounds out of bed before a single alarm bell and be ready a long eight to 10 hours of work after an hour of fitness and a healthy, homemade, well-rounded breakfast.

Instead I’m the type of person that bolts out of bed 20 minutes before she has to be at work, throws on a wrinkled pair of slacks and does her makeup at red lights on the way to work.

The one redeeming quality about the wrinkled-slacks-wearing person is that she’s also the type of person that thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to cook 10 egg rolls for dinner in an effort to make some headway on a list she made nearly a year ago.

And the egg rolls were pretty darn good. I adapted Taste for Adventure‘s Pad Thai Egg Rolls recipe.

Michou and I also made these during our cooking lessons on Sunday, so this post is has pictures of both and includes a very cute graphic on how to fold egg rolls!

I started by making the filling. I browned some ground chicken, chopped green onions and minced garlic. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Appetizers, Poultry, Sauces & Dips, Sides, Weekday quickies
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