Hobo Kitchen

Marshmallow Fluff

2009-02-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

I'm hedging a bit here; I had a total urge to make my own marshmallows, but we're coming to the end of the winter and they look like they might require more counterspace than I've got, so I was putting it off. All it took was making bread yesterday to realise what the solution could be: one mouthful of peanut-butter on homemade bread, and I knew all that was missing was FLUFF.

Don't get me wrong; I never, ever got to have fluff as a child. For good reason, now I know what goes in it: it must be a dentist's worst nightmare. But I had bread, and I had peanut butter, and... Mmmm. Actually, I can't relate this without a fluffernutter sandwich. I'll be right back.

Mmmmmm. See, this is another reason to make fluff seldom and sparingly. Because this happens -- it's delicious, and you want to eat it. If I had kids, I'd probably make this once a year, maybe in February during school vacation -- you know, something to tide them over in those cruel candyless months between Christmas and Easter. I'd also make them help make it, because DAMN, the amount of sugar in this will establish for them exactly why this is a once-a-year treat.

Okay! Now that the health warning's out of the way, here we go.

I used Eileen Talanian's "Marshmallows" book, which looks like it belongs on Amy Sedaris'scoffee table. To start with, I made the base syrup: 1 cup of water, just over two and a half cups of sugar, a teaspoon of cream of tartar, and a dash of salt. Stir this until nicely mixed, then boil in a heavy pan. When it's boiling, cover the pan for 2 minutes (to wash sugar crystals from the sides of the pan via the steam). Uncover, stick a candy thermometer in -- but NO STIRRING! That'll form crystals again, and when the syrup cools the crystals will go through everything. Bad. Wait for the thermometer to go to 240, then kill the heat. Cool for 15 minutes before putting in jars...

...unless you're making fluff, in which case measure out 1.25 cups of the syrup and put into a saucepan with half a cup of water and another 1.5 cups of granulated sugar. Same as with the syrup, mix the ingredients, bring to a boil, cover and sweat the saucepan for 2 minutes, and then chuck in the candy thermometer.

Separate four eggs, putting the whites in your trusty Kitchenaid and saving the yolks for some future attempt at eggs benedict. Add 1/8 tsp salt to the egg whites, but don't start the mixer yet.

At the 220 mark, start the egg whites in the Kitchenaid and whisk on medium until it's thick and fluffy. Has the boiling sugar stuff reached 240? Good! Remove from heat, remove candy thermometer, and be VERY CAREFUL. The base is all gooey and sticky and also 240 degrees hot, so obviously this is a bad time to have it come in contact with your skin. Tip the base into the mixer while the whisk's going, but don't pour it onto the whisk, pour it along the side of the bowl -- aim for a point above the top level of the egg whites.

Once everything's in, crank the mixer up to high for 7 minutes -- this is also the time to add 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract, just as the mixer's kicking into high gear. At the end of the 7 minutes, act fast to get everything into plastic containers and into the fridge, it lasts for 2 weeks.

I did that with most of the fluff, saving aside a little to put on my fresh bread with peanut butter, and also holding aside about 2 cups at the end when I dashed a tiny bit of mint extract into the mixer and made minty fluff for topping my cocoa. Mmmmm. Looks delicious there, and is delicious now.

The original Marshmallow Syrup recipe is actually double what I've posted above, but considering I just made an actual quart of fluff off of halving it, I think that most people wouldn't need the full dose of Syrup. And of course, I'd be remiss not to point out that this batch of fluff has no oil or anything naughty like that, but certainly DOES have almost FOUR CUPS OF SUGAR. Yikes.

So, what I've learned about fluff: Like most things that are bad for me, I love it. My mother was right not to give it to me in elementary school, though if I'd seen how much sugar went into it I might've been more reasonable about that rule. I would make this very seasonally, as in "for February school vacation" or "for a sundae-making event". And I'd make my consumer watch, so they know exactly what they're getting into.

Domestic Obsession

2009-02-14T15:52:00.001-08:00

It might do to explain what's going on here.

I have an annual compulsion that started right around puberty. It wasn't terribly noticeable the first year; basically, I spend about two months furiously cross-stitching in every spare moment I had. After I'd mastered a weird little tapestry-like cross-stitch (that still hangs in my parents' house), it went away. I think I've still got a half-finished one somewhere with roses and bunnies on it or something...

Eh, I was about 13, it's not like everyone's got immaculate taste at that age.

But this wasn't a one-time thing. The next year I suddenly started making really ornate throw pillows. The year after that I think was knitting, and a rather long episode resulted in around eight Irish Chain quilts and a Christmas present to my parents known as the "Swan Song Quilt" because it is ruthlessly ornate and also the last quilt I finished.

It really is a compulsion, too, like somewhere in my lizard brain, a plot hatches to make me excel in some completely weird long-lost (or neglected) craft. My entire family knows it as the Domestic Obsession, because it usually seems to be a skill that would be required of a woman on a wagon trail or Pleasantville or something. I've started to see it as a series of Scout-like merit badges, where I have to achieve an unknown set of skills before I get the badge and the compulsion eases. It's completely insane.

And this year? Well, either I'm turning into a 50s housewife (compulsions: painting, flower arrangement, entertaining) or some sort of recession-era cook (soups, dishes from low-cost items, making own bread). But sometimes these things collide, such as today's totally weird skill: marshmallow fluff production.

Anyhow. Just wanted to explain what's really going on here, and also to note that all of these weird little skills (dressmaking, quilting, cooking, etc) have turned out to be useful in the long run. Would I have been able to cater my sister's bridal shower without a rather intense baking compulsion a few years ago? Probably not. And you'd be surprised at how many things are strangely interrelated, so when the side of your skirt rips on a piece of metal at your desk, you can borrow a coworker's sewing kit ("for loose buttons") and patch it up in a reasonable manner.

So while the Domestic Obsession is somewhat involuntary and occasionally expensive and often not really that useful at the time, in the long run it's always good to learn new things. And maybe the compulsion side of me is smarter than I think.

Bread!

2009-02-14T15:09:00.000-08:00

Simple, eh? I've made bread before, years ago, but that was before I got a Kitchenaid. Then, I needed a lot of kneading space and time and while the bread was good, it wasn't fall-in-love good. And the kitchen ended up coated in flour.

This time round, things were different.

I'm using Alton Brown's Basic Bread recipe. You really do need a scale for this recipe, but as you'll note, I winged it with conversion of bread flour into cups. (In future, I won't do this.) All of the Good Eats eps are available on YouTube, and I'd suggest watching the ep while making the bread because he explains the science of what he's doing. Such as "why mix together a yeast slurry the night before?"

So, into a suitable container: first portion flour, honey, first portion rapid yeast, and bottled/filtered water. Whisk quickly, then leave in the fridge overnight.

Wake up the next morning, put rest of flour, rest of yeast, and salt into the Almighty Kitchenaid! Attach piratey bread hook, arrr. Tip the yeast slurry into the mixer, and turn the gears onto "2". Why 2? Because Kitchenaid really can't handle anything faster while kneading bread, but no one tells you that until your machine starts making funny noises. And if you've measured the flour incorrectly, your dough's going to be REALLY thick and bad, bad things might happen.

Once the dough's picked up all the flour in the bowl and blended in well, tip up the mixer's head and leave the dough at the bottom of the bowl to rest for 20 minutes, covering the bowl with a teatowel. It'll be a little puffier, at which point lower the hook, bwa ha ha! Knead mercilessly for 5-10 minutes.

Lightly grease a container and chuck the doughball in; put this in your oven with a roasting pan full of boiling water. Don't turn the oven on or anything, this is just to keep the steam in an enclosed place with the rising dough. Leave it alone for 2 hours.

I'll update with kneading photos sometime, maybe. It's probably better to leave it to the Good Eats episode. Besides, the really weird and important part was the slurry. (That, and not breaking your mixer.)

But here is the result! It's Franken bread! I didn't shape the loaf as well as I might have, so there's a weird little bulge going on at the bottom of the bread, but that didn't affect the flavour. Which was delicious!

All together, good project. Long project, and passively time-consuming -- you don't really need to do much more work than about 30 minutes, but you need to be present. But this is a pretty good thing to do on a Saturday morning, and you'll have fresh (unpreserved, so short shelflife) bread for the weekend. And when you add up all the ingredients, it's cheaper than buying nice bread from a local bakery. So really, it's all about working the time into your schedule.

But let me tell you: this fresh bread with honey, or jam, or nutella or peanut butter? Seriously satisfying.

FrankenOmelette

2009-02-08T12:29:00.000-08:00

This is not your traditional omelette. It's uglier, it's cooked in the wrong pan, it requires more hardware and the only other time I've seen it made even remotely like this was in Africa. And then, the man beat the egg whites frothy with only the giant muscles of his arm! And yet, despite all of those caveats, this is the way I like to make omelettes because they are incredibly filling and because I like fluffy things.

Start off with a pan and oil. And, in this case, "Psych". (Why don't they put more episodes on? The five most recent just isn't doing it for me. Same thing for "Bones" and all the other shows I'm really not dedicated enough to watch on their own, but will happily stream while cooking. C'mon, Hulu! Target your audience!)

First: veg. Find whatever veg you've got on hand and brown it in a pan with oil (note my awesome new oil drizzler, which is much easier than manhandling an oily plastic bottle over an open flame). A skillet's a good idea for this, but I think I took this series of pictures while stubbornly refusing to do a mountain of dishes just offscreen, so like I said: wrong pan, wrong everything. Regardless! Here, I am sauteeing onions and half a diced bell pepper. (I was actually reusing onions abandoned from a misread recipe, so diced isn't the optimal condition for omelette onions -- I prefer to just slice them for omelettes, because the longer strips help bind a pretty loose concoction together.) Once cooked, tip pan so oil runs to one side and finished veg drain on the other.

While the veg is chilling, grate some cheese. I like swiss. I also like that grating never grates swiss cheese perfectly, so you get to nibble on all the remaining crubs. Nom nom nom.

On the far right, Orangina. If you've never tried Orangina, I highly recommend it. If you haven't and never will, then have you ever tried diluted orange juice? Sounds weird, I know, and I hated it all growing up; I'd accidentally grab my dad's glass and then go into choking histrionics, but maybe my ability to take in enormous sugary substances is coming to an end, because I can find orange juice really overpowering these days. Often, I'll just throw a couple of ice cubes in a glass, fill it half with orange juice, then the rest of the way with water. Yes, I'm turning into my parents, thank you.

Separate eggs. Whip whites into a frenzy, just to that point where they stay pointy when you pull the whisk out. Add pepper, salt, a good dash of fines herbes and the egg yolks again. Start folding (don't go nuts, or you'll pop all the air bubbles the egg whites just got). Now fold the veg and MOST of the cheese in, but hold a little bit of cheese back for later.

Hopefully enough oil stayed in the pan for you to give it a good swirl round the base before putting the egg mixture in. This is where there's a real difference between the conventional, prettier omelette and the gorgeous mess I'm making here: the genuine omelette article basically lays down a sort of egg crepe, waits for it to be mostly cooked, then loads it up with filling. So most of the time, you're just cooking a layer of egg, which is nice and light and crisps up at the edge and is pretty hard to scorch.

By comparison, this is totally easy to scorch. I have possibly just gotten used to the slightly charcoaly taste of this style of omelette, but hey. If you know you like that more ladylike omelette, there are plenty of recipes out there. This one, in my book, uses less ingredients and fills you up faster. So there will be ripping and scorching and if you're serving it to someone who doesn't love you unconditionally you might want to think again, but otherwise, it's delicious.

Sprinkle the rest of the grated cheese across the surface of the omelette. Keep running a silicone spatula round the edge of the omelette, to keep it from sticking to the pan. When the bubbles popping in the omelette's centre don't fill in as quickly, and when the sides of the omelette seem pretty firm, fold the omelette in half.

Yep, it'll get squishy and oozy and likely tear. Patch it up as much as you can, then press the entire thing into a D shape. For the next few minutes, flip the D-shaped packet from side to side, to even out the cooking without burning everything.

And there you go, you're done! I've tarted up this photo a fair bit, what with the sun and the flowers, and that red splotch you see is sundried tomato marinade (MILES better than ketchup, and very little goes a long way), but this is a delicious thing to eat when you've missed breakfast and you're just not in the mood for lunch but you want something filling. This is filling. And really, really good.

Chicken and Bowtie Pasta

2009-02-08T11:29:00.000-08:00

I had my neighbours over for dinner the other night, so they could oooh at the gorgeous new paint and I could cook. This is a really good, really nice-looking dish that is mostly prepared before people show up at your door, and that's part of why I like it so much. It also has only one crazy ingredient (sundried tomatoes) and keeps well for leftovers. So go out and get: chicken (I used one breast for this example, which made two servings), a head of broccoli, garlic, bowtie pasta (farfalle, I think), sundried tomatoes (either in oil or, if dried, follow the hydrating instructions on the packet), and then some of the usual suspects: oil, butter, salt, pepper and dried basil. Oh, also parmesan, for serving.

Whatever cooking pot you choose, you need to make sure it has a fitted lid and can easily be used to brown meat and contain liquid -- you'll also need enough real estate on the bottom of the pan to shove all the meat to one side and cook all your broccoli, which can mean a biiiig pan. I have followed my Le Creuest fixation, obviously. Heat the pot on medium heat, then drizzle olive oil.

What is that odd tool? It's a garlic press, and it's another one of my favourite things. I have been known to travel internationally with only carry-on luggage, and pack this. I dislike chomping down on half-cooked, gummy garlic, and this stops it from happening. If you're not a devotee, just mince up two cloves of garlic per chicken breast you're planning to use. But here's the thing: you're going to want to just cook that garlic until it's a nice golden colour, and that doesn't take long at ALL. So BEFORE pulling out the press, make sure you've diced up all of your chicken into pieces about as big as the top joint of your thumb. That way you don't have to dither and chop while frantically trying to prevent the garlic from burning, because burnt garlic is really, really unpleasant.

Once the garlic is golden, throw in all your chickeny bits and stir until cooked. You can also add about a teaspoon of salt, teaspoon of pepper (hold back a bit on the seasoning at this stage, because you might have guests who hate salt -- you can taste it closer to the end). Grab hold of your broccoli and cut off the florets, rinse them in a colander and, when the chicken's no longer pinkish, push all the chicken to one side and put the florets in the pan to crisp up a bit. Watch for the broccoli burning, but generally this is a stir-frequently thing. While this is cooking, multitask: if you're serving to guests almost as soon as they arrive, start boiling water for the pasta stage.

I've also got the next steps on deck in the photo: white wine, dried basil and a packet of chicken boullion-stuff. Offscreen, I'm boiling half a cup of water in my electric tea kettle (for the chicken boullion).

I'm not sure if it's unfamiliar in the US or what, but this certain meal always makes a really good impression if I'm making it for guests. This is a totally typical dinner at my house growing up, by the way, but I've never been able to figure out if we're in the mainstream or some sort of mad outlier. I remember a high school friend coming over to pick me up on a Saturday afternoon, and he walked in to find my tiny nuclear family clustered round a table that had on it a baguette, a couple of cheeses, a bowl of grapes and I think a small salade nicoise -- you know, a normal weekend lunch. He was not just confused, he was sort of frightened. I'd been over to his for dinner and knew they had stuff like tuna casserole (a totally unknown dish in my house), but I think something in his head just refused to assemble our spread into a "meal". He ranted about it all afternoon, wonderingly. Like he'd walked in on cannibals or something.

With that in mind, check to see if they broccoli's done -- it'll be greener and a little bit crispy. If so, then pour in about a quarter cup of white wine. Stir everything about and let it soak in for a minute, then add a teaspoon and a half of basil, the chicken boullion, and about a quarter cup of water. Stir and leave on a medium-low heat to simmer while you eyeball the amount of diced sundried tomatoes you want in. Slice it up into bits, so it looks like confetti, then mix that in. Let this absolutely delicious concoction simmer for 10 minutes.

The really good thing about this is that you can make it, cover it and leave it to stand for a while if you want to have a good hour before eating. Once the pot's cooked down a bit, add a knob of butter (going by the side of the packet, maybe half a tablespoon?), stir, and then set the heat very low and COVER THE DISH. If you don't cover it, the entire thing will boil away, obviously. When you're ready to eat, cook the pasta, drain it and just tip it into the original pot. The butter/stock/wine acts as a sauce, toss everything together, and you're set.

This is where the genius of Le Creuset comes in again -- if you've not been a total mess, you get to put the entire pot down on the table for people to serve themselves. Ahhhh, lazy cookware, how I love you.

The very last thing you need is parmesan cheese. Doesn't matter what kind, and you could grate it or slice it thinly, but it really completes the whole dish. My mom used to add it before serving, but then again we rarely had leftovers. I wait until after serving, because parmesan is really quite gross once it's been in tupperware and nuked. Without the cheese, the chicken/veg/pasta combo works out just fine.
The one thing I'd close with is: use better wine than I did. I've always been of the opinion that cooking wine can be crap wine, and while I'm still convinced that's true, I forgot that you should also make sure you can drink the remaining wine WITH your meal. And the stuff at the upper right is disgusting. If you're looking for something nice, go with Monkey Bay, both affordable and awesome.

Cheating

2009-02-08T11:17:00.000-08:00

There's a rule, and the rule goes like this:

I am not allowed to buy exclusively sweet things, unless I am making something for an event, when people will come over and eat the food and hopefully leave with some of it. And if I DO break down and have to make something sweet without an event-excuse, then I must do it from scratch... which hopefully brings me right back to the fact that I am not allowed to buy exclusively sweet things, like blocks of chocolate.

But then something like this happens...

It was on sale! I was tired! I hadn't had brownies in ages! It was Ghiradelli! I had milk I had to use up! There is no chocolate in my house! It was on sale! I forgot about the leftover hunk of zucchini bread in the freezer! I'll make up for it with healthy meals for the rest of the week! I froze almost all of them! The flat smelled so good with them in the oven! I'm unemployed! I'll go to the gym on Monday!

Ah, forbidden brownies. So tempting. So delicious.

Curry Chicken & Veg

2009-02-03T19:16:00.000-08:00

Time to use that chicken from earlier in the week. Surprisingly, the summer squash is still going strong, but the parsnip's faded (note the wrinkly bits starting), and I have an entire bag of carrots to demolish, so I'm doing the root vegetable thing again. I've also still got that half of a butternut squash. Crank the oven up to 350, and start with the peeling and chopping.

Today's Hulu feature: The Tick! I love this show. The prep time for this meal is less than the 20-something minutes a Tick episode runs, too, so that's convenient. (Surprisingly, I am not sponsored by Hulu.) I'm also feeling spectacularly lazy today, and am going to try and limit myself to cleaning one pot: a Le Creuset dutch oven.

Batmanuel has reminded me that I'm already putting two sweet-tasting vegetables into this pot (the two carrots and the giant parsnip), so why add butternut squash? Wise Batmanuel. So I've shelved the squash for another day --it looks like it can wait -- and instead pulled out a medium yellow onion, which I chopped into rough eighths. I also added three cloves of garlic, which will get very savoury as it cooks. Everything gets mixed together with 1.5 tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, and a good three-quarters tablespoon of rosemary needles. All of this goes into the preheated oven uncovered for 20 minutes.

The chicken bit's easy. It turned out the last two breasts in the packet weren't separated, so I didn't bother cutting a pocket, I just folded the single piece along the breastbone after peppering and salting it all over. Two slices of lemon inside, which could be fixed in with skewers, I guess, but I'm not that fussy. But then I remembered I just got a new blend of curry powder (with cardamom and saffron in), and decided to add that in. Curry can be powerful, and I am a wimp, so I just sprinkled a dusting on the inside and outside of the chicken and rubbed it in well. I know that the photo makes it look like the chicken's the colour of a butternut squash -- don't worry, it's still good, that's just curry.

When the 20-minute buzzer goes, pull out the vegetables and mix them up. Place the chicken on top of the vegetables, keeping the lemon tucked inside. If you don't like lemon in this recipe, it's not key, you can leave it out.

Cover your dish, either with a lid or with tin foil (obviously, be careful if putting on tin foil). Back in the oven, set the timer for 30 minutes.

Damn, Tick's over. Find alternate viewing option, though hopefully not "The Biggest Loser", which will make you feel guilty about oil and starchy vegetables, and likely make you lose your appetite for what's in the oven.

After 30 minutes, remove the lid of the dish and flip the chicken to the other side. If you've got the room, shove the veg around a bit. If not? Eh, whatever. Everything, back in the oven! Keep the cover off for the last round of cooking, because we want to counter the steam session everything just went through and get everything slightly crispy again. 20 minutes this time, so you can run off to find the wine you'll be drinking with dinner.

Once you're back from the wine cellar (for the former investment bankers out there), the buzzer should have gone. Ahhhhhh, dinner! And let me tell you, this was definitely delicious. It also probably had a little too much oil on the vegetables, which is why I'm suggesting 1.5 tablespoons, rather than the excessive amount I think I ended up putting in there.

But the chicken (that's one breast on the plate, the second's joining the rest of the veg as leftovers) was absolutely fantastic! I love curry! And of course, as always, this would go really well with rice -- not at the same time as carrots and parsnips, clearly, but if your supermarket's got better green beans than mine does, you're in business.

Zucchini Bread

2009-02-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's Superbowl Sunday. No, this means nothing to me.

Zucchini bread isn't what you're thinking -- it's actually quite a sweet, cake-like bread that is fantastic with tea. Set all the cake stuff aside for mixing -- three eggs, a cup of vegetable oil, a tablespoon of vanilla essence, and a cup and a half of sugar (did you know those Twist'n'Loc storage containers are marked for cup measurements?) . Gaze at your Kitchenaid mixer with almost unhealthy fervour, but walk away -- it's best to get everything else prepared before you get to blendin'.

Oven at 350 degrees, please. And make sure that whatever pan you're using can be easily placed mid-level in the oven.

One thing that's become a sort of kitchen tool for me is my computer. You can find a million different variations of recipes on any given Google search, or head to Epicurious (aka, the mothership). It's like all the world's cookbooks in one place -- for instance, the recipe I'm using for this bread is likely evolved from the "Silver Palate Cookbook", with a few changes here and there. But since the laptop's already in the kitchen, why not put it to full use? For me, that means the glorious mind-control platform that is Hulu.com, where I can find things like Psych episodes and archived movies and The Daily Show. Truly, a wondrous invention that I hope the writers got a damn good residual deal on.

The zucchini bit's simple: wash, peel off any rough or scarred patches, but leave most of the skin on. Then grate grate grate, using the smaller grater side if possible. May I suggest "Revenge of the Pink Panther" as accompaniment? It's old, but hilarious. Don't let the Steve Martin remake turn you off the originals.

Once you've grated all of the zucchini, you'll realise that zucchini has a huge amount of water in it. Using a sieve is probably the best way to go about it, but I don't have one of those so had to make do with sort of tipping the bowl and squishing all the grated stuff to one side. You can also just squeeze out the moisture by hand. Either way, you want to get to a stage where green liquid isn't collecting in the bottom of the bowl.

Back to the Kitchenaid! I am unreasonably excited about this, because it's my birthday present from my family, and I have always wanted one of these. So I intend to use every possible attachment with little rhyme or reason. With that in mind, I whisked together the eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla until the mix was light and thick, then switched over to that beater contraption and dumped in the drained zucchini.

Blend this together for about 30 seconds, making sure all the zucchini's spread through the egg mix.

In another bowl, sift together the following: two cups of flour, two tablespoons of baking soda, one tablespoon of baking powder, one teaspoon of salt, one tablespoon of ground cloves and one of cinnamon. I've also added half a teaspoon of "Apple Pie Spice", which has some mace and allspice in it as well.

I'm pretty sure that the weird guard shield on the bowl isn't necessary. I'm pretty sure I'm using it anyway. Add the flour blend and mix for about a minute.
(At right: prelude to a cautionary tale about improperly unpacking groceries? Perhaps.)

The tin I'm going to use is a cast-iron bundt-type tin. My mother got it for me at Home Goods. She's got one that makes me think of the Sydney Opera House, but this one's more understated. Last time I cooked something in hers, entire sections of archway stayed stuck to the pan and I had to cement them back on with lemon icing. In an effort to avoid the same fate, I've carefully cleaned all the grooves of this pan and bought the Baking Pam aerosol spray, which I will apply liberally to the inside of the mould. Place in the oven on that mid-level rack and set the timer for 1 hour 10 minutes. The top of the bread is going to puff up considerably, so make sure you've got the needed clearance.

Settle down for the hour wait. If you've been stopping and starting the way I was, you'll be up to the part where Inspector Clouseau returns home only to find out that he's been declared dead and his Asian manservant Kato has turned his apartments into some sort of opium den/whorehouse. You know, there's plenty in this movie that's objectionable by today's standards (mostly racial and politically correct stuff), but I also haven't seen a joke involving feces or weird sexual leering. It's a refreshing change after the Austin Powers stuff, and I don't really get why Kato in the new series is Jean Reno. Kato's awesomeness lies in the fact that he is just as clueless as Clouseau, but together they make a mad sort of sense.

Enough film critiques. Retrieve the marshmallows you hid from your sister and make a cup of cocoa, then settle in for the rest of the film.

One hour later, Clouseau's in Hong Kong with Dyan Cannon and the bread's done! Better yet, after 15 minutes cooling on a rack, the entire thing tipped out without anything sticking to the inside of the mould. Voila!

Roast Butternut and Onion Soup

2009-01-31T17:42:00.000-08:00

My sister jogged by for a visit today. Literally jogged -- she lives about a mile away with her husband (you'll be seeing more of them; or more specifically their cooking, because they have a grill and a flair for fancy meat-based dishes, both areas where I am lacking.... oh, and they're both employed, and have promised to feed me occasionally). Anyway, last time she dropped by, I was similarly still employed, and so played hostess as she rampaged through my cabinets. As I recall, she ate half my lunch, drank a big mug of cocoa, and then made off with half a dozen freshly-baked brownies in under an hour. Amazing.

But things have changed. Now I am unemployed and have time on my hands, so when she drops by it's not so much an opportunity for her to pillage my freezer; instead, it's a chance to test out new recipes on an unwitting volunteer. Bwa ha!

First, introducing the main players: my new beloved, the butternut squash, and an old standby, the onion. Other things you'll need for this dish are olive oil, dried rosemary, salt, pepper, and chicken stock. I'm not fussy about the chicken stock, be it liquid or homemade or cubed or in a packet, and I often leave it out of soups that already have meat in them. But in this case, we're using it.

I'm also bringing in spices for this one, though I'm guessing you could mix the spices up with another set and come out with a totally different flavour. I'm using whole cumin seeds, ginger, and sweet powdered curry.

Fire up the oven at the customary 375 degrees and put your stockpot or soup pot on the stove at a low setting. I've used the top half of the butternut squash for this -- peeled it (with a vegetable peeler, even though the skin feels pretty tough), cubed it and put it in an oven-safe dish that will roughly accomodate a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, and a teaspoon of rosemary needles. Toss everything and stick it in the oven, and set the timer for 25 minutes.

The pan on the stove should be hot now; take about half a teaspoon of cumin and throw those in, then stir until they're toasted a bit (you can tell when the cuminy fumes start wafting up at you, around the 1-minute mark). Tip the cumin seeds into a cup and stash it somewhere you won't knock it over. Put two tablespoons of olive oil into the heated pan, and keep the heat on low.

Food Network-fu the onion (that thing where you cut it in half, then slice it at angles before chopping it up). Once it's diced into pieces, add the onion to the soup pot, give everything a good stir and then cover the pot. This is where all the "keep the heat on low!" stuff gets serious -- you're going to have to keep coming back and stirring the onions to make sure they don't catch and burn to the bottom. The lid on the pot means that they won't fry, but burning's a problem if the heat's too high.

Turn around to discover that your sister has somehow unearthed a bag of mini marshmallows and is steadily devouring them. Cannily make her tea, and wait until she drinks it before saying "Oh, I should have offered you cocoa instead, to have with the marshmallows!" At this point, your sister will not be able to handle cocoa, knowing she's going to have soup and then have to walk home.

Confiscate marshmallows.

Buzzer! Stir slowly-roasting butternut, then reset the timer for another 10 minutes and put it back in the oven. Now stir the onions again. (Feel free to get paranoid about the onions.)

If you have an electric kettle, this is a great time to fill it up (or refill it, depending on your sister) and get it ready for the soup phase of our operation. If you have a stovetop kettle, same deal. Also, pull out all of those spices you kept safely out of reach: toasted cumin, ginger, curry.

At the second buzzer, check the butternut squash to see if it's golden and lovely. We'll assume that 35 minutes of roasting did the trick and you can turn off the oven (if not, repeat in 10 minute increments until satisfied). Spoon the squash into your lovely unburnt onion-filled soup pot and stir everything together, then pour in enough boiled water to totally cover the vegetables. Add in a packet/cube of chicken stock (thriftier than liquid), stir again and cover; at this point you can turn up the heat a tiny bit, just to make sure that the water keeps boiling well.

I hate to waste a hot oven, and soup alone can be a bit dull unless it's got identifiable bits in it (and this one won't, we're pulverizing it), so I toasted some english muffins and then made mini-pizza-things out of them. At left you see the naked muffins, before I found a few slices of cheddar and spoonfuls of this sundried tomato marinade I use instead of ketchup -- it's incredibly powerful, very nice. Once you've figured out what to put on the muffins, stick everything on a cookie sheet and put them on the top rack of the turned-off oven, and while you finish up the soup they'll just nicely melt together.

The muffin topping search-and-recovery mission hopefully took you about five minutes. Now uncover the pot and make sure nothing's stuck to the bottom (if so, your heat's too high, adjust). Add in a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, a teaspoon of curry, half a teaspoon of ginger, and all of the cumin you toasted. I know these quantities sound miniscule, but most of these recipes are adjusted for a eat one, freeze one plan; if you're married or have a roommate or kids, just assume everything's been made for 2-3 people.

Ironically, at this point I realised that in-pot blending such a small amount in my Le Creuset was probably a recipe for disaster. That's why I tipped everything into a saucepan to continue. And while using my immersion blender, I thought "wow, that certainly creates an odd suction against the bottom of the pot if you hold it the wrong way". And I specifically remember thinking "Hunh, this could get really messy if you're not carefu--- AAAGH!"

Eh, I needed to clean the stovetop anyway.

Once the sister had stopped chortling long enough to set the table, this is what was served. It is VERY filling, especially if you're an idiot and use bowls that are really too big for this job. The sister said that the roasting of the squash was definitely noticeable and appreciated, and I think that's true -- I initially heard of this recipe done with squash just thrown in with the chopped onions, and I suspect that would come out really weak. The onion's not sharp in this at all, but it is present. I was also surprised that a soup with absolutely no dairy in it could come out with the appearance of a cream-based soup! But it was lovely and smoky, and the tomato marinade and cheddar were a nice sharp addition. All in all, not bad for half a squash, an onion, and a spice rack.

...oh, and just in case you don't like onion, you can probably pull this off by using half the onion and just adding a little more squash. I made roast butternut squash soup in much this same fashion last month, and as these two containers show (Twist'n'Loc, my absolute favourite tupperwareish brand ever), you can get quite a different colour of soup by using a different squash-to-onion ratio. And it might also be a good trick to reserve some of the roast squash and stick it back in the soup post-blending, if you're having the soup on its own and want something to get your teeth into.

As with everything, date and freeze the remainder of the meal, preferably in small containers so you can defrost and devour single servings. Ta da!

Grocery Shopping

2009-01-31T16:45:00.000-08:00

New rule: throwing any sort of food out is failure.

That's got qualification, of course, because eating rotting or moldy food is a health hazard, and if you can't afford to waste food then you CERTAINLY can't afford a trip to the doctor (or worse, that money-hole known as the Emergency Room). So the real failure is purchasing something that goes neglected long enough to decay into a health-hazard state. This is what I keep in mind when grocery shopping these days.

So, at left, this week's haul. It cost me $60, which is partly because I live in an expensive part of the country, and partly because I've just run out of meat in the freezer and wanted to stock up. (I'm set for all dry goods because I do a tri-monthly binge at the surprisingly cost-effective natural foods store up near my parents, and that's why there's nothing like beans or pasta or rice in there.)

There's some stuff I'll cook with that I generally expect everyone's got in their house, like milk and butter and eggs, or sugar and flour. Another thing I've got is a huuuuge spice cabinet; it's sort of absurd. I've just gotten some spice racks, so once I get those up and everything in them, I'll include a post about spices -- at the moment, it's just a confusing jumble of identical bottles.

First up, the veg.

In order of anticipated decay: yellow squash and zucchini, parsnip, carrots, onions, and lastly butternut squash. I "rediscovered" a butternut squash on the bottom shelf of my fridge that had been down there for at least two months, and though bits of it were worse for wear, I was able to salvage a lot of it. This revelation prompted me to vow to have one of these on hand as a constant backup, because it's hugely versatile (steamed, roasted, with feta, in a soup...) and apparently will last forever.

The summer squash and zucchini are much more delicate, so those need to be used soon. Also, I dropped one of the zucchs on the ground as I was transferring all this to the fridge and it snapped in half, so tomorrow? Superbowl Zucchini Bread. Lucky brother-in-law!

What to watch for in the other veg: Parsnips shrivel. Carrots go soggy. And supermarkets have recently gotten REALLY sneaky with bagged onions! I used to pick up a bag without a second glance, but now I've noticed that my local's stopped putting out single onions at all, so you're forced to buy a bag, and then you get home and see that two of the onions have rot on the side or have gone mushy. So go ahead and buy the bag, but check it out in the supermarket before you buy. These ones are fine, but it took me two gos to find a good bag.

In the bowl, we've got a yellow bell pepper, a lemon, and a plastic thingie of lemon juice. The bell pepper is here because I'm thinking of putting part of it in the salad, and also because you can snack on these raw without problem -- they're very sweet. The lemon's here to make a point, namely that if a recipe calls for a lemon's rind or slices of lemon, buy the lemon. Otherwise, think of substituting the plain juice. Yes yes, I know that you're supposed to use fresh squeezed lemon and it's better and all that, but if you're just cooking a basic meal, then buying a tonne of lemons is wasteful if you're just using the juice. Save the real lemon for your hobo cocktails.

The fruit salad, for me at least, is less expensive bought at the salad bar twice a week than it is for me to buy fruit and hope it lasts. I'll eat this in three or four days. I used to go and buy three apples and some oranges and grapes, but I can waste fruit like nobody's business, so I'm trying to figure out how to economise on that front, and this seems to do the trick.

Prewashed salad! Yay! It's $4 a bag at my supermarket, while quite a lot of plain lettuce is about $3. Economizing, it might make mathematical sense to just buy the big bag of lettuce, some tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumber. Eh, maybe. If I could guarantee that I'd make my own salad from scratch every day, then I might be better about buying all the individual bits. Instead, I find that the likeliest scenario for me to eat salad is for it to be the simplest, laziest option. Assembling a salad takes 12 minutes, making pasta takes 9, making a tuna sandwich is 5, but opening a bag of salad and dumping some dressing on it takes less than a minute. And thus I hope to make my laziness work to my healthy advantage.

The celery really should've been in with the other veg, but it sort of fits in the "snack" category where I keep the fruit and salad. Celery's great; very good on its own, better with salmonella-free peanut butter, and most certainly necessary for lots and lots of soups. If you're into soups, then celery (along with the onion and carrot from the previous photo) will form the base for a lot of your cooking.

And here's the last thing: meat.

(Notice the prominence of the Sharpie.)

I pretty much buy meat to freeze. I'm not a vegetarian by a long shot, but I probably eat meat less often than your average person. Milk, cheese, beans, eggs -- those sort of things show up more often than meat in my diet, or I have quite small portions of meat in a mess of vegetables. I don't eat much fish because of an early-life confusion about the role of dolphins in the entire fishing proccess, and I have no good reason for not eating much beef, lamb or venison.

I guess I just really, really hate birds?

But it turns out I might have formed pretty cost-effective eating habits, because now I'm not craving meat (relatively expensive). This week's grocery haul also wouldn't have been very meat-heavy, except that turkey keilbasa and ground turkey were on sale. The Sharpie, which I keep in my utensil drawer, is used to mark the date before I chuck everything in the freezer. When I take the meat out, I tend to mix it with stuff that will then allow me to partially refreeze, like a soup or a pasta sauce or something.

And that's it, other than the impulse buy of York Peppermint Patties, which now has me feeling wired and slightly ill. Blech. I'll confess if I allow any of this to go off, to get a better idea of deadlines on food, but with any luck half of this haul will end up in the freezer, just in altered form.

Again, the point of this exercise will be less "what am I hungry for?" and much, much more "what can I make out of what I have?"

Lemon Chicken Packet

2009-01-30T18:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, this started off as just regular lemon chicken. But I went grocery shopping today, and -- well, things got out of hand.

First, rediscover your chicken, now thawed through the marvellous magic of putting it in the fridge for 24 hours. Yay! I also discovered that my plan of using the rest of last night's roast vegetables might have a flaw; namely, I've been nibbling on them all day. So there's not much leftovers left. Whoops. Hence the sudden addition of the onion, yellow pepper, zucchini (or "courgette" if you're feeling fancy) and tin foil.

Something in your head is now saying "Wait a second, those flavours don't really go together with sweet potato...." You're right. If you're making this from scratch, then make a cup of rice to replace the roast vegetables. If you're me, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

Alors, to the oven! 375 degrees again, please.

Put this together on a cookie sheet, preferably one with a raised edge (I think some people call them "jelly roll tins"). Lay out a piece of tin foil; you're going to be wrapping this around a chicken breast and lot of veg, so make it big. Take your thankfully-thawed chicken breast and slice a pocket in it. Mix half a teaspoon of salt with half a teaspoon of ground pepper, and rub this all over the outside of the chicken breast AND the inside of the pocket. Take an angled slice of lemon and put it in the pocket, and you're done with chicken-wrangling.

Now get busy with the veg. I cut the zucchini and the yellow pepper in strips, but left the onion a little chunkier. Place another slice of lemon right on top of the chicken, and then pile the rest of the vegetables on top. If you're a salt nut, you might want to sprinkle more on at this point, and this could also be pretty good with rosemary or some other herb. But generally, everything in this is pretty clean and bright, so just having lemon and salt and pepper will keep it that way.

The wrapping is a bit tricky, and one of the big reasons I like doing this in foil rather than in parchment. The easiest way is to bring the longest opposing sides up vertically, so it's almost forming a sling, then roll and crimp down towards the chicken. Then crimp the sides up to make it watertight. However you do it, it should sort of look like this.

Why include that photo of the unused bits? Mostly for thinking. Right now, I'm thinking that the yellow pepper half and the onion half would be really good in an omelette. The zucchini's probably the easiest of the bunch, because zucchini grilled or sauteed with garlic or onion or squash is incredibly delicious as a side. The lemon... I don't know. I'm leaning towards using it to make iced tea. Yeah, it's winter, and yeah I could probably use the lemon for drinks OTHER than tea... Hm. Well, I'll think about the lemon. The omelette's totally happening, though. (Chicken, obviously, can be almost anything, but also needs to be used ASAP, given it's from frozen.)

Hey, 30 minutes is up! Time to de-mummify the chicken....

Tongs are useful things. For one, they will stop you from getting burned horribly by the steam coming off of this packet (wafting, at left). They will also allow you to pick up all the veggie bits out of the lemony chicken juice left at the bottom of the tinfoil. Sadly, the juice is not delicious.

If you forgot to cook the rice, then STOP UNWRAPPING THE CHICKEN! It'll stay hot for a while if still wrapped (see: steam). Go make rice.

Transfer the chicken and bits to a plate. Leave the watery tin foil.

And now you're either ready to eat, or you garnish with the rice of your choice. The chicken is lovely and moist, everything is lemony (though don't bite into the lemon or you'll be sorry), the vegetables are perfectly steamed, and the only thing I'd really think of adding is maybe some sort of garlic. Possibly in the form of garlic salt, because I really can't see how garlic would do well being steamed in a packet. That just seems a recipe for evil.

Anyhow, it's a good base for further experimentation. For obvious reasons, when choosing vegetables to add in, stay away from anything that you can't readily eat raw, like potatoes (though carrots in this could be very nice.... hm). There's a possibility that you could use only the pocket lemon, then do thin strips of carrot and leek with rosemary and some balsamic vinegar.... Hm. Point is, it's relatively easy, pretty inexpensive, pretty damn quick.

And can even look nice, unless you do what I did, which is offensive to the eye (but delicious nonetheless).

Ah, roasted vegetables. You are a blessing and a curse. Check back for a chicken recipe that WILL go with root vegetables later.

Roasted Vegetables

2009-01-30T15:39:00.001-08:00

Have you seen the employment figures lately? Ha ha ha.... aaaaaugh! Sigh. In tough times like these it's necessary to find other uses for your oven, to prevent you from sticking your head in there and breathing deeply.

As unemployed people, it's also necessary that we make do with what we've got. For instance, the Food Network. The Food Network is awesome and inspiring, but who has pickled red pepper lying around? And at this point, we're not exactly going out to buy it.

Which brings me to root vegetables.

While I was cleaning out the fridge, this is what I found:

One sweet potato
Two red potatoes
Two parsnips (mmm!)
One and a half carrots (?)

This is a pretty typical haul, I think. They're long-lasting veg that I probably bought a week or so ago, and they probably would've lasted in the fridge for a while longer. One thing I did while I was working was do a weekly supermarket run: basically, whatever day I remembered to grab the canvas bag on the way out the door, that was grocery day.

Get chicken... Oh, dammit!

This is why it helps not to be an idiot. Freezing meat is a good thing to do, I think -- long before the Day of the Pink Slip I would buy meat that was on sale (usually because it was within a day or two of its sell-by date) and them immediately stick it in the freezer. Of course, it helps to actually defrost the meat when you want to use it in a meal. Like now. So, chicken goes in the fridge and we're going to just make roasted veggies, and hold half of them over to tomorrow.

Peel everything, though you can pretty much leave the skin on the potatoes -- I just gouge out their eyes! Grrr!

So, back to the theory of impulse grocery shopping: the downside of is that I didn't really make a list before going, and I also tended not to see what I already had in the fridge. Looking back, I realise I was wasting an enormous amount of food, either because I forgot stuff and shoved it back in the fridge or I bought the same item twice. Bad, bad habit.

Chop everything up, dump in cooking dish (this is a Le Creuset cast-iron enameled soup pot, with which I am obsessed).

Add in a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, a teaspoon of dried thyme and a teaspoon of dried rosemary. Dash in a few tablespoons of olive oil, and mix mix mix.

Oh, you thought I forgot the garlic on the cutting board? I did not! Three cloves of garlic, do the Food Network thing and thwack them with the side of a knife before peeling then and chucking them in with the rest. You can put less in if you're not a fan of garlic. Other things that would be very nice in this? Quartered onion, leeks (wash carefully, full of sand), probably fennel -- you could also use fresh rosemary instead of the dried stuff, but since frugal is currently my watchword, I'm going with dried.

Keep your eye on the garlic when you mix, and try and spread the cloves out a bit. If they bunch up, I don't think the flavour carries through as much. Have I mentioned I love garlic?

Mmmmmm.

Okay, we're good. Stick it in the preheated oven, set an alarm for 30 minutes.

I've done this in a roasting pan before, and it's extremely good. If you like your roasted veg crispier (and more impressive in presentation), then this is probably the way to go. Spray the roasting pan with oil before spreading the mix across it in a single layer -- and when you're cutting the vegetables, make them nice quarter-inch chunks. That way the edges get all brown and lovely. If you do it in a pan like the one I've used, the vegetables are going to stay more moist and only brown in bits. It's also going to look a lot less pretty on your plate.

Once the buzzer goes, take the mix out, stir it up (make sure to get any bits that have browned against the bottom) and pop it back in. Another 30 minutes, and you're done.

Voila! One of the most comforting winter side dishes I've ever known. It's fantastic with lemon chicken, but clearly we're experiencing some technical difficulties on that front, so it'll have to wait for tomorrow. For now, I'm eating half of this now, because it's delicious. So there.

The Hobo Kitchen

2009-01-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome, fellow travelers!

We live in a curious age. Money is apparently imaginary, our parents turn ashen whenever someone says the phrase "401k", and our bright shiny future is either gone or on layaway (no one can quite decide yet).

For some of us, this means that we got a nice crisp pink slip for Christmas in 2008. Oh, hooray!

What does this mean? Well, it means a whole lot less dining out, obviously. It means retraining ourselves in how to cook and shop and entertain, and how to do it in the most frugal way possible. Sure, we've got tons of time to watch the Food Network, but that can only get you so far.

I mean, what the hell is a "tablescape"?! And don't you always find there's ONE gourmet ingredient on the recipe that you just plain don't have?

So here's the deal. It's time to stop wandering into the kitchen and thinking "what do I want to eat?" and instead, start thinking "what can I make out of what's already in the fridge?" Time to use our unemployment to our advantage and really get to grips with how to make stuff, rather than reaching for takeout menus. There are some things that are reasonable to splurge on (see: spices), and there are some things that are not (see: Grand Marnier). The freezer is your friend. So are dried and tinned goods.

That's what I'll be doing, anyhow. You're welcome to come along.