better than hot ham water

Hi! I found some good recipes recently:

vegetable soup
I didn't make the basil pistou or the garlic bread, but the soup alone is delicious. Light and healthy without tasting like deprivation.

curried shepherd's pie
This was a great twist on shepherd's pie, but we used our favorite mashed potato recipe (boil the potatoes whole! peel and rice, add butter first, then add way more milk/cream than you think you'll need, salt generously)

red lentil soup with lemon
So much flavor coming from so few ingredients. It's pretty amazing.

Also: I am currently in denial that we are leaving my beloved Philadelphia in less than three weeks. Even though all of my extraneous pieces of furniture are disappearing and my guest bedroom is filling up with boxes, it still doesn't feel real. It's not happening!!!! You can't make me leave!

odds and ends

I figured out what my ideal form of humor is, and it's computers writing nonsense:

a computer-generated list of new My Little Pony names via artificial neural network
We start at Sprinkle Cherry Bolt and rapidly descend to Deader Pony, Dunder Dort, and Tracklewock Packin. It's GREAT.

a Harry Potter chapter written with predictive text
I tried to pick a few lines to excerpt, but it's just all too good. You have to read it in full.

I made some food I liked recently:

These salted butter chocolate chunk shortbread cookies are really weird, but they're also delicious. Very similar to these chocolate sable cookies (and similar potential pitfall with crumbliness-don't despair, just use a sharp knife when cutting and smoosh it back together).

I also made this chocolate babka wreath over Christmas break, and it turned out just as beautiful as the website pictures for once (and so delicious people ate it stale the next day).

Here are some science-y things I recommend reading:

Most of my scientific expertise is knowing how to make and work with proteins. This was a cool article that explains why proteins are cool and how scientists are designing new ones not found in nature.

I also really liked this article, on keeping a cosmic perspective + the Voyager golden record:

"I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. It is only by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective, that we can then dip back in and do the work which our time asks of us."

Not really science-y but I've been thinking about this, too: preserving white space in your daily routine (found via CoJ). Almost all of my dead time is full of looking at my phone (waiting for/riding in the elevator, waiting for an experiment to finish up, standing in line at the store, eating lunch, etc.), and I don't think that's a good thing.

I'll add that to my list of things to work on in 2018, joining learn basic Italian phrases (we're going to Europe this summer!!!!) and bake more cakes. Only appropriate, given that zucchero is inexplicably one of the first words Duolingo taught me. 

mmmmmm

I've been holding out on you. Aaron and I have made some pretty delicious things lately which I have yet to share on my neglected blog. This changes TODAY.

I got over my peanut-butter-is-too-expensive-to-use-in-cookies thing and made these peanut butter cookies from Smitten Kitchen. They have 5 ingredients, and you can be eating them in less than an hour (most of which is hands-off oven or chilling time). They've nearly replaced these brownies as my go-to "I need a dessert now, and I already ate all the chocolate chips I've been hoarding in the freezer". 

Did you need a black bean burger recipe? Because I have one for you! This comes from America's Test Kitchen, which you'll need to have a login to see and the recipes will disappear unless you get a paid subscription after the current season has passed. So I've brought it here to you!

2 cans (15-ounce) cans black beans, rinsed
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 scallions, minced
3 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon hot sauce (optional, but I'd recommend it)
½ teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 ounce tortilla chips, crushed coarse (1/2 cup)
8 teaspoons vegetable oil
6 hamburger buns

Instructions

1. Dry your black beans for ~15 min by putting them on a baking sheet lined with a triple layer of paper towels.

2. Whisk together the eggs and flour to form a paste. Add in the scallions, cilantro, garlic, cumin, hot sauce (if using), coriander, salt, pepper. Mix well.

3. Crush up tortilla chips into a fine powder using a food processor, about 30 seconds (you could also probably just smash them up in a plastic bag if you don't have a food processor, just make sure they're pretty finely crushed). Add in the black beans and pulse 5 times to combine. Combine the black bean mixture with the egg/spice mixture and refrigerate for at least an hour. (This helps make it easier to handle the burgers because the mixture will be pretty loose at this point. That being said, Aaron and I were too hungry to wait every time we've made these, so we skipped straight to the cooking part and it worked out just fine.)

4. Divide the mixture into 6 equal portions, forming patties 3.5" in diameter. You can wrap the patties in plastic wrap and freeze them for later if you want, as long as you thaw them out before cooking.

5. Heat a couple teaspoons of oil in a non-stick skillet over medium heat. Once the oil's hot, cook three patties at a time. Cook 5 minutes on one side, until the bottom's brown and crisp, and then flip them and cook for another 3-5 minutes (whenever the other side is also brown and crisp). 

6. EAT. Love them so much you don't even care they're not beef. My favorite way to top these is with cheese (put a slice on when you're cooking the second side), barbecue sauce, and guacamole. Mmmm happiness.

And your final food recommendation also comes from America's Test Kitchen, but this recipe link should work: bolognese sauce. You're going to need meatloaf mix (pork + beef + veal) for it, and I wouldn't recommend subbing just ground beef or ground turkey (we almost always sub any ground meat for turkey in other recipes, but it doesn't turn out nearly as good here). It's worth it. You can, however, sub out the white wine for chicken stock and it will still taste fantastic.

Besides these few standouts we've sort of been in a rut lately. We decided we should actually cook more out of the cookbooks we own, so there will probably be some more Smitten Kitchen recipes showing up here in the future. Got any recipes you're loving these days?

[fairly empty] thoughts about dessert

I've been accidentally collecting unfrosted cake recipes lately, like this double vanilla butter cake, ooey gooey double baked chocolate cake ("ooey gooey"? ugh, come on, Food52), and this grapefruit curd in grapefruit cake.

I actually made the double vanilla butter cake tonight and in case you were wondering, can I forget to mix the sugar with the eggs at the beginning and not realize it until I've already added all of the other ingredients and still get a decent cake? Yes, you can! I tested out that scenario just for you! Your cake will be about half the height of the cake in the picture and therefore twice as dense, but it will still taste okay!

This will sound like a stupid idea coming off of that failure, but I also decided I want to tackle a Milk Bar cake sometime soon. Probably the birthday cake. I'm debating whether it's worth forking over a bunch of money on Amazon for 1) glucose 2) acetate strips 3) quarter sheet pan 4) 6" cake rings 5) more sprinkles. I was already going to buy myself sprinkles for my birthday, but glucose? When am I ever going to use glucose again unless I bake more Milk Bar cakes?

Not cake, but these salted peanut butter cookies look amazing. However, any recipe with significant amounts of peanut butter, maple syrup, honey, or Nutella makes me hesitate because that stuff is not cheap. And if we're buying peanut butter it's because Aaron eats a peanut butter sandwich almost every day for lunch (he's a champion of food monotony), not for a batch of cookies we'll devour in a couple days. This is when I'll know we've made it: when I can nonchalantly pick up an extra thing of peanut butter at the grocery store for cookies I'm making on a whim with no purpose or event in mind.

Speaking of cookies, I got a cookie scoop for Christmas, and it is a life changer. I want to make drop cookies all the time now because cookies obviously, but also because using that scoop is so fun. It magically makes my cookies turn out much better to boot. I've been biased against cookie scoops in the past because I've always thought of them as ice cream scoops, and they suck at scooping ice cream. But, it turns out when you use them for their actual purpose, they work great! Who would've thought?

You'd think that after such a long gap between posts I'd return with something meaningful or interesting to say buuuuut nope! CAKES AND COOKIES. The important things in life.

make these

I feel like it's been a little while since I've pretended this was a cooking blog, so I present to you a few recipes I've been making over and over again lately:

granola bars
I can throw these together in less than 10 minutes, and then I have a snack for the rest of the week. WIN. I always throw in almonds, and swapping normal chocolate chips for white was really delicious.

rolls
This is my favorite roll recipe so far. Today is my 4th time making them, and they've been really, really good and soft and delicious every time (knock on wood, they're currently rising). A couple of things I do differently because I am lazy: I don't roll the dough out into a circle and slice into triangles, I just do a rectangle with fat strips and roll them up. I'm incapable of making circles of dough...you should see my rectangular pizza and lopsided pie crust. I also don't put any butter on them before rolling them up, since that requires getting a bowl dirty to melt butter. Instead, I just take a stick of butter and rub it over the tops when they come out of the oven. Yummmm.

Do you have any favorite recipes you're currently obsessing over?

basmati.

We are really getting into this cooking thing lately. As in, Aaron was this close to buying a pasta maker this afternoon before I sort of talked him out of it ($70! Too much!), and I asked my mom for a Thermapen thermometer for Christmas (I will make perfect caramel if it kills me).

Here's what we've been making:

risotto
chicken tikka masala
no-knead pizza dough
banana cream pie from scratch (with this pie crust)
pavlova
pumpkin carrot cake with candied hazelnuts
lasagna
ravioli from scratch
whole wheat bread

Aaron found an Indian market not too far from campus and that's where we got our magical garam masala, whole ginger, and basmati rice. I now want to eat basmati rice instead of normal rice for any rice-containing dish. Burritos? Basmati. Chicken stir fry? Basmati. Risotto? Basmati. Just kidding.

Also, while we're talking about cooking, Sara showed me this amazing website called Ziplist that you can use to save recipes on any website (no pictures required, unlike Pinterest), and I am loving it. No one sees what I'm "pinning" so I don't feel stupid about pinning (ziplisting? clipping! I think it's called clipping) 8 chocolate cake recipes in the course of a half hour. It also has a nifty meal planning functionality so you can keep track of what you're cooking when.

This weekend we're going fruit picking again so we can make a peach pie. We also have some super ripe bananas, so banana bread? I guess it's a fruit dessert weekend. What are you making?

because somehow this has morphed into a pseudo cooking blog without the pretty pictures

I made some really great pretzels this afternoon. The recipe only made 8, and we've already eaten 4.

Me: Can we eat more pretzels now?
Aaron: This is why we can't have nice things.

(because any time we get treats in the house, we eat ALL the treats!)

Also, does anyone have a favorite pancake recipe? I've been making pancakes on Saturdays but haven't found a recipe I'm super attached to yet. Suggestions would be much appreciated!

sharing time

Three more thoughts for today:

1. I really loved this series of essays by C. Jane about her past relationships. You ought to read them.

2. Cooking mishap: Tortillas will stick to tin foil, and you will get really frustrated with your tin foil-studded enchiladas.

2. Cooking win: Yesterday we had a successful salmon and cheesecake experience (though not at the same time). Two birds with one holiday, guys! Salmon recipe here, chocolate cheesecake found here.

You got any links you want to share?

pumpkin bread, ramekins, and a new semester

Quick breads, for whatever reason (maybe my banana bread attempt that turned up a still gummy middle but burned crust? or maybe because of Amanda's highly entertaining posts like this), tend to scare me more than yeast breads, but yesterday I stood up to that fear and made pumpkin bread using this recipe from Mel's Kitchen Cafe. It was delish! Not burned! Also, I made glazed carrots using this Martha Stewart recipe (minus the red wine vinegar because I didn't have any), and oh. my. gosh. Never have carrots tasted so good. Even Aaron liked them, and that my friends, is saying a lot. 

I think I've made some cooking progress this year trying scary things like

a lot of yeast breads (but no homemade bread actually), 

a roast (do you know how expensive roasts are, though?! I will probably not make another one for a long time), 

a roux for homemade macaroni and this amazing tomato-basil parmesan soup

caramels with the scary candy thermometer!

I think this year I want to make a cheesecake (since I own two springform pans that have never been used), pie crust, chicken en papillote, and cook salmon. Salmon scares me because it is expensive, and I will never forgive myself if I screw up $12 worth of fish. Oh, and maybe creme brulee since I also own a set of ramekins, but have been using them to serve toppings for Hawaiian haystacks and melt butter in the microwave. 

Obviously, I am a master chef.

In other news, we're back at school, and it's been surprisingly low key. Even Aaron is done with studying before 7 PM, and we've watched half of the first season of "Community" in the past two days.   I'm just biding my time until I find out what lab I'm in, actually have to start doing lab work and TAing, and my inorganic chemistry class starts kicking my butt. Until then, grad school is the best!

Do you have any recipes you're excited to try out this year? Has school been deceptively easy for you too? Are you officially done with school forever and your life is amazing?! Tell me about it. :)

lemon crinkle cookies

I think I am getting better at making cookies (but not better at taking pictures of them). I just have to go against every instinct screaming at me to leave the cookies in the oven for another 3 minutes. These were really delightful, super lemony and soft cookies. Yummmmm.

Since I'm getting over my cookie issues, and also my fear of making yeast bread (these french-like baguettes were super fast and really delicious), I think maybe I should work on my fear of meat. I pretty much only ever cook with chicken or ground turkey because large hunks of beef or pork or whole chickens (!!!) freak me out a bit. I'm going to work on that...starting with this pot roast a la Pioneer Woman.

Anyway, cookies!

Lemon Crinkle Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen

Ingredients:
½ cups butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest*
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoons baking soda
1-½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cups powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte {not melty or shiny}. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Recipe from LDS Living

*I did not have any of those fancy fresh lemons sitting around, so I just used a lot of lemon juice. This led to some rather runny cookie batter, but it still worked and they were delicious. Imagine how great they'd be if you followed the recipe!

roy's chocolate souffle

Yesterday I made these chocolate souffles/molten lava cakes for me and Aaron. It was great because ever since I stuck ramekins on our wedding registry and someone got them for us, I've been looking for a use for them! (I don't own a creme brulee torch or a little propane torch, so the obvious is out.) Aaron and I got all excited about the idea of souffles after watching an episode of Masterchef recently, except they made cheese souffles. I discovered this recipe and decided to give it a try. I halved it because I didn't have enough chocolate, it worked just fine (in case you ever just want to make two-Valentine's dinner, hmm?)

It was like heaven in a ramekin. So, so good, and so easy too!


ramekins (4) or a muffin tin with cupcake liners (chocolate souffle cupcakes? how cute!)
parchment paper

Soufflé Batter:


8 oz. good quality semi-sweet dark chocolate (i.e. Guittard, Vahlrona, Callebeaut-pretty sure my supermarket doesn't carry any of those brands, so I just went with Hershey's)
12 Tbs butter
1 cup granulated sugar
3 Tbs cornstarch
4 whole eggs plus 4 egg yolks

For the batter, mix sugar and cornstarch together in mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and yolks. In a saucepan, melt the butter until it begins to simmer. Add the chocolate and mix until smooth and the chocolate simmers along the edges. Pour the chocolate mixture into the dry ingredients. Mix until combined. Add the eggs and mix at low speed until smooth and sugar is dissolved. Transfer into bowl and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to  400°. (I don't know if our fridge is just way cold, but the batter was much more solid the day after, like more solid than brownie batter. I let the bowl sit on the oven while it heated up, and it thawed a little, but it definitely wasn't as liquidy as the first day. My lack of patience in waiting for it to come to room temperature probably added to the baking time, but it still worked!) Line the bottom of the ramekins with a circle piece of parchment paper, and the sides with a long strip. (I used cooking spray to help the parchment stick to the walls a little easier.)

Fill each ring mold or ramekin with soufflé batter ¾ of the way full. Bake on top oven rack for 26-28 minutes. You want the top to be set, but the middle to still be gooey. (and actually, even for me, the overbaker, our middles turned out perfectly gooey! So you can make these without fear!) Remove baking sheet from oven. You can run a knife along the edges of your ramekin and invert it on a plate and dust with powdered sugar for a pretty presentation, but we just ate them straight out of the ramekin because we're lazy like that. 


Partake and be happy!
Recipe source: The Girl Who Ate Everything, who got it from Roy's Restaurant (like she emailed them and asked, "What's your chocolate souffle recipe?" and they told her! Cool!)

the top started caving in they were so gooey

garlic knot rolls

I made these rolls yesterday afternoon, while waiting in terror to extricate myself from a parallel parking spot and drive back to University City to pick up Aaron. I was almost out of flour, so I halved the recipe, and it worked just fine.

Oops, size uniformity is not my forte. And, the one on the right had a much more successful knot.

Dough:
3 cups bread flour (or I just used all purpose, and it was fine)
1 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. instant yeast (I used dry active yeast and just proofed it before by putting the sugar into the warm water and then adding the yeast to it and letting it sit for 5ish minutes)
1¼ tsp. salt
2 tbsp. olive oil
¼ cup milk
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. lukewarm water (I used warmer than lukewarm water to help activate the yeast)

glaze:
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp. melted butter
½ tsp. Italian seasoning

For the dough, combine the dry ingredient in a stand mixer. Add the olive oil, milk and water.  Mix until ingredients have formed a dough.  Knead on low speed until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.  Move the dough to an oiled bowl, flip the dough to oil both sides, and cover with plastic wrap. Let it rise for about 1 hour, or until doubled in size. Once the dough has risen, divide it into 10-12 equally-sized pieces. Roll each piece out to about 10" long and then tie in a knot. I sort of just tucked the ends on the side of the roll. Put the rolls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, cover, and let rise for another 45 minutes. To make the glaze, finely mince the garlic, or press with a garlic press. Add to the melted butter, along with the Italian seasoning. Brush over rolls when ready to bake. Bake at 350 for 15-18 minutes.

These turned out quite good! They had a nice crust to them but were really soft on the inside. Next time, I think I'd try using garlic powder instead of minced garlic because I don't think my basting brush picked up very much garlic when I was brushing the glaze over the rolls. I'd definitely make these again.

Recipe taken from Annie's Eats (she got it from Amber’s Delectable Delights originally from King Arthur Flour). Her explanation has great photos to show how to tie the rolls into cute knots.

maybe you should make these

Yesterday, I made these delicious shortbread/almond cookies. I love them because a) they are impossible to screw up, even for me and my tendency to overcook everything, and b) they aren't overly sugary, so you feel like you can eat 12 of them guilt-free (you can't, there's a ton of butter in them).

Back in the day, my old roomie Kellie, who gave me this recipe, and I would make these until we ran out of almond extract. It was the best.

1 c butter
1/3 c white sugar
1/3 c brown sugar
1 small egg
1 Tbsp almond extract
2 1/2 to 3 c white flour

Cream the butter and the sugar. Add the egg and flavoring. Add and stir in the flour and knead by hand a little. Dough should be firm enough to form into a ball and hold a shape. Bake for 10 min or so in 400 degree oven.

(note: I actually never knead by hand because I'm too lazy, and they turn out just fine. Also, they don't spread very much in the oven, so whatever shape you stick them in as is what they're coming out as.)

Bon appetit!

i've been on a domestic streak lately

Lately, I have been cooking up a storm! And the dishes have kept turning out okay! Miracle of miracles. I want to share my culinary joy with all of you, so here you go:


This first recipe I got from my friend Naomi, who I think got it from our mutual friend Nate? Anyway, instead of serving it over rice, I cooked some thin spaghetti and threw that in with the meat and sauce (inspired by this recipe by the Pioneer Woman). 


PF Changs Mongolian Beef (Imitation)

Sauce:
2 tsp Vegetable oil
½ tsp minced ginger [I used powdered]
1 TBLS minced garlic
½ cup soy sauce
½ cup water
¾ cup dark brown sugar [only had light and it worked fine]

Heat oil in sauce pan over med/low heat. Add ginger and garlic. Let sauté for a minute. Add water and soy sauce. Stir in brown sugar until dissolved. Raise heat to med/high and boil for 3-5 minutes until it thickens slightly. 

Meat:
1 cup vegetable oil
1 lb flank steak
¼ cup cornstarch
4 green onions

Slice the steak against the grain into ¼ inch thick bite size pieces. Toss meat in zip lock with the cornstarch. Allow meat to rest in bag for 10 minutes. While the meat rests, slowly heat up the oil in a large skillet or wok on medium heat. After 10 minutes, add beef to the oil and cook for about 2-3 minutes until the edges darken. Use a slotted spoon to take the meat out and put on a plate with paper towels (meat may not be completely cooked, but will be in the pan again to finish cooking). Empty oil out of the skillet. Put meat back in the skillet and add the sauce to it and stir. Bring this to a boil for 3-5 minutes or until sauce gets really thick. Sprinkle green onions on top and serve over rice. [or noodles, whatev]


Second, I made these Andes mint brownies from Mel's Kitchen Cafe (her website is so great). Except I threw in some almonds, because I have a million of those after a failed attempt to make almond flour for macaron cookies. Let me just say, these brownies are so awesome. Perfect texture, perfect amount of chocolate-ness, yum.


Third, I made these breadsticks as shared by Amanda. This was my second time making them, and they were so delicious! And they look so pretty too, all twisted. 


Fourth, I made crepes using this super easy recipe for the batter from the wedding gift cookbook Kristen gave me. I don't know that our fillings were all that authentic (except the nutella dessert ones we made later), but whatever. We used potatoes fried in olive oil, ground turkey, tomatoes, and gruyere cheese. Mmmmm. Let me tell you, that cheese will make anything taste amazing. 


Basic Crepes:


1 1/4 c all-purpose flour [I did a little bit of wheat flour too]
pinch of salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/4 c milk [might need more if the batter's too thick, ours was a little thicker than I would've liked]
light olive oil, vegetable oil or butter for greasing pan [use butter!]


1. Put flour and salt in bowl and make a well in the center. Pour the egg and some of the milk into the well. Whisk the liquid, gradually incorporating the flour to make a smooth paste. Whisk in the remaining milk, then pour the batter into a measuring cup with a pouring spout. Allow to rest, if desired.
2. Put a little oil or butter into a 7 inch crepe pan or heavy-based skillet and heat until it starts to smoke. Pour a little batter into the pan, tilting it until the base is coated with a thin layer. Cook for 1-2 min until the underside begins to turn golden brown. 
3. Flip the crepe with an offset spatula and cook for a further 30-45 seconds until it is golden on the second side. Slide the crepe out of the pan and make the remaining crepes, greasing the pan as necessary. 


Makes 8-10 crepes. 


I wish I had photos to go with all of this, but alas! Camera's been dead, and I've been too lazy to charge it. 


Any good recipes you've tried lately? I'm all for suggestions while I see how long my cuisine luck can last!