I've started making this cold (or room temperature) lentil salad. My wife who isn't much of a lentil fan, likes this. When I made this a week ago, I skipped the mirepoix and just used water. It worked very well. I also prefer french lentils which have a slightly earthier taste and remain firmer than other green or brown lentils. Don't use dahl lentils as I think these will be too mushy.
(Optional) Mirepoix of onions, carrots and celery with olive oil.
2 cups french lentils, rinsed and sorted.
5 cups of liquid, water is fine, or a broth.
Extra virgin olive oil
Vinegar, preferably white or red/white wine or even cider
Salt and pepper
Rinse the lentils and remove anything you don't want to eat, like sand.
Finely chop the mirepoix and fry it in olive oil over med-high heat until mostly soft. Add the lentils and the liquid. Simmer until cooked, but not mushy, about 45 minutes (?) for french lentils and 35 minutes (?) less for other lentils. There should not be much water left. If there is excess liquid, ladle most of it away.
Mix or shake or wisk olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. Stir into the lentils while they are still warm. Taste. I use slightly more oil than vinegar, but it is easy to add more of either to the lentils to suit your preference.
Optionally dress this up with cherry tomatoes and/or some goat cheese. Also, I think green olives might go well with this too, but I haven't tried this.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Simple ways to add some zing
I've tried these ideas out over the past several months. All are super simple but really spice up things.
A chimichurri (dipping sauce) for steak
I wanted to provide something interesting, deeply flavorful and spicy for guests. And it had to be quick. This worked like a champ.
Chopped olives (kalamata, green, or whatever you have)
Chopped jalapenos en escabeche (pickled jalapenos w/ onions, carrots)
Extra virgin olive oil as desired
Mix.
I used roughly equal parts olives and jalapenos, but adjust freely.
The jalapenos can be found in the mexican section of most stores now and a little goes a long way.
Zingy corned beef
Before cooking the vegetables add one or two (or more!) whole jalapenos en escabeche to the corned beef cooking water. I added two peppers before cooking the cabbage and it was noticeably spicy in a nice way. My wife almost found it too spicy.
Note that the corned beef and the potatoes won't pick up too much of this flavor. Also new red potatoes are ideal for corned beef. Much better than russets or yellow potatoes, in my opinion.
A broccoli marinade
2 parts soy sauce (Our aged La Choy bottle was a bit thick which was perfect)
2 parts olive oil
1 part rice vinegar (or some slightly sweet acidic vinegar, but not balsamic)
Mix. Drizzle or brush onto steamed broccoli.
A chimichurri (dipping sauce) for steak
I wanted to provide something interesting, deeply flavorful and spicy for guests. And it had to be quick. This worked like a champ.
Chopped olives (kalamata, green, or whatever you have)
Chopped jalapenos en escabeche (pickled jalapenos w/ onions, carrots)
Extra virgin olive oil as desired
Mix.
I used roughly equal parts olives and jalapenos, but adjust freely.
The jalapenos can be found in the mexican section of most stores now and a little goes a long way.
Zingy corned beef
Before cooking the vegetables add one or two (or more!) whole jalapenos en escabeche to the corned beef cooking water. I added two peppers before cooking the cabbage and it was noticeably spicy in a nice way. My wife almost found it too spicy.
Note that the corned beef and the potatoes won't pick up too much of this flavor. Also new red potatoes are ideal for corned beef. Much better than russets or yellow potatoes, in my opinion.
A broccoli marinade
2 parts soy sauce (Our aged La Choy bottle was a bit thick which was perfect)
2 parts olive oil
1 part rice vinegar (or some slightly sweet acidic vinegar, but not balsamic)
Mix. Drizzle or brush onto steamed broccoli.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The perfect eating container for leftovers
What's your container of choice for pretty much anything?
Plates are OK, but they don't handle lots of more liquidy or soupy things. Plus if there is a sauce over a starch (spaghetti or beef stroganoff or chicken cacciatore), then a plate leaves a bunch of sauce behind.
A bowl is ok, but when you've microwaved something to get it nice and hot, say tomato soup, it can be hard to handle. Plus most bowls aren't big enough on the bottom to hold a large piece of stuff, say meatloaf over potatoes with some vegetables on the side.
My choice: a large pyrex measuring cup. One that measures 4 cups. It's like a bowl with a handle. It's glass so you can see the food and can microwave or even bake it. It's Pyrex so you can thermally shock it. The only downside is these are a big expensive. Good thing my wife has no interest in using the one and only one we have.
Plates are OK, but they don't handle lots of more liquidy or soupy things. Plus if there is a sauce over a starch (spaghetti or beef stroganoff or chicken cacciatore), then a plate leaves a bunch of sauce behind.
A bowl is ok, but when you've microwaved something to get it nice and hot, say tomato soup, it can be hard to handle. Plus most bowls aren't big enough on the bottom to hold a large piece of stuff, say meatloaf over potatoes with some vegetables on the side.
My choice: a large pyrex measuring cup. One that measures 4 cups. It's like a bowl with a handle. It's glass so you can see the food and can microwave or even bake it. It's Pyrex so you can thermally shock it. The only downside is these are a big expensive. Good thing my wife has no interest in using the one and only one we have.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Coffee and dates, who knew?
I like dates a lot (the fruit, obviously, otherwise I would have said "I like going on ..."). My favorite is a big plump juicy medjool. They are great solo, in salads, in baked goods. They are a super healthy sweetner. And given how sweet they are, the have fewer calories than you might expect. Where else could I use them, especially as Costco burdened me with 2 lbs of medjools?
Coffee!
They have a gentle earthiness along with a complex sugar taste which goes great with black coffee. And hence my culinary discovery. Remember you read it here first. Except that it was terrible. So terrible, I had to dump the cup.
Coffee!
They have a gentle earthiness along with a complex sugar taste which goes great with black coffee. And hence my culinary discovery. Remember you read it here first. Except that it was terrible. So terrible, I had to dump the cup.
Monday, March 3, 2008
The true poached egg part II
I've been making poached eggs for 4 months now. And some of what I thought previously was a bunch of wrongness. After much experimentation, here's my drill now.
- Boil some water in a small pan. Don't over fill the pan. My goal is to barely cover the egg(s). If the water is too high, the egg falls farther in the water and separates more.
- Cut the heat off or very low, before adding the eggs and wait if necessary. The water should be still when adding the egg(s). In particular, not boiling and do not swirl the water.
- Crack the egg in a small , thin rimmed bowl. I use a chinese rice bowl, for example.
- Put the lip of the bowl almost to the top of the water and gently dump the egg in. It should stay largely in one main blob.
- Each egg you add will lower the water temperature, so keep track of the order they have been added.
- Once all eggs have been added, turn back on the heat to get bubbles forming but not roiling.
- Use the boiling water to heat up some bowls to hold the finished eggs. I use the same bowls I broke the raw eggs into earlier, after rinsing them out the hot poaching water.
- After the whites look like they have solidified, but the yolks still look "too soft" remove the eggs with a slotted spoon. The first egges in can be remove a good bit before the final eggs, if you've made 3 or more eggs.
- The eggs will continue to cook in their own residue heat in the heated bowls.
- Enjoy with salt, pepper and/or some butter. And toast.
The longevity of certain dairy
I need to start a new tact on this blog. Let's face it I'm not adding new recipes with any regularity. But that doesn't mean I'm not cooking or thinking about food. So I'm retooling this blog to be about food, but not necessarily cooking it.
So let's venture into an area that few talk about. Spoilage. Or really the lack there of. I've discovered that certain dairy items keep much longer than you or the manufacturer might believe.
Let's start with a few easy ones. Unopened sour cream or unopened yogurt basically keep for 3-7 months which for dairy is "forever." If we have unopened sour cream in the fridge, I won't buy another one, no matter how old it is, because it is still good to me (that's shorthand for my opinion not necessarily my wife's). Once opened though, all bets are off. With sour cream you've got maybe a month. Yogurt not even that.
More interesting is milk. The less fat it has, the longer it keeps. Half and half is iffy. I've had many a carton go bad shortly after the expiration or even before the expiration. Ironically, the half and half carton that stays good the longest is also in the biggest. It is from from Costco, which in Norther California sells stuff from Producers Dairy. This stuff stays good through the whole carton about 40% of the time which is amazing given it takes 2-3 weeks to use up. About a 1/3 of the time we get a bad carton, which goes bad by the mid point, but that's how tricky half and half is in general. In order, I buy from Costco, Trader Joes and then Safeway and then Albertsons. The Costco item is not ultra-pasteurized either, so it is by far my favorite half and half and it ss the cheapest to boot.
Whole milk keeps perhaps two weeks past its expiration if unopened. The next grade, 2% low fat is good for 2-3 weeks. And while I don't drink non-fat, I won't hesitate to open a carton of 1% low-fat that is a month past its expiration, with reasonable expectations it is still good.
There is a routine I use in testing milk. First, give it a good sniff. Next, optionally, is have someone else smell it, say your spouse. You may get a mild rejection with some commentary like "No! Why do you always ask me to smell rotten food?" Next, pour out a small cup and walk over to the kitchen sink, lean over it, and taste a small bit. Be prepared to spew it out, immediately. In particular, do not let any of it get to the back of your mouth where some of it might be swallowed involuntarily. Swish it around, tasting it. Then spit most of it out, even if it seems reasonable. Swallow what remains. And now you can make an informed judgement.
In fact, I opened a carton that was almost three months past its expiration a week ago, and did the routine as I thought it might still be good. (This was Trader Joe's 1% and the expiration date was Dec 02. This was done in the last week of Feb.) It all seemed OK, until the final swallow, where I picked up the odd flavor of something yogurt-esque. It was not rotten, but it wasn't fresh. I reluctantly poured it over my cereal. And after one spoonful, I had to toss the whole thing. This was not a good yogurt taste.
And finally I would be remiss to not mention the piece of manchego cheese I found yesterday. I think it was 2 months old. It had some grey/white mold growing on it. I was desperate for something to cleanse my palate to help me enjoy the red wine I was having. So I cut off a piece and cut/scraped off the mold. This was a bit challenging as the cheese had hardened (aka dried out), and was rock hard in places. I finally got my fully clean piece, and it was like a Parmesan now both in texture and in flavor. Tasty.
End note, after a night out on the counter, the mold had turned black. Two months of cold and all it could muster was a light grey. I guess it was just waiting for the right growing conditions. And yes, this is how they teach you not to end a piece of writing.
So let's venture into an area that few talk about. Spoilage. Or really the lack there of. I've discovered that certain dairy items keep much longer than you or the manufacturer might believe.
Let's start with a few easy ones. Unopened sour cream or unopened yogurt basically keep for 3-7 months which for dairy is "forever." If we have unopened sour cream in the fridge, I won't buy another one, no matter how old it is, because it is still good to me (that's shorthand for my opinion not necessarily my wife's). Once opened though, all bets are off. With sour cream you've got maybe a month. Yogurt not even that.
More interesting is milk. The less fat it has, the longer it keeps. Half and half is iffy. I've had many a carton go bad shortly after the expiration or even before the expiration. Ironically, the half and half carton that stays good the longest is also in the biggest. It is from from Costco, which in Norther California sells stuff from Producers Dairy. This stuff stays good through the whole carton about 40% of the time which is amazing given it takes 2-3 weeks to use up. About a 1/3 of the time we get a bad carton, which goes bad by the mid point, but that's how tricky half and half is in general. In order, I buy from Costco, Trader Joes and then Safeway and then Albertsons. The Costco item is not ultra-pasteurized either, so it is by far my favorite half and half and it ss the cheapest to boot.
Whole milk keeps perhaps two weeks past its expiration if unopened. The next grade, 2% low fat is good for 2-3 weeks. And while I don't drink non-fat, I won't hesitate to open a carton of 1% low-fat that is a month past its expiration, with reasonable expectations it is still good.
There is a routine I use in testing milk. First, give it a good sniff. Next, optionally, is have someone else smell it, say your spouse. You may get a mild rejection with some commentary like "No! Why do you always ask me to smell rotten food?" Next, pour out a small cup and walk over to the kitchen sink, lean over it, and taste a small bit. Be prepared to spew it out, immediately. In particular, do not let any of it get to the back of your mouth where some of it might be swallowed involuntarily. Swish it around, tasting it. Then spit most of it out, even if it seems reasonable. Swallow what remains. And now you can make an informed judgement.
In fact, I opened a carton that was almost three months past its expiration a week ago, and did the routine as I thought it might still be good. (This was Trader Joe's 1% and the expiration date was Dec 02. This was done in the last week of Feb.) It all seemed OK, until the final swallow, where I picked up the odd flavor of something yogurt-esque. It was not rotten, but it wasn't fresh. I reluctantly poured it over my cereal. And after one spoonful, I had to toss the whole thing. This was not a good yogurt taste.
And finally I would be remiss to not mention the piece of manchego cheese I found yesterday. I think it was 2 months old. It had some grey/white mold growing on it. I was desperate for something to cleanse my palate to help me enjoy the red wine I was having. So I cut off a piece and cut/scraped off the mold. This was a bit challenging as the cheese had hardened (aka dried out), and was rock hard in places. I finally got my fully clean piece, and it was like a Parmesan now both in texture and in flavor. Tasty.
End note, after a night out on the counter, the mold had turned black. Two months of cold and all it could muster was a light grey. I guess it was just waiting for the right growing conditions. And yes, this is how they teach you not to end a piece of writing.
Monday, August 27, 2007
The true poached egg, part 1
Let me admit, I have egg on my face. I got into a discussion with Steve about poached eggs and he thought it was an egg cooked in water, whereas I thought it was an egg cooked in a poaching "cup". My mom used to have an insert that held four cups over a frying pan, letting the eggs cook via steam.
But true poached eggs are cooked directly in water. The steamed variant has become popular and is now commonly called a poached egg, hence the confusion. As I discovered, true poached eggs take some practice, so the poaching cup is a welcome face saver. To help keep the egg together in the boiling water, two tricks are (a) put some vinegar in the water, which hastens the solidification of the whites, or (b) create a vortex in the middle of the pan, by spinning the water. I liked the idea of poaching, because it is healthier and you can get a runny yolk that has been uniformly heated.
I tried making a vortex the first time, aka the "spinney" method and it was miserable failure, partly because I hadn't brought the water to a full boil before hand. The egg was also still a bit cold, so it handily dispersed into the swirling water into an embarassing egg cloud. After 45 seconds, I removed what remained of the egg (about 50% of the white with the intact yolk). I had found a fine sieve cleaning out a kitchen drawer yesterday, so I used it to scoop almost all of the remaining egg white. And then the water really started to boil, and the remaining 3% of white solidified and puffed up like a meringue. It was a bit surprising to see how much volume those dregs of egg white could produce. After more scooping, I finally had a relatively clear pan of water for try 2.
I added a bit of vinegar, brought the water to a boil, lowered the heat and slide the egg in from a bowl. And once again, slivery tendrils formed as the white spread. But what else could I do, so I let it cook. After about a minute or so, I carefully removed the egg, which was about 80% of the white around a soft yolk. It really was most of the egg. And I realized that this is maybe what they do at restaurants. If you lose 20% of the white, the customer isn't any wiser for it. Anyways, the next time, I'll put the egg in a ladle and let it solidify a bit in the ladle before letting it loose.
During this time, I also snuck the remainder of the first egg back in to cook it a bit more, since it was still a bit underdone. I put the two eggs on a thick slice of toasted rosemary potato bread, topped it with some sliced havarti and smoked gouda (which came presliced from Costco) and cut up some ripe Early girls from the garden.
It didn't seem like a premier sandwich. And the egg dripped all over the plate. But the tomatoes were superbly juicy and sweet, and the cheese added a rich almost buttery taste. All in all, a messy but delicious sandwich.
1 egg
Break egg into a bowl or a ladle. Bring a pan of water to a healthy boil and add a dash of vinegar. Lower the heat so the water is fairly calm.
Slide the egg as gently as possible into the water. Optionally put the egg in a ladle and let it firm up before letting it go. Some of the white will start to separate. Ignore this. Simmer until the white is done, but the yolk is still runny. Remove with a slotted spoon. Serve immediately.
But true poached eggs are cooked directly in water. The steamed variant has become popular and is now commonly called a poached egg, hence the confusion. As I discovered, true poached eggs take some practice, so the poaching cup is a welcome face saver. To help keep the egg together in the boiling water, two tricks are (a) put some vinegar in the water, which hastens the solidification of the whites, or (b) create a vortex in the middle of the pan, by spinning the water. I liked the idea of poaching, because it is healthier and you can get a runny yolk that has been uniformly heated.
I tried making a vortex the first time, aka the "spinney" method and it was miserable failure, partly because I hadn't brought the water to a full boil before hand. The egg was also still a bit cold, so it handily dispersed into the swirling water into an embarassing egg cloud. After 45 seconds, I removed what remained of the egg (about 50% of the white with the intact yolk). I had found a fine sieve cleaning out a kitchen drawer yesterday, so I used it to scoop almost all of the remaining egg white. And then the water really started to boil, and the remaining 3% of white solidified and puffed up like a meringue. It was a bit surprising to see how much volume those dregs of egg white could produce. After more scooping, I finally had a relatively clear pan of water for try 2.
I added a bit of vinegar, brought the water to a boil, lowered the heat and slide the egg in from a bowl. And once again, slivery tendrils formed as the white spread. But what else could I do, so I let it cook. After about a minute or so, I carefully removed the egg, which was about 80% of the white around a soft yolk. It really was most of the egg. And I realized that this is maybe what they do at restaurants. If you lose 20% of the white, the customer isn't any wiser for it. Anyways, the next time, I'll put the egg in a ladle and let it solidify a bit in the ladle before letting it loose.
During this time, I also snuck the remainder of the first egg back in to cook it a bit more, since it was still a bit underdone. I put the two eggs on a thick slice of toasted rosemary potato bread, topped it with some sliced havarti and smoked gouda (which came presliced from Costco) and cut up some ripe Early girls from the garden.
It didn't seem like a premier sandwich. And the egg dripped all over the plate. But the tomatoes were superbly juicy and sweet, and the cheese added a rich almost buttery taste. All in all, a messy but delicious sandwich.
Messy, badly poached egg
(I haven't perfected this recipe, so follow at your own risk)
(I haven't perfected this recipe, so follow at your own risk)
1 egg
Break egg into a bowl or a ladle. Bring a pan of water to a healthy boil and add a dash of vinegar. Lower the heat so the water is fairly calm.
Slide the egg as gently as possible into the water. Optionally put the egg in a ladle and let it firm up before letting it go. Some of the white will start to separate. Ignore this. Simmer until the white is done, but the yolk is still runny. Remove with a slotted spoon. Serve immediately.
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