Welcome to

I haven’t been posting lately because of the “vegan-at-home” thing we’re doing.  I wish I could say I’ve had some resounding triumphs and flashes of culinary inspiration, but I haven’t.  So for the sake of having SOMETHING to write about, I’m giving my recipe for mac and cheese, in all it’s animal-fat-filled glory.

For ingredients, you’ll need a pound of pasta (cooked just UNDER al dente, elbows or penne work best, cooled under plenty of water, and drained), a stick and a half of unsalted butter butter, four oz. of flour, a teaspoon of sea salt, a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a quart of half and half, 2 cups of buttermilk, a pound of extra sharp cheddar cheese sliced or grated, and breadcrumbs.

Grease a 9″x13″ baking dish or aluminum foil pan.  Add the pasta to it.  In a large sauce pan, melt the butter over medium heat.  When it begins to foam, whisk in the flour, salt, and cayenne.  Whisk constantly for one minute to make a blond roux.  Turn the heat up to medium high, and gradually whisk in the half and half.  Keep whisking.  When  the mixture is smooth and thick, whisk in the buttermilk.  When steam begins to rise from the sauce again, gradually drop in the cheese, and whisk until all is smooth and melted.  If you’re using a saucepan that tends to scorch, keep the heat down.  It will turn out fine, it’ll just take longer (I don’t recommend using non-stick for this because of all the whisking; it’ll scratch the coating, which isn’t good for the pan or for you.).

Turn off the heat and pour the cheese sauce over the pasta, scraping out the sauce pan with a nylon spatula.  Use the spatula to then incorporate the sauce throughout the pasta and to help express any air bubbles.  Top with breadcrumbs, parsley and paprika.  Ideally, let the mac and cheese sit for half and hour before baking at 350 degrees for one hour, or until browned and bubbly.  It can also be stored covered in the fridge before baking, but let it sit out at room temperature for an hour before baking.

This is very popular at parties, and people will begin to request it from you.  Brace yourself for the pet peeve that bothers me most about this recipe…Other people never bake it enough!  Party-goers can become impatient for it, or it’s sharing oven space with three other casseroles, and the top won’t get brown and crsipy.  But it’s still fabulous stuff.

This recipe can be tweaked into the stratosphere, by the way.  Chunks of ham, tomatoes,  broccoli, or fresh spinach leaves are yummy additions.  If you want to prepare it for a fancier grown-up dinner party, think about dividing the mixture of sauce and pasta into individual ramekins and adding truffle shavings or chunks of seafood.  Top each serving with buttered panko (Japanese breadcrumbs), put the ramekins on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for fifteen or twenty minutes.  Feel free to experiment by adding other cheese, too.  I don’t recommend totally eliminating the cheddar, though, because it contributes a great deal to the flavor profile of the finished dish.  It lends incomparable smoothness, and the natural acids from the extra sharp cheddar (as well as those from the buttermilk) cut through the richness of all the butter and cream.  Those acids are what makes you take bite after bite, because they keep your palate from being fatigued from the fats in the dish.

I haven’t posted in a LONG time, I know.  The simple reason…I really don’t cook at home anymore as much as heat stuff up.  Veganism at home is NOT the same experience as dining in the high falutin’ raw food restaurants popping up in larger cities.  Those places have the time, money, and resources to do some truly remarkable things with vegetables.  Even if I did have the time and inclination to prepare something outlandish like flash-frozen radish and lotus root salad with cilantro oil and beet pollen, that’s not exactly the sort of dish you want to cozy up to after a long hard day at work.

One thing I’ve made more than once is a very warming, satisfying lentil soup.  It has distinct Indian overtones (hence the title of this post…”dal” is the Hindi word for lentils), with a spicy kick.  Moreover, it’s VERY easy to throw together and walk away.

In a large, heavy-bottom stock pot saute two chopped garlic cloves and one chopped onion in a quarter cup of canola oil.  When golden, add 2 quarts of water, a vegetable bouillon cube, a half pound of washed lentils, 4 cups (packed) baby spinach, 1/2 cup chopped cilantro and/or mint, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne, a 1/2 teaspoon of curry powder, and a tablespoon of tomato paste.  Bring to a boil, then simmer on very low heat for an hour or more.  Check for seasoning.

With some warm naan (supermarkets around me carry it, an Indian flatbread) and a salad of chick peas, cucumber, and tomatoes with mustard vinaigrette, it’s a simple, hearty supper.

My husband’s away this weekend (the recently vegan husband, the only one I’ve got), and I’m getting together with friends.  I thought I’d contribute dessert, and the thought of making some bizarr-o concoction full of whole wheat flour, applesauce, and canola oil just didn’t cut it for me.  So if vegan hubby Joe’s not going to be at the get-together, why not make a big, fat, decadent chocolate cake?  I’ve got a dynamite recipe that’s so good and moist, it doesn’t even need frosting.  I usually bake it in a tube pan because of that, but feel free to divide the batter in three 8-9 inch round pans or make cupcakes (yield will be around 30) out of it.  Just be sure to reduce the baking time to approximately 15 minutes for round cakes, and around twelve minutes for cupcakes.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour your choice of pan.  Cream two sticks of softened butter with 2 cups of sugar for five minutes on medium speed in a stand mixer.  If you haven’t got a stand mixer, poor you.  Meanwhile, sift together 2 and a 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt.  Set aside.  Boil 3/4 cup of water and pour it over 3/4 cup of GOOD cocoa powder in a small bowl and whisk.  Pour a cup of buttermilk into the cocoa mixture and whisk again.  In the mixer bowl, with the beater still running and the speed on low, add four eggs, one at a time.  Stop the mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and start’er up again on low.  Add the flour mixture alternately with the cocoa mixture in four increments.  Stop the mixer and scrape down the bowl once or twice.  Take care not to overmix the batter, just mix it until everything is incorporated and the streaks of flour are gone.  Scrape the batter into your prepared pan, spread it evenly, and bang it firmly on your counter a couple of times to express any air bubbles.  If you’re using a tube pan like me, bake the cake for approximately 35-40 minutes, testing for doneness with a toothpick.  Cool for 15 minutes in the pan, then remove the cake from the pan by inverting it on a rack and cool it completely.  Frost, glaze, or dust with confectioner’s sugar as you desire.  

Well, I’m going to sign off and go figure out how I’m going to glaze this cake for the party tomorrow.  I CAN’T WAIT to have a piece of it!  I don’t know how I’m going to last.

I cooked a really delicious dish to bring to a New Year’s Eve party.  It was inspired by a recipe that came in a pamphlet featuring beer as a cooking ingredient.  I rarely cook to recipes verbatim because it’s boring, and sometimes you just KNOW by looking at a recipe that it can be improved.  The dish I made is Shrimp in Habanero Cream Sauce with Carribean Yellow Rice. 

I started with a pound and half of 16/20 Gulf shrimp.  I peeled them completely, putting the shells into a saucepan as I went.  After deveining the shrimp, I laid them into a nine by thirteen baking dish, and covered them with three chopped garlic cloves, half a sliced yellow onion, and a bottle of beer.  I covered the dish with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to marinate overnight.  In the saucepan of shells, I added a teaspoon of sea salt and two cups of water.  I brought it to a boil, and then simmered it for an hour.  I strained out the shells, and put the finished stock into the fridge until the next day. 

So cut to the next day…I pulled the shrimp from the marinade and discarded it.  In a large pot I prepared yellow rice (any good recipe will do, or a high-quality packaged one from Spain or Mexico).  While the rice cooked, I made the cream sauce.  In a saucepan, saute five chopped scallions in one tablespoon each of butter and olive oil.  Mince one or two dried habaneros, and add them to the pot.  Season with salt.  Sprinkle in a quarter cup of flour and cook to a light roux.  Zip the heat up to medium high and whisk in the reserved shrimp stock, two tablespoons of tequila, and one cup of heavy cream.  When the sauce is thickened and glossy, turn the heat to medium and add the shrimp.  Cook them until just opaque.  Turn off the heat and cover to keep warm.

When the rice is done cooking, stir in a good teaspoon of finely minced fresh lime zest and a couple tablespoons of fresh chopped cilantro.  Put it on a platter, and pour the sauce and shrimp on top.  Garnish with well-toasted coconut and a little more fresh cilantro.

The partygoers LOVED this dish, and I have to say it was pretty tasty.  It was fiery, yes, but that could easily be adjusted to your tastes by simply using less dried habanero.  This is a keeper.  Call it Camarones Crema de Habanero con Arroz and impress your friends!

I’d like to let y’all know the end result of the smoked salmon napoleon idea I had a while back.  It’s easy and outrageously delicious.  Plus, you can bake the puff pastry way ahead of time and store it in an airtight container.  You can then assemble the napoloeons on an as-needed basis if you’re using them as an hors d’oeuvre.

Thaw your puff pastry and cut it into one-inch strips.  Bake according to package directions.  Cool completely.  Whip together 4 oz. softened cream cheese and one pint of sour cream, season with white pepper, salt and some minced fresh dill.  VERY thinly slice a seedless cucmber.  Snip or mince some fresh chives.  Open your packages of smoked salmon.  Load the sour cream mixture into a piping bag with a fat star tip.  On each puff pastry strip, lightly pipe on the sour cream using a counter clockwise swirl, being sure to leave room at both ends of the strip.  Top with a piece of smoked salmon and two slices of cucumber.  Repeat, and end with another strip of puff pastry.  Garnish with remaining cucumbers, dill, and chives.  It’s nice to make one cut on a cucmber slice from the center to the edge so that it can be sat atop each napoleon, giving it some vertical interest.  And snip your chives on an angle. And leave some of your dill in sprigs for garnishing.  Who says cooking at home always has to look like home cooking?

FYI, if you take a moment to look at your plate in nicer restaurants, you’ll see that the majority of garnishing techniques are easy to mimic.  Check it out and see what you can use for entertaining at home.

It’s no secret that I have trouble seeing leftovers in the fridge, and even more trouble throwing good food away.  Here are a few interesting uses for some things I found hanging around in the kitchen this past month.

We’ve had some apple cider in the fridge for a couple weeks now, a couple of cups in the bottom of a two quart jug.  Neither me nor my husband has been drinking it with the gusto that comes with a first taste in early fall, so there it sat.  I used it as a braising liquid for pork chops.  Yum.

In the cupboard I had a sleeve of Girl Scout tea cookies that while unopened had been there too long.  I pulverized them in the food processor with some dried cranberries and melted butter to make a yummy crumb crust for a pumpkin pie.

That same pie yielded extra filling that I wasn’t counting on.  I really only needed about two-thirds of the filling a standard recipe for a 9-inch pie calls for, due to the thickness of the crumb crust I had made.  I stowed the extra filling in the fridge along with the bottom of the can of evaporated milk I hadn’t finished.  Today, I combined the filling and the milk with two extra tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of canola oil.  I mixed it well with a bowl of dry ingredients consisting of one cup all purpose flour, a half teaspoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt, and a half cup of oatmeal.  Voila!  The result was enough batter for eight fragrant and moist muffins.  I baked them at 375 degrees for about twenty minutes.

“Waste not, want not,” is pleasantly true when really good things come out of disparate bits and pieces.  I’ve got half a roasted chicken sneering at me from the fridge right now, but with a little innovation, it’ll be rockin’ dinner yet again one night this week.  Maybe with my leftover marinara, capers, and wine I can negotiate some cacciatore.

Yesterday, I traveled an hour and a half to spend over three hours in a noble pursuit…I helped my father-in-law make sauerkraut.  We can only hope that when it begins to ferment, all our effort will not be in vain, and a good brew will be happening.  Ideally, the sauerkraut will be ready for consumption by New Year’s Day, with a pork roast or maybe pork meatballs.

Unfortunately, I completely forgot my husband’s advice to document the process photographically.  When I walked into the house, my father-in-law had everything all set up to begin, and I was so excited I never even thought about the camera.

So armed with forty pounds of fall cabbage (which had to be cleaned, quartered, and cored), two antique sauerkraut shredders, kosher salt, a ten gallon crock (also antique), and a recipe book from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (published 1944), we set to work.  And what work it was.  Despite our best efforts and all the clean sheets on the floor, we still managed to spread cabbage bits all around the kitchen.  It was on our shoes, up to our elbows, and the salt made me itch.  It was great!

My father-in-law and I talked, too,  about everything from gas prices to Rush Limbaugh.  Come to think of it, what a remarkable confluence of hot-air producing things…kraut, methane, and more methane.  We bonded (my father-in-law and me, not me and Rush).

Making sauerkraut is not difficult, but it takes time and patience.  Physically laborious, the process involves mixing five pounds of shredded cabbage with three and half tablespoons of salt, and packing and tamping each batch on top of each other in the crock.  When you’re through with that, you must cover the cabbage with a big plate, a wet cloth, and a heavy weight.  And everything must be scrupulously clean so as to insure a good fermentation. 

My part was over at the end of the day, but my father-in-law will be checking the crock a couple of times a week to de-scum it and wash the cloth on top.  I’ll resume my duties at some point in the New Year, armed with a knife and fork. 

I made some rockin’ seafood chowder last night, and I didn’t need a lot of special ingredients to make it.  It’s true I had a few things hanging around that I normally don’t, but it was really good and cheap.  Here’s what I did.

In two tablespoons of olive oil and two tablespoons of butter, saute a quarter cup of chopped, smoked bacon.  When the bacon’s almost fully rendered, add a half cup each of chopped onion and celery, and a couple teaspoons of chopped garlic.  Season lightly with salt and pepper, and also add in an eighth teaspoon of cayenne and a quarter teaspoon of dried thyme.  When the vegetables are golden and soft, sprinkle a quarter cup of flour in and whisk for a few minutes to make a medium roux.  Still whisking, pour in a bottle of clam juice, a quart of water, a small can of PLAIN tomato sauce, and a quarter cup of sweet vermouth.  Your pot contents should be smooth and slightly thickened.  Lower heat to medium.  Dice two large potatoes and add them to the pot.  Stir it well, put a lid on, and let it simmer for twenty minutes to cook the potatoes.  Add in a pint of light cream, a drained can of baby shrimp, and a drained can of white crab (the cheaper stuff, not lump).  I happened to have a handful of scallops in the freezer, so I thawed those and added them as well.  I’m thinking that some canned chopped clams wouldn’t have hurt, either.  When the scallops were done (this took just a few minutes), I added some chopped parsley for freshness and color, tasted for seasoning, and added some more salt.  I turned off the heat and let the pot sit on the store for an hour for the flavors to blend, and just put the heat back on low fifteen minutes before dinner. 

The finished chowder had a pretty pink color, with a lovely balance of flavors.  The smokiness of the bacon was offset by the slight acid of the tomato sauce, with the sweetness of cream and vermouth holding up the seafood.  It was super yummy, the flavor was deep, rich, and interesting.  It was just the ticket on a chilly autumn night.

I’m figuring the whole pot cost about seven bucks to make.  My husband and I each ate two bowls, and we’ll easily get another dinner out of the leftovers.  With crusty wholegrain rolls and a spring mix salad, it was a warming, satisfying dinner that was not at all heavy.

So apple season is in full swing, with the holidays coming up right behind it.  For any of you who want to volunteer to be the pie-bringer to festive occasions, don’t submit to the temptation of pre-made crust.  You can make your own magnificent pie crust with the following simple recipe, a few tools, and a few minutes.

For ONE pie crust (double this if you’re doing a top-and-bottom crust pie):

1 c. all-purpose flour, 1 T. sugar,1/4 t. salt, 6 T. very cold butter, 2 T. very cold lard, and a glass of ice water

You will need a pastry cutter, a fork, and a medium/large bowl.  In the bowl, mix the first three ingredients well with the fork.  Cut the cold butter and lard into chunks, letting them fall into the flour mixture.  Work the chunks into the flour with the pastry cutter until pea-sized lumps remain.  Put down the pastry cutter, take up the fork, and gradually add the ice water in the bowl while stirring vigorously.  Stop adding water as soon as the dough begins to form into shreds and chunks.  Check to see if the crust has enough moisture by squeezing a small palmful.  If it holds together when dropped lightly into the bowl,  you’re just about done.  If the dough chunk can’t hold together, add a bit more water, stir again, and check again.  The key to a tender, flaky pie crust is being able to see chunk of fats in the finished, raw dough.  If you can’t see the chunks, you’ve overmixed it or you’ve added too much water.  As soon as the dough is cohesive, form it into a disk, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, and let it rest in the fridge for at least an hour.  I often let the dough chill overnight, too.

When you’re ready to roll, sprinkle your surface, your rolling pin, and your unwrapped crust disk with flour.  Be sure to leave the bag of flour open and nearby in case you find the crust sticking to your counter or pin.  Grease your pie plate.  The key to rolling a round crust of even thickness is to apply even pressure from the center of the disk outward just once, then rotate the disk one-half turn, checking at each turn to make sure the dough is not sticking to the counter.  Lift it lightly and flour beneath it if it gets sticky.  When the disk is large enough, put your pin on the far side of it, flop the edge of the crust over the pin and toward you, and roll the crust up lightly on to the pin.  Place the close edge of the crust on the lip of the pie plate, and simply unroll it from the pin, letting it fall across the pie plate.  Press the crust lightly up against all sides of the pie plate.  You’re done! 

Now you’re ready to do whatever you need to with the crust.  Don’t prick it unless you’re baking the shell separately before adding the filling.  You do know about blind-baking, don’t you?  That’s a story for another day.

Oh, but here’s another quick tip.  For quiche crust, don’t add sugar, and replace the lard with another two tablespoons of butter. Or, if you’re watching cholesterol, whisk seven tablespoons of olive oil into the flour and salt, and then add in room temperature water until the right consistency is reached.  The flakiness won’t be there, but the olive oil makes the crust meltingly tender and provides an awesome flavor backdrop, especially to quiches that incorporate tomato, zucchini, artichokes, et al.

Tonight I’m making a “white” chili for dinner, a heresy to those who grew up in the southwestern US and Texas.  And yes, I’m putting beans in it, great northerns, to add another slap in the face of tradition.  It truly is delicious, though, otherwise I wouldn’t bother at all.  You’ll need a pound of lean ground turkey, garlic, onion, green pepper, a can of some sort of white bean (drained), a large can of chopped tomatoes with juice,  chicken broth, salt, cayenne pepper, cumin, coriander, brown sugar, olive oil, and flour.

Chop the onion, pepper, and garlic.  Saute them until soft in medium-hot olive oil.  Season with the salt, spices, and sugar according to your tastes.  Zip the heat up to high and add the turkey, browning the meat and breaking it up.  When the meat is browned , sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of flour into the pot, stir well for a few minutes.  Pour in a cup and a half of broth slowly, stirring to evenly thicken the mixture.  Add the drained beans and the tomatoes with their juice.  Bring to a simmer, put on a lid, lower the heat, and let it hang out on low for a couple hours, stirring occasionally.  It really is yummy, but lighter than traditional chilis.  I serve it with some grated cheddar and sour cream.  I’m also planning on making a bacon and jalapeno cornbread and a green salad to go with it.  Such a gringa, I am.