Month 5 day 13: Souffles

Today I made:
Spinach Arugula and Parmesan Souffles, Cooking Light June 2011

Experiments weren't working as planned this morning so I decided to come home and make souffles for lunch. I only had 2 eggs and I'm leaving soon for a conference and don't need leftovers anyway, so I halved the recipe and made two personal-sized souffles. It's kind of a lot of pans for two servings, but oh well. I had a bunch of arugula left over from the salsa for the fish, so I used that in place of spinach.

This recipe is weirdly ordered. For example, step 2 is to cover the ramekins with breadcrumbs. They will then be set aside for about half an hour, and there will be a lot of waiting time when this could be done at a later point. Step 3 is to cook spinach. Again, this will be set aside and not used until later. Step 5 is the step that should come first, which is to mix egg whites with cream of tartar and let sit for 15 minutes at room temperature. And that's basically the last step... so if you were following along with the recipe as written, you now just watch an episode of Arrested Development while you wait for things to sit. Really this should all be in reverse order-- let the egg whites and cream of tartar sit, meanwhile make the white sauce, which needs to cool for 10 minutes. While that's cooling, you can easily do the spinach part, and then everything is ready to come together at the same time. BAM!

Anyway, I love when I get a chance to use my Le Creuset ramekins. I only have two, (another reason why it was good to half the recipe) but they are so cute!

The souffle didn't really rise or anything, but it is still light and airy just because the egg whites have been whipped. I got hungry soon after, but I guess that is to be expected since really this was just one egg with some things mixed in it.

For dinner I fried up a sausage (left over from the polenta dish) with some bell peppers and had it with pasta. I grated some robusto cheese on top. It was surprisingly good for having so few ingredients. Just trying to clean out the fridge before the trip!

So I think this is it for Month 5! It was a short month, and while many of the later recipes tasted good, I am sick of them after eating them for several days in a row :-P

June's best recipes:
I think we would both have to go with the Mexican dinner! G might put in a plug for the next day's frozen hot chocolate too. Why not make it with Abuelita and serve the two together?

Month 5 day 12: Monkfish with peach salsa

Today I made:
Grilled Halibut Monkfish with Peach and Pepper Salsa, Cooking Light June 2010
with white corn cheesy grits

This was a nice recipe. Shaw's miraculously had ripe peaches-- this never happens. They've been making my room smell amazing and I've been enjoying eating them, so I was almost hesitant to use the rest of them up on this, especially since it uses a habanero pepper and I thought there was a chance I might not be able to eat it :-P A good number of the reviews say that it was way too spicy, although I didn't taste much spice at all. It makes me a little paranoid that all the pepper was at the bottom of the bowl and I will get it tomorrow, but hopefully it will be ok. It's very fresh and delicious.

I walked to Whole Foods for the fish since I was getting a late start and the Shaw's fishmonger closes early. This recipe calls for halibut, but WF didn't have any. They had monkfish and I was curious. The fishmonger said that it tastes like lobster. I'm not a huge lobster fan, but I decided to just try it for fun. The taste isn't really similar at all, but the texture is. It was a very mild flavor-- I think people who don't normally like fish would be fine with monkfish.

The bad thing about monkfish is that raw monkfish looks just awful:

Like some harvested organ or something. Luckily it is more appetizing once cooked through.

I wanted to eat this with cous cous, but we were out, so I went with grits instead. I picked up some robusto cheese at WF so I put some of that in at the last moment to melt.

Month 5 day 11: Sausage+polenta and muffins

Today I made:
Parmesan Polenta and Spicy Sausage Sauce, Cooking Light May 2011
Tuscan Lemon Muffins, Cooking Light May 2011

I planned to make a different recipe today, either one for Asiany tuna or one for halibut with peach salsa, depending on the availability of ripe peaches. But by the time I got to the grocery store the fishmonger was closed up for the evening so that didn't work out. I remembered that there was some polenta tomatoey recipe with sausage, and figured I probably had most of the necessary ingredients at home as long as I picked up some tomatoes and sausage. I thought I remembered the word "spicy" in the title so I bought spicy sausage, although when I got home I realized the spice is from red pepper, and it was supposed to be sun-dried tomato chicken sausage. I cut up a few sun-dried tomatoes to put in the sauce and didn't put the full amount of pepper to make up for it. I didn't have fresh basil or oregano, so I used dried. This was a good recipe, and I think G would like it too, so I will save it. We enjoy polenta! But I didn't think that the Parmigiano-Reggiano flavor made it through, so next time I would either add more or just use normal (cheaper) parmesan cheese. The sausage was good!

After dinner I made lemon muffins. They're made with ricotta cheese and olive oil! It's a bit unusual, but they are very soft and moist. The lemon flavor is actually pretty subtle, even though it has a full lemon's worth of zest and juice. It could use more though.

I meant to eat salad too, but ended up eating muffins instead :-P Does it count as a vegetable if it is in a flower cup?

Month 5 day 10: Japanesey tofu two ways

Today I made:
Udon Noodle Salad with Broccolini and Spicy Tofu, Cooking Light May 2011
Mashed Tofu Salad (白和え), Food Network Magazine June 2010

 I wasn't super enthusiastic about tonight's dinner; Japanese recipes in these American magazines usually aren't as good as you expect/hope. I'm not entirely sure if that's just the recipes themselves or the ingredients. The udon, for example, just didn't taste very good. Tofu in America is usually pretty bad too. I got this tofu at the Korean store a few blocks away. It was some Korean brand because the Japanese brand whose name I recognized (House Foods) had an ad for "The Croods" on it, which took away from its Japan cred. The tofu was fine, but nothing special. I miss my Obaachan in Kusanagi! She ran a store that sold only tofu and tofu-related things (including shira-ae like this, but with more ingredients and much better, which she would sometimes throw in my bag as a bonus) and used an abacus to calculate the total price. The tofu there was great.
The sauce was good, a little spicy though. I didn't have the patience to drain the tofu as long as I should have, and so it seemed a little wet when it came out of the oven. I couldn't find broccolini at the store, so just used normal broccoli. I used sesame oil instead of peanut oil, because sesame is the best. I also subbed pumpkin seeds for cashews, which I don't particularly like. I think this salad would be ok with a different brand of udon (don't get Kame), but I won't save it. The shira-ae was fine, but not that exciting... it seems a little lacking to just have spinach. If I were making an -ae of some sort, it would be goma-ae with sesame paste.

Month 5 day 9: White bean burgers

Today I made:
White Bean and Sage Pita Burgers, Cooking Light June 2011

This was pretty easy for a veggie burger. The onions and garlic are sautéed a bit first, but otherwise everything just gets dumped in a food processor/blender and pulsed, so it's very quick. The recipe made a big deal about how sticky and hard to scoop it would be, but I just used my hand and guessed at the amount instead of using a measuring cup, so it was fine. Another change I made was to use walnuts instead of almonds because I couldn't find any... although I usually have a bag in the freezer at all times. This really does need to be cooked on medium, and with enough oil to coat the pan. The first batch I made got burnt, but the next batch I made was fine. I bought these orange and yellow tomatoes thinking they would be more interesting, but they're not that flavorful actually. I thought this sandwich tasted good, but I don't think that G would have cared much for it. I would recommend it for people trying to be gluten-free (without the pita) or vegetarian.

Month 5 day 8: Salmon with potatoes and Kale Slaw

Today I made:
Grilled Salmon with Chorizo and Fingerlings, Cooking Light June 2010
Green Cabbage Coleslaw: Kale and Parmesan variation, Every Day with Rachael Ray June 2012

This was a ton of food! I was so full, in a good way.

The June 2010 issue of Cooking Light is obsessed with Spanish chorizo. It's been in two of the recipes I've made from it so far, and I think it was in a few others in the issue as well. Anyway, that's kind of nice because it comes in a big package, so I just finished it off with this dinner. The chorizo, onion and garlic, and baby potatoes get braised in broth until soft, so this is a pretty hands-off dinner. I used that time to make the kale slaw.
It's a favorite thing for these magazines to have one recipe followed by several variations on it. In this case, there was the green cabbage cole slaw followed by ten variations. But it's hard to know how to adjust the original recipe. The kale variant, for example, said to make the green cabbage slaw but with kale instead of cabbage, an apple, parmesan cheese, and subbing EVOO for mayo and lemon for vinegar. But then, do you still put caraway seeds? Not that I was going to anyway, but it seems like you might, and that would not mix well. Or carrots? I left them out because the picture didn't show any, but technically if you followed the recipe it should have been kept in. And, I didn't end up doing the first step of the original slaw recipe, which was to soak the cabbage in ice cold salt water for an hour. Not sure if that was really intended for all variants, but I wasn't going to wait that long. This ended up tasting really good, but I think that's just because Parmigiano-Reggiano is the best ever. It reminded me of a Caesar salad, maybe again because of the cheese. G doesn't like mayo so he normally doesn't like any slaw. I am also not a big mayo fan, and I historically have not liked cole slaws, but there have been so many in the magazines this year that I feel like I have made several by now. I think he would like this one though, because it's more just like a salad, and he loves kale (but maybe not raw?). I wonder what it would taste like to sauté this just a bit. The apples might become soft and sweet? There is plenty left over, so I might give it a try.
Anyway, as soon as the potatoes are softened, it's just grilling the salmon (on a grill pan, for me) for a few minutes and then it's all ready.
When I bought the salmon, I noticed it was not boneless, so I asked if there were going to be a lot of little tiny bones. The woman felt around on the fillets for a little bit quietly (that should've been a tip off) before saying that she didn't think it would be a problem as long as you took out the piece of the backbone. Well, that doesn't come out that well, and yes, there were a ton of little bones to take out :-P It's so hard to cut raw fish though, and once it's cut it just flakes apart on its own... so maybe I should've just grilled it bones and all and worried about them later.

Yakitori Zai

Today was our day at Yakitori Zai. They have been open about a year I think, and they used to do cultural classes where they taught things like how to wear a kimono or how to make yakitori. They got too busy though and have put these classes on hiatus. What they have started doing are lunches-- ramen lunches. Yum! So today the New England JET Alumni went to Yakitori Zai for a special class. We got free ramen (I had the tonkotsu tsukemen-- chilled noodles, pork, and soft-boiled egg served with a warm pork-bone-based broth), and then we made several skewers of thigh yakitori. This was all free to us. I still don't know why this happened, but I'll accept it. Given their (fairly high) prices, this was probably about $40 of food for each of us :)

Tonkotsu tsukemen

After we ate our ramen, the head chef demonstrated how to cut up a chicken, taking apart and saving all the pieces. At this restaurant, they serve skewers of tail, for example. Now, I've certainly cut up whole chickens before, but somehow the way he deconstructed it there were all sorts of muscles that I have never noticed before. After watching him we had our turn with a second chicken. Everyone was shy, so I went first to take off the tail and pop off the legs. It was difficult, especially if you're trying not to fling chicken juices on everyone. I certainly don't remember all of the different steps and parts, even having seen it all twice through.

After we finished that, it was time to grill up some yakitori. This was a little bit like a cooking show in that the chickens that we just cut up were whisked away and some pre-made skewers were brought out instead. The chickens we had cut were for broth-- they are old chickens, so their meat is too tough for making yakitori, at least here, where they are very particular. They try to get as much organic and cruelty-free ingredients as possible, and the grills run on imported white charcoal.
The skewers are brushed with sake on both sides before going over the charcoal. After they are completely cooked through, they are dunked into sauce (tare) or sprinkled with salt and pepper (shio) and put back on the grill. The shio ones are done soon after, but the tare ones are dunked one more time into the tare before being ready.

Yum! Ready to eat!

 These plates and the vase-type cups that collect the used skewers were apparently made by autistic students at a local school that has ceramics facilities. So just all-in-all this place is trying to source everything in the best way it can.

Thanks to NEJETAA for the event and the pictures I stole :)

Month 5 day 7: Shakshuka and watermelon salad

Today I made:
Shakshuka with feta cotija, New York Times May 3, 2013
Watermelon-cucumber salad, Food Network Magazine, June 2010

We didn't know what to have for brunch-- there weren't many breakfasty recipes this month. But I flipped through my recipe file and found this one I clipped out of a newspaper for shakshuka:

We first got to know about shakshuka from having it at Tatte, a bakery/cafe that opened about a year ago in Kendall Square. For a few weeks in the fall, I did an experiment every Saturday that required me to do about 10 minutes of work and then wait for an hour. We sweetened the experience by using that hour-long incubation to go and get brunch at Tatte. Their pastries are delightful, but their shakshukas are warm, filling, and delicious. And, unfortunately, better than this one. I would have liked more peppers and not quite so many onions, and a little less cumin. I ran out of paprika so didn't get to use the full amount-- but it would probably have been better with more. We ate this with some bread G ran out to get while it was cooking. We are lucky to live so close to a grocery store, a bakery, and several good restaurants.

There's a bit of waiting in that recipe, so I cut up this watermelon salad in the meantime:

I like the combination of watermelon and mint, and the cucumber is good in there too. I might leave out the goat cheese next time, though. We've made a similar salad before that has watermelon, mint, and lime. I think I liked that one better.

Month 5 day 6: Frozen hot chocolate

One of G's favorite restaurants, a whole-in-the-wall Sichuan (despite being named "Thailand Cafe") place about a block away, will be closing sometime this month because the whole area is going to be torn down and redeveloped as more space for Novartis. Since he'll be away for the rest of the summer, this was G's last chance to eat there for ever. They're not even moving-- they're just closing. So we had to eat there for dinner instead of cooking.

Another thing G loves to have is iced hot chocolate at L.A. Burdick. They serve rich, creamy, decadent hot chocolate, and he found out once on accident (when he ordered a drink and it came chilled) that they're offered both hot and cold. He wanted to go-- to round out his only-in-Boston favorites before leaving-- but there was a tropical storm out and it was just rainy and wet and miserable. But I had a trick up my sleeve:

Frozen hot chocolate, Every Day with Rachael Ray, June 2012

G was so excited to get a little taste of L.A. Burdick at home, and he definitely wanted to save the recipe. Our blender isn't good enough to really chop up the ice, so there were still small pieces of ice in this. We think that next time, we might want to add extra water or milk to compensate for the volume, and then instead of adding ice, we'll pop it in the ice cream maker for just enough time that it gets milkshake-thick but is still drinkable. I thought it might be fun to try putting some cherries in, but G wanted it just the way it was. This was super easy and delicious.

Month 5 day 5: Mexican combination plate

Today's dinner was like something that you would get as a combo plate in a Mexican restaurant:
Chile Rellenos Made Easy, Cooking Light June 2011
Baked Black Beans with Chorizo, Cooking Light June 2011
Agua Fresca de Pepino, Cooking Light June 2010
Served with brown rice

It took about an hour and a half to make all this food. You'll want to zoom into this one:

About a year ago, a new Mexican/Tex-Mex restaurant opened up near us. This is a big deal for New England, and we were quite happy. We usually get the chile rellanos and chimichanga and share. So when I saw this recipe to make my own chile rellenos, I wanted to make it for G while he is here for just a few days before starting his internship. I paired it with baked black beans. These are each hour-long recipes, and the timelines to make them only partially overlapped. But actually, the brown rice took the longest to make...

The reviews on the chile rellenos all think that it's good, but all wonder what about this is "easy." I think it's the fact that the salsa contains salsa verde instead of being completely from scratch. But there are still many steps. Onions, tomatoes, spices, and salsa verde are simmered together and then blended. The chiles are charred, placed in a bag to steam a bit until they can be peeled and seeded, then stuffed with cheeses. Then, you whip up egg whites to stiff peaks, fold in the egg yolks, and dip the stuffed chiles in flour, egg, and corn meal. This gets fried for a few minutes, then baked for a few more. Nothing's really difficult, per-say, but it does require many steps and dirties many dishes. 

The beans are not very complicated-- it's just onion, garlic, and serrano pepper sautéed then mixed with canned beans and broth, mashed, and topped with cheese and some chorizo (cooked earlier). I accidentally used up all the tomato for the salsa because I didn't see it at the bottom of the ingredient list for this dish. So that was one deviation from the recipe. I don't think it should have baked 30 minutes as suggested, because everything is cooked through and all that really needs to happen is for the cheese to melt. But maybe the cheese getting crispy is the goal? Or maybe with fresh tomato on top it wouldn't be so toasty.

The agua fresca (the green liquid in the cup in the background) was kind of nice, but G didn't care much for his. I didn't notice the part about it "brewing" overnight, so we decided maybe we shouldn't strain it lest it end up just as unflavored water... this meant that a bit of seranno pepper was still floating around, so every few sips you'd get a zinger. I thought it was good, though. There is a sushi restaurant I like near us that serves water from a pitcher with cucumber and maybe some melon cut up in it, and it's oh so refreshing. 

G says to save the bean and chile recipes, although we also felt a bit like we might as well just pay $7 and get it at the restaurant a block away... save some time and some dishes. But I think if you served this meal at a dinner party, it would be a big hit and people would be impressed.

Month 5 day 4: Southern-inspired halibut open-faced sandwiches

Today I made:
Open-Faced Blackened Catfish Halibut Sandwiches, Cooking Light June 2011
Stewed Okra and Fresh Tomato,  Cooking Light June 2011

This was a ready-in-30-minutes meal, and I thought it was pretty good.
The side is stewed okra with corn and fresh tomatoes. Since I used frozen okra and corn, this potentially could be made any time you have a tomato and onion handy. It reminds me of something that they would serve at Redbones, our favorite BBQ restaurant/food truck, but we think they would add in some bacon. I will do that next time. This is fast to put together, then just simmers for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, you rub the fish with some spices and throw it into the cast-iron skillet. The grocery store's fishmonger was almost closing up, so he only had halibut. That's fine, because sometimes catfish tastes a little odd anyway. This is pretty quick to cook, but while it's on the stove you have just enough time to mix together yogurt, lime, and honey with the (precut, bagged) coleslaw vegetables and cilantro.
It's an open-faced sandwich, so the slaw, fish, and more slaw goes on top of a toasted slice of sourdough bread. We went local with Iggy's bread, and I can't wait to have the extra for breakfasts this week.
The coleslaw is a little atypical. For one thing, I put in the whole bag instead of just two cups, so the dressing didn't quite coat it as much as it maybe should have. You could taste both the sweet honey and the sour yogurt+lime, and it was a sort of strange combination... the flavors didn't really meld together, they were just distinct. Maybe I didn't mix it well enough. We'll see tomorrow if the flavors have permeated a little more.
G thought it was good too, so we'll keep the recipe. It's nice and fast.

Month 5 day 3: Pork and peaches

Today I made:
Skillet Pork Chop Saute with Peaches, Cooking Light June 2011

Today's dinner is brought to you by the color brown

Today's dinner was a little monotone, but we had more of the Thai salad for lunch, so I think that makes up for it. These "ripe-and-ready" peaches were totally hard, but after a few minutes boiling in the wine-broth mixture, they were juicy and very sweet, just like the peaches in cobbler. I always thought that was sweet from the added sugar, but apparently cooked peaches are over-the-top sweet on their own. It was a little much. This was also a pretty salty dish, even though I didn't add anything more than a sprinkle on the pork. But I think cooking wine usually has some in it, and of course chicken broth does as well. It got very concentrated in the peaches too-- so in addition to being super sweet, they were also very salty. The broth flavor reminded me of beef stroganoff... although now that I look up a few recipes for that, I don't think they have much in common. It also tasted like it should be a fall dish. I do think I like apples and pork together more. In a few months, I bet using this same recipe with apples would be delicious.
Anyway, this was a very fast, flavorful dinner. We like orzo a lot too.

Month 5 day 2: Thai Turkey Salad

Oops! Saved this as a draft instead of publishing it.

Today I made:
Grilled Thai Turkey Salad, Every Day with Rachael Ray June 2012
served with rice noodles

This is a very pretty, colorful dish, as I suppose a lot of Southeast Asian-inspired dishes are. It was in a section of dinners for four under $10. I don't think we were under $10 though. The meatballs are made of turkey, half a jalapeño, shallots, and lime zest. The salad is topped with a brown sugar, fish sauce, and lime juice dressing. It was pretty easy to make, and tasted good too. We will keep the recipe.
For dessert, we had French macarons! G just got back from a family vacation in Europe. He left Paris a few days ago, so we decided we had to eat all 8 macarons tonight, since it's humid here. Luckily this was a light dinner, so we had no trouble doing that, and eating several pieces of Belgian chocolate too :)
I didn't think jalapeños were that hot, especially given that this recipe actually called for a serrano or thai chile. But I got some on my hand and it burned for the next several hours :-P Darn TRP channels.

Month 5 day 1: Yakitori

This month I have five magazines:

• Cooking Light, May 2011 (because there were too many Mays)
• Cooking Light, June 2010
• Cooking Light, June 2011
• Food Network Magazine, June 2010
• Every Day with Rachael Ray June 2012

These issues are chock-full of grilling recipes. I'm not sure I like grilling that much, because you would have to prepare everything in your room, then go downstairs and fire it up, and there is no sink to wash your hands/utensils/plates between putting the raw meat on the grill and taking it off. I might try some on the grill pan, though, which I love to use, even though the handle makes it impossible to use any adjacent burners.

Like tonight, for example, I used the grill pan and made:

• Yakitori, Cooking Light, June 2011
• Sesame-Miso Cucumber Salad, Cooking Light May 2011
• served with rice and corn, microwaved for a bit and then put on the grillpan for a few minutes with some of the leftover yakitori tare.

Actually, last month I had a recipe for yakitori from Food and Wine and a recipe for a cucumber wakame salad I was going to make with it. I knew that there was a June yakitori recipe coming up, and I kind of thought I would see which was better. But then June ended, and I never tried it. I considered that I could make both tare and see which was better, but decided to stick with just the one since I was running out of everything. I'm not sure how close this is to the real recipe, because as I was cooking I ran out of sake, so I just halved most of everything else. I ran out of rice vinegar, so then I started using some old sushi vinegar, which I also ran out of. And I ran out of sesame seeds after the salad, and the cilantro wasn't good anymore. Some restocking is in order I guess. Also the other day I ran out of whole pepper corns and thought I was buying more, but it was allspice and I just totally didn't read it until I almost put it in the grinder (>_<)

Also, the F&W recipe has the sauce just dredged on at the end, but this one is marinated for a bit, so it seemed better. And it was good! I will keep this recipe. I have been back from Japan so long that I don't remember much what real yakitori tastes like. I'm sure this is not legit, but it tastes good in its own right. The cucumber salad is good too, and is just very simple. If I make it again I will either cut the cucumber as thin as possible or I will peel it first. The funny thing is that the cucumber salad recipe comes with some variations. One of the variations is "don't use the first 7 ingredients" and use others instead. That leaves just the cucumbers.... I wonder how that counts as a variant.

I think it would be fun to try the other recipe still though. Both of them were for the type of skewer known as negima, meaning "onion in the spaces." There are many other types of yakitori, so it's interesting that this is the one that's made its way into Western cookbooks. Others might not be so pretty, featuring cartilage and stuff like that. Speaking of authentic yakitori, I will be going next week with some of the other JET alumni to Yakitori Zai to make some. Yakitori Zai is fairly new, and is a totally legitimate yakitori restaurant, but the prices are crazy. With their pricing system, these three skewers would have cost $15 and the salad $10. So I have never been. But I'm very excited to go. Maybe I should start going to more of the JET alumni meetings to get invited to this sort of thing more often....