Ham Fried Rice

My family made a ham for Easter.  After a couple days of fried ham and ham sandwiches we were about done.  My mother kept telling me to make fried rice, so I did.  Then she asked why I was making fried rice.

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So I decided to make a batch to share with friends.  It's a great dish to use up leftover meat and vegetables.  I searched the food sites for a few recipes but wound up doing my own thing.  Partially inspired by Jean George's ginger fried rice, I took what should be a quick dinner and broke it down into multiple steps, first crisping up finely diced ginger and garlic in oil, then browning the leftover chopped up ham with a small diced onion and frozen peas, and setting them all aside before adding back to the rice and scrambled eggs.

Not having a full time job at the moment, I have the luxury of time to cook a dish that takes all day, and even it doesn't, it has been therapeutic to take a simple dish and focus on preparing each ingredient to bring out as much flavor as possible.  Browning any of the ingredients definitely helps.  I'd like to think that's sort of French of me.

Madeleines

I actually made these for Valentine's Day, which shows how behind I am!  I believe, like Alton Brown, that you shouldn't purchase anything for the kitchen that is "single purpose."  Like a garlic press.  Use a knife, people!  (My dream knife - Global chef's Knife, 10" (Google Affiliate Ad)). But to make madeleines, you need a madeline pan (Kaiser Classic Nonstick Madeleine Pan (Google Affiliate Ad), or else they are just mini pound cakes.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  But then they're not madeleines.

The packaging for the pan had a recipe on the back for the little cakes, but I was skeptical.  Who tested it?  I found a few recipes on the Food Network site, and was tempted to choose the easiest one.  But felt for my first time (and Valentine's Day), I should make them right.  So Julia Child it is.  I used the recipe as it was posted from the blog hungry sofia.

I liked not having to use a mixer (too many pieces to wash).  A wooden spoon will do.  And it's good exercise.  There are a few more steps than just tossing everything into a bowl and stirring, but it wouldn't be French if it was haphazard like that.  Browning the butter and adding lemon zest are two things I think are necessary to make them extra special.  They baked with their signature little "hump" on top, and the edges browned nicely.  Not bad, for my first try.

Bacon Deviled Eggs

Come on.  Just read the title and you know this has to be good.  Unless you have some bizarre hatred of eggs.  Or can't eat bacon.  I'm not a big mayo fan - I've seen too many gloppy mayo-laden potato salads or this newish trend at Chinese banquets - fruit salad with lobster and mayo.  Like really.  Why would you do that?  But you can't make deviled eggs without mayo.  And this recipe from Bon Apetit doesn't go overboard.  I made these for Christmas and the past weekend for the Superbowl, and didn't get any complaints.  The dijon mustard gives them a tangy sweetness, the bacon fat a smooth richness and I added some cayenne or hot paprika for heat.  Not your everyday bacon and eggs.

Best. Burger. Ever.

Of course, the healthy eating resolution went right out the window the next day when we wanted burgers.  I've made fancy asian-style chicken burgers and italian-style turkey burgers, but never really perfected the classic beef burger. For a dish that is seemingly so simple, it was always something I'd order outside.  I think, besides good ingredients, it's much more about the technique than the crazy toppings all these new places are advertising.  It feels like every other week there's a new burger joint opening in my neighborhood - all claiming to be the best and "most famous."  But I think the best may be this one from Julia Child.  

The key is sautéing shallots in a little butter and mixing that into the ground beef.  For condiments, we kept it simple with American cheese (2 slices), pickles and some more of that whole grain mustard I'm growing very fond of.  And I mustn't forget to mention the potato rolls.  YUM.

A New Year

I'm ashamed at how long it's been since I've updated.  The last year was full of events that required more of my attention that I normally would have spent experimenting with recipes and exotic ingredients.  But this year has been off to a good start, in more ways than one.  New inspiration to cook new things, a new someone to share them with. M says food isn't sold for the single person.  Which is true, unless you count frozen food.  The good thing about buying fish is you can get just the amount you need.  To start the year off right with an attempt at healthy eating, I bought salmon for the first time at the local international supermarket.  Served over a bed of quinoa and bok choy, it sure beat Celeste pizza for one.

The salmon was almost ridiculously easy.  For two, I bought 3/4lb fresh salmon.  Season with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice.  Then make small cuts throughout the fish and insert thin slices of garlic.  Spread a good whole grain mustard over the top and drizzle with olive oil.  Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for about 15-20 minutes until the center is opaque.

Ingredients:

3/4 lb salmon

salt and pepper to taste

lemon juice

2 cloves or garlic

whole grain mustard

olive oil

Comfort Food

I've been bad. It's been almost two months and I've done enough cooking to fill up an entry each day. Something my friends and I have been noticing, is that Christmas commercials have started earlier and earlier each year. I think the first one I saw was out before Halloween. Not that I don't like Christmas, it's always been a special holiday for me, though as I get older it's more bittersweet than the sheer joy it was when I was a kid. But by the time Christmas comes around and you've been watching the layaway commercials since mid-October and hearing music in the stores since before Thanksgiving, you're just sick of it. And that's wrong. So this year, I decided to embrace the long holiday season, which has led to me being so busy cooking and baking I haven't had the energy to post. I baked and brined my first turkey. (Pictures to come). I've made dozens and dozens of cookies and still dozens more to go. But what I'm going to leave you with are two comfort foods I've managed to successfully recreate, despite my fear of attempting Chinese cuisine. Just to give you a break from all the Christmas cheer.



The first is chee cheong fun. Thin wide rice noodles rolled up, steamed and so delicious with a hoisin/peanut sauce, tabasco and sesame seeds on top. A memory from my childhood, where for $1 you would go to a tiny food cart in Chinatown and get a little styrofoam box full of these noodles. These carts seem to have disappeared, but you can still by the noodles plain to flavor yourself. But I wanted to see if I could make them from scratch.

The second are soy sauce eggs. Basically hard boil eggs, remove the shells, and simmer submerged in a broth of lots of light soy, dark soy, brown sugar and slices of ginger. You will never think of a hard boiled egg the same way.

Gougères (Cheese Puffs)

Cheese puffs. Need I say more? Okay, maybe a little. I've been wanting to make pate a choux for awhile. It's a versatile dough that can be used for savory or sweet treats (cream puffs anyone?) I prefer savory, and had some gruyere in the fridge and made my version of David Lebovitz's gougères. I made mine about the size of a donut munchkin, so I ended up with half the batch than his recipe, and within a few minutes out of the oven, they were almost gone.

Tomato Tart Take 2

For someone who once said she hated tomatoes, I've been buying them a lot this past summer. They're growing on me. I think it's to blame on a first bad experience with a watery, flavorless tomato as a child who mistook it for watermelon, bad watermelon. So the idea of watermelon tomato salad kind of disturbs me. I like tomato sauce (homemade), sundried tomatoes, salsa, so what's the deal? I figured with all the flavorless tomatoes out there, I've only liked them when the flavor is concentrated enough to be what a tomato should be - acidic and sweet at the same time. And so I must cook them.

This is a second attempt at my tomato tart from two posts ago. The crust is exactly the same but I didn't take any short cuts this time and it came out completely different - that is to say, what a tart crust should be. After skimming through a long article on how to make pie crusts, I learned that to make a flakier crust, you need to mix in the water by hand. Last time, I cheated and cut the butter into the flour with the food processor, and just poured the water/egg in til the dough formed. But that resulted in a dense, albeit, tasty crust that was more like a cookie than pastry. This time, I still used the food processor to cut the cold butter into the flour, but removed to a separate bowl to mix in the water. And with my fancy new non-stick tart pan, I successfully made my first tart crust. To make things interesting, I changed up the filling with pesto, gruyere cheese and tomatoes and it was like a fancy pizza. Who would've known I'd be drooling over tomatoes.

Chicken and Rice for the Soul

I bought a giant family pack of chicken breast this weekend to make soup for a cold that snuck up on me Friday night. The soup was good, flavorful and comforting. The most soothing part of making it, I think, was sitting around actually relaxing while my first homemade stock simmered away. I followed some of Barefoot Contessa's recipe, minus the whole chicken, since bone-in skin on chicken breasts were cheaper. And my cold is gone! Coincidence?

With about 3 pounds of chicken left, I was worried I wouldn't be able to use it up in time. Then it hit me, of course, chicken and rice! The infamous late night meal of clubbgoers found almost everywhere in New York, but non-existant anywhere else. Within the past year, more recipes have popped up on the internet for a dish that can't be found anywhere but a New York street cart. I tried out a recipe I found on Huffington Post because it had tons of spices which would mean tons of flavor. It was very tasty, especially the yogurt based "white sauce," but I didn't use dark meat like the streets cart do, and did not marinate overnight, two things that I think would have made my dish taste even more authentic. Something to try next time! And find a recipe for the hot sauce. Not to say it was all for nothing, because there are no leftovers today.

Tarts

It's been a little while, so excuse me as I bombard you with photos of food! I finally started using my food processor, so recipes that I've been collecting that called for one have been on the top of my list. Above is a free form tomato tart from David Lebowitz's blog. It was my first "tart" dough and came together SO easy with a food processor. I am in need of a tart pan, so I made it free form as he suggests. It was very tasty with some heirloom tomatoes from the Union Square Farmer's Market, and the dough was still crispy despite the tomatoes sitting on top. My only qualm was the crust wound up being more like a cookie crust than the flakier one you might expect in a tart.



The second photo is my version of the classic quiche lorrraine adapted from Smitten Kitchen. The dough was similar to the tomato tart, but was harder to handle as it kept crumbling when I was putting it in the pie plate. It also came out more cookie-like and dense, possibly a result of over rolling the dough. It was pretty tasty considering 1) I substituted organic skim milk for the usual heavy cream and 2) I forgot to put the cheese (gruyere) IN the egg mixture so wound up sprinkling it on top near the end. I think next time, I'm going to have to give in try the heavy cream...



Lastly, after a semi-successful first quiche attempt, I tried this insanely easy plum clafouti recipe. This was my first clafouti and thankfully, does not require a tart crust, and it came out great. All you have to do is slice the plums, and mix the rest of the ingredients in one bowl, pour over and pop into the over for about an hour, and voila! It looks much more impressive than the effort and made me feel a bit better about the quiche lorraine faux pas of earlier in the day.

Lahmacun (Turkish Lamb Pizza)

Sorry it has been too long! I don't know where the summer has gone. We still have days here in New York that almost hit 90 degrees, yet the early morning chill in the air has started, which no matter how old I get, still makes my stomach slightly queasy with the memory of starting a new school year. To ease that discomfort, I watch Anthony Bourdain before I go to sleep, and one I have on replay is his Istanbul episode. Not good to watch late at night when you have no access to shish kebob, donar kebab, fried cheese and one I was dying to try: lahmacun (or lahmajoun). After an hour of recipe searching on the web, compared with what ingredients were in my kitchen, I chose this recipe. It looks like a lot of ingredients, but they're all easily found in your local supermarket. The dough is easy to make, although I would suggest adding a pinch or two of salt to the mixture, because while it came out cripsy, there wasn't much flavor to it. The meat mixture was nice and well rounded, but I added some extra hot sauce to mine.

As a condiment to slather on top, I mixed together a quick yogurt sauce. I used a 6 oz. container of plain greek yogurt, a tablespoon of chopped parsley and two cloves of garlic - minced. Something I would definitely make again in the future, though I'd rather try the original in Istanbul.

Ginger Syrup & Homemade Ginger Ale

I first saw ginger syrup at a booth at the Brooklyn Flea. I was really tempted by it's neat glass bottle, but after learning how simple it was to make and hearing the $10 price tag, I thought, why can't I make this myself?

So with the air conditioner blasting, I decided to try my hand at some homemade ginger syrup. It was very easy, with only three ingredients and at the end I had half a wine bottle of some yummy syrup to make homemade ginger ale! It would also be great used in cocktails, which I am looking forward to experimenting with.

Recipe:

Approx. 6" hand of ginger

1 cups sugar

3 cups water

Chop the ginger (you can leave the skin on) roughly, and combine with the water and sugar in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20-25 minutes. Cool, strain and enjoy!

Endive & Pear Salad

Such an amazing combination. After a long weekend of overindulging (eh, it was a holiday!) I decided I needed to get out and do some healthy walking to my green grocer. On my mind was Barefoot Contessa's special Barefoot in Paris and the endive and pear salad she made. I swapped out the wine vinegar for balsamic vinegar and it was still very good. Make sure to toast the walnuts for a few minutes, it makes them even crispier!

Eye Candy

Taking a little break from my cooked food photos to enjoy the beauty of raw food. Not to worry, I'm not becoming a raw foodist. Nothing against them, I just like my cheese melted sometimes, thank you very much.

The first photo is a sicilian eggplant, isn't it cute?? I was having a bad day but finding this little round, spongy veggie in a tiny green grocer made it a little better.

Below, what might be mistaken for green roses, is actually the very end of bok choy which I discovered when I cut them off to clean the vegetable. Nature's pretty freakin' amazing sometimes.

Egg Curry

Continuing on with my no meat dishes, I tried a dish I've wanted to cook for awhile: Bal Arneson's egg curry. I love eggs and I love curry but I wasn't sure if the two would work together. It turned out to be a very rich and filling dish, even without cream. I omitted the fennel seed since I didn't have any, and added my must-have ingredients, garlic and onion. My family loved it and didn't miss the meat at all.

Chickpea Mughlai

After watching Food, Inc. for like 5 minutes, I decided I didn't need to eat so much meat, particularly chicken and eggs. I LOVE eggs, so I'm in a bit of a moral dilemma because stopping eating them myself isn't going to change the egg industry. Anyway, I had made this dish the first time following Nigella Lawson's recipe for chicken mughlai down to the inclusion of heavy cream and it was delish. This time, I didn't have any cream, but the yogurt is creamy enough, and I went with two cans of chickpeas instead of the chicken. Still very tasty, and you can eat and ease your conscious for a night.

Welcome!

Welcome and thanks for reading! I've been busy looking for work (and my oven was broken for a few days) but it's fixed now and I'm ready for some cooking inspiration. Feel free to post any recipes you love, or would like to see me cook and photograph.

Mushroom Risotto & Powder Puffs

I guess the heat isn't bothering me that much, because despite having no air conditioner in the front of my apartment, I have not let that stop me from 1) standing over a stove (literally) for almost an hour stirring risotto yesterday and 2) baking on one of the hottest days so far (today). Maybe I'm just crazy.

The risotto is based on a basic risotto recipe, but I add garlic to almost everything, so there's 4 huge cloves in there, along with 12oz. of cremini mushrooms. This is my 4th time making risotto and the last two times I still found many undercooked grains of rice, even after cooking for over the 30-40 minutes. The next day, it's all good.

The first time I saw these powder puffs on Laura Calder's French Food at Home, I knew I had to make them. They taste like giant eggy macarons, and are a lot easier to bake - no worrying about if they rise properly or grow their "feet." Filled with vanilla whipped cream and raspberry jam, they are insane - though you may want to hold back having too many because I'm having a total sugar rush right now!

Beef Bourguingon & Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake

It feels like forever since I've been able to cook, photograph and post! My third time making beef bourguingon, but first time photographing. I use Anthony Bourdain's recipe from his Les Halles cookbook. I couldn't find a good chunk of beef, so wound up using thin chuck steak which is nice and marbled which means lots of flavor. The broth that results is so rich in flavor, it's unbelievable how simple it is.

May is the start of birthday season for most of my family and friends, so one of the cakes I've made is a chocolate chip sour cream coffee cake from Smitten Kitchen's awesome blog. The batter is thick and rich and that just tells you how moist and dense the cake will be. I also love the combination of cinnamon and chocolate chips. I didn't even use all that is called for the in recipe and it was still very chocolately.

Strawberry Lemonade Cookies

I hardly ever go to Walmart - it's nowhere near me and I have mixed feelings about doing "real" grocery shopping there, but my dear friend A. offered to take me for some necessities that somehow there's never time to buy during the week (like soap and conditioner). But being hungry and it being Walmart, I wound up buying a whole bunch of snack foods that offered no nutritional value, unless orange cheesy powder counts, but lots of nostalgia.

The healthiest item I bought was a bag of frozen strawberries, which threw me back on the hunt for a strawberry baked good that actually uses fresh strawberries. Ninety-five percent of the recipes on the internet either use strawberry cake mix, strawberry gelatin or strawberry jam to achieve their flavor and signature pink color. Go on, google it. I refused to make any of them and decided to find a good basic cookie recipe and convert it into a strawberry recipe.

The result? Martha Stewart's glazed lemon cookies sans glaze, plus a cup of thawed chopped strawberries. Oh and a little pink food past, just because. Pretty yummy if I do say so myself.