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My Braise Was A Bust

Marcia January 23, 2011 Banter, Cookbooks, Cooking, Learning to cook, Recipes 0

These lamb shanks look delicious! Unfortunately, they are not my shanks . . . (photo by Jennifer via Wikimedia Commons)

So, the stressful, senseless holiday season had finally given way to calm, cool, January. OK, maybe calm, cool, overabundant in its snow production January — but a good month nonetheless to tackle a braise. The day of the Pats – Jets play-off game seemed a perfect day to let something sit in the oven for hours — I could have the braise braise while I watched the late-afternoon Sunday game and then enjoy a leisurely if somewhat late dinner since neither Gary nor I had to work the following day (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).

A perfect plan, but what should I braise? Meat? Fish? Chicken? Or did I want to make a stew? Beef, lamb, or pork made the most sense at the time if I wanted to stretch the cooking time to at least three hours — the usual length of a pro football game. Short ribs were an option — the short ribs in cherry sauce we made in our Moist Heat Cooking class were great, especially the sauce. Hm. Pork was out because I made a pork roast just two weeks before and I wanted to attempt something totally different. Continue reading »

Attempting Cook’s Illustrated Ultimate Banana Bread

Marcia June 24, 2010 Cookbooks, Recipe ratings, Recipes 5

Bunch of bananasOh, how quickly a bunch of perfectly just-a-hair-underripe bananas, purchased with the best of healthy-and-light-eating intentions, can go from fit for snacking or slicing into a bowl of Kashi Crunch to must-freeze-for-pops-and-smoothies to oh-dear-its-time-for-banana-bread. The inevitability of an upcoming banana-bread episode fills me with both glee and guilt—glee because I have an excuse to bake one of my all-time favorite snacks breakfasts nibbles splurges, guilt because most quick breads and muffins—no matter how much good-for-you lowfat yogurt, whole-wheat flour, or unprocessed wheat bran goes in them—are sweet, calorie-dense temptations. You think I’m going to have just one slice? I don’t think so . . .

Two simple criteria make a recipe splurgeworthy. First, the taste, texture, and overall delight must be worth the time and trouble to make it. Second, the experience has to be enjoyable enough to justify the overabundance of fat, sugar, and calories I will end up consuming. Of course, finding splurgeworthy recipes takes considerable trial and error.
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Rating recipes

Marcia February 8, 2010 Cookbooks, Recipe ratings, Recipes 0

Thumbs DownI’m going to start rating or grading each recipe I follow.

There are many qualities and characteristics to consider in a recipe, such as ease of preparation, length of ingredient list, healthfulness, availability of ingredients, taste, texture, expense (in money, time, and energy), and plated appearance. I don’t have an official list of grading criteria yet, but I will use a rough preliminary grading technique on the recipe for Sautéed Grated Zucchini with Marjoram from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters.

The ingredients and technique are straightforward and simple: Coarsely grate a pound of zucchini, draw out excess water by way of salting and squeezing in a sieve, then sauté the drained zucchini in two tablespoons of olive oil or butter until lightly browned. Remove from heat, add chopped marjoram and pulverized garlic.

And now . . . the impromptu rating system makes its debut:

Sautéed Grated Zucchini with Marjoram

Source: The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
Ingredients: Easy
Overall time estimate (with all ingredients at the ready): 35 minutes
Taste: Good. Well-seasoned with a mellow butter flavor
Presentation: Good. Pretty green vegetables and herbs with a nice golden overtone (I used herb butter in this trial.)
Healthfulness:Jury’s still out. If made with butter, not sure how this will fare. I will run this through NutritionData.com’s analysis tool later this week. In the meantime, see “practicality.”
Practicality (via No-whining Dining’s current food and cooking philosophies): Poor. One and a half pounds of zucchini were used for this trial, yielding maybe a cup or a cup and a half of shredded zucchini sauté. To accommodate the published serving yield (4 servings per pound of zucchini), each serving would get only about one-fourth of a cup. So much for filling half your plate up with veggies. Also, in a world where high-calorie, high-fat, low-nutrition foods are abundant and available around every corner, vegetables such as beautiful, sweet, fresh zucchinis are a welcome, safe, go-to tasty, healthful, low-cal oasis. WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO SPOIL THAT WITH TWO FREAKIN’ TABLESPOONS OF FAT?????? But that’s another blog entry.
Overall grade: C-

I’m not sure if the permanent rating system will have grades or scores. Since this system will be largely subjective, I might as well go with grades, or even just key words. Or something. I’ll figure something out. I’m open to suggestions.

Minestrone soup for the culinarily insane

Marcia January 26, 2010 Banter, Cookbooks, Recipes 0
Minestrone Soup Recipe

My minestrone soup of yore

Several weeks ago my cabbagephobic husband broke his cabbage taboo and fixed a vegetable and sausage soup. The deliciousness of the sausage would outweigh any ick or stink of the cabbage, so his reasoning went. Another unusual (for us) addition to this concoction: tomato juice. The combination of tomato-based broth and mildly crunchy cabbage reminded me of a minestrone soup I used to enjoy many years ago.

This minestrone, as I remember it, had tender red kidney beans and soft but assertive elbow macaronis. The recipe, which I just dug up, called for frozen mixed vegetables, beef bouillon cubes, and a lot of celery as well; but the memorable aspects were the cabbage, tomato, and macaroni. I had made a mental note to fix this memorable minestrone sometime soon. Then I forgot about it again . . .

. . . until I started looking for a suitable use for a large amount of curly endive leftover from an overzealous greens purchase I made in pursuit of my first salad ala Alice Waters. The salad consisted only of red leaf lettuce and curly endive, the endive being totally edible and nicely bitter, but a little tough. “I feel like a ruminant,” declared my husband between chews. I conceded that this hearty green might be more easily eaten cooked, so I searched the Web for ideas and found a minestrone soup recipe on the Eating Well site. Aha! I can dig up my old minestrone soup recipe and add the endive to that!

But wait! There’s more! Let me see if The Art of Simple Food has a minestrone recipe. If it does, I’ll make that instead!
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A quick, light vinaigrette

Marcia January 19, 2010 Banter, Cookbooks, Recipes 0
Vinagrette ingredients

A simple fix: Wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper

For the actual recipe, scroll down to the bottom of the post.

Just days after denouncing all dietary crap, I found myself in a little late-night quandary. While hastily preparing a portable lunch for the next day, I realized I had no crapless salad dressing on tap. In the home fridge we had Kraft Lite Ranch and Newman’s Own Light Lime Vinaigrette, the latter of which would have been good enough by my new standards but I really wanted to try to throw a dressing together before my quickly approaching bedtime. I’d just need a little guidance. Let me check a few cookbooks . . .

Hm. Fresh Tomato Vinaigrette or Blue Cheese Dressing from Healthy in a Hurry? Nope. No tomatoes on hand; no blue cheese to speak of. Okay, how about Apple Basil Dressing or maybe Orange Tarragon from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites? Intriguing, but no basil and no tarragon. And I had no creamy cucumbers, no minted dill, no lemon tahini, no fresh buttermilk, nor any ingredient these seemingly basic dressings required. I was too stubborn to Google “viniagrette” — why did none of my cookbooks have a simple vinaigrette recipe?

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Objective three: Find more cookbooks to love

Marcia January 17, 2010 Banter, Cookbooks 0
Oatmeal Corn Meal Bread, from The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones

Oatmeal Corn Meal Bread, from The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones

While composing the opening paragraph for a post about my favorite cookbooks I realized I had only two cookbooks that I really really loved, at least in my current collection, plus a handful of hardy go-to books, the recipes and advice of which result in many a speedy or satisfying meal, but don’t possess the material or artistry or style to bring them from 4-star (like it a lot) to 5-star (love it!) status.

The two books I own that I will happily curl up with to read and eagerly anticipate what recipe I shall try next are The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones and White Chocolate by Janice Wald Henderson. It’s not just that I love kneading and shaping and baking and eating bread, or am delighted by the ivoryness, creaminess, and subtlety of white chocolate, but that these are the only two cookbooks I own about foods that I adore and through which I allow myself an occasional flight of fancy.

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