Cooking Adventures

I am the queen of procrastination. But I guess I needed a day off, so me not working at all today is okay. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

So I made two things today. Veggie lasagna, and vegetable soup (pictured above).

The lasagna turned out good, though I now know to use the best quality mozzarella I can find for optimum melting and browning. I ended up using eggplant and zucchini and totally forgot the mushrooms I was going to put in. Oh well.

The soup was more of an adventure in that I totally had no idea what I was doing. It started with me having some extra eggplant and zucchini from the lasagna and so I chopped them up and was just going to make a stir fry when I remembered that I had carrots so I chopped up three of those too and threw them into the frying pan. Then I thought to myself, when I am going to eat a dish with chunks of carrot and actually enjoy it? (My aversion to plain carrot chunks is much like my aversion to plain tomato chunks, only in very particular situations.)

So then I got some boiling water, poured in the contents of the frying pan into the saucepan, threw in some salt and pepper and then let it boil for aaages. Then after they got all soft I started thinking about how I probably wouldn't eat soup with chunks THAT big, so I poured the whole kit n' caboodle into a blender and ran it through. Out came a nice tasting soup, but without enough body, so I remembered I had some potatoes. Which I chopped, boiled 'em until tender and threw them into the blender too.

I was left with a yummy, full bodied and textural treat. Which is what you see above, with the addition of home made croûtons, i.e. bread cut up, drizzled with olive oil and sent into the toaster oven for a few minutes.

Yum.

Baked Cheesy Deliciousness

So I bought a pound of rigatoni in the bulk bins at Rainbow Grocery because I haven't ever tried cooking creamy pasta with this type of pasta and apparently it's perfect because it's fluted and "picks up that cream so incredibly well". Right, so I needed to try and found a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis on Food Network and here's the delicious results with a few additions and changes:
Ingredients:

• 1 4 oz. stick of butter
• 1/2 c. plus 2 tbsp. flour
• 3/4 qt. whole milk
• 1 c. grated mozzarella
• 2 large carrots, cut into bite-size pieces
• 10 white button mushrooms, sliced
  
• 2 cooked chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 lb. uncooked rigatoni
• Salt and pepper to taste
  

1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F
   
2. Melt butter in a large saucepan (enough to fit more than a quart of liquid), add the flour and whisk until smooth.
3. Whisk in the milk and keep stirring until smooth, keep cooking until the cream coats the back of a spoon and you can draw your finger along the back of the spoon and the cream stays separated. Remove from heat.
   
4. Stir in half the cheese and all the chicken, carrots and mushrooms, set aside.
5. Cook rigatoni in boiling water for 5 minutes, the rigatoni should be undercooked as it will continue cooking in the oven.
   
6. Drain pasta and mix in with the cream sauce.
   
7. Pour into a large and deep baking dish (13x9 inch is recommended, or smaller if you want to split them up), sprinkle remaining cheese and bake for 25 minutes.

Serve hot and steaming. Yum.

Easy Meal

There's not much that I really feel like doing when I'm on vacation and not traveling. Usually, I just end up cooking, or watching endless T.V. (thank goodness for reruns and marathons). So I usually experiment with whatever is in the house, coupled with the thought out meals, sometimes some happy coupling occur.

As was the case today with my meatloaf and salad:

So I had all the trappings for a super simple meatloaf, beef, crackers, a can of diced tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, pepper and garlic powder. I decided to throw in an extra ingredient with some mushrooms. Didn't really do anything to change the flavor, but it's just nice to know I got a veggie in there somehow. But it's a warm day and I didn't think the meatloaf was the "cooling" food that I needed. So in came the cucumber and carrot, the latter of which was going to be roasted, but like I said, I'm sweating, a plate of steaming roasted veggies would not help my temperature.

So look up carrots and cucumbers on foodnetwork.com and there's a nice cucumber and carrot salad recipe, which I couldn't make mostly because I didn't have the requisite lemon juice.

So rather than toss the whole idea together, I went for it, sans lemons:

I think it's rather pretty don't you?

Cucumber Carrot Salad
Ingredients
1 carrot - shaved with a veggie peeler
1 cucumber - shaved with a veggie peeler, toss the core once you reach it

Dressing
2 sliced shallots
1 tsp. chopped capers
2 tsp. Dijon or Stoneground mustard
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
Pepper to taste
3 Tbsp. Olive oil

1. Mix all dressing ingredients except for olive oil, whisk together and slowly pour in olive oil until well incorporated
2. Mix in cucumber and carrot until both are covered in dressing
3. Put in fridge until cool

Oddly enough, the salad tastes like coleslaw, except without the gross mayonnaise. I just haven't felt the same about mayo since I had that elote many months ago. *Shudder*

Cupcake

I will admit, I have tried making icing from scratch, which only resulted in failure, but this time, it was different, this time, the only thing I was making from scratch was the icing, the cupcake was boxed french vanilla, three eggs, oil and water type deal. But the icing is an accomplishment because I do not own a mixer. Not even a hand mixer. Which makes the requisite creaming of butter a little bit hard.

So this time I found a boiling icing recipe, where the thickening agent is flour and milk, and although it still required some extended periods of whipping, it took considerably less effort than a butter cream recipe and also allowed me to use regular sugar instead of powdered sugar, which I did not have in the apartment and was not jazzed about the effort needed to get said ingredient. Although, even with this recipe, I still cheated a little. Let me explain with the recipe:

Ingredients
1 cup milk
4 tbsp. flour
3/4 (1 1/2 sticks) butter - cubed and at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Let me make note that after I typed above ingredients out, I realized that I forgot to add the vanilla, oh well, it tastes just fine without it.

1. Heat up milk and flour in saucepan, whisking continuously to avoid flour lumps. Turn off heat when mixture thickens just the little bit. (The residual heat will thicken the mixture further, you don't want a solid mass, it should be creamy.) Allow to cool.

2. Mix butter and sugar, use a whisk and try to incorporate sugar into butter as much as possible.

3. Slowly start adding the flour mixture.

-Pause-
This is where I cheated.

I did not leave the flour to cool for very long, I put it in a shallow ceramic bowl to take off some excess heat and to stop the cooking process. But what I found out was that by adding the mixture to the butter before cooling, I actually melted my (frozen) butter enough that it whisked very well, and it also melted the sugar down so I didn't have sugar granules. Great for when you're working with butter straight from the freezer and don't have any mechanical mixers. The only downside is that it takes a little longer to make the icing because you need to put it in the fridge to get the right consistency, otherwise all you have is white slush.

4. Whisk together until fully incorporated, add vanilla and apply to the cupcakes.

Result:

Tadaaaaa!

Of course now I can't eat of the cupcakes because I'm so sick of the taste of the icing, I was testing it every few minutes while I was making it to make sure the bland flour mixture didn't overpower the sugar. I actually only used 1/2 cup of sugar, since the cupcakes were already really sweet. Strange, this icing tastes exactly like the icing my mother used to make, I haven't tasted it on any cakes in years.

Quiche-y

Usually the only reason I try a new recipe is to get rid of a mass quantity of an ingredient that I have that is verging on going bad, or I'm not going to eat that thing until it's already gone bad. That's usually how I end up making my awesome banana nut muffins (no need for modesty here).

So today's project was quiche, which came out great (pictured below....and on flickr....aaaand in my belly), got a nice basic quiche and added some ham and mushrooms, and switched swiss for goats cheese. I thought I was going to make just one quiche but the custard made for two and then some. Very tastey, recipe follows picture...

Ham and mushroom goat cheese

• 2 10" unbaked pie shells
• 1 tbsp. butter, softened
• 3/4 cup broken up goat cheese
• 1/3 cup parmesan cheese
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 6 eggs
• 1 pt. cream
• 1/2 cup chopped sliced ham
• 3 diced button mushrooms
• Enough parmesan cheese to sprinkle on quiches
• 2 tbsp. butter, melted & browned

1. Spread butter on bottom of pie shells.
2. Sprinkle ham and mushroom in bottom of pie shells.
3. Sift dry ingredients.
4. Add eggs and cream to dry ingredients and beat until mixed but not frothy.
5. Stir in goat and parmesan cheese.
6. Pour custard in pie shells. There will be enough left to fill a ramekin, either cook with mushroom and ham or plain.
7. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes.
8. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake 25 minutes longer.
9. Remove from oven and sprinkle with parmesan cheese and butter.
10. Return to oven for 10 minutes or until a knife inserted in custard comes out clean.
11. Let set 10 minutes before cutting into wedges to serve.

Foodsie!

So I have no pictures, just recollections of the past few days of food. Read if you wish, my camera has only just gotten back into commission after I have temporarily given up my search for a new 'un.

Yesterday began with toast, scrambled eggs and bacon. Picture this:
A slice of toasted sourdough, a layer of butter, a slathering of boysenberry jam, a layer of scrambled eggs, topped with bacon.

An orgasm in my mouth.

Luckily I only had one slice otherwise I would have completely O.D.'ed on my breakfast. I don't know what it is about the combination of sweet and salty that makes me go over the top. Like maple-roasted bacon. *Drool* And the popcorn in Thailand? Love it when they mix the sweet with the salty so I get a mouthful of each flavour.

Then Fog City Diner for dinner, an my verdict is: Eh.

Nothing special, honestly I would never go back there again, overpriced eatings, and being the cheapie I am, I'd rather eat some great Thai food rather than overpriced "decadent" food. Call me low-brow, I like being there.

Lunch today turned out to be spinach-ground beef spaghetti with a sprinkling of bacon. Lots of bacon grease makes for an extremely, but tastey lunch.

Between lunch and dinner, I pulled my strawberries (bought a day before yesterday) out of the back of the fridge and sliced a few up with yogurt, sat down to eat my afternoon snack and got an icicle between my molars. Oh wait, that was a frozen strawberry. I guess the back of the fridge is not the best place for liquid-based food. So the strawberries will be going bad soon, so I decide JAM! What better solution than a little bit of jam. Look online for a recipe and and find a super simple recipe that doesn't involve pectin and therefore does not involve me leaving the apartment. Strawberries, sugar and orange juice (what was supposed me lemon, but you know, citrus is citrus). Mix and boil, it is now sitting in a kern's jar in my fridge, with more of a preserve consistancy than jam, but I have tried it with my prized yogurt and am very much satisfied.

Dinner was a spread of ciabatta, crackers, salami, olive tapanade, avocado and goat cheese. Light, somewhat healthy and yum!

As for the retail therapy that happened yesterday...

I walked into Westfield with the thought that I would discover Bloomingdale's for the wonder of fashion that it is, and since I'm always seeing people with Bloomie's bags all over the place, I figure I must be able to find something I like there and can buy with good conscious (because I am still, that very, very frugal person). Well, the verdict was: NO. My goodness. I found one dress that I really liked there, and it was silk, beautiful and for $100 a good deal, but it was dry clean only, and I when I can catch myself, I don't buy clothes that I can't at least wash in a machine. Anyway, ditched Bloomies and started through the actual mall, I can't really even remember the stores I walked into. Anything that said SALE really. Ended up buying from Victoria Secret (had a $10 off coupon), Express and of course, MNG. Everytime someone that I knew saw the Express bag, they would exclaim "Man, I haven't been to Express in aaaages." Which I agree with, I hardly ever go in there because it's just too much of a hassle for nothing, but today I saw so many people with bags, I figure I should at least try it out. Got a cardigan for $10. And onto MNG's flagship in SF, walked though and found a black jacket that I loved, 50% off and just had to buy it, even though it was stifling outside, I just knew I had to.

Shopping was a success, I was happy with my big bags, got the retail therapy I needed, because there's few feelings better than having a big bag and showing your purchase off to others, so I am satisfied as far as purchasing goes, for at least a while.

Now that I have batteries for my camera, maybe I'll actually be able to post some pictures, I've been taking pictures of stuff I've seen on the street. Did I ever tell you about the time I saw a filleted salmon on the street? It must have either come from Chez Spencer or Nihon, but it was a full fish body-sans meat, in the gutter, on the street, across from my house. Well, let the adventuring begin.

Yelpper!

Are you Yelping? Because I'm tooootally Yelping. I've caughten the Yelping bug. By now you're probably wondering (1) Why is Asha using the word "yelping" in every sentence? (2) Why does "yelping" have a capitalized "y"? (3) Is Asha a little crazy?

Well I shall answer accordingly: Yelp is cool. Yelp is a name, thus capitalized. And yes, Asha is a little crazy and especially so right now because she's hopped up on cold medication.

Oh how I hate being sick, and I don't think I made it any better by spending the first day of being sick (yesterday) running around San Francisco. A meeting, then the SF Design Center (FOR THREE HOURS, classwork), and then dinner and dessert. Dinner was hilarious because there were four of us and three were sick with a cold. Anyway, this whole Yelping thing, at www.yelp.com you can read reviews on restaurants, stores, basically anything that's reviewable, and also post your own. Which is what I started doing this past week and haven't been able to stop. Went to a new restaurant? It will be on my Yelp the day of or the day after I went. I'm just like that. And I spend way too much time on the internet.

Now I'm off to bed to try and sleep this cold away.

Cookies

I cannot believe this recipe. It's the regular Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe from the package of chocolate chips, and it's says that it makes 5 dozen cookies. I have no idea how anyone, anywhere could possibly squeeze more than two dozen out of one batch, much less FIVE. I'm halfway through the dough now and I've made, oh, 16. I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that I have nothing too heavy to complain about today, just a bunch of little complaints that peck at me constantly, and so to relieve the mini-burden that is those peckers, I shall just unleash them upon you.

It took me 20, TWENTY, minutes to find Silom on a satellite view of Bangkok. I honestly suck at looking at maps of Bangkok, there's just so much shit going on, and obvious I hardly ever see Bangkok in an aerial view when I'm there, so all I really had to go by was the RBSC and Lumphini park. Well that didn't help at all, and when I finally went on google search and found a drawn map of greater Bangkok, I realised I was in the wrong bend of the Chao Phraya and way too fucking north to anywhere near Silom. So I corrected, found the street, zoomed in and found my house. All for the sake of geo-tagging my flickr photos of Millie and Trillie.

So I've been geo-tagging my photos, totally ignoring the cookies (I'm surprised I haven't burnt any yet), the oven's still going but the cookies are out. I just can't believe how sucked into things I get when I'm into them, nothing else matters, I'm so over cookie baking right now. It just surprises me when I realise I'm trying to do multiple things at once, because anyone who knows me well enough knows my "open mouth stare". The biggest and most contraversial case is when I'm talking to you on the phone, and there some other stimulus going on where I am. Be it the television, the cat, a shiny object, I will, without fail, completely ignore anything you are saying to me, whether you're speaking softly or yelling, I won't hear a word unti I snap out of it.

I just geo-tagged some of my photos on flickr, there's a map, you find locations, drag and drop your photos onto locations, and so when you view the photo and it says on the side "Take in San Francisco, CA" you can click on the "map" link and it'll show you exactly where in SF I took the photo. I don't think I have the energy or mental capabilities to tackle the Hawai'i set yet, especially not with this cookie baking going on.

I just finished the last batch, scraped the last of the dough from the bowl with a spatula and sent them into the oven, when done, I will have a total of 27 (plus 1 eated) cookies. That is not even 2.5 dozen. I don't know how these Tollhouse crazies make their cookies, but I'm pretty sure people eat four at a time because they're so damn tiny. Eugh, makes me want to quit making drop cookies because the dough is so stupidly sticky, at least with a shaped cookie I know how thick it's going to be, I can make them smaller or bigger. With a drop cookie recipe I can either make a big sticky lump or a small sticky lump.

Enough complaining, I'm going to watch Care Bears on YouTube again.