T Minus Two Type Two Diabetes and Other Passions

Beginner’s Notebook: Sampler Platter

A few things on my mind (and on my stove):

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Today I attempted a somewhat complicated dish, using a recipe from a noted chef who I don't blame at all. The net result was a kitchen that looked like a war zone, four bland chicken thighs, and a vast quantity of undercooked rice. Contributing errors included both I-should-have-known-better mistakes, I'll-know-better-next-time mistakes, impatience, and possibly picking a recipe too short on precision for a beginning cook.  Key take-aways for me: 1) I now know how to blanch and peel tomatoes, and 2) 'coring' a tomato just means removing the little nubbin the stem attaches to, not removing all the guts.

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I am having this weird mental block on dessert baking. Though I have found that packing a homemade goodie with my lunch keeps me out of the vending machines, I am disinclined to do the kind of baking to produce those goodies. It's as though the things of this kind that I've done successfully have done nothing to give me confidence that I can do the next thing. Tonight I made a chocolate sheet cake from a box mix, hoping that the shortcut would help. The result is okay, though I made the non-fatal mistake of frosting a bit too soon. (I did make my frosting, because I associated canned frosting with tasting like shortening.)

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I am learning that I really like a variety of tastes and textures in many foods. I recently made a cole slaw with cabbage, carrot, a low-acid vinaigrette, raisins, capers, and some roughly-chopped almonds. To me, this was a great improvement over what's usually served as cole slaw. (Tonight's trivia: the 'cole' in 'cole slaw' comes from an old Gaelic word for cabbage, and is related to our word 'kale'.)

The discovery of my fondness for contrasting elements points to way to how I could approach other foods that I find good-but-boring, such as tomato sauce or macaroni and cheese.

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For me, the symbolic payload of making my own bread is enormous. It's much more powerful than with anything else I make for myself.

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Speaking of making things for myself: last night at the store I bought some pita chips and some hummus. As I ate, I grumped at myself a bit, wondering why I hadn't made my own hummus. It's easy, and I even have tahini. (Not making the pita chips didn't bother me at all. While I've done this, it's much more of a production.

Beginner’s Notebook: Still Life With Avocado

OK, here's what you're going to do. Next time you go grocery shopping, you're going to take a quick peek in your refrigerator to make sure you have a little lemon juice or a fresh lemon. (I think lime juice would also work.) Then, when you get to the store, you'll go to the produce section and check out the avocados.

The avocado you want is ripe but not overly so. If you're new to this, the one you want will give a bit to gentle pressure but not feel squishy. (GENTLE pressure - no need to harm anything.) For this application, a little squishy is okay.

When you get home with your prize, you're going to cut it in half lengthwise, working around the large pit in the middle. You'll then rotate one half against the other, and one of the two halves will be freed from the pit.

There are a number of suggested methods for removing the pit from the other half, most of which have the potential for serious injury. I sometimes use one of those, but often I just work around the with a spoon. (I deal with more avocados than most home cooks, I'd guess. Two - and now three - of my favorite things to make include them. See here and here.)

Next, put your avocado halves on a plate. Salt them and drizzle them with lemon juice. Then just eat those suckers, scooping bites out with a spoon.

I did this for the first time 20 minutes ago, and that first bite was A Moment. The tartness of the juice perfectly balanced the unctuousness of the avocado, one of those great combinations of acid and oil. (Think salad dressings, or pickles on cheeseburgers, or ketchup on french fries.)

If I had a rating scale for how much I wanted you to try something, this would be WAY up there.

You could argue that this isn't even cooking. Fine. But it is most certainly eating.

Beginner’s Notebook: Won’t You Be Brine?

I took last weekend almost entirely off from cooking, feeling a great need to engage in some sloth. But, just to give myself sandwich makings, I decided to do a small pork roast in the slow cooker. I further decided to brine my roast - that is, soak it in a saline solution before cooking - to try to get the enhanced moistness the method is said to provide. I found a brine recipe on the Internet and enhanced the brining solution with a couple of tablespoons of chile-garlic puree. I left the roast in the brine for about 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Result 1: The cooked roast was nicely moist, and has remained so throughout the week. I don't know for sure that the brine was the biggest difference, but I am inclined to think it was.

Result 2: If the hot sauce I'd spiked my brine in made any difference to the taste of the cooked meat, it was too subtle for me.

Conclusion: In the future, I will brine raw pork on most occasions when I have the time.

Pizza Again

I described making homemade pizza in this post, and I've made pizza more or less the same way every weekend, refining my method.

I've arrived at the conclusion that the way to go is to make my crust as it is done in the recipe, except I (1) use only half the dough, (2) roll it out as thin as I can, (3) let it rest for a while, and (4) roll it out as thin as I can get it again. This produces a crust that is very thin and also a little bit smaller.

Tonight the toppings were roasted onions, roasted tomatoes, and goat cheese. Here's a shot of the whole pizza and a close-up:

The crust was nice and crispy, almost cracker-crisp. I meant to try docking the crust, but forgot, so I had the big bubbles you might expect from water becoming steam VERY rapidly. (Being laid on a cast iron griddle that's been brought to 500 degrees will do that.)

The flavor was good, but missing a little something. I think it needed something herby, and maybe some more salt.

However, with this pizza I'm confident that I can consistently produce pies as good or better than I can get delivered and for a fraction of the fat. Win!

Big Trouble for Little Onions

For all the cooking shows I've watched, there are only a few times I've attempted to directly reproduce something I've seen made on a TV show. I've learned a vast amount about ingredients, techniques, and combinations, but have rarely attempted to take a specific recipe from screen to table.

I did it tonight.

I've wanted to make balsamic glazed onions for some time, since a friend mentioned loving them. I've looked at some recipes, but not really been called to action by any of them. But tonight I was watching the Cooking Channel with my neighbor lady, and Giada De Laurentis started making them. Giada's shows aren't my favorite, simply because little of what she cooks fits with what I'm trying to do right now. But what she did to those onions looked like JUST what I wanted to do, so I came home and did it.

I chopped the ends and outer peels off a handful of cippolini onions and a handful of pearl onions. (The show hadn't used pearl onions, but I didn't have enough cippolini onions to make it worth it.) I made a dressing of about 2/3rds inexpensive balsamic vinegar and 1/3rd olive oil. I added salt, pepper, and dried oregano to my dressing. (The show had used fresh thyme rather than dried oregano.).  I lined a small baking dish with parchment paper (to ease cleaning) and threw in my onions and my dressing and got everything coated. I then put the pan in a 450 degree oven, and left it there for an hour.

(I -love- roasting things. Am I really a cook or a slow pyromaniac?)

The results are delicious. When I first pulled my onions, I thought many of them were burned, but that proved to be crusted love. What little liquid was left was simply concentrated fabulous. (You didn't know that "fabulous" was a substance that could be concentrated? You do now.)

I'm thinking pizza with these onions. More specifically, I'm thinking pizza with these onions accompanied by goat cheese and roasted tomatoes. I may be thinking this well into the night.

POSTSCRIPT 4/4/12, 11 PM When I removed the parchment paper from my dish, I found a mess underneath it. Next time, I'll use aluminum foil. 

A Tale of Two Doughs, and Other Notes

Saturday night, I made chocolate shortbread. The dough was pretty much made of flour, butter, and cocoa powder. The dough was ultimately kneadable, but was unbelievable soft -- I felt like my dough ball might explode at any moment and leave me nothing but a mess.

Sunday, I made bagels again. My food processor gave up about five seconds into the kneading, so I had to knead by hand. The aim, in the words of the recipe, was a dough that was "tough and elastic". I certainly achieved that.

I cannot imagine two doughs being more different. As I put it on Twitter, if the shortbread dough was a person, it would give flowers to strangers. The bagel dough would take your lunch money -- and then beat you up anyway.

The oddest thing was that after rising and resting, the bagel dough had become very soft and pliable - not delicate like the shortbread dough, but a delight to form into rounds.

I made this particular batch mostly as a gift to a friend from work, a native of Baltimore. He emailed me that they were delicious, much better than he had frankly expected.

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A week or so ago, I had an emotional experience that brought me face to face with the fact that I -really- want something sweet with my lunch. That being the case, it made more sense to make my own treats. I was attracted by the "bar" category because of the portability factor. I really don't want something I have to carry in yet another plastic container. My first effort was the "Oatmeal Butterscotch Bars" recipe from the "America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book."  I was alarmed when I put the batter in the pan: it was quite thick, and I expected it to either burn or turn out dry. In fact, they were really good - and a fabulous way to end a lunch.

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In the last twenty-four hours, I have made eggs four times - three shots at a poached egg and a batch of hard-boiled eggs. The three poached eggs each were made by slightly different methods. The last one worked pretty well, except that I think I want the yolk on my poached egg to be firmer than most people. (My method of choice is to add a splash of vinegar to the water, bring the water to barely simmering, then stir the water in one direction before carefully adding the egg. The recipe called to simmer it for 4 1/2 minutes: I'll try longer than that next time.)

The hard-boiled method was more successful. Put the eggs in the pan, add enough water to cover by an inch, bring to a boil, cover and remove from heat for five minutes. Then you put it in ice water for 5 minutes. The texture of the cooked eggs was great, there were no green rings around the yolks, and they were easy to peel.

As a self-taught cook, I often find that I need to go back to something that's very basic.