CTN: Vietnamese Grilled Steak Salad

Except, for me, it wasn't steak. Nor was anything grilled. And I didn't take pictures--again. I have gotten very far behind on my cooking, baking, and writing. I haven't left my link on the last two TWD posts (although I did make the Lemon Loaf Cake--which I would highly recommend to anybody), haven't made the last TWD baked good, and haven't caught up with Cook This Now.
The last thing I made from Cook This Now was the Vietnamese Grilled Steak Salad, which I picked. I picked it because it sounded light and crunchy, might use up some of the veggies from my Co-op bag, and sounded like something that would fit well into my diet-of-the-week.
All of which were true!
I didn't look carefully at the recipe, didn't go to the store, and figured it was something that could be thrown together in a few minutes.
This was not true.
I made this with frozen shrimp. Unfortunately, they were already cooked frozen shrimp. I thought I had stopped buying those. They are very non-versatile. I thawed them and threw them into the marinade anyway--figured they couldn't be hurt swimming around in some orange and ginger for a while.
Then I read the part of the recipe where you are supposed to mix the cabbage, carrots, and cilantro together, cover it, and put it in the refrigerator for three hours. WHY???? Did anybody actually do this? And why would you? What a waste of time. I elected to slice up the cabbage and mix it with cut up carrots (I didn't feel like grating). Wait--I forgot to mention that I made this on a Wednesday night after a 5-mile Girl Scout hike (that was planned at the last minute, while I was still wearing work clothes--so was performed in work clothes and old tennies Natalie brought me), and I was super hungry (because of my diet-of-the-week) and super cranky. The thought of shredding my knuckles while shredding carrots sounded unattractive to me. And I didn't have cilantro.
I did, however, have a bunch of other vegetables. So I threw in sliced red pepper and chopped cucumber. I might have thrown in something else. I didn't have peanuts. I threw in chopped almonds instead.
I heated the shrimp in the marinade. What a waste of marinade. I honestly don't think the shrimp absorbed one drop of the flavor in the marinade.
When it was finally finished (it probably took me 20 minutes to throw together but it seemed like hours in my hungry, cranky frame of mind), I just wolfed it down. I don't remember much about it except that the shrimp was tasteless and the veggies were nice and crunchy. I really liked the chopped almonds because they were the same degree of crunchiness as the veggies. Often I find that peanuts have a softness to them which doesn't balance well with the Asian food they are trying to complement.
I actually would like to make this again when I have a little more time and the right ingredients. I probably won't make it with steak, but I'm thinking that if you marinate a really nice piece of Ahi, and then sear it, that would be pretty darn tasty on this salad.
I might even put it in the refrigerator for three hours just to see why that would ever be necessary.

CTN: Matzoh Brei and Chilaquiles

Although I made the Matzoh Brei more than a week ago, I have not had an opportunity to write about it until now. Busy times.

I had eaten Matzoh Brei before, because our office used to be down the street from a Jewish deli where I occasionally ate. Nothing ever looked good to me on the menu, except Matzoh Brei. I had never made it before, and never really thought about how it was put together. Soaking the Matzoh was a bit of a surprise to me. As was the ENORMOUS amount of butter. Yikes! Six tablespoons. As you can see, that more than coats the bottom of the pan.

 The rest of the dish was really just scrambled eggs, with a little more sitting than scrambling. While I was making the Matzoh Brei, Natalie commented on the fact that this dish was a bit like Chilaquiles. She was actually not thinking about Chilaquiles, but about a breakfast dish that Pete makes from time to time when he adds fried tortilla strips to scrambled eggs. But once she said Chilaquiles, I couldn't get them out of my head.

 Since I followed the recipe, there wasn't really enough food for four people. I ate mine with black pepper, sea salt, and a drizzle of honey--per the recipe. It was really good that way, something which surprised me. Natalie, Cassandra, and Pete all tried different varieties. I believe most of them involved hot sauce.

After we had all tasted the Matzoh Brei, I decided that I would make Chilaquiles to round out the meal. Here is my recipe for Chilaquiles:

1 large can of tomatoes (I didn't have this. So I used 3 slightly squishy tomatoes and about half a jar of pasta sauce. Similar, right?)
2-3 chipotles in adobo (I like it to be spicy--3 is almost incendiary)
1/2 onion
About 2 garlic cloves

Blend all of this in the blender until smooth.

Take some corn tortillas (I used about 8-9), cut them into wedges (eighths), and fry them until they are almost like a chip, but not quite.

Throw the fried tortillas and the sauce into a large pan (I use a saucepan because the sauce bubbles and makes a big mess when I use a frying pan). Cook until the chips and the sauce become one. Eat sprinkled with Cotija cheese.

Oh yeah--and don't forget the fried egg on top. Or leftover Matzoh Brei.

Really Delicious Tomato Soup

I know the soup had a different name, but I am just describing it. Its funny--I used to really hate tomato soup. Or thought I hated tomato soup. I suspect that I had been fed the canned Campbell Soup variety. I actually have no bad memories associated with tomato soup, but I knew I didn't like it.
During the 90s, my office was next to a very high-end restaurant--Pamplemousse Grille. One of the waitresses told me that I had to try their Tomato Fennel Soup--that it was food of the gods. I kept resisting, because I didn't like tomato soup. Finally, I broke down one day and tried it. She was right. I think I ate Pamplemousse Grille Tomato Fennel Soup 2-3 times a week during the entire time our office was in that location. I have since been a fan of tomato soup. But only really good tomato soup. I have had a few other excellent bowls of tomato soup in San Diego, at The Prado and at Urban Solace.
This soup rivaled all of those other tomato soups. I was a little skeptical of the coconut milk, so I did use an extra can of tomatoes and only about half a can of coconut milk. In my opinion, the blend was perfect. I spooned my soup over a mound of brown rice and topped it with (slightly rancid) sliced almonds. It was delicious (except for the almonds). Natalie ate hers with a grilled cheese sandwich. Pete ate his with croutons. Cassandra didn't eat any at all because she doesn't like tomato soup.
Maybe it will take her 40 years to come around. I hope not. She is missing one of life's great pleasures.

TWD: Pizza Rustica

 I have to be honest. The only reason why I wanted to make this recipe was because the crust looked pretty in the picture. The entire recipe was suspect to me. It is called "pizza," but it isn't like any pizza I've ever heard of. It is called "rustica," but it didn't really seem like peasant food either. It is a savory dish with a sweet crust--that doesn't fly with me either. I had very low expectations.

I loved how easily the crust came together. I have a love for smooth, pretty dough. I like looking at it, and I like kneading it. This particular dough was very lovely. I think I ended up kneading it far more than required.

I had to think about the filling. I don't do meat, so knew I wouldn't be using prosciutto. I read some of the discussion on the P&Q board, and saw that some of the people who had made a vegetarian version of this dish were having trouble with sogginess. I also saw that people who did use prosciutto had mentioned that the saltiness of the prosciutto was a nice contrast to the sweet crust. I cleaned my refrigerator thoroughly over the weekend, and knew that I had a half jar of sundried tomatoes and a half jar of Kalamata olives. To empty my refrigerator more, I used all of the tomatoes and olives in the filling (chopped). I also chopped up a couple of handfuls of fresh spinach. I mixed these veggies into the bland ricotta, egg, mozzarella, romano filling--it was very pretty filling. Very Italian with the red, white, and green.

The crust rolled out like a dream. I was hoping to actually weave the lattice top, but the dough was a bit fragile for that. Didn't matter-any lattice top looks pretty.

I baked the pizza quiche pie whatever-the-heck-this-thing-actually-is for slightly longer than indicated in the recipe so it would be sure to set. I was a little worried about the edges of the crust burning, and felt too lazy to make a foil collar to protect it. It was alright--it didn't burn. It looks just as pretty as the picture in the book.

And I was very surprised by how much I liked it. It tasted like a quiche in a sweet crust. The crust was fantastic. My stepdaughter didn't like the filling, but she said she would eat the crust plain. She tried to break off all the edges to eat that. I was so glad I put so many olives into the filling (it looked like way too many), because the salty-briney taste of the Kalamatas contrasted perfectly with the otherwise bland filling and the sweet crust. The texture of the filling was perfect. My husband devoured a couple of slices and said he loved it.

Whatever IT is.

Olive Oil Almond Cake

Those of you who know me know that I'm always trying something new. The circuit analysis, I found, was not for me. It was taking me twice as long as I had allotted to listen to the lectures, read the text, do the homework, and read all of the wiki posts. So my homework was late, which meant I was going to get a zero for it. More importantly, I apparently didn't understand the material anyway, since when I checked my homework, it was wrong. I have therefore given up on the MITx class. Maybe if they offer one in a subject I am more interested in.

Like cooking.

So now that I have more spare time, I should be cooking, right? 

Nah--I just found something else to fill that time. And it came with a diet. Adventure Boot Camp. Means getting up at 4:45 a.m., doing a grueling workout, and coming home to protein shakes. My kind of fun!

Since I started on Monday, I knew I had to throw the cake together on the weekend if I was going to have any chance at all to eat any of it.

Fortunately, this cake was really easy to throw together. I started off well, taking pictures. Here are the separate bowls of dry ingredients (flour, buckwheat flour, almond flour, and see the little flecks of baking powder that WOULD NOT go away? grrr) and wet ingredients (expensive evoo, eggs, fresh squeezed OJ).

And here are the ingredients mixed together. This is apparently when I stopped taking pictures. We were going to see the Hunger Games, and I had to get this into the oven.

So I have no picture of the finished product. It actually looked very similar to the photograph above. Really really boring looking cake. Plus, mine stuck to the pan, so it came out in two pieces.
In my opinion, it was just as boring tasting as it was looking. It is a very plain cake. I did like the Mascarpone cheese with it--but I'm the only one who likes Mascarpone. I suspect Pete has been eating small slices of the cake with his coffee in the morning because it has been disappearing in a rather slow way. Natalie ate some--her comment was that it tasted like a weird pound cake. I don't think it was as good as a pound cake. I'm not sure what I didn't like about the cake. Maybe the texture. It was kind of sandy. It was a little too sweet.
I won't make it again. Unfortunately, I had to throw over half a cake away this morning. Serves me right to go on a diet the week we are making a cake.

Spicy Black Beans with Chorizo

This was a no-brainer recipe for me. I think my favorite meal in the world is beans and rice. When I was in college, living with college roommates Marlene (100% Japanese) and Elsa (100% Mexican), we always had an olla with frijoles and a rice cooker filled with Japanese sticky rice. Not sticky rice and adzuki beans. Not Mexican rice con frijoles. Japanese sticky rice with pinto beans. I did eat that for most meals of the week, and still could eat it almost every meal. I even order it at restaurants!
When I realized, on Thursday night, that I had forgotten it was Thursday, I previewed the recipe and was very pleased to see that it used canned black beans. I'm sure it would have been better with homemade black beans--but I didn't have any in the house and didn't feel like making them.
So when I got home from work (and my voice lesson) on Friday, I immediately ran into the kitchen to get to work on this incredibly simple recipe. Singing "Pur Dicesti a bocca bella" at the top of my lungs (since I was alone), I threw rice into the rice cooker. I checked the fridge for ingredients (I did not go to the store in advance of this recipe). I had a whole bag of little tiny peppers of some sort that were about 4 days away from needing to go into the trash. Perfect. I chopped them up, and ended up with about a cup of chopped peppers. I found a couple jalapenos (was getting concerned that I would have to use canned chiles like Maria did). I chopped up an onion and some garlic. I threw all of that in the pan and heard the garage door go up. Oh no!!! Pete was home and I had JUST thrown chopped onions into the pan! He would see them!  EEEEEEEEKKKKK. I am just saying that I chopped up two soyrizo sausages faster than any TV chef you have ever seen chopping anything. I got those chopped and into the pan to cover the onions right when Pete walked into the kitchen. Phew! Both Pete and Sam commented about how good it smelled. Phew again!
After the veggies and soyrizo had cooked a bit, I threw in the spices and the black beans. At that point, the garage opened again, and Natalie and Cassandra walked in. They were upset because they thought we had gone to get Mexican food without them--and then happy when they saw that I had made beans and rice. It isn't just me who loves beans and rice.
Only Natalie and I ate our beans and rice with a fried egg. And I sliced up an avocado to put on the top.
Of course, I thought this was delicious. What's not to like? Natalie loved it. Cassandra liked it (too many peppers for her). Pete liked it. Sam loved it. She kept talking about how good it was.
I will definitely make this again. Of course, I make rice and beans all the time.

Potatoes and Brownies and Circuit Analysis

I signed up for MIT's free class on circuits and electronics. It was free. And it was from MIT. The prerequisites for the class are AP Physics, Calculus, and Linear Algebra. I have taken all of those classes. Yes, that was 30 years ago, but I took them.
And, because it is in my nature to do my very best against the odds, I have been struggling through the class. I don't understand any of it. I have to listen to lectures 2-3 times, watch all the tutorials over and over, and read the discussion boards to find out why my answers are wrong. Which they almost always are. I just turned in my first homework assignment (today is 3/22--the assignment was due 3/18), and I only got about half of the answers right. I had spent about 6 hours on it. As Sharmyn said, I will be failing this class spectacularly.
But I have become obsessed with it, which means that all of my spare time (ha!) has been consumed with circuit analysis and KVLs and KCLs and node analysis and things of this nature. I have had very little time to cook (or workout or clean or do laundry).
So Monday night, I came home and told the girls we were going to get the potatoes and the brownies done. I put Cassandra on the brownies, blatantly copying Maria. I rubbed the potatoes with salt, shoved them in the oven, and then worked on my circuits (getting all the signs wrong and a lot of the math wrong) while Cassandra made the brownie batter. I paid very little attention to her. She did complain about having the chop the chocolate, exclaimed about the fact that she was using cocoa and chocolate, and commented on the fact that my eggs had green shells. The only thing she had me help with was scraping the batter out of the bowl. I was stunned at how thick and sticky the batter was. I have made a lot of brownies in my life, but none with the kind of black, thick, sticky batter that Kate's Impossibly Fudgy Brownies have. Yum.
The potatoes were finally baked, and I played a game of hot potato scraping the contents out into the bowl, mixing it with butter, dill, salt and pepper, and scooping that mixture back into the potatoes. I forgot the corned beef. Forgot. Really. The recipe didn't say to put the tops back on the potatoes, but I did. Oh, and I sliced up a purple cabbage I had received in my CSA bag and threw that it in the oven too.
We all loved the potatoes. The crispy salty skins were delicious with Habanero Ketchup! We loved the dill flavor. The cabbage was a bit too crispy, but still yummy.
The brownies--what can I say? These were truly delicious brownies. I think I might agree with Claire that they are my favorite brownies ever. After reading Claire's interview, we doubled the cayenne. That meant that the brownies had a spiciness that snuck up on you. The sweet, chocolaty flavor contrasted with the salt and the spice very nicely. And I loved the texture--like thick nutella or chocolate sauce. Yummm. We all loved them. Cassandra took them to school and her friends all loved them too. Except they thought the cayenne should have been left out. I disagree.
I tried to interview Cassandra about the brownies, but she was not an interesting interview subject. "Did you learn anything when you made these?" "No." "Were you surprised by anything?" "No." "Is this your favorite brownie recipe?" "I don't know." I told her that she needed to be more interested when she is interviewed.
Phew. I'm done with this blog post. I can get back to my node analysis.