Cooking Resolution #2: Resourcefulness

While I suffer from a peculiar condition called Grocery Store Rage (my friend Clay, also a longtime sufferer, and I are considering petitioning to have it added to the DSM V) when people mindlessly BLOCK THE ENTIRE AISLE WITH THEIR CARTS AND BODIES, I do love grocery stores.

And gourmet shops and specialty stores and ethnic markets and the like. When I went to Iceland in 1998 (you know, cuz of the Bjork and the road-building around elves and all), sure, I found the Gullfoss Waterfull beautiful...

...and the geysers interesting...

...and the craters impressive...

...I’m not a geologist, so let’s face it, it was the grocery store that made the biggest impression on me. (I was too shy to take pictures inside though.) All of the different products, the interesting labeling, etc. I always recalled some news story on literacy talking about how without being able to read, it could be hard to distinguish juice from a bottle full of lemon-scented cleanser. Being in an Icelandic grocery store really drove that possibility home.

Anytime I travel to a foreign place or just make a visit to an ethnic or specialty market, I am fascinated by the product, and being a rather impulsive person, I tend to make a lot of impulse buys.

So I now have a kitchen that is very VERY well-stocked with a lot of random stuff. Some of them were just pure impulse, some were odd or uncommon ingredients for just one recipe. Many are expiring soon (marked with an asterik).

I took an inventory and started compiling a list of possible uses. My goal is to fulfill my need for novelty this year NOT through additional shopping, but instead to try to find recipes that focus on using up what I already have. Below is the list and some ideas on what I can do with the items.  More to come, with reports on how well I am doing shopping from my own pantry.

• Old Bay Seasoning
• *Self-rising flour- Buttermilk Biscuits with Green Onions, Black Pepper, and Sea Salt 
• *Almond Flour – Pear Butter Shortbread (recipe forthcoming)
• Sambal – Shrimp Sambal; Halibut with Sambal Vinaigrette and Wasabi Cream
• Red curry paste – Coconut Curry Lentils (recipe forthcoming)
• *Whole wheat pastry flour – Butternut Blondies, Butternut Blondies, Butternut Blondies
• Evaporated milk
• *Oat Flour - muffins
• Mango chutney
• Raisins
• Cake flour – Rosewater angel food cake 
• Rosewater – see above
• Soba noodles – Soba Noodles with Vegetables, Soba Spinach Soup
• Canary beans – Peruvian Quinoa Stew + Peruvian Canary Bean Stew for some kind of combo?
• Quinoa (see above)
• Rosemary mint sauce – some kind of shrimp like this recipe for shrimp on rosemary skewers?
• Rice flour
• Miso paste – Soba Spinach Soup (above)
• Tandoori sauce – maybe with pressed tofu or shrimp?
• Dried apricots
• Sriacha sauce
• Dried apple rings - Granola
• Corn grits (above biscuit recipe)
• Gumbo File – er Gumbo
• Tapioca pearls
• Seedless raspberry preserves – Fudgy Chocolate Raspberry Bars; Jam Cumb Cake; Raspberry Hazelnut Brownies
• Toasted sesame oil – Soba Noodles with Tofu listed above
• *Whole grain mustard – SuperPower Salad Dressing (recipe forthcoming)
• Oyster sauce
• Sweet red chili sauce
• Worcestershire sauce 
• Lemon curd – Lemon Curd Ice Cream
  
• Pickles jalapenos
• Candied orange peel
• Capers
• Carob molasses – gingerbread (got some additional help from the ChowHound)
• Pomegranate molasses – use in salad dressings, sauce for seared scallops
• 11-year old mysterious Icelandic schnapps – ????????????

Cooking (Reasonably) for Company: Make-Ahead Little Breads

It was almost exactly one year ago that I wrote about bundt cakes, Martha Stewart and the demon that hovers like a menacing wraith over most of my creative endeavors.

I am, by nature, generally criminally lazy. I have a cat-like need to remain motionless for around 22, 23 hours out of the day. Like a cat, though, when actually roused to action, I can expend a great deal of energy all in one go.

Periodically, this cycle plays out with the energy spent in a creative pursuit focused on trying to achieve some Platonic ideal of an end result.

As I wrote last year, perfectionism is an easy label to slap on that pursuit of an ideal, but to me, that label has actually come to mean a fear of flaws, which misses the mark.  I believe what people like me (i.e., the mini-Martha Stewarts in the world) are actually trying to do is instead make manifest this thing in our heads.  In addition, we want to make it manifest in precisely the way we are seeing it in our heads.  And we do it for no other reason than to scratch the itch created by having the idea in the first place.  Unfortunately, for me, at least, scratching that itch usually resulted in my spending too much money and time and temporarily subordinating everything else to pursuing that vision.

I've been reconsidering this cycle lately. I learned a lot from my time with too many jobs, mainly that I never EVER again want to be that busy and chaotic. I think for years I’ve been juicing my need for stimulation by putting myself into high-stress situations. It might be a negative jolt to be overscheduled and frantic, but it’s still a jolt. And if stimulation is a greater basic need for you than comfort or calm, you’ll keep making that choice even if it makes your life seem objectively worse.

Cooking has been such a revelation to me because it reminded me that rather than looking to stress for stimulation, I can (and should) look to creative work to fulfill that basic need.  Obvious, perhaps, but I can be a little slow at grasping the obvious sometimes.

And let’s face it: stress, like junk food, is a heck of a lot easier to come by in the typical American life than fulfilling creative work or a healthy meal.

Of course, back to the original point of this post, that creative stimulation is only a positive if it doesn’t go all out of control when harnessed to an impossible ideal.

So, now armed with the knowledge of this more positive stimulation, and the desire to have a more calm and peaceful life, I had the opportunity to try a new approach when cooking for a few dinner guests and events recently.

In the past, cooking for company descended quickly into a 20-hour cook-a-thon. I planned a menu FIRST and think of budget only after I’ve gotten attached to an idea (usually grandiose, usually involving a bunch of ingredients I didn't have on hand).

Now, I wanted to see if I could START with keeping budget and time in mind first, and plan the menu around it. (Again, remember I generally only figure out the obvious after an absurdly long period of trying out the totally not obvious and/or ridiculous.)

Some things worked, some didn't, but the consistently successful element were little savory flavored breads that I could make a few days before the event.  These little breads came in handy: not only were they delicious, they are - as restaurants well know - something you can throw into the maw of your hungry guests as you get the other elements to the table.

I found a few successful recipes, and I’ll be posting the recipe results over the next few days. I picked them for a few reasons.:

• They are highly-flavorful, so much more satisfying and exciting to the palate than plain bread. The flavors themselves in these recipes are simple yet sophisticated and so most are suitable for even a fancier-time party.
• With maybe one exception, the ingredients called for aren’t too unusual if you have a reasonably well-stocked kitchen and access to a store like Trader Joe’s.
• You can make them early, at your convenience, and spend the time the day of on all of the more a la minute type of items.

Here are the recipe results I’ll be posting this week.  There are a few different baked good prep methods represented, in case you are already a baker and have a preference or want to stick to a method you feel comfortable with.

Tuesday: Buttermilk Biscuits with Green Onions, Black Pepper and Sea Salt

• Advanced Prep: Make biscuit dough rounds in advance and freeze the dough, bake on day-of.
• Method: Biscuit, obvs.

Wednesday: Rosemary and Thyme Breadsticks

• Advanced Prep: Can be made three days in advance.
• Method: Yeasted bread.

Thursday: Crisp Rosemary Flatbread

• Advanced Prep: Can be made two days in advance (although it's super fast so not a big deal to whip up day-of).
• Method: Quick bread with a smidge of kneading.

Friday: Parmesan Black Pepper Biscotti

• Advanced Prep: Most biscotti can last for about two weeks in a tightly-sealed container or can be frozen.
• Method: Kind of biscuit-y

Sometimes Eating Food is a Pain

I’ve been saying for months now that it feels as though I have been sprinting through a race that turned out to be a marathon lo these several years since I moved to Seattle.  I keep digging deep to find an extra burst of energy to get me to the finish line, then I find out that what I thought was the finish line was just another place where they are handing out water.  And they just ran out of it by the time I got there.

But I really think this is it!  As of Tuesday, I should be officially down one job.  As much as I am sad to leave the cooking school, I have to concede that there are, in fact, only 24 hours in the day and I would actually enjoy spending more of them not working or doing chores.  I would like to read a book or go to a movie or just sit around without the mild anxiety of There’s Something I Should Be Doing Right Now gnawing persistently at the edges of my peace of mind.  

I would also like to be cooking more!  The past few weeks I’ve returned to consistently buying and eating processed food.  This is what I brought home from the grocery store the other night.  I felt covered in guilt!  

(Shameful!)

But let’s face it: sometimes – even when you love cooking, even when you love a variety of interesting food – sometimes you just want to stick enough calories into your maw so that you can get through your day’s installment of Jillian Michael’s 30-Day Shred without passing out.  And trying to put too fine a point on that process – getting all bunched up about finding the ideal mix of quality, nutritional value and creativity, all while making everything from scratch – is just not an option.  

This last stretch of three-job-havin’ has been one of those times.  I really just want something to put into my system to keep it running and I just don’t want to have to think about it so hard.

(I realize this is a luxury of my socio-economic class and nation of origin.  For some people, having the option OF food would be a luxury, and it’s bratty and entitled to be complaining about how hard it is to figure out what of my many options I should be eating.  So let’s just get it out of our systems – I’m bratty and entitled and don’t know what a real problem is – and move on to solving this non-problem problem.)

A smoothie is one of my favorite solutions to this non-problem problem.  It's as close as I am probably going to get to what I really want which is either a food pellet or IV feeding system.  It's kind of a combination of both.

Long-Distance Gay Husband and I were comparing our smoothie-making process, and we decided I should post about this since he wanted the visual recipe of what I put into mine and what tools I use.  Everybody has their own way of making a smoothie but mine is best.  So there.

I enjoy this smoothie because it a) is fast, b) requires minimal clean-up, c) is filling, d) incorporates several healthy/Health Food Trend elements and e) doesn’t feel like Healthy Eating (aka Punishment).

Amounts are pretty flexible.  Obviously if you have, for example, more berries than yogurt or smoothie, you’ll have a thicker shake.

The Platonic Ideal of Smoothies

½ c. commercially-prepared smoothie mix or flavored kefir beverage

¾ to1 c. plain nonfat yogurt

½ to 1 c. frozen berries

1 Tbls. whole flaxseed

1 Tbls. EFA oil

• Place all the ingredients in a deep, wide cup or measuring pitcher. 
  
• Use strong immersion blender to mix everything until berries and flax seed are pulverized. 
  
• If you are by yourself, stick a straw in the measuring pitcher and save yourself an extra dish. 
  
• If you have company, pour it into a proper cup like a civilized person, you animal.

(It's not pretty but it gets the job done.)

Some Other Stuff I've Learned

I keep waiting until I have a block of time to try to post something substantial but it's looking like that will be June.  So instead, here are a few things that I have learned/tried over recent weeks that have been making the meal-making process tastier and/or easier. 

While the first phase of the Cooking It Myself project was solely focused on the cooking part (no matter what the dish was), now I am back to wanting to also incorporate focusing on making healthy choices back into the mix.  In other words: less risotto. 

And - although I'll still always probably love me a cook-a-thon - sheer necessity has meant I have had to choose less time-consuming projects.

Cooking with these objectives (health and time) normally feels like a major buzzkill, and a shortcut to frustration or boredom and off-wagon-falling.

But somehow this so far has had both an enjoyable process AND results, so here are some of the things that have been working.

Click to read more ...

Geeking Out: DIY Recipe Database

Even just a cursory scan of this blog makes it clear that I can be a bit obsessive and hyperfocused, but here’s something you might not know: that does translate, at times, into being a geek. 

It could be because my dad’s a computer guy and so I was part of an early-adopting household with a Kaypro in the early ’80’s, and lost many hours to playing Star Lanes and Boulder Dash.

Or maybe it’s just that I really bought into Tomorrowland during early childhood trips to Disneyland, but whatever the origin of the impulse, I am basically all about automating my life.  I am constantly looking for new ways to outsource my brain’s rote activities to a computer.  I have more important things to do with my gray matter!  Like memorize hip hop lyrics and try to remember the names of DOS computer games I played in the early ’80’s!

My latest obsession is finding the perfect recipe database that can help me with this whole Cooking in the Matrix thing.  Maybe at some point, I’ll have an established repertoire of dishes to rely on, say, to use up that big bundle of sage I bought at Trader Joe’s because it was cheap.  But for now, it requires me picking through recipes in books, online, and in magazines without always having a quick and easy way to drill down to something that a) I would actually like, b) would use up the ingredient I want to use up and c) won’t require buying a bunch of new stuff.

Recipe databases are supposed to help keep that kind of thing easy and (my favorite!) are automated.  While I’ve seen some that have great features (like grocery list generation, easy scalability and nutrition/cost estimates), none has been perfect enough to make me want to drop the cash. 

And most of the ones with the best features seemed to be offline tools.  I need something I can access anywhere in the world, from the North (sitting at my actual desk with my desktop) to the South (sitting five feet away on my couch with my work laptop). 

Enter Zoho.  If you haven’t encountered them, like Google, they offer a variety of online business and personal applications like word processing, spreadsheets, databases, etc.  Mainly for free!  (I think if you use them for biz they might cost.)  I’ve used their database creator to make an inventory for the store, so I thought I could maybe do something similar with a recipe database.

Maybe at some point I will make something that complex, but for now, I’ve actually managed to create a (relatively) simple cross-reference-able database just using their word processor called Writer and its tagging function.  (It’s similar to what you could probably do using a blogging platform, but since I’m using other people’s recipes and copyrighted material, I want to keep it private and most password-protected blogging tools cost at least a little each month).  It's online, so I can access it anywhere. 

So any recipes that I had in Word, I just imported into Zoho.

I then added tags (in that bottom gray bar) for the ingredients that I thought I would someday need to cross-reference.  (I don’t add things like olive oil or garlic or anything else I always have on hand and use up regularly before it goes bad.)

I then have three different ways to use this.  Let’s say I’m in a recipe that uses that sage, and I want some ideas for other things I can make that week that will use up the rest of the sage. 

I can simply click on the tag and it pops up a little window showing me what else is tagged with that:

If I click that “Add as Folder” designation when I add the tag in the first place or any time that window is up, it creates a folder off to the left of the workspace for that tag.  So if I’m not already in a recipe or open Zoho with the ingredient in mind first, I can click on the folder, in this example, Sage, to see the recipes listed in that folder that use that (any recipe tagged with Sage is automatically added to that folder).

And of course, I can do a basic search of all the files, although it does seem to bring each result up twice for some reason.

So far, I’m loving it!  I can’t scale, or make a quick grocery list, but this cross-referencing this is really the most important to me.  In addition to quickly copying and pasting in recipes I find online, I’ve been scanning in some recipes I’ve been wanting to try from my stack of cookbooks, converting those to text (while this is a little bit of extra work, it’s actually not that much and will ultimately be less annoying than my current process of poking around aimlessly in every book I own).  And since I am currently between projects at work and have some downtime, I am preparing for some serious geeking out time over the next few days.

Laura Ingalls Wilder & Cooking in the Matrix: Closing out Extra Produce

Experienced home cooks: this entry will be boring to you.  Those of you, who, like me, are doing Adult Remedial Home Economics, might find something of interest.

One of the things I admire about my boss at the cooking school is how she always seems to know what we have in the fridge and has a plan for using it.  Sometimes we have to throw things out, but she is usually able to efficiently dovetail the extras from one class into the ingredients for another, and she always seems to have a way to use up those last bits before they go bad. 

I am fascinated by this.  My obsession with efficient food usage started, I think, with that Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House anecdote of the pig butchering where even the bladder of the pig had a use (blown up into a ball for the kids to play with, but if you are an American woman who grew up loving books, I probably didn’t need to tell you that!). 

There was something so satisfying about how self-contained the family was, all snug in their house in the woods.  I think I enjoyed the Little House in the Big Woods more than the more famous Little House on the Prairie mainly for this reason, it was so focused on how they made everything and used every little bit (remember Pa making the bullets?).  The respect for resources and humble and thrifty approach the family had to have really made a lasting impression on my young brain.

Growing up, as I did, in a plastic, air-conditioned, chain-store town like Scottsdale, AZ, this kind of living seemed like it was on another planet entirely, but it was a planet I wanted to live on!  I am enjoying cooking so much now because it is giving me that relationship with the material world that harkens back in a teeny way to that pioneer living that is so very different from the disposable and careless way that I’ve lived most of my life.

As mentioned, the main reason for my distaste for vegetables is, well, the taste.  But I think another reason why fresh produce sometimes isn’t a priority is that – as a person who is usually cooking for one – it’s hard to make sure that it all gets used up before going bad. 

Many produce items are sold in bunches that are far greater than the quantity I need for my scaled-down dish for one or two servings, and then I’m left with 80% of the original bunch, and no plan of what to do with it.  This is especially true when I am using something that’s unusual or unfamiliar in a new recipe.

And, since I’ve had a tendency to do what I call my binge cooking, usually I’ve blown a big chunk of my cooking time on the one dish that used that 20% and simply don’t have time during the week to try to find another new thing to try in which I could use that item.

But now with my produce delivery, and my Cook It Yourself project, I’m determined to finally get a handle on this.  I keep thinking it as Cooking in the Matrix, because it’s a multi-dimensional thing.  In order to use up one item, I have to sometimes buy another item, which then creates a new offshoot of a need to use that up.

For example, over the weekend, I made a Vegetable Paella.

(Here's an abbreviated Recipe Result column for this Veggie Paella: Eh.)

I picked this recipe because a) I have a ton of different rices and wanted to use the paella rice I’ve never tried, b) it called for some cannellini beans, and I had some leftover from the can I opened for the Vegan Walnut-Mushroom Pate last week, and c) I thought I could replace the peas it called for with the green beans I received in my produce delivery.

Great!  Efficient!  However…it also called for either chard or escarole.  Even sticking with the called-for quantities of it and the other veggies (I cut the rice in half so that I wouldn’t be making six servings of starch, but figured bulking up on veggies couldn’t hurt), two cups of escarole is only about ½ of a head of escarole.  So that’s now in the matrix, although I did successfully use up those cannellinis. 

I made that beet salad thing to use some of the beets from my delivery.  In order to use up the leftovers in sandwiches, I bought some cabbage.  But even if the beet stuff hadn’t fizzled as a leftover, I still would have had way more cabbage than I needed. 

And then I have all of the herbs that I bought for the Risotto with Seven Herbs.  I also used them in the lentils for the Tom Douglas Pan-Roasted Halibut thing, but I still had a ton leftover.  They are so expensive that it would really kill me to have to just compost them.

This isn’t really a problem, per se, but unless I want to spend all my free time chasing after these loose ends of produce, I need to have some a game plan for this matrix that includes some final destinations: recipes that are specifically in place to use things up and not require the purchase of a bunch of new things. 

Here’s where the effective home manager will yawn and be like, “Um, duh!” but I am new to this planet, Mrs. Wilder, so bear with me and my ignorance.  These are some of the dishes I am starting to realize are an important part of my repertoire mainly as users-up of things:

Stir-fries: good for extra alliums like onions, garlic, scallions; and veggies like mushrooms, cabbage, bok choi, broccoli, green beans, etc.  Not so good for root veggies.  Good because this is easy to make a single serving of, so it’s not one of these dishes where I know I’ll be eating it for the next three days (which sometimes is demotivating even if I like the dish).

(A pile of virtue: Stir-fried Savoy Cabbage, Green Beans, Mushrooms & Scallions over Brown Rice)

Risottos: herbs and general veg (also good because I can make a half-batch, and I generally like repurposing the extra serving into a risotto pancake for lunch the following day)
Stock: good, again, for alliums like onion, garlic and shallots; root veggies; leftover celery when I only needed a couple stalks but had to buy the whole kit and caboodle; mushrooms; and bits and ends when appropriate.  Stock, obviously, can be frozen, so it’s a twofer: a user-upper AND something I don’t then have to worry about working into the menu over the next few days.
Vinaigrettes: good for extra citrus, garlic, shallot, and herbs.

(Herb & Lemon Vinaigrette)

Ice cream and sorbets: Fruits.  What?  Why are you looking at me like that?  Look, I didn’t say this was about nutrition, it’s about using stuff up before it goes bad, and there are only so many kiwis I can eat in a day.  Ditto my comments from stock re this being a twofer.
Syrups: Especially with summer coming along (iced tea!) simple syrups made with leftover herbs and/or citrus will be nice to have on hand.  Also a twofer.

(Ginger-Lime Syrup)

Frittatas: Good for most of the same things that would go into stock other than bits and ends and celery.

I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones that I feel like I know well enough that I can now start to cook them more effortlessly without the kind of constant referring to a recipe or major military operation planning.  Not exactly Little House in the Big Woods, but it’s not my previous McLife either, so I’ll take my small victories where I can get them!

Follow-up re Tom Douglas' Pan-Roasted Blah Blah Blah

So...as I mentioned in my previous post on the dish, the cooking process for my first batch of Pan-Roasted Halibut with Toasted Breadcrumb Salad and Green Lentils was as excessively lengthy as the dish's name itself.

That said, I made the dish again yesterday, using some of the leftovers, and it took like 25 minutes. 

So to review:

FOUR+ HOURS

25 MINUTES

They didn't taste much different, either.

So here's the shortcutting way, I think, to have quicker access to this meal:

• Don't be going through some kind of bizarro Cook It Yourself project where you feel obligated to do everything from scratch and instead just buy some veggie stock and coarse bread crumbs.
• If you do want to make everything from scratch, don't also be going through some kind of freshly-made-everything-is-the-best weird obsession that you caught from all the chefs you're always around WHO HAVE ACCESS TO SOUS CHEFS AND DISHWASHERS.  Keep some stock and breadcrumbs on hand in the freezer or make them on a different day, not as part of the cooking process for this meal.
• Once you make the meal (assuming you like it) freeze up extra lentils for future dishes. 

If the lentils are prepared, and you have breadcrumbs, the rest of the prep is actually super fast. 

• You could probably get away with skipping making the full fresh Lemon Vinaigrette by just pressing a clove of garlic into some lemon juice, shaking up with some olive oil and S&P and using that instead.  (Mince a shallot if you have time, but this is a quicker option.)
• Zap the leftover lentils into the microwave or reheat on stovetop.
• Quickly pan-fry your breadcrumbs, cool them, and then mix with lemon zest, S&P, chopped parsley and most of the lemon juice mixture (save a smidge for topping the fish).
• Throw a piece of halibut into the same pan you just used for the breadcrumbs (don't bother cleaning it), cook it up, put it on top of the reheated lentils, drizzle the rest of the lemon-garlic/shallot on the fish, top with the salad, and you have a fancy-times dinner in a not-so-fancy-times time.