Special “OMG It’s HOT” Duo: Recipe: Pico de Gallo and Margaritas

21 Apr

It has been ungodly hot in San Francisco the past few days. As a result, I haven’t felt like turning on the stove. Or the oven. Or anything that produces heat, really. I’ve subsisted on pico de gallo and margaritas.

Ok, that was a lie. But I am eating/drinking them right now, and I have to admit that the combination might just be the perfect summertime pair. Even though, technically, it isn’t summertime.

Margarita (serves 1):
1 TB powdered sugar
1/4 C water
1 lime
1/2 orange
3 oz tequila
1.5 oz triple sec

Grab a cocktail shaker and put the sugar and water into the shaker. Squeeze the lime and orange into the shaker with the sugar. I use my handy dandy lemon squeezer apparatus.
Squeeze it! Squeeze them citrus fruits!
Add the tequila and triple sec. Now give the shaker a few good shakes, and pour the mix into a glass with ice.
Oh yeah.

Pico de Gallo!
3 medium sized tomatoes
1/2 lime
1/4 of an onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove
1/4 C (or more, depending on your taste) of chopped cilantro
Salt and pepper

Chop the onion, garlic, and cilantro and put in a bowl. Add about 1/2 tsp salt, and a bit of pepper. Chop up the tomatoes and add them to the bowl, then add the lime. Use the same lemon squeezer thingamagig that you used for the margarita.
Stir the salsa to combine, and eat with corn chips!
Or, if you would like to be a bit more healthy, another good idea is to eat with thick cut cucumber slices.
So. Good.

❤ Stef

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Friday’s Post-April 17

16 Apr

I regret to inform you all that I will be unable to post anything this Friday. I’m up in Portland visiting my friend Bryna who just had a baby. She (Bryna, not the baby) can make chocolate chip cookies without a recipe. She is the only person I know who can do this. She’s kind of my hero.

I meant to prepare a post before I left California but it just never came together. I hope you enjoy my faux hostess cupcake recipe, though!

I want to make this up to you. So, I’m taking suggestions. My next post will be next Tuesday, April 21. So what would you like to see me make? The idea I like the best will be be the one I execute. 
Aaaaaaaand go!
❤ Stef

Recipe: Faux Hostess Cup Cakes

14 Apr

It’s been a sweet couple of days. I usually emphasize savory dishes in this blog, because I don’t have any original baking recipes (sorry, but I have to use a recipe to make chocolate chip cookies!) and because I’m not usually a big fan of sweets.
But I had this idea. I want to create the perfect cupcake. I bought some vanilla pudding mix (I feel that adding vanilla pudding mix to cake batter will make it more moist) and I already had marshmallow fluff from last Friday’s post, so I decided to experiment.
I mean, even a failed cupcake is a cupcake, yeah?
Fortunately, these cupcakes did not fail. They were quite delicious, actually. And though they do not, in fact, contain vanilla cream in the middle, like Hostess Cupcakes do, they have marshmallow fluff.
Which might be better, actually.

Recipes borrowed and slightly altered from their original versions in “Perfecting the Cupcake” from the Food and Wine May 2008 issue.
Ingredients:
Chocolate Cake:
4 TB butter
1/2 C veggie oil
1/2 C water
1 C flour
1 C sugar
1/4 C + 2 TB unsweetened cocoa powder – I used sweetened cocoa powder that I had laying around the house, and cut the sugar in half.
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 egg
1/4 C buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 TB instant vanilla pudding mix
1 TB marshmallow fluff per cupcake.

Frosting:
6 TB softened butter
2 C confectioner’s sugar (powdered)
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
2 TB milk, half and half, or cream
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted

Preheat the oven to 350˚.
Melt the butter with the oil and the water over low heat.
Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and pudding mix.
Add the melted butter to the dry ingredients and mix until smooth. I am your butter river, carving up your valleys.
Mix mix mix.
Add the egg, buttermilk and vanilla and mix until all ingredients are incorporated. Oh, shiny!
Pour the batter into lined muffin tins, about half of the way full. Add 1 TB of marshmallow fluff to each tin.
Cover with the remaining batter.
Bake for approximately 25 minutes.

While you wait for the cupcake to bake, make the frosting. I, regretfully, do not have any frosting pictures. Use your collective imagination. Thick, creamy, chocolatey. . .mmmm.

Melt the chocolate and allow it to cool down before you cream it together with the butter. Mix the two ingredients together until they are smooth.

Mix in the sugar, vanilla, and salt, and mix until smooth. Add the cream, milk or half and half and beat until fluffy.

When you take the cupcakes out of the oven, make sure they have time to cool down before you frost them or the frosting will just melt all over the place.
This is the most artistic cupcake picture I have ever taken.
Yum yum yum!

Do your best to share. It will be difficult. These cupcakes are very, very good.

❤ Stef

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Recipe: Molten Chocolate Cake

10 Apr

This recipe hails from the September 2008 issue of Food and Wine magazine. These mini chocolate cakes are extremely easy to make and sinfully delicious. One of the coolest things about them is their versatility–you can use almost anything you like for the filling (I used marshmallow fluff and strawberry jam) or if you don’t have a filling at all, the cake naturally creates its own molten chocolate center. Yum.

Ingredients:
Note that I cut this recipe in half in order to only make two cakes. My boyfriend and I don’t need any more excuses to pig out than we already do!
1 stick of butter, plus melted butter for brushing
1 TB unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 C plus 1 TB flour
6 oz dark chocolate, chopped
1/2 C sugar
3 large eggs
Pinch of salt
Your choice of filling, about 1 TB per cake. Some options:
Fruit jam
Marshmallow fluff
Caramel (with or without a bit of sea salt)
Peanut butter (mixed up with about 1 TB of powdered sugar)
Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Grease two ramekins. The recipe says to use melted butter for this, but I used veggie oil. Why? I’m a rebel. Also, the point of this is to ensure that the cake doesn’t stick to the ramekins. I figured that veggie oil would work just as well. (It did.) I’m also lazy. Very, very lazy.
Mix together the cocoa powder and the 1 TB flour, and dust the greased ramekins.
Chop the chocolate and melt over low heat with the butter.
While it melts, whisk together the egg, sugar and salt until thick and pale yellow.
Gently fold the melted chocolate into the egg and sugar until there are no visible chocolate streaks.
Do the same for the flour.
Fill the ramekins 2/3 of the way with the batter, then spoon 1TB of your filling of choice on top, and cover with the remaining batter.
Put the ramekins onto a cookie sheet, and bake in the center of the oven for 16 minutes, until the tops are cracked but the center is still slightly jiggly. Look at the crazy marshmallow fluff cake! You will have to take my word for it when I tell you that they had jiggly centers.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the cakes to loosen, invert onto a plate, and serve. Top with powdered sugar, if you like. Yummy yummy yum!
I lived every child’s dream tonight, as I gleefully ate dessert before dinner.

Hahaha!

❤ Stef

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A Meditation on Blueberry Muffins

4 Apr

I’m participating in the Omnomicon Blueberry Muffin Recipe Round-Robin. I submitted a recipe myself, and I can’t say which recipes I’m trying (that would be against the rules) but I want to say that the muffin that I just ate was AMAZING. There is no way I am winning this thing. Once the contest is over all will be revealed, but for now, know this:
Yum.

Recipe: Chicken Pho

3 Apr

I am a Pho lover. LOVER. I eat mine with hoisin, basil and lots of lime. I typically get the rare beef stuff when I get it out (because I like my meat to be nearly raw) but I make chicken pho when I’m at home.
This isn’t my recipe, sadly. It is the first one I found when I looked up “Chicken Pho Recipe” on google a few months ago. You can find the original on Food and Wine’s website.
I want to mention a few things about this recipe before I get into all the messy stuff. First, you have to be prepared to spend at least 3 hours on this recipe if you follow the instructions and make the broth from scratch. You don’t have to do it that way, in fact I usually don’t. If you decide that you are lazy, you can use regular chicken broth and simmer it with chopped boneless, skinless chicken, the roasted veggies, salt, and sugar for like 30 – 45 minutes.
Second, if you decide to go all out and make the chicken broth, you will need either a whole chicken or a whole chicken already cut into pieces. If you don’t have very good knife skills, don’t have sharp knives, or are altogether unfamiliar with chopping up whole chickens, I suggest you buy the chicken already in pieces or have your butcher chop it up for you. Eventually I’ll write a blog about knife skills, but until then, I’d prefer if no one loses a finger. Capiche?
Good.
Ingredients:
2 unpeeled yellow onions, quartered
3 1/2 inch thick slices of ginger, smashed
4 qt water
One 3.5 lb chicken
1 TB salt
2 tsp sugar
1/4 C fish sauce (do not be afraid of fish sauce!)
1 lb dried rice noodles
Garnish (all of this stuff is optional):
mung bean sprouts
basil leaves
lime
jalapeno
chili-garlic sauce
hoisin sauce
First quarter the onion and smash the ginger, and roast in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes.
While the veggies are roasting, quarter the chicken (if you need to). First remove the chicken insides from the cavity. The chicken insides include the liver, heart, and neck, among other things. There they are, in the bowl in the back!
Now cut the entire chicken in half lengthwise. Yeeeah, raw chicken insides, woo!
Now cut each of these chicken halves in half again. I find it easier to flip them skin side up for this part.
There should be a picture of this, but I forgot and by the time I remembered the chicken was already boiling away. Oops.
Remember to always wash your hands when you handle poultry!
Now we are going to make a chicken insides bundle using cheesecloth and the chicken innards. This will be awesome for the chicken broth. First cut a length of cheesecloth.
Put all of the innards into the middle of the cloth. If you have any frozen innards from previous chickens, use those too. Yes, I save chicken giblets. You should, too.
Wrap the cheesecloth around the innards to make a bundle. I use thread to stitch it up very loosely, but kitchen twine or anything like that would work just as well.
Take the roasted veggies from the oven. Mmmm, don’t they look amazing?
Put all of the veggies, the chicken pieces, the innard and cheesecloth bundle, the salt, the sugar, and the water in a big soup pot and put it on the stove over medium high heat for 30 minutes. The idea is to cook the chicken.
Remove the chicken from the pot and separate the meat from the skin and the bones.
Put the skin and the bones back into the pot, and the meat in the refrigerator. Simmer the broth for 2 hours. Strain the broth using a colander and a very big bowl. This bowl was not big enough. I burned my finger. Use a very, very big bowl. And your common sense.
Return the strained broth to the soup pot and set to boil for a further 20 minutes. Stir in the fish sauce. Bubbly bubbly.
While you wait, soak the rice noodles in warm water for 15 minutes. This time may be different, depending on the noodles that you bought, so make sure you read the instructions on the box.
After the noodles are done soaking, drain the water, and add new salted water to the noodles. Bring the noodles to a boil, and then allow them to boil for about 3 minutes. Drain them.

Shred the chicken into the broth and simmer until heated.
Serve by putting a big bunch of noodles into a bowl, and then pouring the broth and the chicken over the noodles. Serve the soup with your choice of condiments listed above.
Yum! The best thing about making this recipe is that you have pho for days. Just make sure not to mix the noodles with the broth when you store it, otherwise the noodles will get all soggy.

❤ Stef

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Recipe: No-Knead Bread

31 Mar

This is the infamous NY Times No-Knead Bread recipe, and all of the rumors are true. It is the most amazing bread recipe EVER.
No, I’ve never made bread before. This was my first try. But aside from having an absurdly long rise time (18 hours), I love everything about this bread. Even the rise time isn’t that big of a problem if you time it right-you could mix up the ingredients right before you go to bed at night and then bake it when you get home from work the next day. It would totally be worth it.
The only warning I want to issue is this: the dough is incredibly sticky. I mean, very, very sticky. You need to flour anything that touches the dough, including your hands, if you want to avoid getting dough bits stuck everywhere. The plus side to this is that it is the super-wet dough that allows the bread to be so low-maintenance and yet so delicious. The exterior is crusty, the interior is fluffy and chewy.
So do not be afraid of homemade bread! It is easy, I promise. Now go, bake and prosper.

Ingredients:
3 C flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 5/8 C water (5/8 C = 5 ounces)
Put the flour in a large mixing bowl and add the yeast and the salt. Make sure you use a big bowl because the dough is going to double in size.
Add the water and stir just to combine.
Cover with a piece of plastic wrap and let sit for 12-18 hours in a warm place.
After at least 12 hours has elapsed (I usually wait 18, but it’s your call), the dough will have doubled in size and will be very bubbly.
Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface and fold it over onto itself once or twice. Loosely cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, flour your hands and quickly shape the dough into a ball-ish shape. While you are doing this re-flour the cutting board (or wherever you have the dough resting.) Cover with a floured towel and let sit for another 2 hours. If rest the dough on a towel like I did, make sure you flour the towel really well or the dough will stick to the towel. Also, don’t use a terrycloth towel. If you do, the little nubs on the towel will likely become embedded in the bread and we don’t want that!
Half an hour before the 2 hours are up, pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees and place a heavy covered pot (I use enameled cast iron, but anything heavy like pyrex will work) into the oven to warm up. Turn the dough into the heated pot.
Bake covered for 30 minutes. Half-way done bread! At this point, your kitchen will begin to smell delicious. You will feel unexpectedly happy and secure. This is all part of the plan.
Now bake uncovered for another 30 minutes. The crust will be dark and golden.
Mmmmm, bread!
See all of those lovely air pockets?
I recommend you eat at least a slice while it is still warm from the oven. Butter is (obviously) delicious, but you could dip it in olive oil and balsamic, too. Mmmm.

Another quick note-please make sure you don’t put your very hot pan on any uncovered wooden surface. I’m usually very good about this but I accidentally burned my wooden countertop the second time I made this bread. Very sad. Learn from my mistake! Cover your wood!

❤ Stef

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Recipe: Blueberry and Cheddar Pancakes

27 Mar

I have to be honest and say that this recipe isn’t mine. I stole it from Aleta Meadowlark (which might just be the coolest name EVER), who runs the blog Omnomicon. She stole it from The Joy of Cooking. I took it and made it fit for the lazy person in your life. The original recipe involves making the pancakes from scratch. This is not difficult by any means, but I always use Bisquick for my pancakes. Bisquick is always what my father used, and I always thought that his pancakes (made with Bisquick) were much better than my mother’s pancakes (made from scratch.)
Anyway, to view the original recipe, go check out Omnomicon. For my lazy version, read on.

Ingredients:
Bisquick (2 C)
2 eggs
1 C milk
1 tsp Vanilla
1/2 C frozen blueberries
1/2 C shredded cheddar cheese

You are going to make two batches of pancakes-a cheddar batch, and a blueberry batch. This way you can eat the cooked pancakes together, for maximum delicious. Get out two medium sized bowls, and put 1 C Bisquick, 1 egg, 1/2 C milk, and 1/2 tsp vanilla in each.
Mix the ingredients together half way. Alton Brown (my idol) says that Americans have a tendency to beat batter into oblivion, and that we should all chill out and leave well enough alone. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but he has a point. So resist the urge.Measure out 1/2 C of the frozen blueberries and choose a batter bowl to add them to. I chose the red bowl. You are supposed to thaw and drain them, but I didn’t bother. This didn’t seem to affect the pancakes in any way, but you can feel free to take the extra step if you like.
Shred 1/2 C of cheddar cheese, and add it to the other bowl.
Mix both bowls again so that the additional ingredients are distributed. Purple pancakes? Awesome!Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium-low heat, and add about 1/2 tsp of veggie or canola oil. Once the pan is hot, drop about 1/4 C of batter per cake. Flip when the tops get bubbly. Repeat as needed.
Forthcoming-Pancake Porn.

Mmmmmm.Oh yeah.

Serve stacked on top of each other.
I LOVE the way they look like this, all colorful, stripey and fun! I think this will be my new desktop image. I admit, seeing them stacked on top of each other is part of the reason I decided to make them to begin with. That, and cheddar cheese in pancakes sounded way too good to pass up.
Can you imagine serving these for breakfast? MAJOR points, people. Major points.

❤ Stef

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How to Read Recipes: Measurement Abbreviations

25 Mar

I’ve been writing this blog for a bit now, and it recently occurred to me that not everyone may be familiar with the measurement abbreviations found in many recipes, including mine.

I started this blog in an attempt to spread around my cooking philosophy–basically, it’s easy, quick, and fun, and anyone can do it! In this spirit, I’ve decided to start posting little mini-tutorials on basic kitchen tasks, like proper knife handling technique and how to peel garlic effectively, all of that good stuff. The first one, as you may have figured out from the title of this blog, is how to read recipes effectively by deciphering those pesky measurement abbreviations.

The three used the most are for cup, teaspoon, and tablespoon. These are abbreviated as:

C for cup
tsp for teaspoon
TB for tablespoon

A few more:

lb = pound
oz = ounce
gal – gallon
pt = pint
qt = quart

You might also find liter, which is:

L

You probably won’t find many recipes in liters in the US, but it never hurts to know. Learning is half the battle, after all.

These are the basics. If you feel I’ve missed anything, or have any questions, leave it in the comments!

❤ Stef

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Recipe: Cheese Tortellini with Lemony Chicken and Asparagus

19 Mar

I usually post Fridays, but I am flying to Seattle this evening for an interview with Seattle Pacific University. I didn’t want to deprive you of my culinary genius for a whole 24 hours, so I thought I would just list my recipe early this week. 😉
This recipe is very easy and super delicious. I tend to cook a lot of pastas and soups, for a few reasons.
1. I’m broke.
2. They are easy to make, and require minimal clean up.
3. My boyfriend is much pickier than he would have you believe.
I elected not to use a cream sauce for this dish, because I am trying (half-heartedly) to eat healthier and lose some weight.
This recipe can very easily be made vegetarian. Just use a whole pound of asparagus and eliminate the chicken, and substitute veggie broth for the chicken broth.

Ingredients:
12 oz cheese tortellini. I used fresh; you can use dried or frozen, whatever. The only thing it will impact is your cooking time.
1/2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast
1/2 lb asparagus tips
1 TB crushed and chopped garlic
1/3 C chicken broth
Juice of 1 small lemon, approximately 1/8 C
1/2 tsp flour
1 tsp salt
ground black pepper
grated parmesean, to garnish
Instructions:
Set a pot of water to boil for your pasta. While you wait for the water to boil, you will be making your sauce.
First, chop your veggies and the chicken. You want to slice the chicken into little strips.
Chop the asparagus into quarters.
Next, crush the garlic with the flat of your knife and chop into tiny pieces.
Heat 1 TB of olive oil in a pan on the stove over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute until slightly brown, but not burnt.
At this point, add the chicken and cook until half cooked. This is what partially cooked chicken looks like.
Add the asparagus, chicken broth, lemon juice, and salt and pepper. It is important to add the asparagus while the chicken is only halfway cooked because you otherwise run the risk of overcooking the chicken. Dry chicken is just as bad as undercooked chicken. Perhaps worse, actually, because once it is overcooked it is difficult to talk down from the ledge.
Yum yum yum. Simmer until the chicken is cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add the flour and stir. Allow to simmer for a further 2-3 minutes, then turn off the heat.
Add the chicken and the asparagus to the cooked tortellini, reserving the sauce in the pan.
Next, you are going to reduce the sauce by half. Boil the sauce over high heat for about 30 seconds to 1 minute.
Bubble bubble bubble.
Be sure to watch the sauce, or it will reduce too much and you will have too little sauce! This is just about perfect, but even then I think I reduced it just a little too much.
Not exactly the most flattering picture, but tasty just the same.
Add the reduced sauce to the tortellini, chicken and asparagus. Stir to coat and serve with lots of parmesean.
Mmmm. Doesn’t this look lovely? The end result is slightly lemony, which is perfectly complemented by the parmesean.
I should note that this recipe is me
ant to serve two people. You could probably serve 4 if you don’t eat very much. My boyfriend and I polished off the whole thing ourselves, but we had seconds. We’re eaters.

❤ Stef

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