Leftovers for Breakfast

I think I've mentioned here before that I don't often make breakfast. If I wake up early enough that breakfast is warranted, I either get a latte or eat whatever's left in the fridge from the past few nights. For example, this morning I ate a slice of cold pizza! And I know I mentioned eating the leftover yaki onigiri cold for breakfast. I'll also eat stir-fries, salads, baked goods--whatever is there and doesn't have to be prepared beyond maybe heating up for a minute or two.

Anyway, after a super late night on Saturday (Mike and I didn't get home until 4am after Cabaret and it was soooo amazing and Amanda Palmer puts on a damn good show and I had a drink with absinthe in it and it turns out I don't like absinthe), we slept late and I was in the mood for a real breakfast. Enter the leftovers from the night before--I was really glad, in the morning, that I'd been too rushed and afraid to make the Chicken Creole with an entire cut-up chicken, as per Becky's recipe. Because we ate all the chicken that I cooked in it, we had a whole bunch of the sauce left over, and I had a vision for that sauce.

Creole-Poached Eggs.

With well-buttered rye toast from my favorite bakery.

The recipe for this is basically "make Chicken Creole, have leftover sauce, crack some eggs into it and simmer until the eggs are cooked to your liking." It took maybe 15 minutes to whip up and we had a wonderful Sunday breakfast. At 1pm. And as far as I'm concerned, that's still breakfast because I had to drag Mike out of bed for it. (Hey, it was really only around 8 hours of sleep.)

This has completely cemented in my mind the importance of making big one-pot meals. You can poach eggs in the leftovers. I intend to try to find something else that I can do this with soon, because runny yolks mixed with vegetable-y sauce on delicious bread is possibly the best way to have breakfast, ever. And that huge pile of food is almost completely vegetables! It's even healthy!

Okay, so I'm super excited remembering this and now I'm sad that I don't have anything to poach eggs in for dinner. (And I really want to make huevos rancheros soon!) What does everyone else here eat their eggs with?

Asparagus Risotto

A while ago, a couple of the blogs that I follow posted recipes for asparagus risotto. I've never made a risotto before--well, not a REAL risotto--and I absolutely love asparagus, so of course I absolutely had to make it. I went searching for recipes all over the place. Though I didn't really know how to make a risotto, I felt very strongly that it should include more than a tablespoon of cheese and/or cream, yet that seems to be how most recipes write it. I finally found a satisfactory-looking recipe over on Epicurious, modified it a teensy bit, and got cooking.

This was my first experience that caused me to realize how much I've come to love cooking from blogs and sites like Recipezaar (now Food.com), where people who aren't professionals make the dish and write it up. The instructions are clear to those of us who didn't go to culinary school, and if we have a question, we can easily ask. Things like "turn the burner from medium to low" don't usually get left out. While I'll probably make this again sometime, I'll make it from the recipe I'm typing up here, not the one I followed the first time.

RECIPE: Asparagus Risotto

Ingredients:

-1 1/2 lbs asparagus

-4 cups chicken broth (one box)

-1 tbsp butter

-1 large red onion

-2 cups arborio rice

-1/2 cup white wine

-2 tsp chopped fresh sage

-1 cup freshly grated romano cheese

-1/4 cup fat-free half and half

-water (about 2 cups)

Instructions:

1. Wash and trim the asparagus. Cut off the tips and set them aside. Cut the rest of the asparagus into inch-long pieces.

2. Combine about 2/3 of the asparagus with one cup chicken broth and one cup water in a blender. Puree and set aside for later.

3. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the onion over medium heat until tender. Add the rice and lower the heat to medium-low. Once the pan has cooled down a little, add the wine and stir until absorbed. (This should take about 4 minutes. If it takes less time than that, lower your heat more. If it takes longer, turn the heat up a little. The original recipe doesn't say anything about changing the heat so my first half cup of wine just cooked off immediately and I ended up using a whole cup and it was perfectly delicious, so if it cooks off too fast and doesn't actually absorb, don't worry about adding a little more.)

4. Add 1/2 cup broth and the chopped sage, again stirring until absorbed. Continue to add broth but the half cup, allowing each one to be absorbed before adding the next half cup. After about 15 minutes, add the asparagus pieces that you didn't puree, and continue adding half cups of broth. Once you've run out of broth, add two half cups of water in the same manner.

5. Increase the heat (back to medium) and add the asparagus puree. Stir often until absorbed.

6. Add the cheese and cream, stir thoroughly, and serve! Garnish with fresh sage if you would like.

Step 2. I took about 12 pictures of this and this was the least blurry one. Sometimes I think my camera hates me.

The rest of Step 2. It looks like those green smoothies that I buy at the store, but I wouldn't drink this. Just set it aside for now.

The rest of the asparagus, after 2/3 of the stalks were pureed. The only reason to separate the tips is to not puree them, so if you want to toss them in the bowl together now, that's okay. You probably don't even need a separate bowl to begin with.

Step 4. I loved how the red onion had a nice pink color that contrasted with the sage (and, later, asparagus) but most of the color disappeared after cooking for so long. Oh, well--it tasted delicious.

Still step 4--this is right after I added the asparagus. I'm glad I used the hugest pan I had, this made a TON of food!

Step 5: Asparagus/water/chicken broth puree added, and I'm now very worried that my pan will overflow if I stir too vigorously. Epicurious seems to think this takes 3 minutes to absorb. Like I said earlier, I like to have some direction about the heat. Mine did well after taking a while to absorb, so I guess it's okay.

Everything is added! It's ready! WOOOOO! Notice how the onions don't look nearly as pink anymore? After some refrigeration they lost their color completely.

The 'eat' step. It was rich and thick with plenty of asparagus flavor but it didn't overpower the grilled chicken that we ate it with. It's very warm and perfect for a cooler evening.

So, there's my first risotto! I was pretty happy with it, and I had leftovers for quite a while, which was nice. One night my mom and I had the leftovers with poached eggs, thanks to Kevin over at Closet Cooking. (I forgot where I'd seen it when I decided to try it, but went and found his post afterward. He deserves credit for such a perfect combination!) My mom was skeptical; I was not--the runny yolk complemented the creamy risotto perfectly and made for a great light meal. (Not that the risotto itself doesn't make a delicious light meal, of course.)

Given the amount of risotto I had left over, unless you're serving at least 6 people, I would probably recommend cutting this recipe in half or freezing half of your leftovers--the last of mine went bad before I could eat it! I was very sad about this. Now, though, I have a bag of arborio rice and an idea of how to make risotto, so I'll be looking for more tasty recipes. I think it would be fun to make this with three colors of asparagus--green, white, and purple. It would be so pretty!

Okay, so I've voiced my opinions about where I like to cook from. How about you guys? I'm assuming that if you're reading this you're not averse to cooking from blogs, but do you have difficulty with cookbooks or "professional" recipe sites? I'm sort of nervous about using epicurious again; both recipes I've followed have been less than ideal in the way of instruction, and I'm not sure there's anything I'd want to make that couldn't be based on something in one of the blogs I read. What do you think?

Oh, and I've also started a new thing with the comments. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I've enabled commentluv, which means that if you have a blog and leave a comment it'll link back to your most recent post with a title. I think it will also let me reply to comments directly, but I'm not sure. Let me know how you like it!

One Crust to Rule them All

I hear a lot of people saying that they can't make a pie crust. This never quite made sense to me--I made my first pie when I was 12. I read the instructions and followed them and the crust came out perfectly. I was a natural, and everyone who ate this pie (blueberry-banana; I saw blueberries and decided to make a pie without realizing that you need way more blueberries than that so I added bananas and it was an excellent combination which I'll have to post here at some point) was impressed. (Wow, I've been the family's designated pie-baker for all occasions for ten years now. This makes me feel sort of old.)

I quickly became disenchanted with that recipe, however. It used shortening, and a lot of it, which my parents categorized as an Unhealthy Food. I started looking for recipes that didn't use shortening--I found a few with lard, but I wasn't touching those, and finally I found one with butter (also an Unhealthy Food but not nearly as toxic as shortening). It turned out to be the One Crust to Rule them All. It's so easy to throw together and it always comes out perfectly flaky and delicious. It's Martha Stewart's Pate Brisee recipe, which is absolutely amazing and I make one tiny modification in mine.

So, in case you don't want to click on a link, I'm putting the recipe here along with step-by-step pictures so you can see what it's supposed to look like at each different step and know if yours looks right! I hope this is helpful to those of you who could never figure out pie crust before.

IMPORTANT: You will need a food processor or stand mixer for this recipe. Martha says to use a food processor; I've always used my kitchenaid. I made it once with a pastry cutter and it just didn't work anywhere near as well.

RECIPE: One Crust to Rule them All
Adapted (only very slightly) from Martha's Pate Brisee

Ingredients:
-2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
-1 tsp sugar
-2 sticks (one cup) unsalted butter, chilled (the unsalted part is important)
-1/4 cup very, very cold water

Instructions:
1. Cut each stick of butter along the tablespoon lines on the package. If it's cold, you should be able to do this without taking the wrapper off or getting pieces of wrapper in your pie. If you see any pieces, pull them off. (Alternatively, you could try to cut the stick into about 8 roughly equal pieces without the paper.)
2. Cut each tablespoon square into quarters. You'll have a lot of very, very small cubes of butter. This is good.
3. Put the flour and sugar into the bowl of your food processor/stand mixer (with paddle attachment) and mix well. (Martha says to use a teaspoon of salt, too. I don't. I prefer my crust with no salt. If you want to use salt, though, go ahead.)
4. Add the butter cubes, a few pieces at a time, allowing each addition to be completely coated in flour before adding the next.
5. Mix until the butter has been broken up into small pieces and the mixture "resembles coarse meal." Important: don't mix longer than that! It's important to not over-knead pie dough, or else it becomes dense and hard and awful.
6. Take your quarter cup of very cold water. Add a tiny bit (seriously, only very small splash) to the mixer at a time. Continue doing this until the entire thing sticks together in one big lump. (Note: I'm not sure what it'll do in the food processor, but according to the recipe you should be able to grab a handful and it'll stick together.) The tiny amounts here are key--I almost never use the full quarter cup. I'm pretty sure that using less water will give you a much more velvety and flaky crust, and more water will result in a hard, dense crust. So add the smallest amount of water you possibly can for it to all stick together. (Again, stop the mixer as soon as it gets to this point. Overkneading=bad.)
7. Take the dough out of the mixer and form it into a big even log and cut it in half. Form each half into a disc (don't roll it out yet, it should be about half an inch to an inch thick). Wrap it in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge for about an hour.
8. After an hour, take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out. This recipe makes enough for a double-crust 9-inch pie.

Steps 1-2: chop up the butter.

Step 3: put the flour and sugar into the bowl.

Step 5: This is what it looks like before I add the water. Notice that there are still some larger pieces of butter sitting around--that's okay.

Step 6: Adding tiny amounts of water. Eventually it will form one big clump.

Step 7: The ball is about what your crust will look like when you've added enough water. The disc is what your disc should look like.

Okay, so I made a RIDICULOUS amount of pie crust. In half an hour or so. (I called it "speedpie" and decided it should be a new Olympic sport.) You're not going to have this much crust unless you make three batches, but it seems like a good way to point out another important part of crust-making: if you're making multiple pies, don't make all the crust at once. You'll have to knead it too much for it to work. Do each batch separately and your pies should be wonderful!

I used these crusts (four of the discs) to make the pasties I posted about earlier, and the other two to make a pie, which I'll obviously be posting sometime soon--I felt that I needed a post dedicated purely to making an excellent pie crust.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Best Basic Cupcake Recipe

There is a gorgeous food (mostly baking) related-blog out there on the internets called Technicolor Kitchen. I think, aside from the beautiful food she makes, the most amazing part is that she posts every single thing in both English and Portuguese on two different blogs (click on the language to go to the blog in that language). Anyway. The Wednesday before Easter, she posted a recipe for some delightful-looking cupcakes that she called "Almond cakes with sugared apple icing." The recipe is apparently from Donna Hay but I can't find it anywhere on that site. Regardless, these were delicious and simple, so I'm posting the recipe for your enjoyment. (We doubled it--I'm going to post the original measurements, because you probably don't want 32 cupcakes. But if you do, double what I'm posting here.)

ALMOND APPLE CUPCAKES--Recipe
Ingredients (for the cakes):
1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp unsalted butter (at room temperature)
3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (note: if you want really almond-y flavor, substitute almond extract)
1 cup plus 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/3 cup ground almonds
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup whole milk

for the icing:
3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup clear apple juice

Directions:
1. Okay, so the recipe technically calls for caster sugar (in both instances) which is really hard to find in the US (at least in my part of it) so put the sugar in a food processor and pulse for a few seconds to make it a little bit finer.
2. And I'm assuming that you didn't find ground almonds (or almond meal) at the store, so put some almonds in a food processor until they're finely ground. My advice (for both the almonds and the sugar) is to do small amounts at a time and fill measuring cups to make sure you have the right amount once it's ground.
3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
4. Put the butter, sugar and vanilla (or almond) extract into the bowl of an electric mixer, or into a normal bowl and use a handmixer. Beat until fluffy.
5. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well before adding the next one.
6. Add the flour, ground almonds and baking powder. Mix thoroughly, then fold in the milk.
7. Pour into cupcake pans (that are either buttered or lined with cupcake liners). Fill each about 2/3 full. I sprinkled a couple almond slivers onto the top of each of mine so they'd look prettier. I think one almond slice would work well, too, or just one almond. Or whatever you think would be appropriate.
8. Bake for 15-17 minutes. They are done when a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool.
9. Make the icing: put the sugar (that you've put through the food processor) in a bowl. Add small amounts of apple juice, stirring, until it becomes something that you can ice a cupcake with. Spoon it over the cupcakes, spreading if it's thick enough to spread.

The batter before folding the milk it. It made a heart!

In the oven. (Do I recommend opening your oven to take a picture? No, not really, but I forgot to take pictures before putting them in the oven.)

Fresh out of the oven! They look so pretty here, I almost didn't want to ice them.

This didn't come out well at all, but that's basically what happens when they're iced. Except this was a leftover cupcake and I'd forgotten to take the picture until just a little while ago and it's a week old. So really, it looked prettier than this. (Also? Still delicious.)

My thoughts on this recipe:
-It was good. Really good. But, like I mentioned in the ingredients list, you'd probably need to substitute almond extract for the vanilla if you wanted a lot of flavor. As it was, they were a pretty basic cupcake and I think I'll use them whenever I need a basic cupcake recipe for a fun frosting.
-The recipe that I got said to ice the cupcakes as close to serving time as possible. It wasn't really possible for me to ice them right before serving them as we were traveling with them. The apple juice in the icing sort of sunk into the cupcakes and they ended up with a hardened layer of sugar on them. Was it delicious? Yes. But I couldn't taste the apple at all.
-Also, I think I should have put more apple juice in the icing. Mine was at a point where I could spread it, and I think if I could have drizzled it, there would have been more apple flavor.
-I used slivered almonds and I think this was a bad idea. Almonds are one of my favorite foods, and I ate some of the slivered almonds afterwards and they didn't have nearly as much flavor as normal almonds. Perhaps using normal, whole (or at least sliced) almonds would give better flavor to the recipe. And a tiny bit of color.
-They probably would have come out fluffier if I'd remembered to take the butter out of the refrigerator and let it warm up and soften a bit. Instead Mike stuck it in the microwave and it ended up melted. I read something recently on how important it is that your butter is softened as instructed and how melted butter is useless--I disagree, but whatever you're making usually comes out much fluffier if you actually follow the instructions.
-I'm definitely using this recipe again. And I highly recommend you check out Technicolor Kitchen for more wonderful sweets.

Mike decorated one of the cupcakes. With a chocolate frosted mini wheat. A special cupcake for a special boy.

blechhh

On Friday I cooked fish for the first time ever.

I guess I should explain about me and fish. I hate fish. I love sushi. I hate the types of sushi that involve cooked shrimp or anything similar. I love shrimp. Except when I say that I love shrimp, really what I mean is I rarely eat shrimp and whenever I go to a party that has shrimp as an option part of me is saying "Hey, remember last time you ate shrimp? And the time before that? And pretty much every time ever? It's delicious, huh? You should definitely get in on that shrimp cocktail before it's gone and you KNOW it will be" and another part of me is saying "Shrimp is fish. You hate fish. Why would you eat shrimp? You won't like it. Sure, you seem to remember liking it before, but your memories are wrong. It's gross. Don't touch it." I always end up eating the shrimp and being happy that I did, and I tried scallops last summer and they weren't so bad, but in general, cooked seafood disgusts me. Occasionally it's prepared well and I enjoy it while it's in my mouth but then it leaves a nasty aftertaste and I get mad at myself for being tricked into eating fish again. I'm simplifying this by making a list, because I'm aware that nothing I just wrote made any sense to anyone but me.

TIMES THAT I LIKE FISH
-Shrimp, especially in shrimp cocktail form, but part of me thinks I won't every time
-Sushi (but none of the types involving anything cooked)
-Sushi-grade tuna steaks that are cooked really rare and are basically just sushi with a little bit of sear on the edges
-My dad made this awesome poached salmon on top of a palak paneer-like spinach mixture and that was quite good
-When there is enough other flavor in the dish that I can't actually taste the fish at all (such as baked in salsa)

That's pretty much it. I do, however, have a 'try anything once' policy when it comes to food--if I didn't I never would have eaten sushi and look where THAT would have gotten me--so I'll occasionally take a bite of someone else's fish if they order it somewhere. The result of that is usually that the bite was almost tolerable but there's no way I would eat an entire piece of fish. Luckily, I think, from these tastes, I've developed an ability to know if fish is prepared well, even if I don't like it myself. (Though if the fish smells fishy, I won't touch it. Sorry. The smell makes me nauseous.)

Anyway, Mike wanted fish on Friday, because he always eats fish on Good Friday, but he didn't want to make me make or eat fish. I decided that, in honor of his tradition, I would find a way to prepare fish so I could tolerate it, because otherwise we would have had to go to the store while there was some perch in the freezer that just needed defrosting. Unfortunately, the perch was frozen and I had to run it under hot water for a long time before I could break it apart, and once I'd run it under hot water the skin was all soggy and do you know how hard it is to skin a fish when the skin is soggy? (I will say, however, that I'm pretty damn good at skinning a fish. As much as I avoid it, I once worked in a grocery store deli/fish department and had to learn how to skin the fishes. Witnessing a contest between two other members of the department to see who was the better fish-skinner taught me how to be quite good at it.)

NOT QUITE A RECIPE: Edana's Approach to Fish
Ingredients
-some fish
-lots of breadcrumbs
-parmesan or romano cheese
-a relatively large amount of herbs and spices that you know you like and go well together
-butter

Instructions
1. Preheat your oven to whatever temperature the fish you're cooking should be baked at.
2. Mix the breadcrumbs, cheese and herbs/spices in a bowl.
3. Skin the fish if you weren't smart enough to have the people at the store do it for you. (This is a lot easier if the fish is fresh.) You can leave the skin on if you want, but I don't know why you'd want to do that. It always confuses me.
4. Melt the butter. Brush the fish with the butter. Cover the fish in the breadcrumbs mixture. Put it on a thoroughly oiled baking sheet.
5. Bake for required amount of time. (This is usually not very long. If you don't know, look it up, and check it after the smallest amount of time because overcooked, dry fish is even worse.)

I used a large amount of basil and a small amount of paprika. It came out in the "this doesn't taste so bad until after I swallow it, at which point my mouth tastes like fish" category. I was able to eat a whole (though quite small) fillet. Mike loved it and was very happy that I sacrificed myself for him like that. He seemed sort of surprised that I managed to be good at cooking fish despite my general refusal to have anything to do with it.

I realize this isn't all that spectacular of a dish to be blogging about, but since I've never made fish before, I thought it was worth mentioning that I did something new. (And I think at some point this turned into a rant. Whoops.) Maybe someday I'll make sushi, and I'll have made fish that I actually like eating.

Is Pretty Important?

I've never made a bundt cake before in my life. I don't even own a bundt pan. However, whenever I see a recipe for a bundt cake, they look so pretty and delicious that I get sad about not owning a bundt pan. When I saw a recipe for Orange Chocolate Chunk Bundt Cake on eat me, delicious, I complained to Mike about my lack of a bundt pan, and he said that he had one--problem solved! So when it was his mom's birthday, we thought it would be a good time to try out this recipe. The picture looked so pretty, with ganache dripping down the side, and it just seemed like the perfect idea. We got some oranges and chocolate chips and made sure we had everything we needed.

I haven't zested anything for years. Last time I did, it was to make key lime pie (which I really want to do again, perhaps when it feels more like summer) and I don't think I've ever zested oranges. We got huge oranges, though, and ended up with enough zest after only two of them.

We now have a basic progression of cake. First the batter goes into the pan (making the batter wasn't all that interesting).

Then the pan goes into the oven. And then it comes out of the oven, and sits and cools for a long time so that it doesn't fall apart.

And then the cake falls apart anyway when we try to remove it from the pan.

I don't get it. Mike buttered and floured the pan, which he's usually very good at, and he even thought he did so in excess this time. And, with a normal cake, you can sorta stick a knife around the edges and a spatula of some sort under it and get it out and piece it together so it looks slightly reasonable, and it'll look okay anyway because you're frosting the thing. But with all the curves and weird edges in a bundt pan, we had to pry slowly and basically ended up crumbling half of what was stuck in the pan. And, let's be honest, I'm female and it's my boyfriend's mom's birthday and I suggest making a cake and it falls apart and I flip out. I'm not entirely sure how much Mike noticed that I was flipping out, because he managed to keep his cool and attempt to piece the cake together correctly (it was like one of those weird 3D puzzles but missing some pieces). There was a little ring of 'not done' on the bottom of the cake, and I'd say maybe that's why it fell apart, but that's not the part that fell apart at all. And we could have kept it in the oven longer to fix that, but perhaps it fell apart because the rest of it was overdone and really we should have looked at the positioning in the oven before we started, but you'd think that it having been on the top rack would mean the top (well, bottom) would be the part that came out overdone, right? And I probably stopped making any sense a while ago but the point is I'm really, really glad the recipe for the ganache made way more than originally pictured and we were able to cover the whole thing and it still tasted delicious. And looked, if nothing else, acceptable.

I don't go for pretty when I bake. It's not really the point. It's wonderful when it happens, but I'm usually in a rush and don't have time to care if the pie crust cracks when I put it on top of everything else, so I just hope it cracks in an artistic way instead of a messy, ugly way. And I guess it's the same with cakes--if I can get the thing to stick together, isn't it enough that it tastes good? I mean, if I were at a bakery and wanted a cake and there was one that looked really pretty and another one that had sorta fallen apart or they'd screwed up the food coloring in the frosting or something, well, the second one would probably be discounted and still taste exactly the same, so I'd get that. What do you think? Is pretty important when it comes to food?

And, besides, when you're making a cake that tastes like a Terry's Chocolate Orange, shouldn't it be okay for it to look like someone whacked it?

(Click here to go to the recipe. The only thing I changed was to leave the instant coffee granules out of the ganache and put in some almond extract. And next time I embark on this adventure [and it tasted good enough that there will be a next time] I'll substitute almond extract for the vanilla in the cake, too.)

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Banana Cookies--with recipe!

I know, earlier this week, I said something about banana bread. I was fully intending to make banana bread. The bananas were getting old, and it seemed like an awesome idea at the time. (I should mention that I usually hate bananas. I'll never eat a banana. But I think they're delicious baked in things, so I let them get old and bake them into things.)

However, sometime between then and now, I was given a recipe for banana COOKIES and I couldn't resist making them. I'm very glad that I didn't. They are absolutely amazing.

These cookies include bananas, chocolate chips, AND peanut butter chips. I had to go buy banana extract (the store only had imitation, boo) and when it came time to add the butter, I realized I didn't have any and had to walk to to convenient store down the street. Well worth it. So, here--have a recipe. Go make some cookies.

RECIPE: Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Banana Cookies

makes about 36 medium-sized cookies

Ingredients:

-2 and 2/3 cups flour

-1 tsp baking soda

-1/4 tsp salt (optional; I always leave the salt out of baked goods if possible)

-2 sticks butter (salted or unsalted)

-1 cup brown sugar

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-3 large (or 5 medium) overripe bananas

-1 tsp banana extract

-1 large egg (should be at room temperature)

-1 (12 oz) bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

-1 (10 oz) bag peanut butter chips

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt if you're using it. Set aside.

3. Cream together the butter and both sugars.

4. Add the bananas, banana extract and egg. Mix well.

5. Add the flour mixture and chips. Mix until the chips are well-integrated into the dough.

6. Realize you forgot to preheat the oven, and figure it's probably better this way, since it'll heat in the amount of time it takes you to scoop out the cookie dough. Turn the oven on to 325 degrees.

7. Scoop out the cookie dough, leaving a decent amount of room on the side of each ball (the actual amount of room depends on how big you're making the cookies).

8. Bake for 18-22 minutes (and pay attention while they're baking so you can take them out earlier if they look done; they come out sort of crispy if you've only got one sheet in there. //Edit: they're not actually that crispy. They end up with a slightly harder outer layer but remain soft and chewy on the inside. These cookies may just be the most perfect cookies ever.)

Step 4

Step 7

Step 9 (eat)

Update, 17 June 2010: This recipe won a banana-dessert-recipe contest over at Haute Whimsy--you should check it out!

Mashing Purple

So, I made a new discovery in the grocery store this week. I didn't actually make it, in fact I'd known it was there the whole time, but my boyfriend (I guess he deserves a name, doesn't he?) Mike found, for the first time, purple potatoes. Now I'd had purple potato chips, so while I'd seen them before I'd never really thought twice about it, especially because I had no idea what I'd do with a purple potato once I acquired it.

We bought them, and decided to make mashed potatoes. It was way more exciting than I expected. I later learned that the purple variety of potato has more nutrients in it than the regular kind, so maybe this is just how I'll do it from now on!

They were so small! This was by far the tiniest (and therefore most adorable). I quartered the rest of the before boiling them, but this one I just put a bunch of fork-holes in so it'd cook properly. When they were cut, the color was beautiful:

And they were all speckled inside! This was where it started getting really exciting. The potatoes were really purple, and I was really cooking them. They, however, lost a lot of their color in the boiling process:

Still definitely purple, but a much more subdued tone. It all got very pretty again when they were mashed, though.

They're kind of lavender now. I suppose I should be calling them "smashed potatoes" as we kept the skins on. Now, I usually cheat at this step and pull out my KitchenAid and its whisk attachment and make whipped potatoes, but Mike insists on mashing them the old fashioned way and allowing a few chunks to stick around. (Tangent: I really hate the word "chunk." It just sounds so awful, and I especially don't want it describing my food. I rarely buy cans of tuna because of this, despite the fact that tuna salad is the only non-sushi seafood I can abide. However, it makes more sense here to say 'chunks' than 'unmashed bits of solid potato' so I will have to deal.)

Mike's method turned out great; the potatoes were just as smooth as I'm used to. They also looked delicious with the rest of the food. The picture came out blurry, unfortunately, because the flash was making them look almost white and I don't have a tripod for my camera. And the point was the purpleness, so I wasn't going to allow them to look white in the pictures. Mike said he could taste the purple--that is, that they TASTED purple, which I understand because I believe very strongly that beets taste red (he thinks blood oranges taste red)--but I thought they tasted like pretty normal mashed potatoes, perhaps just a little richer. (Served with green beans pan-fried with freshly minced garlic, lots of olive oil, and balsamic vinaigrette; cajun marinaded steak. The flavors worked much better together than I expected them to.)

RECIPE: Purple Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:

-2 lbs purple potatoes

-Whatever else you usually put in mashed potatoes (I used some dried parsley, garlic powder, butter and cream.)

Instructions:

1. Make mashed potatoes exactly the way you usually do, except with purple potatoes.

2. See the looks of awe on everyone's faces as you present them with purple mashed potatoes. Ask them if they can taste the purple. Regardless, they'll think it's cool.

Now I really want to make purple gnocchi.

Pasta Adventure, with original Garlic Bread recipe

So! Yesterday's pasta making was quite the adventure. I've never used a machine before and had no idea how it would come out, but I absolutely *love* it and will pretty much never go back to rolling it by hand. It's so easy this way!

I make my dough with half semolina flour and half all-purpose flour (2 cups each), and four eggs. It all goes in a bowl together:

Technically, you're supposed to make a pile out of the flour and a little well for the eggs, but I'm clumsy and know I would manage to knock over an edge of the well and spill eggs everywhere, so I use a bowl. You may notice the egg carton in this picture is symmetrical. I do that. In fact, if someone else doesn't do that, I fix it. I always thought I was strange until my boyfriend mentioned that he does the same thing (though of course, he's pretty strange, so we might both just be weirdos).

Mixing the eggs in is fun--you stir them with a fork until they're broken up, and then start slowly bringing in flour from the sides until it gets tough enough that you need to knead it with your hands. (I always need to add small amounts of water so the flour will all stick, otherwise it's too dry and doesn't work. I could probably do with a fifth egg, but this way works just fine and I can play with it to just the right consistency.) By the end, it looks kind of like scrambled eggs:

Or something. That gets pushed together until it's all stuck in a ball, then you break off pieces, roll them out a little bit with the rolling pin (otherwise it won't go through the pasta machine; I tried). Then the exciting machine-related part happens! I was so nervous for this. It's probably unreasonable to be nervous about using a pasta machine, especially when it's not even a machine because there's nothing mechanic about it, but it was new and therefore scary.

But there was nothing to be scared of! It's a little tedious at first--you have to put it through on the widest setting a number of times, folding it in half each time so that it eventually becomes rectangular instead of having ragged edges, but I expected the actual turning of the handle to take more effort than it did. Once I got all the dough through (with the knob on 5, it seemed an appropriate thickness) it was time to make noodles out of it! This was probably the most exciting part. I was nervous about this too, because the instructions for the machine say that if your dough is too moist it won't cut, and mine was sort of moist, but it came out beautifully:

I loved how it made a curtain of spaghetti. (That's the thinner, round setting; the other one wasn't cooperating for pictures. I felt like I was dealing with a six-year-old, but in pasta form.) Everything piled together looked pretty awesome:

That is, it looked awesome until I realized that it had to dry for a while, and we had to sit down and separate all the slightly-sticky noodles. It was, however, well worth it.

Delicious! My (half-Italian) boyfriend makes homemade sauce with meatballs, which is pictured here, but not documented because he made it about a week ago and froze it. I find that sauce sort of works like soup, where it's almost better for having been cooked a while ago. He does the whole cooking-for-five-hours thing; perhaps some day he'll teach me and let me document it or share the recipe here (though it's an old family recipe; I wouldn't be surprised if he were protective of it). The pasta came out to about two pounds--twice as much as we needed for the sauce, and I hope my mom figures out something to do with the rest because I disappeared for the weekend and don't know how to store fresh pasta yet.

The garlic bread pictured is my own invention; I needed something to soak up the sauce remains on the plate once we'd eaten our pasta and it worked great. I only had a vague idea of what I was doing when I made it, but it came out so well that I'm posting the recipe here for all to see and steal. (Seriously, steal it. It was delicious.)

GARLIC BREAD RECIPE

Ingredients:

-1 loaf Italian bread (bought at the grocery store works just fine, but you can make it if you're ambitious. I'm not.)

-1/2 stick butter

-Lots of fresh, finely-minced garlic--I used about 8 cloves, but they were tiny, so maybe about 4 or 5 normal sized ones (though I'd probably use more next time, just because I love garlic so much).

-About 1 tsp italian seasoning

-About 1 tsp garlic powder

-A dash of salt

-1/4 cup parmesan or romano cheese, finely grated (optional)

-1/4-1/2 cup olive oil

Instructions:

1: Slice the loaf of bread in half lengthwise so you have two big flat pieces of bread.

2: Mince the garlic.

3: In a small pan on low heat, melt the butter with the garlic, italian seasoning, garlic powder and salt. Allow to bubble for a little while so the garlic flavor infuses into the butter, but not for so long that anything burns (probably around 8 minutes, I wasn't timing myself).

4: Using a kitchen brush, brush the liquid in the butter mixture over the fleshy (not crusty) parts of the bread until they are mostly covered. Then, using a spoon, spread the garlic that you didn't pick up with the brush over the bread as evenly as you can. If you're using the cheese, sprinkle it over the bread now.

5: Pour a small amount of olive oil into a bowl. Using the same brush, cover the buttery garlicky (and possibly cheesy) bread with olive oil. The goal here is to saturate the top layer of the bread so that it's nice and mushy when it's done.

6: Put the two halves of the loaf together again. Using the brush, get whatever you didn't get out of the pan earlier and brush it on top of the loaf. (This mostly just makes it look pretty--shiny--but it also gets some flavor into the outside of the loaf. I didn't brush the bottom, but it would probably be delicious if I had.)

7: Wrap the loaf in foil and allow to sit for a few hours. Flip it over every half hour or so; this way, any moisture that is seeping through the bread will seep through in both directions.

8: Heat the oven to 350 degrees and bake (in the foil) for 15 minutes. Remove from tinfoil, place on cutting board, slice and enjoy!

Step 4

All in all, my pasta-adventure was quite successful. We all had a wonderful meal and were afraid to move for a while afterward because we'd eaten so much.