Time to Wet Your Appetite

Announcement: The prodigal blogger returns!

At last, I have woken up from my long slumber... To commemorate this occasion, I thought I'd depart a bit from my usually DRY writing and tell you a bit about Kevin and my attempt at making soup!

Yes, lame pun aside, making the soup was quite the experience. All the soup recipes we found online pretty much all agreed on a couple things: 1) Soup takes a lot a lot of time and 2) Soup requires a lot a lot of flavor. So, you could say, that it really tested our patience and pushed us to be more BOLD.

For our soup recipe, as with, sadly enough, all of our recipes, we basically just threw everything we could into it and prayed for it to work. Look at all the stuff we stuffed into the pot:



I personally believe that the hard part was the cutting and the preparation... After that, it was all... well... waiting... a lot of waiting...


The second challenge after the waiting part was the seasoning part. The problem with all those great things we put in was that they have no strong taste by themselves. And, since soup is more than half water, without the proper seasoning, it would basically only taste like watered down veggies... ick... So, we nuked it with this:
Yum! = D

And with that, hold an hour, and BAM! We had soup!

Success

I mentioned earlier that Kesav not only deprived us of his presence, but also his car, ending our weekly Safeway runs. The inconsistency of the food situation caused me to realize how ridiculously convenient dining halls are. One can get a wide variety of well-cooked food just by paying for a meal plan and showing up at pre-arranged times. We, on the otherhand, are usually in a fight for what we can make with what we have, usually with priority to the oldest food. Fortunately, George's parents came into town for a week and graciously gave us food to fill our fridge. Though I guess they kind of have a vested interest in not seeing their son starve.

Their infusion was quite refreshing, as we had a large supply of foods we likely wouldn't have picked for ourselves. In particular, we got several, large bell peppers, which led to our likely final, presentable offering: stuffed bell peppers.

Like all other determinations, this recipe was picked because we got pretty close to the ingredient list. Unfortunately, I've learned that most stuffed peppers recipes call for ground beef as the meat, with the pork sausage here being unusual. We, however, just have chicken. So chicken it was.

Everything came together very nicely. In typical fashion, we misjudged how long various parts would take, and boiled the bell peppers first, while the stuffing took much longer. Because we had to cleave the recipe down to smaller servings, we approximated measurements, and came out to a fairly solid stuffing when the cheese was thrown in:


After thrown into the bell peppers with cheese and tomato sauce to top, and a 30 minute bake:


And it came out great. The stuffing was as dense as it looked, but tasted great, even with the chicken substitution. My only regret is that we only have white rice, which doesn't come out as crunchy or hard as long-grain, but everything mixed together well anyways.

So with a menu based heavily on ripening surplus and constant shortage, we manage fairly well. I'll be heading home Saturday morning, so our culinary adventure has ended. I would write about it here more, but I think I'll do a more extended cover of the summer in my main blog (shameless plug!). I, however, would cap off cooking as this, especially based on this last meal.

Cheaper, better, and more fun than a meal plan. That's a success.

Second Second Chances

George asked me to help out with another dish (ketchup), so thank you for your patronage, and I apologize for your pain in reading this.

Because of our perpetual shortage of more delicate flavors, we haven't been able to redo recipes, to hone our wild culinary flailing. But from earlier purchases, George and I ended up with several pieces of chicken in the freezer. Combine that with an endless supply of pasta in the form of mac and cheese boxes, and the right google recipe search was for chicken pasta.

Exactly a week ago, we found a recipe called "Brooklyn Girl's Penne Arrabiata," which we mostly had the ingredients for. The extension necessary for this pasta dish was breaded chicken. Since week-old bread also resides in our fridge, I pulled some of that and put it into the oven to turn into crumbs.

I didn't quite think it through, though, and left the pieces whole. After one check, I tore it into little shreds and let it that bake. Altogether, it just didn't quite turn out how crumbs should. With some eggs to cover the chicken, here's how that came out:
Yeah, the crumbs were kind of chunky...


...so the breading looks kind of chunky. It ended up covering it better than it looks.

We went through the rest of the recipe, which just made a glorified tomato sauce since we don't have any basil (or canned tomatoes soaking in garlic and olive oil).


Overall, it came out alright, mostly because the ingredients weren't bad. The recipe altogether, however, was somewhat bland. We followed as the recipe instructed to let the chicken simmer in with the sauce, and that, of course, killed the crunchiness of it. I would guess that the breading in the recipe was just to let the chicken soak up the sauce, but since our sauce wasn't particularly tasty, it only came out alright.


Come today, we assess our fridge situation, and determine that this time, we need to use up the large bag of spinach which had been sitting in the cripser. We prepared quite poorly, and actually didn't determine what we would do for dinner until I came back from work. On that, I hastily defrosted another piece of chicken into ice water for the very clearly named, "Chicken Breast with Spinach."

This time, when it called for breaded chicken (with slightly different instructions), I did what I should have the first time and shredded the bread before it went into the oven. I did this several more times as it baked, then used a spoon to mash it to bits. I left the crumbs in a look too long, so they came out darker. The finer texture, however, definitely made this set better. The three step process of flour, then eggs, then crumbs, also worked much better. The flour thinly coated the chicken, which turned into a somewhat adhesive layer with the egg, which stuck much better to the smaller crumbs. How nice.


The chicken browned on the pan in butter, then cooked when lided, and turned out great. The other major aspect of the recipe was, of course, the spinach, which seems like a very hard thing to do wrong. I, however, learned a little more about cooking. Very early on, I learned that it's very easy to underestimate how much vegetable to cook. Spinach, for example, dies when it hits the boiling water. Knowing this, I put in two more handfuls than I thought we needed. Which still wasn't enough. And thus, I've learned a special application of Hofstadter's Law, as Hofstatdter's Law of Spinach:

Raw spinach always produces less cooked spinach than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law of Spinach into account.

Even so, it cooks very quickly, and I let the pot have its way with our entire supply, which formed the foundation for this:


The chicken turned out far better this time, and while the flavor was limited to some salt, pepper, and butter (since we don't have parmesan cheese), it still turned out great. I'm quite pleased with how much better the breading came out this time over last time, which makes me happy to know that I've learned something in the kitchen this summer. Considering that I'm going home very soon, improvement is definitely something I'm proud of. It means I won't starve in the future just because I'm sick of ramen.

Second Chances

Due to the absence of a car, George and I missed our Safeway run last week. Fortunately, while our fridge emptied, our stomachs remained full with some timely intervention. Most notably, a lunch trip to Round Table, Kesav getting late-night Domino's, and free Pizza Chicago thanks to Mirrielees. Which means that our "cooking" was reheating pizza for a couple days, but it turns out there's some art to that. So this time, all you (two) fine readers will get a discourse in pizza take two.

So at the bottom of the pile is cold pizza. I know few who say they like it, but that seems like a lie. I don't know anybody who likes cold bread, and there's something special about gooey cheese. No comparison.

Next after that comes the microwave, with the primary weakness that all it does get it hot. My experience has been that microwave pizza ends up burning the roof of the mouth with the cheese while the crust remains chewy. Or it doesn't get hot enough. No thanks.

With the Round Table, I went back to the oven. That, however, seems to take quite awhile, and it's fair to say that a second chance in the oven can't quite restore pizza to its quality the first time around.

I'd like to preface the final portion of this: I did not develop this method myself. But then again, many of our creations are adaptations of online recipes. So the real cook here is Google.

So the last tactic I found was the pan. The flat bottom mimics a pizza stone fairly well, and with some patience, the results are amazing. The obvious difficulty of the pan is that the surface (touching the pizza crust) is the hottest, while the rest doesn't really warm up. To avoid burning the crust, turn the heat down to medium-low. To increase the heat to the rest of the pizza, apply the lid.

The results are amazing. I say (and George agrees) that Domino's came out better the second time than the first. I thoroughly dislike Domino's Pizza, but the reheated pizza I ate was fantastic. The crust comes out to an almost cracker-like crunchiness, but still feels right with the thicker layer and dough. The cheese–if you're willing to wait for it–melts into a goo, and only being on medium-low heat, the pizza is just cool enough to hold in your hand and eat right out of the pan, but well-within good warmth. Pen it up: to my taste buds, pizza goes right there next to tamales as far better the second time.

My Obsession

During the school year, I had brunch at Wilbur dining every weekend, and that was the best offering we got all week. Mostly because of omelettes. For as long as I can remember, I've been attracted to the omelette line at fancy hotels, on cruise ships, and anywhere else I could get it. And even into our apartment, my obsession continues every week on either Saturday or Sunday morning.

It's hard to say what I really like about omelettes, but it seems to fit the same approach to our regular cooking: everything goes in. Well, everything relatively standard, that is. Fortunately, that manages to fit much of what we stock in our fridge. Just this weekend, I had a fairly solid (but nowhere near loaded) one including green bell peppers, mushrooms, ham, and onions.

I've been experimenting some with how I cook it, and I think I've found one I'm satisfied with. I use the smallest skillet and let the bottom of the (two) eggs cook. While the top is still wet, I dump the other items in and do an amazing flip to get that stuff cooking against the skillet.
(pre-flip)

A restoring flip is followed with some cheese, and after the cheese melts and bottom fries just a little more, it's closed and plated.


I diced up a little too much onion this time, so I threw it on top, raw and crunchy. Completed with some salt and pepper!

Right now, you might be thinking, "Kevin; once a week is hardly an obsession. And you didn't even do anything that unusual with it." So yes, I do like my omelettes fairly pure. The obsession continues as omelettes appear in my other meals.

I mentioned about my ramen dishes, and this past week, I just couldn't stop adding stuff to it. After dumping the vegetables in to boil with the ramen, it still looked somewhat lacking, so I took George's advice and dropped in a whole egg (no stirring) to cook as well. After draining the water, I realized I could either go with the beef seasoning or add in some lunch meat, cheese, and real seasoning.

So I basically just had another omelette.

But it doesn't end there. A few days later (and after burrito night), we still had some tortillas left. I had done a regular quesadilla once already, so I decided to do things a little differently. Like omelette-style.

I had to use the lid to make sure the egg cooked before the bottom completely burned, but it came only slightly extra-crispy, and had a great filling inside.


One day, I'll find something that doesn't go well with eggs and random vegetables. In the meantime, I think I'll have a lot of things to try.

Burrito Night 8/26/08

Apartments in Mirrielees are mostly triples, and our other roommate has, so far, been left out of the blog. Welcome Kesav. Kesav is Indian and vegetarian, and he works bizarre hours for bio research and spends many evenings either playing Indian music or attending Jazz concerts as part of the Stanford Jazz Festival. As such, he spends most of his nights eating out, though when he's available, we always invite him to join us in the kitchen.

Not quite knowing what's easy and vegetarian, I asked my (vegetarian) sister near the beginning of the summer about easy choices. She mentioned several dishes, but the one that seemed most appealing was the burrito night. Since then, I bugged George and Kesav about doing burrito night. That week, the timing looked good, so at Safeway, we picked up large tortillas, fresh tomatoes, extra salsa, black beans, chicken, grated cheese and burrito mix.

Saturday night, we all jumped into the kitchen after a day at the Gilroy Garlic Festival eager to prove our kitchen as proficient as Chipotle. We roughly divided ourselves into teams with George on the frying, Kesav with the fresh vegetables and other small tasks, and me on the beans.

George seems most fond of his wok-like frying pan (for cooler areas and flipping) and did a great job on the chicken and fajita vegetables.

The beans were fairly easy to deal with. Beans first, some water, the mix, and wait until the water boils away. Turn the heat down and let the steam rise out of the simmer.

In our last step, we separated out some of the beans for Kesav then mixed the chicken into the rest of the batch.

And a pile of fresh vegetables to top it.

Because it isn't really worth it to have a full kitchen set for only a summer with a kitchen, I happen to only have plastic, compartmentalized plates. I needed a flat surface to put my burrito on and found the classic solution to that and the potential.

The burritos were absolutely delicious and as good as any I've ever had. A little more time-consuming than other meals, but stirring beans takes no attention, and we had a great time talking and shifting around while cooking. Burrito night was absolutely as good as it can be.

Watch out Chipotle. You just got served by Mirrielees 421.

Jump Back 8/24/08

We've tried Scampi. We've had steak. We've done a thousand variations on stir-fry. The difficulty of our meals has varied widely, but even with the simpler food, it's taken some attention to cut up meat and steam vegetables. Not this time.

Much of our protein comes from meat, but because we shop once a week and don't have a lot in the freezer, we tend to run out in the days leading up to that important weekly ritual. In preparation, we bought canned baked beans for that shortage. Unfortunately, we couldn't think of anything in particular to with the beans we had, since they were already sitting in sauce and had instructions on how to use them. So we just followed instructions.

Beans and rice are a solid combination. Probably a staple in many diets. And for a ridiculously simple meal, it was delicious. We put some rice in the rice cooker, dumped the beans in our saucepan, put some cabbage in (because we figured we needed something else and our theme, of course, is that everything goes in), added a little barbecue sauce for flavor, and let it simmer.


Mixed in with the rice, it was by far the densest meal we've had so far. Perfectly simple, perfectly filling.


I'm impressed with the variety of meals we've tried (more varied than we blog about) and how we've actually tried to do better than typical college food, but I can appreciate that every meal doesn't have to have 7 different elements mixed into a masterpiece. Sometimes simple just tastes good.

The Casserole (6/17/08)

It looks like blogging has been derailed, so George has asked me to help him catch up over the next couple days. Steel yourself for it.

Before arriving in our apartment, we both knew that we wanted to take full advantage of the kitchen and really try to create something tasty for our tongues. Even so, life seems to provide numerous distractions, and with food available in many places outside of the home, real cooking effort often doesn't seem worth the hassle. In preparation, George brought a large amount of boxed macaroni and cheese.

On the previous day, we had decided to get ground beef at Safeway with no particular idea about how we would use it. In our usual fashion, we IMed back and forth while at work and eventually decided to try Beef Macaroni Casserole. It took several substitutions, including pasta sauce for tomatoes and barbeque sauce for worchestershire sauce, and our entire supply of ground beef, and we did our usual work of using almost all of our seasoning and vegetables in the fridge, but we remained faithful to the theme of the recipe.


It ended up looking very good, and the various parts all came together into something delicious. The baking step wasn't particularly effective in anything other than melting the cheese, but it certainly wasn't any worse for it.


Cooking with a kitchen like ours often seems to force us to use whatever's on hand, but I guess we've learned to try new combinations, discovering what works and what doesn't. Who doesn't love a little fusion?