❧ Cocoa Brownies ❧

So there are two out-of-the-ordinary aspects to these brownies. For one thing, I never cook from English-language recipes, or rather non-Japanese recipes, but this is adapted from Smitten Kitchen. (You'll therefore notice that for once, ingredient amounts will be given in volume instead of mass, which I actually hate.) For another, I don't repeat recipes, because one of the few New Year's resolutions I've actually been successful at trying to keep is to attempt as many different recipes as possible and post them to this cooking site. You can follow my progress here, but you won't want to. Anyway, the point is, the fact that I broke these two fundamental rules to my cooking is pretty indicative that these brownies are good.

To be completely honest, I would probably cut down on the butter and sugar if I were making these brownies for myself, but I think that's my inner Japa talking. Everyone who's had these brownies says I shouldn't mess with them.


Ingredients

1 1/4 sticks butter (I actually used margarine and it's fine)
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 + 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour

1. Allow the butter to soften at room temperature. Preheat oven to 325 F. If you are using a traditional baking pan, line the bottom and sides with parchment paper or foil. If you are improvising with a muffin pan, like me, use muffin cups or lightly grease the sides.
2. Whisk together the butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt in a medium microwavable bowl. Microwave the bowl for 30 seconds (at 700 watts, in case you were wondering), then whisk further. Repeat until the mixture is smoothly mixed (although possibly gritty) and hot.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each one until the batter is thick, shiny, smooth, and well-blended.
4. Add the flour and whisk until completely incorporated*. Continue to whisk for 40 more strokes. (This is actually not as bad as it sounds--if you whisk vigorously, it takes under a minute, and in any case you'll need to burn some calories to justify eating these brownies.)
   
5. Pour batter into pan and bake for 25-30 minutes. Allow the brownies to cool before attempting to cut the brownies or to remove them from the pan. If you are using a muffin pan without liners, be warned: the brownies will break in half (under the muffin top line) if they are not completely cooled.
   

*I picked up this word from another English-language recipe blog. I'm kind of proud of myself but I hope I'm using it right.

kitchen improv: white bean linguini

Kitchen Improv is where I read a recipe, in this case, this one, am missing many of the ingredients, go into the kitchen, and try to cook up something like it anyway, reconstructing the gist of what I read before.
So, I may have mentioned once upon a time that I had a lot of frozen white beans? Well, I still have some of them, and  I'm about to move, so it is time to Clean Up Frozen Things. Here is what I did.

1. Cook linguine. That part should be easy.
2. Fry up some onions and garlic in generous olive oil. I used three fat cloves of garlic and most of a small onion ("most" because part of it looked funny), but I would recommend using more, because garlic is awesome.
3. Add to this about a cup, heaping, of white beans, and a cup of chicken stock. Also salt, pepper, and a large portion of oregano.
4. Cook this down to sauce-like consistency, and mash up the beans as you go. If you are impatient and have too much liquid, which I did, you can add tomato paste--which I had, and the original recipe had sun dried tomatoes in it so I thought something tomatoey would be good. The exciting part about this is that I do not have a can opener, although I have canned goods, because it got rusty or something and my roommate threw it away. In this situation, you can still open cans by poking a hole in them with the back end of a hammer, and then cutting a hole with a knife. Tomato paste cans are a poor choice, because they are small and thus more structurally intact, and also their contents don't pour, so then you have to scoop it out spoonful by spoonful while attempting not to cut yourself on the ragged metal edges of the little hole you made. Guys, I don't recommend this course of action. Keep your rusty can openers. Anyway, add maybe half the tomato paste.
5. Serve! Add lots o' cheese.

This produces about two portions of sauce, I'd say. It needed to be slightly more vigourous in flavour, but I am not sure what it needed, so I'll go with garlic. Maybe salt, too. It was pretty delicious, but it needs beta-testing. I wouldn't make it for a dinner party, but maybe for people who were hungry and not judgmental would like it.

baba ghanoush

Guys. I just made baba ganoush and it was SO GOOD.

Here is what I did. First, I had two little eggplants. Pro tip: in the future, I will get big eggplants, because there was not NEARLY enough of this stuff. Anyway, then I chopped it into slicesand sort of brushed them with oil and salt but APPARENTLY most people do not, they just poke holes in the eggplant. Either way you are supposed to grill the eggplant but your oven broiler works just as well! When it looks browned and squishy, remove peel, put in bowl. Avoid eating delicious roast eggplant. So good.
To mushy eggplant, add garlic (I had one HUGE clove), and a few tablespoons lemon juice and tahini. I put in a little too much tahini, but actually that is ok because tahini is delicious! Also, fun story, I went next door to my friendly local falafel-vendor-cum-middle-eastern-themed-convenience store to get some tahini  and then I asked if they sold any lemon juice and he poured me out a whole CONTAINERFUL and gave it to me for free! So that was fun.
And then salt to taste, and eat, for it is delicious!

Peanut sauce!

We already had peanut sauce on this blog a really long time ago, but today I made some myself, using the recipe in How to Cook Everything as a loose guideline. My version involved frying up some garlic and some pepper flakes, and then adding a splash of soy sauce, a pinch of brown sugar, several shakes of turmeric, the juice of an extremely aged lime, and of course peanut butter. (My motivation in making this was in part that we have several jars of peanut butter in my apartment for some reason and I decided some of it needed to go away.) I didn't have coconut milk, but I did have some dried coconut I bought at the asian market a long time ago. All that is necessary is to pout boiling water on it and let it sit about for a bit, and hey-presto, coconut milk. Though I must say it turned out rather thinner than store-bought, as did the sauce; this is probably due to the fact that I didn't measure out ratios at all.  Oh! and also you are supposed to put lemongrass in the sauce, but I had none, so I put in a bunch of ginger instead.  Anyway then you heat it all up! I put some egg noodles in it (the long kind that comes all wrapped up in a little knot--came from the same expedition as the coconut) and so I had peanut noodles. And I wish I made more because it was very good; though I think I need to experiment a little with the dashes and pinches and splashes to get it to be excellent.

Also, the various bagged items in my cupboard that I bought this winter have since inflated (well, the bags, not the items themselves). Low pressure front coming in?

Potato Gnocchi

Since Anna needs things to read...

Earlier this week my lab held its (questionably) annual potluck. I had to feed a lot of people, stay within my imaginary budget, and use up almost two pounds of potatoes before they were overwhelmed by eyes. And so I decided to make potato gnocchi (I almost made a potato cake, but this idea was vehemently rejected by a friend).

Anyway, the process is pretty simple, although the whole process, from washing the potatoes to making the tomato sauce that went with the gnocchi, took approximately five hours. It won't take this long if you don't attempt to feed anything larger than a family, but just keep the timing in mind if you're ever inclined to try this recipe.

Ingredients

2 medium potatoes (~400 grams)
70g flour
1/2 tsp salt

1. Wash the potatoes and remove any eyes or damaged parts. Boil whole, with skins, until soft.
   (I boiled for about half an hour.)
2. Peel potatoes, and mash in a bowl until smooth.
   (This is the key part--I mashed the potatoes with the end of a rolling pin until they were the consistency of slightly lumpy mashed potatoes. I then began to knead the potatoes with my hands until all of the lumps were removed, and the starch was drawn out. By the end, the potatoes had become a sticky, uniform ball.)
3. Add flour and salt, and mix together into a ball of dough.
4. Pinch off a bit of the dough and roll into a small ball. Place on a flat surface, and flatten the ball with the tines of a fork. This helps the gnocchi take up the sauce after it has been cooked.
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat!
   
   
   In case you were wondering, 960 grams of potatoes makes 150 gnocchi.
   
   
6. Bring a pot of water (with some salt) to a boil, then add the gnocchi. Once a gnocchi floats, remove quickly from the pot and let drain in a colander.
   
7. To prevent the gnocchi from sticking to each other, drizzle a very small amount of olive oil on top and mix so that they are all evenly coated.
   
   
   

things that are delicious

Guys, if you are reading this, don't. Go away and make something wonderful and write about it. I want to read! Shoo!



Anyway, here are things that I made recently that were good.
The first thing is inspired by something I had at a Turkish restaurant. It was basically tzatziki, but Turks don't call it tzatziki. Anyway, to make it, you will need some yogurt (which I have lots of), and also garlic and dill and cucumber and a little salt and olive oil. I think I used about half a bowl of yogurt and about an inch of cucumber cut up small, and several smallish cloves of garlic (can you have too much garlic?) and then put in as many shakes of dill as seemed useful and then a little more than that. The olive oil is mostly to thin it, only my yogurt is already kind of runny; but olive oil is also delicious. Anyway I served this with pasta, and it was good.
The other thing I made was to use up some leftover pasta I had from the previous thing, and also some broccoli raab I have lying around (I think it's in season? but normal broccoli is supposed to work too), and taken from The Cookbook. Basically, boil the green things in a pot, and meanwhile roast up some garlic in a skillet; when the raab is done, which takes less than five minutes, take it out with a slotted spoon and dump it in the skillet. You now use the same water to boil up some pasta, while stirring around the green things (possibly with some pasta water added to them); then when the pasta is good, drain it and reserve some water, and put pasta and water into the skillet and toss with some salt and pepper and maybe some red pepper flakes. Serve with some grated Parmesan/Romano. I put in a lot of red pepper and it was good; however I suggest erring on the low side for the pasta because my rotini to not-rotini ratio was really suboptimal.

cooking everything?

So, I have previously evangelized the wonders of How to Cook Everything; I know at least a few of you have this culinary tome, also, though I don't know how many do, or whether we all have the same version (I have the red one?). Anyway, the thing with How to Cook Everything is that it makes me want to cook, well, everything, and it will probably be a very long time before I am done that. So I will describe three things I made from it this week, and then you will know if it is a delicious thing that you ought to make also, or if you ought to cook some other subset of everything! I'm being sort of lazy and not giving the full recipes, but if you really want them comment and I will transcribe. Also I forgot to take pictures. :(
 So.
RECIPE NUMBER ONE: Beans and Tomatoes (p.414, if it matters).
MY STORY. So, a while ago, I got a pound of Great Northern beans, and then I was bored and cooked them and froze them so I would have beans at my disposal. And so last weekend I decided to cook with some of them.
THE RECIPE, IN SUM: Pretty simple, really; you just make a tomato sauce with some (canned) tomatoes and shallots and things, and cook the beans in it for a bit. And serve with cheese, if you like.
EVALUATION: Man, Mark Bittman claims this is supposed to convert people to being bean-lovers, but I wasn't very excited by it, to be honest. I mean, I used water instead of stock for the sauce, which may have contributed, but still it was kind of boring. I ate it, but I wouldn't serve it to guests.
IMPROVEMENTS: So, I ended up jazzing up the leftovers a bit (since a recipe for a similar dish was just posted on a blog I read!) by adding some garlic salt, mustard powder, and brown sugar, in sort of dash-sized quantities, and baking at 375 for 45 minutes or so. This was actually  pretty good, though I was also very hungry. I approve of this change.

RECIPE NUMBER TWO: Rice Pudding (954, again, if you care)
MY STORY: Have I mentioned I have a lot of mediocre rice? I think I have. I also have brown sugar I haven't been using, because there are not enough desserts in my life. Finally, my apartment also has--for reasons I think relating to the summer sub-letter--a bottle of Captain Morgan's spiced rum. Guys, this is a really weird beverage. It smells like somebody wanted eggnog, and then decided not to bother with all the fuss of the creamy part. I do not think it would be good to drink. I figured it would be good for baking though; so I was happy to find a recipe that included all these things I had!
THE RECIPE, IN SUM: Rice pudding is pretty simple too, though it requires some babysitting. Basically, one part rice, two parts sugar, 16 parts milk, flavouring agents; bake at 300, stirring every half hour or so, until it is pudding-esque (about 1.5 or 2 hours). I was using a "butterscotch" variation, so brown sugar instead of white, and about half a stick of butter, and also the aforementioned rum and some raisins.
EVALUATION: Quite delicious, if I say so myself; and it's also good cold later; and ridiculously easy to prepare. I would make this again.

RECIPE NUMBER THREE: Chicken with Yogurt and Indian Spices (650).
MY STORY: Don't actually have much of a story, except that I got a lot of Indian spices for that palak paneer a while back and I might as well use them.
THE RECIPE, IN SUM: Essentially, frying up an onion with everything delicious* in your spice cabinet, adding yogurt to making a sauce, and then cooking a chicken in it (covered). I think part of the point of the braising process is to get it to have a nice skin, but my chicken was skinless; whatever.
 *Specifically, we are talking about salt and pepper, Tbsp garlic, Tbsp ginger, tsp each cumin, coriander, cardamom, 1/2 tsp cayenne, turmeric, cinnamon; although honestly I was making a fraction of the recipe and was basically guessing at amounts anyway, but knowing the ratios might be useful.
EVALUATION: Guys, this is so good! This is an A-plus recipe. You should totally eat it. I cooked a ginormous piece of chicken, and I ate all of it, because it was so delicious. I recommend highly.
IMPROVEMENTS: My only comment is that I am not sure how necessary the yogurt was; mine mostly curdled into little paneer-y things, which is great because I like paneer; but I am sure this could be made into just Delicious Chicken In Spices if you didn't have/couldn't eat yogurt.

THAT IS ALL.