coconut is delicious

So, a while ago, I left New Haven while totally forgetting I was supposed to be cat-sitting. So I had to ask another friend to do it, and as a reward, I made her cookies.  However, James stole my cookie cookbook;  so I made do with my new favourite cookie recipe from online, namely "Choconut Cookies."  I actually modified them a bit--I didn't have enough coconut, so I added in some walnuts I had lying around. They were good--added a nice texture--but it's really the coconut that makes these so dangerously addictive.

While I'm on the subject of coconut, a while ago I made banana bread, on account of I had some old bananas. And I used the recipe in How to Cook Everything, which also uses coconut! It is certifiably delicious. 

1 stick butter, softened

1.5 cups flour

.5 cup whole what flour (didn't actually have any; I think I approximated with the dry cereal again)

1 tsp salt

1.5 tsp baking powder

.75 cup sugar

2 eggs

3 ripe bananas

1 tsp vanilla

.5 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I used both!)

.5 cup coconut

Mix together dry ingredients. Cream butted and beat in eggs and bananas. Stir into dry ingredients, just to combine. Stir in vanilla, nuts, and coconut.  Put into greased 9 by 5 loaf tin and bake at 350 for 45 to 60 minutes. Cool 15 minutes before removing from pan. 

yum.

more salad

The easiest of our picnic salads requires some time in the fridge, but is so worth it, especially with extra garlic.

Chick-pea salad with red onion and tomato

1           can (19oz) chick-peas, drained
2 tbsp    finely chopped red onion or green onions
2           cloves garlic, minced
1           tomato, diced
1/2 cup  chopped fresh parsley
3 tbsp    olive oil
1 tbsp    lemon juice
             salt and freshly ground pepper

In salad bowl, combine all ingredients and toss. Chill for 2 hours to blend and develop flavors before serving. Taste and adjust seasoning. Makes 4 servings (about 1/2 cup each).

July salad

It is July! That means it is picnic season. Or, if you're me, actually-having-to-pack-a-lunch-to-work season. Or maybe potluck cookout season. At any rate, it is a time for salads, and I got my mother to send me our family favourites, so here they are.

PASTA SALAD

This is addictive--I think it's the dill and garlic--and has lots of yummy veggies in it. Looks attractive too, although apparently I ate it before taking a photo because I can't find a picture on my computer.

3 1/2 cup  (rotini) pasta   [[The store was out of rotini when I went, so farfalle are also delicious]]
1/4 lb        snow peas or green beans
3 cups       cauliflower, in small pieces
1 cup         thinly sliced carrots
2               sweet peppers (green, red, yellow or mix), chopped
2               green onions, chopped
1/4 cup      fresh parsley 
1 tsp each  dried dill weed and either basil or origano
Dressing:
2               cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup      red wine vinegar
1 tbsp        granulated sugar
1/3 cup      oil
3 tbsp        water
salt and freshly ground pepper

Cook pasta.  Drain and rinse under cold water.
Blanch snow peas or green beans in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain; rinse under cold water. Cut in 2" pieces. [[N.b. I was using those fresh snap peas and cooking them seemed a waste, but then I also dislike cooked vegetable generally.]]
In large bowl, combine cauliflower, carrots, peppers, green onions, parsley, dillweed, basil or oregano, snowpeas or beans,pasta
Dressing: In bowl, combine garlic, vinegar and sugar; mix well with whisk. Add oil and water; mix well. Pour over salad and toss to mix. Add salt and pepper to taste. Makes about 10 servings (1 cup each).


NOTE: This is so much more delicious the longer you let it sit in your fridge. 




POTATO SALAD


A lot of potato salads are kind of mushy and sweet and weird; I don't like that. This one is mostly potato-y; the secret is in making a good dressing.


Potato salad


2 lbs potatoes (about 6 medium)
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 cup italian dressing (or, what I do, oil-and-vinegar dressing)*
1/2 cup mayonaise
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 hard cooked eggs, cut up.

Heat salted water to boiling. Add unpared (and washed) potatoes. Cover, cook till tender. (Betty Crocker says 30 to 35 minutes; might be a bit long. Keep an eye on them, you want them "done" but still firm enough to cut into pieces.) Cool; peel; cut into cubes. Mix with onions. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Mix with italian dressing. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Just before serving, add mayonnaise. Toss until potatoes are well coated. Stir in celery and eggs.


* My mother cleverly does not divulge what her dressing is, exactly, but it's probably a lot like our house salad dressing, which includes a touch of Dijon and garlic. 

an odd combination

Life is full of surprises. Today I was very hungry coming home from work, owing to not having had lunch, and also had a very strange assortment of leftovers. My dinner (late lunch? Linner?) thus ended up being a tortilla with tahini, zucchini, and chutney. Surprisingly delicious!

Summer cobbler

It is strawberry season in New England, and a while ago they were selling some local pints and it was SO EXCITING I had to get some there and then. And then they were selling rhubarb too, so I got some of that, because it is likewise delicious. The obvious thing to do then was to make a delicious cobbler from a favourite recipe. Here it is (I wrote this up in an email freshman year that I am copy-pasting).

Pretty Darned Tasty Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler (not original title)
Courtesy of the 1986 Milk calendar (this has been around a while) for the month of June.  Published by the Ontario milk marketing Board for the Saskatchewan Farmers' Dairy. Just fyi.

1 pt. strawberries, sliced
1 lb rhubarb, cut into 1" chunks (about 3.5 cups)
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp butter, cut into bits
TOPPING
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour.
2 tsp baking powder
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp grated lemon rind
3 Tbsp uncooked oatmeal
3 Tbsp chopped walnuts (preferably toasted, it says; they taste fine without.)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup butter, cut into bits
1 cup Milk (sic)
2 Tbsp icing sugar, sifted.

1.  Preheat oven to 400F. Butter a 9"x9" baking dish. (or casserole pan)
2. Combine strawberries, rhubarb, lemon juice, sugar, and butter. Place in bottom of pan.
3.  For the topping combine flour with baking powder, sugar, lemon rind, oatmeal, nuts, and cinnamon. Cut in butter until it is in tiny bits.  Sprinkle mixture with Milk. (sic). Stir together just until a heavy batter is formed.
4. Drop batter by spoonfuls over top of the rhubarb.
5. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Allow to cool before serving. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

Serves 6. 


Annotations are that I didn't realize until I was making it that we didn't have regular oats, just steel-cut; I replaced them with some sort of hot cereal we had lying around (another abandoned thing), which was slightly more bitter than oats, but worked. Also I omitted the icing sugar. I also had to clean out a super gross 9 by 9 pan to make this, and I SCOURED it to be white instead of brown and felt like I had CLEANING POWERS. 

Anyway, this is delicious warm, with ice cream, to ingratiate yourself to roommates; it is also good cold as a snack. Basically, it's delicious. 

falafel

A while ago, I noticed How to Cook Everything has a falafel recipe. As I have dried chickpeas, and tahini, and love falafel, I decided to try it out! Here is how it went (I made half this recipe)

Ingredients:
1.75 cups dried chickpeas
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion
1 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp cumin
~ 1 tsp cayenne
1 cup parsley or cilantro
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 baking soda
1 Tbsp lemon juice
Lots o' oil.

Blended chickpea mash.

Step 1. Soak the beans in a big bowl, covered by a few inches of water, for 24 hours.
2. WILL IT BLEND?
At this point the instructions tell you to put everything (except the oil) into your food processor. I do not have such a thing, and they cost more than I have. I do, however, have an aging blender; so I tried that. Here is the problem: blenders have sort of conical bowls, which is great for liquids but for solids means only the bottom stuff really gets chopped and the top stays kind of whole. if I'd thought about it, I could have done it in batches, but I didn't think to. So I ended up with a bunch of semi-processed chickpea stuff, and had to add extra water to it to blend it up. The results of this step do not really look delicious.

Frying is exciting.

3. Fryin'. I have never really fried something before, so this was exciting. You are instructed to put 2 inches of oil into a saucepan. THIS IS SO MUCH OIL. I did one inch, and that was a lot. Then, you are supposed to make little spheres from your mash. This also did not work well; in the end, I mostly got fried chickpea-matter, occasionally in coagulated lumps. (You toss them in the hot oil, and remove when brown). Then, you eat!

Food.

My evaluation is that this is a pretty time-consuming process, especially with having to poke around the chickpeas in the blender and then having to fry the non-balls three by three. I would probably not do this again soon, or at least not without a food processor. That said, the results are delicious, even if they are not as pretty as at a restaurant; there is something about things you fried freshly yourself that is hard to achieve in any other way. They were crispy and flavourful (though I would probably doctor the spices a bit on second go-round) and really rather delicious.

Mustard Curry Pork Chops

Alright, so I said I had a lot of recipes to share, but this one is coming first. It comes first because I think it may be the most delicious meal I have ever made for myself. It was SO GOOD i actually had to stop myself to leave room for dessert--and that never happens.
Basically, today's special at the grocery store was pork chops. Or a pork cut of some kind; I foolishly forgot to ask, but it looked basically chopp-y.  So I made the following meal. It took about an hour, and made my kitchen very hot. (recipes from How to Cook Everything)

1. Make chutney. This is not totally necessary, it turns out, because the meat is pretty delicious by itself; but then, so is the chutney. Your chutney will require: chopped red onion (I used about a half cup, or about an eighth of an enormous red onion); half tsp salt; 1/4 tsp pepper; dash of some sort of paprika/cayenne, etc; and 1/4 cup red wine vinegar. Put in a bowl and let sit.
2. With about half an hour to go, prepare the chops (and heat up your oven broiler. Basically, mix 1 Tbsp Dijon and 1 Tbsp curry powder (this is for two chops); rub in thoroughly. Broil. Turn over after about 5 minutes. The chops should be cooked after 15 minutes or so; let stand 10 mins before serving.
3. With about 10 minutes to go, heat up some oil in a pan and fry up one thinly sliced potato with salt, pepper, rosemary.

EAT OM NOM NOM. I would serve this to guests. I would serve this to anyone. I probably would not make it in July though.

p.s. I bided my time between steps 2 and 3 by making brownies; results still in the oven.