Grits!

Guys, I just wanted to let you know I've welcomed grits into my life with open arms. I never ate them much growing up and only realized how incredible they were while carb-loading on spring training trips when they were served with cheese at breakfast (oh, spring training was the life! row, eat, sleep, repeat). Now, I know they're not the healthiest thing, but really, they're not so bad. A serving is 1/3 cup and is 130 calories. Totally doable if it's your starch, and it's a pretty substantial serving. 

There's a fancy pants food cart at work sometimes that serves grits for SEVEN DOLLARS. I got them once, and it was incredible. And then I though, oh hell no. I'm from the south! I will make this myself! And save that shit, I don't make mad money. So I ordered a container of quick grits that probably cost $3 and has about 20 servings, and now I make them for dinner or on weekends to go with a range of eggs, cheese, greens, and more. I make them on the stove, it takes about 5 min longer than eggs, and it really ups the ante and fills me up. Plus if I slip just a smidge bit of butter in the water before it cooks, they have a really great flavor. 

Anyway, that's all. This is just a PSA that grits are good and you should probably have more in your life.

my first loaf of bread

This was one of my first big accomplishments in cooking. The pictures date to March 4, 2010, so it took me a while to really start using recipes and cooking things beyond dinners. I decided that I wanted to try making bread. I consulted SK and found this recipe, which looked and sounded simple and required few ingredients. I started making the bread at 7 pm on March 4 and then got up at like 5:30 am on March 5 to do the final steps and bake it so that we would have warm, fresh bread for breakfast and to take into school. This was definitely a cooking confidence booster for me.

I modified the ingredients a bit based on what I could easily find in Morocco, so the original recipe is a little different.
3 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp wheat/corn germ or bran [I definitely didn't have this]
1/2 tsp yeast
1 1/2 cups liquid (half milk, half water)

In a large bread bowl, mix the flour, one heaping teaspoon of salt, a half teaspoon of sugar, and one tablespoon of wheat or corn germ.

Mix 1/2 scant teaspoon of yeast (active dry is just fine) with 1 1/2 cups of liquid–half milk, half water, or more water than milk–whatever you have on hand. (If you’re going to leave it overnight, use 1/4 teaspoon of yeast.)

Pour the liquid into the flour and stir it up. The dough should be neither dry nor sticky, but should tend more toward to the stick than the dry. If too sticky, add a little more flour.

Knead the dough well, roll it in flour, put it in a warm bowl. SK: I covered mine with plastic wrap at this time–a towel works as well–but realize it might not be neccessary. Leave it in a cool, draft-free place and go about your business.

Whenever you happen to get home, punch down the dough, knead it well and forget about it until convenient.

Sometime later (with a long first rise, a short second rise is fine, but a long one is fine, too) punch the dough down, give it a final kneading, shape into a baguette, slash the top with four diagonal cuts, brush wtih water and let proof for a few minutes (it was 30 minutes, in our case). However, if you haven’t the time, it can go straight into the oven.

You can preheat the oven or put it in a cold oven, it matters not a bit. Bake at 450° for half an hour. Turn the oven to 425 ° and bake for another five to twenty minutes. (SK notes: This range is long because I found my bread was done–sounded hollow when I tapped the bottom, quite brown on the outside and registered 200 or so on a thermometer, all different techiniques to check for doneness–after just 5 more minutes, but Colwin suggests 20. It will vary based on the density of your bread, the size of your baguette, etc. etc. so just check in with it every five minutes or so.)

pumpkin/squash soup

Another throwback! In fall of 2009, when I was beginning my cooking exploits, I was talking to my friend Andy online and he told me about a soup that he makes. I don't think we had squash available the next time I went to the market, so I just followed the recipe using pumpkin instead. At least as far as I remember. Anyway, the recipe looks good and what I ended up with tasted good. Plus it was my first foray into cooking homemade soup, which I ended up doing pretty frequently in the cold months. Inevitably, it pretty much cooks itself, tastes good, and makes a lot of food.

As you can see, I'm still trying to figure things out. This probably was one of the first times I used the oven other than to heat bread or cook asparagus (which I only knew how to do because my college boyfriend used to cook us dinner frequently once he graduated and lived on his own; I just sat around, teased him, and looked pretty). Eryn and I liked this soup; it was a bit sweet, but it still worked as a dinner.

In Morocco, our kitchen was pretty limited: cups, plates, bowls, silverware, three pots, one skillet, knives that I routinely bent/broke until Courtney sent me a nice set of three stainless steel ones (thank you!), and that's pretty much it. Did I mention measuring cups or spoons (or blenders or any other fancy gadgets)? Nooo. Because I didn't have them. So I used actual cups and spoons and eyed it. Recipes like Andy's were nice because I could just sort of estimate and it was fine. And since I had no choice but to measure imperfectly and just try it out, it gave me confidence when using formal recipes (like SK) to just do my best with what I had. If I was missing a spice or a particular type of cream, I just used what was similar (like in this recipe, I just mashed it up as much as I could). I estimated what a teaspoon might be or a 1/4 cup. The food generally turned out fine. Probably not perfect, but fine. It kept me trying things and experimenting, and now I'm rarely discouraged by a recipe because it looks difficult or complicated. I know to just do the best I can with what I have.

Andy’s Butternut Squash and Apple Soup
butternut squash (or pumpkin)
4 apples, quartered and cored (next time, I would maybe leave the skin on because it is so flavorful, especially if you do have a blender or don't mind chunks)
3 cups of chicken/vegetable stock (or water)
spices, cloves, olive oil
lemon/lime juice


Quarter a butternut squash and rub the exposed flesh with olive oil. Roast on a baking sheet in the oven until soft at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes. Quarter and core the apples and bake until the flesh is soft.

Let it cool, and scoop it out of the rind with a spoon into a big pot. Add ~3 cups of chicken or vegetable stock (to keep it vegetarian) or water, some spices, maybe a little cloves, salt, and a glug of olive oil. Let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Puree with a blender. You can stir in some acid when you serve it - either lemon or lime.

first attempts

So I said that I would write some throwbacks with some of the recipes I made before I started the blog. First, however, I thought I would show some of my first recipe-less disasters attempts at cooking myself a meal. As mentioned, I really couldn't cook at all before I went to Morocco to start life as a recent college graduate with a real job in the real world.

My fellow recent postgrad, Eryn, and I bonded together to feed ourselves (and generally spend every waking moment together, I'm only exaggerating by about an hour of individual time a day), and it was not pretty for a while. I really had this thing against using recipes; I wanted to be able to make good food based on my own know-how. Now, I realize that your own know-how comes after you research, learn, practice, learn from mistakes, and so on. Then you know what goes together and how flavors and ingredients work and so on.

Finally, I decided to give in and use recipes, starting with my beloved Smitten Kitchen, where I first learned how to produce something that tasted good by my own hands and raw ingredients. Before that, Eryn and I, we had some blunders. Things improved a bit and we were thrilled and proud; though looking back, I think that we may have overreacted. At least that tells you about the quality we started out with...

Wow, a really delicious Moroccan beef hamburger..sub..thing with soggy fried potatoes, mushrooms, and asparagus. 

An everything-but-the-kitchen-sink fritatta? What could be better?! 

 Proud of my ability to cook mushrooms. 

See? I really did start out with baby, baby steps...

YES! Cooked mushrooms! A true success story! 

At least we were using healthy, fresh ingredients: eggplant, mushrooms, and asparagus with rice 

Pasta with a homemade sauce that probably tasted good in spite of looking black and unappetizing.

Bon appetit!  That's frozen spinach, frozen peas, chicken, and mushrooms, cooked "Chinese" style, 

aka with butter and soy sauce. 

As we gained confidence with our fabulous cooking skills, 

we started introducing meat into our cooking exploration.

Now, a more respectable pasta dinner. Its the end of the beginning.  

homemade pop tarts

Since I haven't really been cooking much lately, other than attempting to use the odds and ends in my pantry and fridge before I leave (cornbread, couscous, strawberry cake, etc), I thought I would post some recipes and pictures back from before I started the blog. There are only so many that I did in Bulgaria before I started this blog last fall, but I think there are quite a few from Morocco. As you will see from pictures, both the pictures and the food lack a lot of the finesse, if I can be so bold, that they have gained over the past year or so of practice.

A recipe that I made this fall that I really enjoyed making and eating and would like to do again (likely it will be in August or September before I get around to it, though) is one for homemade pop tarts. I really liked the cinnamon filling the best; it looks like it will be dry, but it was really delicious once it was all baked.

Pastry
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into pats
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) milk

1 additional large egg (to brush on pastry)

Cinnamon Filling (enough for 9 tarts)
1/2 cup (3 3/4 ounces) brown sugar
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, to taste
4 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 large egg, to brush on pastry before filling

Jam Filling
3/4 cup (8 ounces) jam
1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon cold water

Alternate fillings: 9 tablespoons chocolate chips, 9 tablespoons Nutella or other chocolate-hazelnut paste or 9 tablespoons of a delight of your choice, such as salted caramel or a nut paste

To make cinnamon filling: Whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, and flour.

To make jam filling: Mix the jam with the cornstarch/water in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, and simmer, stirring, for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat, and set aside to cool. Use to fill the pastry tarts.

Make the dough:

Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Work in the butter with your fingers, pastry blender or food processor until pea-sized lumps of butter are still visible, and the mixture holds together when you squeeze it. If you’ve used a food processor, transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Whisk the first egg and milk together and stir them into the dough, mixing just until everything is cohesive, kneading briefly on a well-floured counter if necessary.

Divide the dough in half (approximately 8 1/4 ounces each), shape each half into a smooth rectangle, about 3×5 inches. You can roll this out immediately (see Warm Kitchen note below) or wrap each half in plastic and refrigerate for up to 2 days.

Assemble the tarts:

If the dough has been chilled, remove it from the refrigerator and allow it to soften and become workable, about 15 to 30 minutes. Place one piece on a lightly floured work surface, and roll it into a rectangle about 1/8″ thick, large enough that you can trim it to an even 9″ x 12″. [You can use a 9" x 13" pan, laid on top, as guidance.] Repeat with the second piece of dough. Set trimmings aside. Cut each piece of dough into thirds – you’ll form nine 3″ x 4″ rectangles.

Beat the additional egg and brush it over the entire surface of the first dough. This will be the “inside” of the tart; the egg is to help glue the lid on. Place a heaping tablespoon of filling into the center of each rectangle, keeping a bare 1/2-inch perimeter around it. Place a second rectangle of dough atop the first, using your fingertips to press firmly around the pocket of filling, sealing the dough well on all sides. Press the tines of a fork all around the edge of the rectangle. Repeat with remaining tarts.

Gently place the tarts on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Prick the top of each tart multiple times with a fork; you want to make sure steam can escape, or the tarts will become billowy pillows rather than flat toaster pastries. Refrigerate the tarts (they don’t need to be covered) for 30 minutes, while you preheat your oven to 350°F.

Charming tip from King Arthur: Sprinkle the dough trimmings with cinnamon-sugar; these have nothing to do with your toaster pastries, but it’s a shame to discard them, and they make a wonderful snack. While the tarts are chilling, bake these trimmings for 13 to 15 minutes, till they’re golden brown.

Bake the tarts:

Remove the tarts form the fridge, and bake them for 20 to 25 minutes, until they’re a light golden brown. Cool in pan on rack.