A speedy Indian Monday night meal

Mondays are tough. I always feel like the day gets away from me and I end up getting home late, making cooking difficult. Add to that I often do laundry on Monday nights and it's trash night and I feel like the evening always flies by! Tonight was one of those Mondays so I went with a quick stand-by meal that is easy and delicious, Curried Chickpeas and Spinach. It's home-cooked, but relies on some shortcuts that make it really effortless. Number one is Patak's Original Hot Curry Paste. I love these pre-mixed Indian spices because I worry about getting the combination just right and this does the job for you! To make the dish, I chopped roughly a medium onion and sauteed in olive oil until soft. Then I added a can of chickpeas and a couple big spoonfuls of the hot curry paste (you can use more or less based on your preference). I sauteed that for a couple minutes and then added a can of diced tomatoes with their juice. I threw in a couple handfuls of fresh baby spinach and then cooked over medium heat to combine flavors (~10-15 minutes). And that's it! Super easy. I served this with Trader Joe's Garlic Naan.

Is it Parmesan or Parmigiana?

Parmigiana seems more authentic, so I'll go with that. :) Tonight, I made an Italian meal for a group of hungry boys (Alex, his buddy Grant, and Joey). I started by looking for an easy sauce recipe and fortuitously, one had been posted on one of my favorite cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen, today! Now, I usually use premade sauce b/c it easier and, compared to my previous attempts, better, but this sauce has changed my mind. It's incredibly easy and amazingly tasty. The secret is butter (of course!). Here's the recipe:

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions
Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking

Serves 4 as a main course; makes enough sauce to lightly coat most of a pound of spaghetti

28 ounces whole peeled tomatoes from a can (San Marzano, if you can find them)*
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste (you might find, as I did, that your tomatoes came salted and that you didn’t need to add more) and keep warm while you prepare your pasta.

I actually made a double batch to have enough to serve over pasta as well as in the eggplant and chicken parmigiana that I prepared. I dredged and fried some chicken cutlets and a sliced eggplant (pre-salted) and layered each with the sauce and some parmesan and mozzarella cheeses. I baked in the 350F oven for ~30 minutes until the cheese was melted and bubbly. While the parmigiana was baking, I made some pasta as a side and also a green salad. Everyone enjoyed the feast and we ended the night with a MarioKart tournament (in which I came in last every time)!

French Bread Version 1.0

Cooking started early this Saturday with a cake in the oven by 9AM. Alex and I were planning to go see my grandparents for lunch and wanted to bring along something sweet so I made Moosewood Kitchen's Orange Cake.

Orange Cake
1 1/2 cups butter, softenened
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp grated orange rind
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tbsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup orange juice

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Added eggs one at a time, beating well. Stirred in orange rind and vanilla. Combined dry ingredients in one bowl and sour cream and OJ in another. Added these mixes alternately to butter mix, starting and ending with dry mix. Poured into greased bundt pan and baked at 350F for 1 hour. Cooled in pan for 15 min then completely on wire rack.

While cake was cooling, I made the following glaze:
Orange Glaze
1/2 cup orange juice
1-2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice

Combined ingredients in a small saucepan and brought to a boil. Lowered heat and simmered uncovered for ~3 minutes. Poured hot glaze on cooled cake.

Another project I undertook early on Saturday morning was a more ambitious one...my first attempt at baking French bread. I made the dough using my food processor and I can't begin to explain how ridiculously easy this appliance makes this process. Simply place 3 cups of flour, 1 tsp salt and 1 packet of instant yeast in the bowl. While running add 1 cup of water. Process until dough forms a ball, adding more water if needed. The dough was ready in a minute! Then I put it in a bowl and let it rise for several hours while I went to hang with the grandparents.

When I got home, I shaped the dough into a loaf and let it rise for another hour, cutting slashes on the top. I preheated the oven at 400F and then reduced heat to 375F before putting the bread in to bake. I baked it for ~45 minutes until the center temperature was 210F.

For my first try, I think the bread turned out ok. The bottom was a little overdone and the top could have been browner, but the inside was perfect in taste and texture. I think that one key part of making great bread is having humidity in the oven, so I will try that next time. It really wasn't much work to make my own bread and I hope to get better with practice.

With the bread, we had a cauliflower and potato gratin. Again, my food processor came in handy for slicing a couple pounds of potatoes. I parboiled half of a large head of cauliflower and combined in a 9x13 pan with the sliced potatoes. I covered these with a roux made from 2 tbsp butter, 3 tbsp flour and 2 1/2 cups milk with ~1 cup of mixed gruyere and parmesan stirred in. I then sprinkled the top with ~1/4 cup more cheese and baked at 375F for 45 minutes.

Taco Night

We decided that Friday night dinners in home-cooked January should be "fun" food, so this week we made one of our favorites, tacos. We filled the table with lots of yummy taco fillings, including ground meat (real meat!), refried beans, grilled peppers and onions, lettuce, tomato, salsa, sour cream, cheese, and guacamole.
There really aren't recipes to share...for the beans, I use canned pintos and mash them in their liquid. Saute 1/2 of a small onion and a clove of garlic in olive oil, then add mashed beans and cook until desired consistency. I've tried to make refried beans (and other dishes) using dried beans, but they just didn't come out that well and it was a whole lot more work. I guess I'm just a canned beans kind of girl. :) I've made guacamole a few times and haven't provided a recipe, so I figured I'd describe even though I don't follow a strict recipe. Basically I just mash a couple of ripe avocados, then add a bit of chopped red onion (a slice or two is enough), a clove of minced garlic, salt, cilantro and juice of half a lime. All can be adjusted to taste.

Take a look at our tasty creations (Al's is the double decker):

Sweet Potato and Carrot Pancakes

I had a couple of sweet potatoes that needed to be used so I made them into vegetable pancakes. I ran 2 sweet potatoes, 2 carrot and half an onion through the food processor with the grater attachment. Then I combined the shredded vegetables with an egg, ~3/4 cups flour, salt, pepper, a tablespoon of melted butter and a splash of milk. I shaped into pancakes and cooked in butter over medium heat until the vegetables were tender and the outside nice and crispy. These pancakes were really good and didn't take much work at all. You could use other root veggies to make similar dishes.

A note about portions: This week, it seems like leftovers are really piling up. I want to keep cooking every night but I hate to waste food. Most nights, it's just Alex and me, and Alex doesn't eat too much of some of the things I'm making (though I'm proud that he has tried everything!). But recipes are usually for at least four servings, so I'm trying to modify them when possible and not make too much. Otherwise, I'm going to have to start bringing extra lunches for friends.

Chinese food and game night and a late night cake

The inspiration for tonight's meal came from the vegetable dumplings Mike's dad made for me. We have a special deal where he trades me dumplings for cookies. There were 40-50 dumplings taking up too much space in my freezer so I decided to make them for game night. But since those won't really home cooked, we also made some vegetable fried rice and fried tofu. I say we because Mike helped with the cooking...ok, he did most of the cooking, but I helped. Mike made great sauces for the tofu and dumplings. We had a pretty full table once Ihab, Megan, and Ben arrived.

After dinner, we played a rousing game of True Colors and had a great time laughing and finding out what everyone else thought of us. For dessert, Megan brought a yummy cake.

Once everyone left and I got done cleaning up it was pretty late and I was planning to go to bed, but I just couldn't get comfortable. So, I got up and decided to make a cake to bring into work in the morning for lab meeting. Late night baking has long been a habit of mine, though these days I sleep much more than I used to. I made a simple and delicious cake from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook - everyone at work seemed to enjoy it.

Brown Sugar Pecan Cake
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chopped toasted pecans

Combine the dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time. Add dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with milk and vanilla, beating until smooth. Stir in 1 1/4 cups pecans. Pour batter into greased bundt or tube pan and sprinkle remaining pecans over the top. Bake at 325F for ~1 hour until a knife inserted comes out clean.

A simple supper

After last night's cream-fest, we needed a break and made a really simple meal. I knew I had a busy day so this morning I washed some beets and wrapped them in foil. Alex helped with the cooking by putting the beets in the oven at 400F while I was still at work. An hour later, when I arrived home, the beets were ready. I had a long, busy, and at times frustrating day today, and it was nice to come home to a warm house with an almost prepared dinner. I took peeled and sliced them and combined with little olive oil, salt and pepper and served them with Trader Joe's Harvest Grains. Aunt Fran introduced me to this tasty blend of Israeli couscous, orzo, baby garbanzo beans and red quinoa. You just simmer in some broth (I used my homemade vegetable broth) and it's ready in 10 minutes! The grains and beets went great together and made a wonderful simple dinner. Alex added some ham since he's not really a beet fan.