Spam Musubi

Well, ya' go to Hawaii and what do you have to try?  Spam Musubi, of course.  Ya' come home from Hawaii and what do you have to do?  Buy a Musubi press and try it yourself!

Japanese Style Pickles

If you Google "Japanese Pickle Recipes" there are a number which use rice vinegar, salt, and sugar - seems to form the basis of Japanese pickle making and I look forward to a lot more exploration.  But for now, I started with a recipe for soy/ginger pickled cucumber spears.  That's nor what I made, of course but it is where I started.

The recipe called for pickling cucumber spears and fresh ginger slices in a marinade of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, and toasted sesame oil.  I used a sliced seedless cucumber rather than spears and used some pickled ginger strips which we had picked up at the Asian market in Philly.  These are definitely ginger but not really very tasty, useful for adding to other things but not something you would want to eat by itself.  I substituted apple cider vinegar for rice vinegar because that's what I had and honey for sugar because I prefer it.

The pickling brine consists of
1/3 c. vinegar
1/3 c. soy sauce (I used Kikkomen's)
2 T. sugar (I used honey)
1/4 t. Toasted Sesame Oil



Slice the cuc's and ginger as you want them,

1. Put soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and toasted sesame oil in a bowl and stir until sugar has dissolved.
2. Put cucumber and ginger in a ziploc bag and pour vinegar mix on top. Removed air before sealing the bag. Once sealed, lightly massage the cucumber and ginger, making sure the pickling liquid evenly coats all the vegetables.
3. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and for no more than 12. Drain pickling vinegar and keep the cucumber and ginger pickles in the fridge.

I saved the brine and used it for another batch.

This is about as easy as it gets and the pickles were awesome!

Pretty Good Zucchini Fritters

Did I sell it to you?  Pretty good.

If I'm being honest, I don't use a lot of fancy ingredients anymore, mostly because it's too expensive.  And since the exhaustion of pregnancy and having a newborn hit, I tend to cook pretty darned simply.  It was a miracle that I tried a new recipe last night at all.

That said, these fritters were good and healthy, though nothing fancy.  I made a half recipe and we ate them up.  I recommend the accompanying yogurt sauce.  I made it as written, except I left out the mint because I didn't have any.  Also I wouldn't say that I necessarily measured as much as estimated.

Instead of posting the recipe, I'll just post a link to the blog where I found it.

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2015/08/17/zucchini-fritters-with-garlic-herb-yogurt-sauce/

Molly

Fish Quesadilla

I don't think we've had a discussion of quesadillas on the blog yet.  We've taken to making these as a great way to use up small bits of leftovers, especially things like spicy beans.  Or sometimes we will start from scratch with chicken strips and mixed vegetables or some such. 

The other night we got a reasonably good piece of cod fish from the store and ate it broiled with salt, pepper, and lemon juice with baked potato slices and steamed broccoli - very good in a straight up, traditional way.  Last night I sauteed up the left over fish, some left over rice, and fresh asparagus from the  garden with salt, pepper, a little horseradish, and some fresh lemon zest and used it for quesadilla filling.  We use shredded orange cheddar for the cheese cause that's what we tend to have, not too much, don't what to overpower the flavor of the fish.  Served it up with just a little bit of salsa (again, don't overpower) along with a big plate of lightly steamed fresh asparagus (you know what season we're in).  This was a winner.  The lemon zest provided a brilliant  high, light overtone.

Perfect Brownies

I recently developed a brownie recipe that I think yields something that can legitimately be called the perfect brownie.  I've had three independent groups proclaim these to be pretty much the best, so I feel somewhat justified in my claim.  This yields a straight-up chocolate brownie, moist and somewhat fudgy, definitely not dry, but just cakey enough to be different from flourless chocolate cake.

I adapted the recipe from one I found on Epicurious.com (originally published in Gourmet in Oct, 2003), and I applied some principles I learned from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook to get a deep, rich chocolate flavor.

2 sticks (1 c) unsalted butter
8 oz bittersweet chocolate (I use Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips)

1 c white sugar
1/3 c brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 t vanilla
1/2 t instant coffee dissolved in 3/4 t water

7/8 c all purpose flour (1 cup minus 2 T) = 3.94 oz
3/8 c cocoa (1/4 c + 2 T) (I use a mix of dutched and non-dutched cocoa)
1 t baking powder
1/2 salt
1/2 t cinnamon

Melt butter and chocolate over low heat, then remove from heat and whisk in sugar.  Allow to cool briefly, then add eggs one at a time, whisking after each egg until batter is smooth.  Whisk in the remaining wet ingredients.  Stir together the dry ingredients, then add to the chocolate mixture, whisking just until all the dries are incorporated.

Bake in a buttered 8X8" or 10X6" or so baking dish.  I usually line mine with parchment paper and then butter that to make it easy to remove the brownies from the pan.  Bake at 325 degrees for 35-40 min or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out "mostly" clean without any raw batter on it.

Lentils

I had a very Keck moment last night when it came to dinner.  Tom was working late and I wanted to make something that I could make quickly and easily but could be left on the stove for awhile.  One of the food blogs I search had a recipe for lentils and I was inspired.  I really felt like a Keck as I made lentils and rice for dinner.  Even more so when we both loved it.

Anyway, each time we eat lentils, which is somewhat rarely, we always enjoy it and say we should eat more of them.  That's good considering how big of a pot I made last night.  What I made was nothing new or different, but I'm wondering if you all have any standbys that you go to when you need something quick, easy, and healthy (and cheap!).

Here's what I did last night...

Threw some chopped onion, carrot, and potato in a pot with olive oil.  Stirred it around a bit and eventually added some garlic.  Once they were softened, I added turmeric, cumin, coriander, a bit of cinnamon, and cayenne.  Then I added my lentils, chicken broth (could do water), and a can of diced tomatoes.  Once it was almost done, I added some kale to wilt.  Oh and obviously some salt and pepper as you go.

We served that up with some rice (Tom added Sriracha) and really enjoyed our meal.

Anyone else have any lentil recipes?  Or something similar?

Molly

White Beans

Revising write up based on Round 2:

1 med onion
3 large cloves garlic
1 can Navy Beans (or other white beans; I used Great Northern in Round 2)
1 can Diced Tomatoes with Green Chilis
1/2 t. salt or to taste
1/4 t. ground Mustard
1/2 t. dried Rosemary
1/2 t. dried Sage
1/2 t. dried Thyme
1 t. dried Basil
1/8 t. ground Cloves
1 Bay Leaf
2 T. Marsala

Tried this again today with mods based on experience with Round 1:  cut the dried mustard from 1/2 t. to 1/4 t. and tried to pre-wet the dried herb ingredients.  A quick search of the internet suggested alcohol as an edible surfactant suitable for cooking, so I pre-soaked the dry ingredients in 2 T. of Marsala.   "Why Marsala?" and "Why 2 T.?" you ask...'Cause there was a bottle of Marsala with 2 T. left in it in the liquor locker, of course.  I let it soak for about 3 hours just 'cause that's how the timing worked out.  Seems to have solved the problem of running into bits of "dry hay".

The whole point here was to come up with a different seasoning base for beans:  I like cumin but seriously, there has to be another way.  These came out pretty well.  Can't say I won't play around with the mix some more, but they're worth a try.

Marinated Mushrooms

I recognize that this might be the wrong crowd cause most of ya'll have some weird aversion to mushrooms, but has anyone tried making marinated mushrooms?  I guess I'm mostly asking Mom/Dad since most everyone else probably doesn't love them.

I just tried some for the first time this week.  Turned out pretty good, but needs some tweaking.  Here's what I did...

• Boil 8oz of mushrooms until just tender.
• Throw them in a bowl with equal parts olive oil and vinegar.  The recipe I was using called for white wine vinegar but all I had was apple cider.  In the future I would try a different vinegar than apple cider.
• In the bowl add some finely diced red onion, peppercorns, oregano, red pepper flakes, a dash of brown sugar, salt, and minced garlic of course.
• Threw that in a jar and put it in the fridge overnight.  

The result is better today (about 4 days later) than it was the day after.  As mentioned I'd try a different vinegar next time.  I think it could be fun to throw a hot pepper or something in there, but that might be weird. 

Anyway, if you've given it a try, let me know if you had some success.  It was a fun experiment.  I'm going to try it again cause I loooooove marinated mushrooms.

Molly

Polenta Pizza

Had some roasted corn meal mush that needed to be used, some left over (really good) spaghetti sauce that Mom made the other night, and shredded mozzarella that was looking a little peak-ed this morning.  Well, that spells polenta pizza, right?

Sliced and fried the mush (I used coconut oil, of course), warmed the sauce and spread liberally over the fried polenta slices, added shredded mozzarella, also liberally, plus some slice black olives for Mom's, and popped it all in the toaster oven 'til the cheese melted.  Served for breakfast; I dropped a poached egg on it, of course; Mom opted for a fried drain stopper on the side, as usual.

This is awesomer than it has any right to be.  Plus, it's gluten free, grass fed, free range, non-GMO, new-age, kaleless, and just plain-old tasty.