keeping the flame alive

I haven't written for a while, and then last night I nearly burned down the LKTC, so I figured I'd share my stupidity with the interwebs for an afternoon laugh at my own expense. Don't feel too badly if you catch yourself laughing literally out loud--I couldn't contain my own laughter (after the fact, of course) last night. 

When I got home from work (yes, work, on a Sunday), SS and I were debating what to have for dinner. He wanted pesto pasta with a side of ground beef. I, exhausted from a day of ordering interns about, couldn't disguise my confusion over why someone would want to eat just ground beef. Because I wasn't all that hungry, and I'm the ultimate pragmatist (unless you are chewing gum noisily in my vicinity), I told him it was fine. SS, knowing the universal language of women (shout out to his three sisters for that), realized it was not, in fact, "fine," and that I wouldn't touch the ground beef. So, he gamely acquiesced to my desire to try a new meatball recipe, even though he was starving, and we didn't have all the necessary ingredients. 

photo from the recipe

In the midst of frying the meatballs, and pre-emptively congratulating myself on successfully tending to three different pans on the stove, I didn't notice that the paper plates I'd set out to drain the meatballs on were too close to one of the lit burners. At least, I didn't notice it until one of the paper towels set on top of one of the plates was suddenly covered in one corner with bright orange flames.

Being the level-headed genius that I am, of course my response was to start shouting "oh my God, oh my God," and blow on the corner of the paper towel (which meant I was also blowing in the direction of the open flame on the stove). Unsurprisingly, this didn't extinguish the rapidly spreading paper towel torch. After letting me flail briefly, SS calmly leaned in, took the paper towel out of my hand, and dropped it in the sink, which, wouldn't you know it, sits less than a foot away from the stove. I sheepishly told him "there's a fire extinguisher under the sink, just FYI." I'm not sure if I was trying to make him feel better ("look! I'm prepared for crises!") or worse ("I'm trying to distract you from the fact that I nearly burned up the kitchen!"). 

In case you're wondering, the meatballs turned out just fine, despite the excitement. I approached the recipe with some trepidation, because I didn't take the time to make my own breadcrumbs, as was suggested, nor was I totally confident that adding water to raw meat was a good strategy. But, we were pleasantly surprised at how quickly everything came together and how tender they were. And I didn't hear SS complain once about the change in the dinner plans (or the fact that I'm useless in a crisis). Then again we may have his sisters to thank for that, too.   

meat....sauce

Don't ask me why exactly, but it seems oddly appropriate that one of my first post-hiatus recipe recaps is basically about how I totally failed at recreating something seemingly simple. Probably a sign that Sunday is a night for either takeout or frozen pizza, and not something as ambitious as meatballs, especially when the ground beef is frozen solid, it's already 6pm, and you have two hungry, grumpy boys waiting to be fed. 

But of course I thought to myself I've been cooking up a storm lately. Meatballs? From a recipe that I've made before? Child's play. 

So off to a very crowded Harris Teeter I went with one of the aforementioned grumpsters (whom I love dearly, and who would also admit that he was grumpy, so I'm not exactly telling tales out of school here). We foraged for supplies. He talked me out of taking the time to make sauce from scratch. We braved the epic lines. I did my best to whip up dozens of meatballs in record speed. 

We ended up eating this: 

 

Do you see any meatballs? No, you do not. See, this overly confident girl got a little too frenzied in the kitchen (and some red wine on an empty stomach may also be to blame), and didn't fully braise the meatballs before they cooked in the store-bought sauce (note that I'm still shuddering at my lack of homemade sauce). So instead of being appropriately firm, the meatballs fell apart the minute you so much as touched them. Instead of trying to salvage them, I crushed them all up, and we had meat sauce instead of meatballs.

However, I can still wholeheartedly recommend this recipe, including the whole "make your own sauce" bit, because I whipped it up on Election Night back in November for sustenance as we watched the results trickle in.  I even forgot to add the egg to the meatball mixture that time, and they held up fine. So, follow the instructions and braise those babies. If you do, you'll get something much more like this: 

Note: grumpy, hungry boys, I learned, will eat either in mere seconds. So don't worry if you're as impatient and screw-up prone as me. 

winging it

Funny things happen when you're broke and lazy. And by funny, I mean kind of sad. You force yourself to leave a perfectly awesome happy hour after a few drinks to trek home through the torrential rain so you can eat a free meal. You try to make your own caramel instead of using prepackaged squares because the local grocery didn't have them. You make your own coconut milk.


Last night, I left a particularly stressful class (in which we discussed our final exam, which is a mere six days from today...), and the entire walk home, all I could think about was how badly I wanted Thai food. Specifically some sort of red curry. And how I really, really did not want to cook it myself. But, I've been spending far too much lately, especially on food, so I had settled on making my go-to quick dinner: pasta with peas and corn. Snooze. 


As the water for pasta was boiling, I decided I should at least give curry a shot, but a quick rustling through my pantry turned up exactly zero cans of coconut milk. I did, however, have some rice milk in the fridge and a bag of coconut flakes in the pantry. Worth a shot, I decided. If it failed, I'd already be halfway to my usual dinner. 


Surprisingly, it was a total success! If you also are craving curry, lacking in coconut milk, and happen to have milk and coconut flakes on hand, a quick simmer/steep/strain process will get you a totally curry-worthy ingredient!

Ok, so maybe if you're more skilled in the kitchen, this isn't a super-exciting discovery, but I was thrilled, and yes, a little surprised, it worked. To the freshly minted coconut milk, I added a couple of teaspoons of curry paste, a few drops of oyster sauce, and a couple dashes of brown sugar. I threw in (cooked) vermicelli and spinach. It was no Thai take-out, but, it hit the spot for $0 instead of the $20 the takeout would've taken me. And unlike the caramel fail, it didn't leave me wanting to chuck food across my (tiny) kitchen.      

And now that I've gotten that little burst of enthusiasm out of my system, back to my thrilling day of caffeinating to make it through the sprint to next Monday, when the report I work on goes to press, and I take my final exam. (A week from today will basically be the best day of my summer, is what I'm saying, because I will a)sleep in, b)finally take a deep breath and relax completely) 

celebration station

Neha and I at her birthday party on a rooftop in the shadows of the FBI building. So very "DC"

Sophie's and my birthday party at Churchkey

Last night was full of birthday festivities. I think over 50% of my friends and family have birthdays in May, so it's always a month full of celebration. We kicked off yesterday with a joint birthday party for Sophie and I in the afternoon at Churchkey, a local beer-tastic bar in the popular 14th Street corridor. Although we didn't come up with a hilariously embarrassing theme like the 30th birthday party across the bar from us, we still had a great time, and I left reminded of how lucky I am to have such amazing friends. 


Later in the evening, I went to a joint birthday party for my coworker/friend Neha, and one of her close friends. Their party was on the roof of her friend's building, which just so happens to call the FBI its neighbor. So while that top photo is too dark to see the details well, trust me, we were a stone's through from the Bureau's headquarters. Not that any stone we could have thrown would have done any damage. The whole upper part of the building is ensconced in weird tan colored netting. Very odd. It was a gorgeous night for rooftop celebrations, and the whole experience seemed very DC. The fact that I could then walk home just made it even better. 


So today I've done a lot of little projects, like cleaning my room, painting a bench, and snapping all sorts of "in progress" photos to follow up on "before" shots I shared a couple weeks ago, even though I'm still sleepy from yesterday's adventures. Despite the lingering tiredness, I forced myself to venture in to the LKTC and concoct a real dinner.     

I know, it's nothing fancy at all. No recipe involved, even. I tend to be pretty hard on myself for nights when I make the non-fancy stuff. I feel like I should always be trying out something new and complicated. But, there are just nights where the motivation and/or time isn't there, and I need to remind myself that on those nights, something simple is better than something fried and sold in a bar. 

So tonight, instead of eating my second bowl of ramen noodles or ordering take out, I sautéed olive oil, onions, garlic, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, and then poured in crushed tomatoes. I separately boiled my go-to veggie (peas) and this new Barilla pasta, which is tee tiny, and apparently infused with a full serving of veggies in each 100g portion. I was more enamored with the size of the mini wagon wheels than the advertised health perks, but, it was a nice bonus. For as often as I consume some form of pasta, it's good to know I can procure a slightly more nutritious variety at the grocery down the street.

I think, by the way, that it's pretty funny that in the span of a couple hours, I can get equally excited about child-sized pasta and 99 cent furniture paint. I think I'm simultaneously resisting turning a year older in a week and giving in to the fact that I'm a boring old lady who snaps up clearance paint for her new apartment. I suppose there are worse ways to kick off my birthday week... (yes, week).     

better than bar food

Sometimes I declare it a success if I eat dinner at all. Sometimes I declare it a success if I eat something other than bar food and beer for dinner. Sometimes I declare it a success if I actually cook something. A recent weeknight dinner falls somewhere between those last two. It was warm, it was made in my kitchen, and it wasn't half bad. 

It was, however, from a jar, basically. Sure, I boiled the pasta, cut the green beans, cooked the peas. But they all got tossed in pesto that came, yes, from a jar. It's not that I didn't have food in my pantry, but I've been having an unusually persistent craving for pesto lately, and by the time I stumbled in to the TJ's in my old neighborhood after an appointment one day, I was far too hungry to shop for the makings of the homemade stuff.

So maybe I used half the jar of pesto, made enough to feed a family of 4, and ate some of it out of the pan like I forgot my curtain-less kitchen window faces a busy side street. I'm just proud of myself for not giving in to that temptation to choose takeout over logging kitchen time, especially when ravenous. I'm also proud of myself for remembering a tip I saw somewhere to add a little pasta cooking water to your pesto sauce to thicken things up a bit. 

Never mind that last night, I did have bar food and beer for dinner. Little victories and all that...   

(f)easter dinner

Saturday was the much-anticipated (F)easter dinner with coworkers. We served salad, rosemary olive oil bread, two types of pasta (made by Trader Joe's, not me, sadly, after my failed experiment), bolognese sauce, pesto sauce, tiramisu, and toasted almond gelato with espresso (known as "affogato"). I'm not kidding when I say that every so often, I just need to make a ton of time and labor intensive food! It's an urge that strikes rarely, but when it hits, you're best served to just get out of the path of the oncoming apron-clad little blond girl and just let her go to town.

I'm happy to report that everything turned out well, despite the general haze of exhaustion through which it was all prepared. My pesto succumbed to the horrors of oxidation, so the thin top layer of it was a lovely brown color, but the rest was unscathed, and it all tasted just as pesto should. I highly recommend Ina Garten's pine nut and walnut recipe. As far as I know, I'd never made pesto from scratch before, so that and the gelato were the only two new things I added to my repertoire this weekend. As much as I like to try new recipes, sometimes the classics are just calling your name. 

But I digress. As much as we all enjoyed everything, I have to say my absolute favorite was the affogato. I had gotten in my head about a week ago that yes, yes we did need two desserts, and that gelato + warm espresso just had to be one of them. That was the end of that discussion. The toasted almond gelato recipe came to me entirely by accident, but I'm so, so happy it did. I'm not sure I could imagine a better flavor to meld with the espresso. I must say, Williams-Sonoma has yet to lead me astray, and this recipe was no exception. 

So because I'm sleepy, and have about a million billion jillion house-related things to tackle in the next 2 1/2 weeks, I'll stop rambling, and leave you with a slew of photos from the feast. Recipes appear at the bottom, and on the LKTC-tested recipes page!  

bolognese

pesto

tiramisu sampler (to make sure it tasted ok, and that none of the eggs were bad before I served it to a group of people!)

the pan of tiramisu for the crowd

the espresso for the affogato, percolating away in my stovetop machine, which was saved from the garbage by this trick

since I didn't manage to capture the affogato, I offer Williams-Sonoma's photo instead

We all had a great time stuffing ourselves silly, and given that (F)easter dinner was the night before, you guessed it, Easter, and we are a group of many religious views, we had some amusing discussions on the tenets of (and misconceptions of) different beliefs. Perhaps my favorite was my coworker who asked me to explain the Holy Trinity, and when I did so, said "oh, I thought the holy spirit was Gabriel!" 

Anyways, hope you had as enjoyable of a weekend as I did. And if you're also feeling a strange but prominent desire to spend a day in the kitchen, here are the recipes I used. I promise the day will quickly slip away between whisking and kneading and mincing and simmering. And also that you'll have a meal that is entirely worth it. Enjoy!  

Recipe Roundup:

• Ina Garten's Pine Nut and Walnut Pesto
• LKTC's Bolognese 
• Food Network's Almost Famous Rosemary Bread
• Williams-Sonoma's Tiramisu
• Williams-Sonoma's Toasted Almond Gelato

ps-many thanks to Neha, who remembered at the last minute to photograph everything!

use your noodle(s)

no, i'm not nostalgic about noodles. read on! (ps- photo from here)

Yes, yes, I know, it's Wednesday, and subsequently a regularly scheduled nostalgia day. But oddly enough, I'm not feeling especially nostalgic lately. Work is becoming more consuming by the day and I'm talking to my mortgage and real estate brokers so often that I feel like I'm dating them both. Not to say there aren't exciting things to come in the very near future, but I'm just left without much spare time to pine away for my days sidled up to the counter at Bar da Gino in Venice, perfect cappuccino in hand.

So instead of subjecting you to any sort of wistful musings today, instead I'll just tell you about this great, entirely free service I accidentally signed myself up for recently. In some weird email quirk, I started receiving magazine-related emails meant for my mom a couple weeks ago. I ignored most of them, but one from Coastal Living caught my eye. I'm not usually one to enter contests, but their offer to enter to win a $5000 kitchen makeover seemed worth the effort. See, if I do buy a place, the kitchen is likely going to need the most work. So why not enter?  (When I was young I used to win random stuff all the time in little contests, and while I think that kind of luck has long since left me behind, a girl can dream {of new cabinets and a breakfast nook}).

When you enter, there's a whole slew of things you can opt to sign up for (along the lines of weekly newsletters and special promotions). I didn't think I had signed up for any of them until I started getting daily "dinner tonight" emails. At first, I was all that's so annoying, I really need to opt out. And then I started paying attention to them. Almost all of them sounded good (and more importantly, pretty simple, cheap, and like something I'd eat). So now any time I get one that fits the "simple/cheap/something I'd eat" qualifications, I save that sucker via Pinterest. Then, when I'm on the train home (or sitting on my couch at home), I can quickly see all my ideas in one place and pick something based on what I have on hand or what I can grab easily. 


Sunday was the first time I actually tried one of the many I've now saved. I had been feeling weird most of the weekend, but was finally pretty hungry Sunday evening. Having walked all over DC Saturday and Sunday, I wasn't inclined to go back out for ingredients, but this Asian noodles with chicken option played to everything in my pantry (minus the chicken, and we all know how I feel about cooking meat, so that deficit was fine by me). 


I'm not sure why the recipe says it takes 30 minutes, although I suspect it has to do with a)cooking chicken, and b)using rice or soba noodles, which soak in hot water for a long time versus spending 10 minutes or less in boiling water like traditional pasta. All I had was whole wheat spaghetti, so I just used that. Start to finish, I think the whole thing took me 10 minutes. While the spaghetti was boiling, I threw the sauce together with time to spare. And for the minimal effort involved, it was delicious. 

Oh and I just realized that I lied about just being short on chicken. I was lacking in green onions and cilantro, so I'd be curious to try the recipe again with all the suggested ingredients, and maybe tofu in lieu of chicken, but the  point is, if you, like me, have most of what is called for here, it's still going to be a perfectly satisfying Sunday evening dinner (and tastes perhaps even better straight out of the fridge on Monday for lunch). 


I've since tried a couple of other recipes (eventual reviews to come), but I've tested (and saved) enough of them to suggest that you also give this (free!) service a test drive. I think it's especially well-suited for people like me who don't really plan ahead, are often indecisive on the recipe-selection front, and who could often use a little inspiration standing in the grocery store aisles or in front of the pantry. 


Oh and bonus? The service is provided by My Recipes, which is a sister site of Cooking Light, so at least all of the recipes I've seen so far have been pretty healthy.

edible play-doh

I generally fail both at sleeping in and the lazy weekend morning concept. Today I decided that because I couldn't sleep in, I'd try to make fresh pasta again. My sister gifted me a pasta extruder attachment for Kitty the Kitchenaid stripper a while ago, and shamefully I'd only used it once before today.

Last time I made pasta from scratch, the resulting noodles were a little too thick and kind of a weird texture. So I've been doing some research online to see if maybe I made some grave error the last time around. All I really learned, though, is that there's a pretty wide range of recipes, techniques, and opinions on the dough-making process.

Ultimately I landed on a tutorial by Giuliano Hazan, son of of the famous Italian chef and cookbook author Marcella Hazan. Not only was the page I found extremely detailed, it also included a helpful "how-to" youtube video embedded within. As if all of that weren't enough to convince you that you, too, could whip out pasta like a Hazan, there are pictures of little kids with mounds of flour and egg in front of them. See? So easy a kid can handle this.

So instead of keeping things simple, I decided to try a couple of dueling methods/recipes. I made a dough solely of whole wheat flour and eggs (from Hazan's tutorial), and one of a combo of whole wheat pastry flour, regular flour, eggs, olive oil, water, and salt (from here). Originally I planned to split them each in half, and put half of each recipe through the pasta extruder, and roll the other half by hand. Hence this set up:

Normal people go to brunch or church or a museum on a Sunday. I conduct ill-fated culinary experiments. Is there a specialist out there I could discuss this disorder with, I wonder? No time, I have eggs and flour to play with...

Anyways, the whole wheat/egg dough was what I would, at first, have described as an unmitigated disaster on par with that night I ate wine for dinner or the recent mug cake fail.

I didn't whisk enough flour in to the eggs, resulting in a runny mess when I put the fork aside and tried to incorporate things with my hands. Once I contained the egg runoff, I couldn't get things to come together at all. After adding probably 1/8 to 1/4 cup of water, I managed to get the crumbly mess in to some semblance of a cohesive ball. Frustrated and unsure of what to do, I threw it in some saran wrap to rest, and turned my attention to the other recipe.

In what would be my first real deviation from any sort of standardization in this experiment, I threw all the ingredients in my kitchenaid to let it do the combination step, a blatant attempt to avoid another eggy mess on my cutting board. I quickly realized I had a Goldilocks dilemma on my hands. My first dough was too dry. This dough, on the other hand, was the picture of sticky, and with its olive oil component, smelled more like bread than pasta. I yanked it out of the bowl and kneaded it for a good long while trying to incorporate sufficient flour. When I thought I'd reached a sufficient level of flour, I put it in saran wrap and turned my attention back to the dry whole wheat dough.  

The whole wheat dough was too dry to even thing about rolling out with my rolling pin, so I attached the pasta extruder to Kitty and picked the "large macaroni" plate. Strike two (or three?) for my original experiment. I slowly fed walnut-sized pieces into the hopper, and was greeted with fairly normal looking rigatoni-ish noodles. The whole ordeal was far less Laverne and Shirley at the chocolate factory than my last attempt, for which I was quite grateful. 

Once I'd patiently used up every last ounce of whole wheat dough, I taste-tested a few of the smaller noodles. Not bad at all, I conceded, with a healthy level of surprise.

So I arranged it all on a new Ikea towel and set it aside to dry (a state of this adventure that is still in process, I am annoyed to report). 

Then, in my third (or fourth) violation of the original tenets of the experiment, I opted to roll out the pastry flour dough. You're only supposed to run you're kitchenaid mixer for something like 30 minutes straight, and Kitty had definitely been working longer. I'm the picture of penny pinching these days, so a new Kitty is not in the budget. And I figured using a rolling pin would be my version of exercise today. 

I'm sure I didn't get the dough anywhere as close to the "proper" level of thinness, but I produced some pretty little disks. 

Then I let them dry about 10 minutes until "leathery," per my pal Giuliano's suggestion. At that point, I rolled up each disk and cut papardelle-width noodles. Upon un-rolling each strand, I wasn't happy with the looks of things. So I rolled each one back up and cut something more along the lines on linguine-width noodles. I tossed groups of about six noodles into bundles to dry. 

My taste test of the papardelle noodles (pre-second round of cutting) wasn't as promising as the whole wheat dough. The noodles were thick and kind of slimy. Much of the same issue I had with my last attempt at pasta. I haven't tried them again since trimming them down to a smaller size. I'm not holding my breath, although part of me obviously holds out some hope for the little suckers, because I didn't just pitch the whole batch or anything. 

Had I not used up every last "oh shoot these are about to expire" eggs, I probably wouldn't tried yet another recipe/method. In case you've really started to worry about my sanity at this point, rest assured that I was up so early that I actually completed all of this prior to 11am. After my kitchen was covered in flour and drying noodles, I popped out to meet up with a friend at Eastern Market. My stomach has been queasy for a couple days, so I didn't actually eat anything, but we wandered around for hours. It was the perfect spring day.

Now, however, I am exhausted. I think I've earned some couch time before what promises to be possibly the busiest month of my life. Think I'm exaggerating (now why would you think that?!)?  Just stay tuned. 

ps-If Giuliano Hazan's name sounds familiar, it may be from the recipe of his I used for dark chocolate gelato here. Yum. That reminds, me, Fiona could really use a workout...

pps-yes, that blog make-under lasted all of one day. I tried to browse through my archives and it was such a hassle that I changed things back straightaway. 

alarming

I may've said (many times) before that I consider my inability to sleep in a sign of my likely evolutionary inferiority. I can go to bed at 9pm or 3am, and I will still wake up with the sun. You can see how, in my mid twenties, that might cause some problems in the social life arena, no? 

So this past weekend, I was ecstatic when I managed to stay in bed until 9:30 on Saturday. That excitement, however, was quickly replaced with sleepy disappointment when I was up before 8 on Sunday (having not gone to bed until after 12).

Somehow, though, it still turned in to an obnoxiously productive day. I made muffins, went to mass at DC's oldest (and only?) basilica, met my friend for brunch in a bookstore, and came home to make bbq sauce, focaccia, and dinner. 

The difference between me and your average productive person, however, was the series of mini disasters that befell me (which served to remind me that I sometimes try to do too many things).  


When the muffins first came out of the oven, I let them cool for a couple of minutes, which I clearly thought was sufficient as I sunk my teeth in to one of the mini snacks. The chocolate chunks, however, hadn't cooled much at all from their 350 degree temperature, and the sensation of extreme burning pain immediately afflicted the middle of my bottom lip. Naturally I tried to wipe the chocolate off of my lip to stop the burning, scorching my finger and getting chocolate all over my cheek, neck, and left arm. Finishing up the baking one-handed was a bit of a challenge, but my lip stung so badly that I had to keep ice on it for an hour. 

I should've taken that as a sign to just give things a rest in the LKTC, but instead came home and cranked up the stove again. To make the focaccia dough, I had to move Kitty the Kitchenaid stripper all the way across the kitchen to find a working outlet due to a fuse I apparently blew a couple weeks ago (which rendered half the outlets in my kitchen useless). I forgot to latch her shut, and things got a little wild while the dough was being kneaded. 

I thought that was our last mini crisis of the day, and set the dough in the corner to rise while I made bbq sauce for my upcoming Monday night dinner with a friend. Luckily that went fairly uneventfully, but as I heated the oven up to bake the focaccia dough, my smoke alarm started blaring. 


This is a problem I've had before, especially when high temps and/or parchment paper are involved, but I've always been able to alleviate it with open windows and ceiling fans. Sunday, however, was an entirely different story. The alarm beeped for half an hour. That may not seem like a long time, but let me tell you, when an extremely loud, high pitched noise carries on unabated for a mere five minutes, it seems like a lifetime. Half an hour? Let's just say "wit's end" doesn't begin to cover it. My neighbors knocked on my door to make sure I wasn't burning the joint down, and I imagine they were as horrified by my leggins/baggy tshirt combo as they were about the noise. The did not seem persuaded that "everything is fine!" After fruitless attempts to quiet the alarm by waving a scarf in its general vicinity, I finally called the front desk in sheer desperation. 


The man who answered barely spoke English, and kept saying "ma'am, I can barely hear you." YOU THINK? Imagine how things are on my end, buddy. Fortunately he found a maintenance worker who was on duty at 7pm on a Sunday, and he made the noise stop. I don't know how, nor do I really know why my alarm insists on beeping any time I use my oven. I do know that I needed a drink after that business. And also that I would crack like an egg under any sort of noise-related torture. 


At that point I didn't even want the dinner that I had started to make just before the alarm went off. I kind of wanted to throw up (weird, I know, but that's how loud noises sometimes affect me. See: evolutionary inferiority). But I made the effort to make a menu plan for the week, and to shop selectively for those items (which turned in to an adventure in its own right on Saturday), so I wanted to stick with it. I also didn't want to drink on an entirely empty stomach. 


Enter sopa seca, or "dry soup." I found the recipe in a recent issue of Food Network, and thought it looked easy enough, not to mention conducive to leftovers. It's kind of a cross between chili and spaghetti in flavor, but not super spicy. I won't say it was my favorite dish ever, but that's probably because I will now and forever associate it with that one night I nearly lost my marbles. Really you should just give it a whirl yourself (I suggest adding some cayenne for heat if you do try it out). Hopefully you will have far less traumatizing memories associated with it than I. 


ps-when I've made peace with the focaccia-related alarm incident, I'll be back with an update on that experiment.
 

dinner (don't let its simple look fool you, its production was a nightmare)

second annual girly oscars party

So, I took a little unintentional hiatus from the LKTC recently. Not only was I not really cooking all that much, but I didn't really feel inclined to write about any cooking I may have done. Since this has always been just a pet project, a distraction from the tedium of life in a government job, I don't feel compelled to post on any sort of schedule, and I know that my loyal audience of approximately 5 isn't expecting particularly regular missives. 

Anyways, a couple of weeks ago, a few girlfriends and I had a girly Oscars party, a tradition we started last year. You may think that's really dumb, especially if you're a male, but I'm here to tell you there's not a whole lot more awesome than dressing up, having a nice dinner, and polishing off a few bottles of champagne while critiquing red carpet ensembles and acceptance speeches.

Last year we just had an array of snacks, but this year, thanks to the evil empire of Pinterest, I really wanted to try this recipe for sweet potato gnocchi with smoked gouda sauce. Mind you I've never made gnocchi, sweet (potato) or otherwise, but sure, why not give it a whirl before a handful of cocktail dress-clad ladies were due to show up at my door expecting a meal?     

the aftermath

(not that i'd just cleaned my kitchen or anything)

the finished product(s)

I don't think I necessarily nailed the texture of the gnocchi (and definitely cut them too big), but it tasted fine, and everyone claimed they enjoyed it. The gouda sauce stole the show, though, as we ended up dipping all the leftover bread in it after dinner. I will say, if you try the recipe, be prepared for generous quantities of gnocchi and sauce. It supposedly serves 4, but we had plenty of leftovers. I'd say you could probably serve closer to 6 people, especially if you have bread, salad, and dessert.

You should also be prepared for the fact that it is hearty. What I'm really saying is that if you think a certain quantity of say, champagne, is enough, and you're guzzling it after you've consumed large quantities of this dish, well, you might find yourself staring at the bottom of your last bottle with the bulk of the Oscars still to go. Fortunately my apartment's bar is stocked with a really nice bottle of bourbon thanks to a friend, and even though DC seems decidedly northern, I felt like a proper little southern hostess when I pulled out the tumblers and ice cubes. All in all, it was a successful evening.

I actually did a respectable amount of baking/cooking this weekend, which led to some interesting adventures (along the lines of scorching my lip and setting off my smoke alarm for half an hour), so I'll be back one of these days with those glorious details. 

winey

Last week, I was totally uninspired on the Monday dinner front (even though Monday dinner happened on Tuesday). Monday dinners have become a bit of a new tradition for Sophie and I, and I like using them as a venue for trying new recipes, because a)Sophie is a simultaneously intrepid and kind soul, and b)the bottle of wine we polish off each week makes just about anything taste better. 

Much like last night's surprise pesto, I didn't use a recipe for the dish I came up with. Instead, I relied on my memory of dishes that have been made for me in similar fashion in the past, and it worked out alright. I like to think it's all part of being a little more aggressive in the kitchen in 2012. Not so aggressive that I nearly set my oven on fire, but that's another story for another time. 

I honestly think peas go with everything, but especially pasta

 

blanched asparagus (in the new mixing bowls my sister gave me for Christmas!)

vanilla peppermint crunch gelato with chocolate teddy grahams

So, I failed at taking sufficient pictures, which tends to happen when I'm cooking in a hurry and/or solo (both of which are shamefully common in my kitchen). But, you'll have to take my word for the fact that the pasta turned out both edible and photogenic. I can't really take any credit for the sinful vanilla peppermint crunch gelato, as it came from a starter kit, but I can tell you to get thee to Sur La Table and buy your own box of it immediately, and my job will be done here.

If it's fun pasta you're after, though, here's what I suggest... pick a pretty green veggie or two. Blanch them in a pot of salty water, and scoop them out when they get bright green. For 2 people plus lunch leftovers, boil half a pound or so of pasta (my preference is something in the spaghetti family) in the veggie water. Mmm fiber. After just a few minutes, maybe 4 or so, drain the pasta. Boil half a bottle of wine, and throw the pasta in there until most of the wine is soaked up by the noodles. While the wine gets to boiling, in a skillet, heat up some cubed pancetta and let it get golden. Add garlic, and then the blanched veggies. Finally, pour the winey noodles into the skillet and let it all get nice and toasty. Yum. (I have to reiterate, though, that this is not a creation of my own brilliant mind, rather it's a recreation from dishes I've been served before.)

Anyways, aren't you glad I managed to update you just in time for the next Monday dinner? I knew you were just clinging to the edges of your seats waiting on this recap. Try to contain your excitement for tonight's experiment: broccoli and bell pepper stir fry with tofu. I know. Wild times, people. Wild times.  

sneaky

I'm trying really hard to be excited about the pro bowl, but it's just not happening. Although I'd rather neither team win next weekend, I'm ready for the theatrics of the Super Bowl. 


So instead of actually paying any attention to the game, I've been spending some time in the LKTC, because I got some new gadgets. Although I'm perpetually in budget mode (or yelling at myself for accidentally ignoring the tenets of budget mode), I found a Kohl's gift card when I moved a month ago, and used it to buy an immersion blender and a mini food processor.


We also got a Trader Joe's in my 'hood at some point, and I just explored the outpost this weekend. There might need to be a TJ's-related intervention for me at some point in the not too distant future, given my complete lack of self control in the face of budget-priced food in cute, clever packaging. 


Anyways, new gadgets + cheap foodstuffs = experiments in the LKTC. This is what I whipped up tonight: 

It's pesto, but not the traditional basil sort. The green stuff is arugula, but the cheese was replaced with silken tofu. Sneaky, sneaky. I realize that a pretty significant portion of the population likes, perhaps loves, cheese. I do not. So, replacing cheese is actually an improvement on the dish for me. 

I wasn't following a recipe, nor did I really write anything out, so this is just an approximation of how it all went down. I threw about 3/4 of a cup of silken tofu, 1 or 1 1/2 cups of arugula, maybe a tablespoon of toasted pine nuts, and a few sprinkles of salt, pepper, and cayenne in my new mini food processor and whirled everything until it was combined. Then I threw that over peas and spaghetti. (And if you're wondering if the garlic omission was intentional, the answer is "no," but, I didn't realize I was out until after I'd already returned from my grocery trip. Murphy and his stupid laws.)

My complete inability to boil an appropriate quantity of pasta (and my eschewing of a cook book) aside, it was a surprising success. Everything I've read about it is true...tofu is pretty much flavorless, making it a great base for other flavors to build off of (and arugula has plenty of flavor). I really didn't miss the cheese at all (the garlic, on the other hand...). 

And thanks to the aforementioned portion control issues, I will have plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow, which is great news for that nagging part of my conscious that's all about keeping me on budget and eating well. 

something old, something new

So, my lazy Sunday was a semi-success. I did pass a somewhat excessive number of hours at Starbucks, watching a few episodes of tv on Hulu, sipping my overpriced drip coffee, marveling at the relentless deluge of customers, and generally ignoring all of the things stressing me out in my life right now. 

But then, around lunch time, I gave in to my "must stay busy" tendencies and popped in to Whole Foods to pick up the ingredients for this pasta with roasted red pepper sauce recipe. I walked home, picked up my apartment a bit (no, really, HOW does it get so messy every week?), and made my bajillionth loaf of banana bread ever. Yum. 

 

{Side note...in composing a list of LKTC-tested recipes, I came to the realization that I haven't actually tried all that many new recipes. I think that's partially by virtue of the fact that I've done a lot of group meals in which I provide just a dish or two, and partially due to the fact that I'm a creature of habit (a pattern I've also noticed in the places I choose to eat out and/or go to happy hour)}

So I hesitated to make my bajillionth loaf of banana bread, but the nearly expired bananas staring me in the face made the decision fairly easy. I consoled myself that the roasted red pepper pasta sauce would be the "something new" to balance the trusty old banana bread recipe.  

After I made the bread, cleaned the kitchen, and avoided the raging temptation to cut in to the warm, chocolate chip-filled loaf, I got started on the sauce. 

I bought a pack of three small red peppers at the store, and from outside the pack, they looked perfect. Once I opened them, however, I realized one was all moldy at the top, so I settled for two (while cursing Whole Foods and swearing to call them up and complain...which I never did end up doing). I threw them on a cookie sheet and subjected them to whatever passes for "broil" in a gas oven. 

 

They say impatience is one of a cook's biggest enemies, and I have to agree...I pulled

these out before they were sufficiently charred 

 

mmmm, toasted pine nuts!

 

the aftermath of peeling and de-seeding steaming hot peppers

 

pureed peppers and pine nuts, yum!

 

garlic, olive oil, onions...aka my idea of heaven

 

the finished product!

So, I have to say this wasn't my favorite pasta sauce, but I blame myself. I didn't roast the peppers long enough (see: lack of patience), and my pine nut to roasted pepper ratio was off. I also used too many onions for what is a pretty thick sauce. It was by no means gross, it just didn't look anything like the Pioneer Woman dish (which is where I got the recipe), and I'm a raging perfectionist. 

I'm convinced I'm cursed. I never can seem to master two kitchen feats in one day. Then again, maybe that's what I get for refusing to embrace the lazy Sunday concept.  

I decided I should take a break from obsessively checking the radar before I talked myself out of tonight's flight entirely.  In case you don't know me, I should explain.  It's simple, really.  I am terrified of flying.  Fear isn't rational, people.  Don't try to talk me out of this one.  (Now my slight fear of revolving doors and automatic flush toilets? I could be convinced to relinquish those).  If you haven't flown with me, or with someone who is similarly anxious about airborne travel, this is how we feel. (seriously, if you click on a single link in this blog ever, let it be this one. it is hilarious, maybe not so much so when I'm actually flying, but definitely when I've got both feet safely on the ground)

What I'm getting at here (sorry, fear makes me particularly inarticulate) is that I need a distraction from trying to calculate whether or not the storm clouds will reach the flight path of my plane between now and 7pm.  Having a background in business and English is not helping the cause, here. 

So, you finally get to hear about Sunday dinner! Two posts in one day! My attempt at false enthusiasm in the face of imminent fear! 

Initially, the plan was to exploit the grills by the pool at Allie's building.  That bright idea was quickly tabled in favor of something indoors.  DC being the center of the massive heat wave and all, we figured it would be totally unenjoyable for all involved, which is the antithesis of the meaning of Sunday dinners.  So this is what we turned out instead:

I know you think you know what this is, right?

But if you were right, then it wouldn't be served with...corn...right?

If you guessed pesto, you fell for my oh-so-clever little trick. It's actually...

...espagueti verde, a recipe Allie found on the blog Serious Eats.  When she sent it to me, the recipe made me immediately think manchego lime corn! manchego lime corn! Ok, I doubt I had that much pep in my step after two straight weekend days in the office, but I really love corn, so, I don't think I'm too far off in my recollection.  I had just stumbled upon the recipe while leafing through an issue of Bon Appetit that I scored for 40% off at one of the innumerable Borders that is closing.

I don't have much to say about the preparation of these dishes, because it was honestly pretty spectacularly easy.  Allie handled the pasta/sauce, I handled the corn.  It took maybe fifteen minutes total (minus roasting time for both corn and poblano peppers, but I'm talking hands on stove time here).  Allie generously cut the jalapeno for my dish (my first and last un-gloved brush with hot peppers ended up ruining a pair of contacts) while I ignored the recipe's direction and tried to shuck the corn while it was still hot (don't do that, it's stupid). 

mmmm, roasted corn.

(but really, they aren't joking when they say: let it cool)

corn, red pepper, lime, jalapeno, butter...so many things i love in one bowl

All joking aside, this was a delicious alternative to grill night.  The pasta sauce wasn't at all spicy, and we actually all agreed we'd throw a little red pepper in there next time.  But if you don't particularly like spicy food, you could make this pasta and love it just as much as we did is what I'm saying. 

The perfect end to the meal, I think, would have been this Mexican chocolate ice cream.  Now I just need to buy that ice cream maker...