Since everyone's doing it, I decided to go ahead and make oat-and-chocolate-chip cookies in the waffle iron.

You can get the recipe at Finecooking.com.

Kouryou-chan loves them, of course. They're huge, they're fluffy, and damn if they aren't a good excuse to eat butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips with just enough egg and flour to bind them all together, a little baking soda riser, and oats for, well, I guess for volume. Maybe I can pretend they're good for me.

Tags: baking, cooking, food
Current Mood: full

I must be in a foody mood. I've been cooking a lot recently. Today's menu: Seared scallops, pasta pilaf w/lemon & chives, and asparagus w/honey & lemon.

• 1 small onion
• 1 cup orzo or other small pasta
• 1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 2 tbs fresh chives
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1.5 pounds sea scallops
• 1 lb baby asparagus
• 2 tbs honey
• Olive oil
• Canola oil
• Salt & pepper

If the scallops are frozen, start defrosting them in a colander by running cool water over them.

Heat 1 tbs olive oil in a non-stick saucepan. While it's warming up, chop the onion. Saute' the onion for 3-5 minutes until glassy, then add the pasta (we were out of orzo, but had plenty of kid-friendly star and alphabet pasta the kids stopped eating ages ago, still good), the broth, the wine and thyme. Lower to a simmer and let cook for 15 minutes. You'll know when it's done when the pasta has absorbed all the liquid.

While the pasta is cooking, chop the chives, snap the bottoms off the asparagus and discard, and juice the lemon. Mix half the lemon juice, the honey, and four cups of water and put it all into a large pot. Tie the asparagus with string (or, heck, a rubber band) and stand them up in the pot. Cover, put on high heat, and steam for 4-7 minutes. You can tell when they're done when they turn a handsome dark green.

Bring an iron skillet to medium-high to high temperatures; put in just enough canola oil to cover. (I use canola instead of olive because canola burns at a higher temperature). Toss the sea scallops with salt and pepper, then put into the hot skillet and sear 3 minutes on a side.

When the pasta is done, add in the other half of the lemon juice and chives, set aside and keep warm.

If you're so inclined, toss a tablespoon of butter down the stalk of the asparagus. Either way, remove asparagus from the water and unstring.

If you time it right, everything will be done within two minutes of each other, so serve. Total cooking time, about 25 minutes. Good with crusty bread and a cold drink such as white wine or beer.

( Adult content )

Tags: cooking, food, recipe
Current Mood: full

• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 handful fresh basil
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1 can pinto beans, rinsed.
• 32 oz. chicken broth
• 1/2 cup pearl barley
• salt & pepper to taste

Rinsing the beans removes most of the proteins that lead to bloating.

In a large saucepan, saute carrot, celery, and onion in olive oil over medium-high heat until the onion glassy, about five minutes. Add basil until it wilts slightly, then add the broth and beans. Bring to a boil, then reduce the temperature and let simmer for half an hour. Add the barley, and simmer for another 25 to 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve with warm, crusty bread.

Yamaraashi-chan loved it, Lisakit said it had too much celery, and Kouryou-chan was, well, Kouryou-chan. I liked it a lot, myself, and I'm glad there are leftovers.

Tags: cooking, recipe
Current Mood: full

Right now, in your kitchen-- unless you have a low-sodium diet, and even then you might still have it-- you have the tool needed for making perfect home-made mayonnaise.

There are tricks to making mayonnaise that you only learn later. Cold eggs from the refrigerator do not separate well; bring them up to room temperature and the white readily seperates from the yolk. A warmed bowl helps the emulsion process.

But none of these handle the real tricky part: adding the oil s-l-o-w-l-y. I've tried all sorts of tricks, from just plain ol' pouring from the bottle to an injection-style basting tool too big for hands. And today, while doing the dishes, I found it. The perfect oil-control tool for making mayonnaise: a soy-sauce bottle.

Dude, the thing is made for portion control, and for a slow flow of liquid, controlled by one hand, into whatever you're dousing. I wish I'd discovered this earlier. It's completely made mayonnaise routine.

Tags: cooking
Current Mood: hungry

Biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham has proposed that cooking was a necessary step in human evolution, because cooking breaks down fibers and improves the bioavailability of many nutrients we don't normally extract from raw foods.

But more than that, we cooked over woodfire. And I would not be surprised at all to learn that cooking over a woodfire is engrained into our genes in a way that, say, cooking with gas or electricity is not. As we camped, we were always cooking with wood, and damn if it didn't make everything we ate taste better. Even pancakes and scrambled eggs. There was something to the smoke that was utterly wonderful.

Tags: camping, cooking
Current Mood: full

Some people fantasize about sex... I fantasize about sandwiches.

Today's fantasy sandwich: tomatoes and basil fresh from the garden, sliced mozarella, bacon, and home-made mayonnaise with olive oil, dijon mustard, and white wine vinegar.

Yum!

Tags: cooking
Current Mood: full

Being home does have its pleasures. Yesterday, for example, I had slow-cooked whole oatmeal with just a touch of brown sugar for breakfast, a grilled cheese sandwich with pancetta & horseradish (It occurs to me that: it's summer, I have a grill. I should make real grilled cheese sandwiches), and for dinner I made risotto with prosciutto and vegetables-- the last made with a half-cup of Beecher jack fresh from Pike Place Market, and home-made stock.

Unfortunately, that was the last of the home-made stock. But there were two carcasses in the freezer, along with a gallon bag of onion ends, skins, and miscellaneous vegetable peelings and cuttings. That's enough for a gallon and a half of new stock, so today the house smells wonderful.

Tags: cooking, food
Current Mood: full

Discovery #1 was that I got to eat bacon whenever I wanted. Discovery #2 is that my cast iron skillet has become perfectly seasoned.

Tags: cooking, life, unemployed
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Porcupine Tree, Shesmovedon

I attempted this week to make chocolate-covered grahams in about the simplest manner possible: melt chocolate in a double boiler, add a touch of cream to keep it smooth, and dunk graham crackers in it.

They came out okay. Not great. The first bad had way too much fat in them and were very messy. The second batch was still messy but less so, and ultimately I got 16 cookies out of a handful of dark chocolate chips and some leftover graham crackers. They're a different kind of wonderful from the Nabisco Deluxe's, which I can't find anywhere anymore. And they were yummy; the girls made them disappear.

Tags: cooking
Current Mood: full

Omaha told me it was my night to cook. I had little to no idea what was in the house. Solution: Uh, kinda a stir-fry fried-rice mashup. I had about fifteen minutes until I had to go retrieve the girls from their extracurricular activities, so a shoved a pound of frozen shrimp under the cold water to thaw, started a cup and a half of rice (basmati, an experiment!) in the rice cooker, and diced some broccoli, a carrot, some ginger and some garlic. Just before I left the shrimp was thawed enough to pull the tails off.

After picking up the girls, I went on to stage two: I heated up the wok with some peanut oil, threw in the shrimp for one minute, then the garlic and ginger for a minute, and then a mix of 1/2 cup vegetable broth, 2 tsp cornstarch, 2 tsp sherry, and I think some soy sauce. I stirred until it was thick and then poured it all back into the bowl where I had mixed up the cornstarch blend.

I wiped out the wok, added two tbsp peanut oil, and stir-fried the veggies until they were almost crisp, then tossed in one cup of frozen peas until they were thawed, then threw in all the rice with one egg, mixed it up a lot, and then tossed in the shrimp mixture, and stir-fried for ten minutes. I tossed in two tablespoons of soy sauce at the end.

It was surprisingly yummy. The girls ate it all.

Unfortunately, my vinagrette for the salad (two tbsp olive oil, 1/2 tbsp sherry, 1/2 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 1 tbsp sugar, and a few drops of sesame oil) was ruined when I realized the sesame oil was rancid. It's been there a long time; they ought to sell it in 4oz bottles, I use so little of it.

This has been another episode of what to cook when there's "nothing" in the house.

Tags: cooking
Current Mood: amused