Paella

Following a recipe is not too hard, but I think that the real art of cooking lies in figuring out how to combine what's in your fridge into a meal. (See, Bridget thinks so too!) I peered in my fridge last week and saw shrimp and chicken that needed to be eaten, lots of homemade stock, and I knew I had saffron  I just bought for the first time - ah, paella! I was so proud of myself for coming up with that one.

Simmering...

I have tried risotto several times, and I have to admit that I'm just too impatient - I end up boiling over, or burning it, or something else because I can't maintain the slow-and-steady stirring and adding routine that gives you that luscious final dish.

Simmering...

But paella, man, now there's a dish I can get behind. Once you add the rice and liquid, you NEVER STIR IT. It just boils merrily away, with the rice getting plumper and plumper, until you take the lid off and boom! Dinner is served.

Done!

This was my first ever attempt at paella, and I can assure you it won't be my last. SO tasty!

What's the Spanish version of bon appetit?

After making this, I learned that this dish is also a favorite of my boyfriend's. Now I also happen to know my boyfriend makes fantastic risotto, so I'd say surely we can work out a fair trade system - my paella for his risotto, what do you say? :)

Saffronsbröd - Swedish Saffron Batter Bread

My first culinary experiment with saffron was this weekend - I made saffron bread, from a traditional Swedish recipe. This was my contribution to my friend's Midsommar potluck, a Swedish holiday celebrated on the longest day of summer. Excellent food and excellent company - I look forward to it every year! 

(I had to borrow the pan from her - it's a kugelhopf pan. Similar to a bundt pan, but a different pattern/shape to the ridges. And now you've learned something today!)

Saffronsbröd in a kugelhopf pan. Say three times fast.

The recipe is as follows:

Swedish Saffron Batter Bread (Saffronsbröd)
Originally from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas

Ingredients
1 package active dry yeast
¼ cup warm water (105ºF to 115ºF)
½ cup butter, room temperature
½ cup sugar
3 eggs
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup milk, scalded and cooled to lukewarm
¼ teaspoon powdered saffron
3 cups all purpose flour
¾ cup golden raisins
powdered sugar

Instructions
1.  In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in the ¼ cup warm water.
2.  In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar.
3.  Add eggs and salt; beat until smooth.
4.  Stir in milk, saffron, and yeast mixture.
5.  Gradually beat in the flour.  When all the flour has been added, beat with electric mixer at medium speed for five minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally.
6.  Mix in the raisins.
7.  Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 ½ to 2 hours.
8.  Meanwhile, generously butter a 10 cup kugelhopf or bundt pan.  Dust lightly with flour.
9.  Stir down the dough and pour into the prepared pan.  Cover and let rise in a warm place until dough almost reaches the top of the pan (about one hour).
10.  Preheat oven to 350ºF.
11.  Bake 40 to 45 minutes or until loaf is well-browned and sounds hollow when tapped.  Let cool in pan 15 minutes, and invert onto rack to cool.  Dust with powdered sugar.

Delicious!

The bread was a hit, and is gone already.

I also made a marinated flank steak with fresh green beans and lentils cooked in duck stock for dinner this evening, so all in all the weekend has been fantastic from the culinary standpoint!

Salmon Asparagus Wraps

I have been enjoying cooking lots of meat lately. I got tired of vegetables all the time, and just got a hankering for MEAT. I came home from the grocery store with sausage for breakfast, chicken for lunches, and salmon on special for dinner. 

Very similar to this recipe, I tossed mayo, mustard, seasonings, and a bit of Worcestershire sauce for a dressing.

Look at those beautiful white and green asparagus spears, from my farm share!

Meat. Protein. Oh yes.

Assemble ingredients and wrap each filet up in parchment paper packets, roast in the oven until the whole room smells delicious.

When the fish flakes with a fork, it's done. And enjoy!

Strange Eats

I was discussing food with friends the other day, and in particular the adventurous foods we'd tried. I realized I have some photos I've never shared on this blog that are relevant to that topic, so today is a recap of an old story.

While I was in Iceland, I did some sightseeing. I saw a volcano, the Blue Lagoon, and the President. I also had some excellent food. We asked the locals what the regional specialties were, so we could be on the lookout - and at first we found it fairly comical. "Oh," they cried, "You must try the seafood and the hot dogs!" Since we are all from New England, home of excellent lobster and Boston Red Sox hot dog stands, we were a bit amused...

But turns out, we were not dissapointed. The lobster was excellent, and the "hot dog" turned out to be an excellent sausage-like affair, which really shouldn't have been translated into an English word for a cheap food.

We couldn't leave without trying something at least a little more exotic, though. So one night we went to a tapas bar, where you order lots of little dishes - an excellent venue for trying many types of food. We tried lots of seafood (fish, crustaceans, a couple types of mollusks), a couple vegetarian dishes (roasted stuffed peppers for the win), and one or two chicken/beef options. But then - there was debate. Also listed on the menu were various options containing shark, horse, and puffin. PUFFIN.

The debate was short. How could we not get the puffin?

Figure: Behold, the puffin.

Figure: And, horse. Which looks a lot like puffin.

The puffin was delicious - and purple colored, although it's hard to see in the photo. A little salty, but good I thought. The horse, though, I didn't care for - chewy and a strong flavor.

When we excitedly told our hosts this story the next day ("We ate, like, a WHOLE puffin, and MOST of a horse, so aren't we adventurous and cool like real locals?") they looked at us, and kind of snickered. Snickering is almost never good.

Suspicious, we inquired - why, why the sidelong glances at each other? Well, turns out puffin is seasonal. The reason they hadn't recommended puffin to us is because it wasn't in season. In order to keep it, they either freeze or preserve it (ah, the saltiness...)

So, not only have I eaten puffin, I've eaten LAST YEAR'S puffin.

Good times, good times... :) What adventurous foods have you tried?

Cooking Day

Today was dedicated to cooking, and absolutely no research. I have recently discovered gojee.com, and I love it. LOVE it. It's a recipe site that suggests recipes for you, based on what you have in your kitchen already, what you are in the mood for, and taking into account the foods you don't like.

Awesome.

There are other sites that do this, and I've tried them before. But they all have fatal flaws - most commonly, the website is painful to list out all the ingredients you already own, and laborious to delete ingredients once you've used them up. And if not that, then the recipes suggested I don't like. For instance - I will never make anything that requires a box brownie mix. Or marshmallow fluff. That's just heresay. And I also don't do casseroles that call for hot dogs or cream-of-anything soup. And on the other extreme, I'm also not going to cook with caviar, liver, duck, or anything on the half-shell. And if it requires smoking a tomato? Not gonna happen. And even if the website manages both of those things, the interface is just ugly.

But gojee? None of those things. Simple, gorgeous, and serves up recipes that I can't wait to make. I die.

Today I was on a tear to use up all the produce in my fridge that is nearing its shelf life - I hate to have good food go bad! So I made:

Nectarine and Fennel Salad
Mustard-Maple Chicken with Quinoa-Cucumber Salad
Chicken Tagine with Fennel, Preserved Lemons, and Green Olives
 - modified, because I only have fresh lemons, and I'm not even sure what a preserved lemon is...
Bread Pudding
 - modified by adding currants, walnuts, and nutmeg

My kitchen smelled wonderful all day. And I have leftovers a-plenty!

Bring on the week. I don't know about research, but I've got the lunches DOWN.

KitchenAid

Last week, my hand mixer broke. The plastic body cracked all the way around, and I thought maybe I could still make it work - but the crack caused the two beaters to be out of alignment. Since they were no longer concentric, "mixing" became more like, "using both hands to keep the vibrating mixer from flying apart."

So I started looking for replacements to my $12 Wal-Mart special. There is no Wal-Mart in Boston, however, so rather than travel arduously by bus to the suburbs where one can find a Target, I opted to poke around online. As I sat with pursed lips in front of my screen, I pondered: Well, let's see - I could always get another of the same one. OR, I could get this nice $20 one - but ooh! The $34 one has a retractable cord...

Well, ladies and gents, by the end of my research, I was nearly ready to place an order for a KitchenAid stand mixer.

That tends to happen in my family. The oft-told story goes that we renovated and doubled the size of our house, starting because my mother didn't like the living room curtains. And more recently, my family gutted the home office, beginning with the fact that the air conditioner didn't work in that room. Projects tend to escalate quickly!

Back to my project, Operation: Replace Mixer.

A KitchenAid, if you are not familiar, is a serious tool. Depending on the model you get, it's also a $300-$400 investment at retail price. But what my family has taught me (besides "projects escalate quickly") is that it is critical to have the right tool for the job. Actually, I suspect the two go hand in hand. Escalating projects is only a winning proposition if you are properly prepared for the expanded vision...

So is the KitchenAid a tool I need? I cook quite a bit, and use my mixer often. And man, the KitchenAid can do so much more than a little hand mixer... and the attachments! Endless opportunities. Good for hours of dreaming for someone like me, interested in both mechanical tools and cooking. 

And the best part? At Amazon, the color I wanted was on sale for $206. 

Figure: Ah, lovely...

Now let me be clear - the KitchenAid comes in many colors. Standard colors are available all the time, and then every so often they come out with specialty colors. Pioneer Woman even sold off a yellow flowered variety. 

I happen to think that pattern is terrible, but in my browsing I found there was yet a worse option. Pepto-Bismol, baby powder pink. Sheesh. 

Figure: Okay, I think it's actually for cancer, so it gets a pass for being a good cause.

And in fact, you can get a whole range of pink kitchen implements! 

I feel about pink kitchen tools about the same as I feel about pink construction tools. 

And that being, that if you can't handle the full-powered version of a tool, you shouldn't be playing with it. This applies to the "baby" versions of tools that come in pink, like the above drill, which is powered with all of 9.6 Volts. Don't hurt yourself, now...

To be fair, I did have a friend point out an excellent argument - that if you are a woman who can handle tools, there are legitimate, high-quality tools that come in pink. And there is one good reason to consider purchasing such a thing.

Figure: That's more like it. Comes with proper drill bits and 18V battery. Could be lithium ion, but still.

 And that being, your tools will not get stolen (and believe me, tools have a ridiculous tendency to walk off). My chemistry friends would say that tools have a high vapor pressure... think about it... think about it... okay, maybe bad joke. In any case - if you work on a construction site, none of the men would be caught dead with a pink drill. And even if someone DID swipe your tools, it would be immediately obvious, because who else would have a pink one? I mean, let's not kid ourselves and think more than one woman would probably be working on a construction site.

So I will grant you that argument. But in my kitchen, nothing is getting stolen. Therefore, no pink. I want my KitchenAid to blend in, be a beautiful component of my counter space. Like so:

Figure: Can you see it? Hiding over there by the oven?

So that black KitchenAid baby was in my cart, and I was so tempted. I left it there to think overnight (another lesson from family - never rush the thinking portion of a project...). And what I decided was this: 1) I haven't saved up the chunk of cash I need for such a purchase, and money is definitely one of the "proper tools" needed for a project. And 2) I have been getting along just fine with a hand mixer so far. And finally, 3) Does my kitchen look like this?

Figure: My DREAM kitchen looks like this, granted.

No, no it does not. I still have a tiny efficiency kitchen, and I feel like getting a KitchenAid is a life step. Kind of like getting the white picket fence and the dog. And honestly, I'm just not there yet. When I have a house - or shoot, even an apartment with a dishwasher - then I'll revisit this.

So for now, I deleted the KitchenAid from my cart.

Actually, that's not quite true - I "Saved for Later."

Because you better believe I'll be back for it. And in the meantime, I splurged for the $34 hand mixer with retractable cord, daggone it, because I'm at least ONE step up from the $12 model. :)

Lemon Rolls

I saw this recipe for Lemon Rolls come up in my Google Reader - and come on, how could I not? And cream cheese glaze... well consider me sold.

So for the most recent study break for my girls in the dorm, I made cookies and lemon rolls.

The dough is a pretty basic yeasted bread variety, but lemon juice and zested lemon are included for an extra kick.

Yummy filling... seemed so odd to be making rolls with no cinnamon sugar! I decided I would have to have two rolls, to properly decide if they reached the standard cinnamon-roll quality bar.

Rolling out and spreading the filling...

then rolling right back up!

Trying not to squash the pretty roll as I cut it (I used to hate mushing the roll when I made cinnamon rolls as a kid with my Mom... but with freshly sharp knives, and a little better adult motor skills, it seemed to work out!).

If you a nerd like me, you will realize that the fattest rolls are at the center of the roll, and the smallest ones are at the end. So the optimum placing of the rolls in the pan is not in sequential order... but instead the biggest rolls should be in the same row as the smallest, second-biggest with second-smallest, etc.

But no matter how much time you spend over-thinking it, in the end it doesn't matter all that much. Look at that deliciousness! Add the cream cheese glaze, and...

... drool. My girls and I polished off two 8x10 pans of these, plus cookies. I'd say a winner!

Guest Posting at Engineer Blogs

Ever wonder if an engineer's brain turns off? Answer is no, no it does not - even while cooking.

Check out today's post on Engineer Blogs.

I was having dinner with a engineer recently, and we split the last appetizer. It fell to me to divide the morsel in half. As my friend watched me size up the little wedge with my knife, he laughed and asked, "Trying to find the centroid?"

Why yes, yes I was.

Takes one to know one, that's what I say. :)

South of the Border Cooking Class

Figure: Miss Outlier, Chef

This is actually a woefully old post, but one of the nice things about establishing a routine is that I can be productive. So I'm getting around to posting things I've always meant to share! Oh wait - productive was supposed to apply to RESEARCH? Details, details...

In February 2010 (gulp - where did the time go?) I took a class from the Cambridge Culinary School of the Arts. The cooking school offers classes on the weekends to the public. Some are series - baking, or international cooking, or just the basics - and some are single day courses. I signed up for a one afternoon class, called South of the Border Cooking. And the best part? Getting to use the professional kitchen! Drooling, drooling...

Figure: We're wearing aprons. Must be official.

Figure: The teaching podium, where the instructor demonstrated techniques.

Look at that cool mirror above the instructor's table - it shows you the bird's eye view, so you can see the ingredients and watch what the hands are doing!

The class had ten people, and the instructor lead us through making an authentic Mexican meal. Or at least I'm told it's authentic, how would I know... The students were split between the dishes (or the dishes between the students?), so one or two people would work on each recipe.

Figure: Other students intent on preparing their dishes.

The recipes we prepared were the following (and yay, I got to take home all the recipes!):

Marinated and Grilled Shrimp with a Chipotle Pepper Sauce
Chicken Mole
Grilled Flank Steak with Ancho Chili Cream Sauce
Green Rice
Chicken Fajitas
Fresh Tomato Salsa
Guacamole
Salsa Verde
Refried Beans
Grilled Pork Tenderloin with a Peach and Macadamia Nut Salsa
Bittersweet Chocolate Cake

Does that not just make your mouth water? YUM! I was assigned the chocolate cake (no need to twist my arm on that one, I assure you).

Figure: Measuring out Mexican chocolate for my dessert

It was neat to hear the other students in class chattering away with their teammates. These two ladies in particular kept the class lively!

Figure: Ladies making roasted peppers.

 I claimed a saucepan and spot at the stove, to make the chocolate topping sauce.

Figure: That's heavy cream. Oh yes.

Because the kitchen was all open, I could peek over shoulders and watch the other dishes come together.

Figure: Preparations for mole chicken.

Figure: Chicken being mole-d.

I felt like a fancy chef on a TV show - I got to have fun with the presentation (or, "plating") as well as actually making the dessert.

Figure: Plates for the chocolate cakes, dusted with cocoa powder.

 At this point, the ladies making the shrimp appetizers finished the dish, so we all got to take a mid-class break and sample our efforts!

Figure: Shrimp, completed quickly, as appetizers are meant to be - and eaten quickly, as good food is meant to be!

After our break, I continued on and finished making my little cakes in individual ramekins.

Figure: Miss Outlier at work!

The kitchen smelled so good, it was ridiculous.

Figure: Grilled Flank Steak

Figure: Setting up the buffet. You can see green rice, flank steak, refried beans, and chicken mole.

Figure: Our instructor (see the hat? nobody else got a hat).

Figure: Meat! Pork and chicken.

When everything was ready and set out on the buffet, the whole class got to enjoy the meal.

Figure: Sitting down together.

One of the couples taking the class had brought Mexican beer to pair with the meal, and they generously shared with the class. Seemed only appropriate!

Figure: South of the Border, baby.

Let's get a close up of that, shall we?

Figure: Oh, life is good.

It's really cool how food brings people together. At the beginning of the day, none of us knew each other. At the end of the afternoon, we were laughing and joking and passing the salsa.

FIgure: Because really, who doesn't like food?

I ducked out of dinner a bit early to put the finishing touches on dessert. And because one of the students had a birthday, the instructor even provided a little candle for one of the cakelets. How cute!

Figure: Looks downright professional, if I do say so myself.

 The finished dessert:

Figure: Basically a chocolate lava cake made with Mexican chocolate, topped with a fudge sauce and whipped cream.

The day was a success - I learned a lot, ate good food, and got to indulge my inner Julia Child! Maybe someday I'll take another class... the baking series looks particularly tempting...