mk's savoury french toast

ok, we're easing into real recipes.

use the best san francisco-style (by which i mean boudin-style) sourdough you can find, make normal french toast, but include dried oregano and basil and fresh ground pepper and a dash of salt in your milk-egg mixture. top with freshly grated parmesean.

hummus once more

recipe and all that:

um, the first time i made some with dried chickpeas (cheaper and i had them at hand) i kept at the googling until i found a recipe. the basic outline of my process is:

wash your chickpeas and pick out the rocks and the damaged ones. then set your chickpeas in water with a tsp and half or so of baking soda i think, and leave it for a few hours, then change the water and leave it over night.
then boil the lot (in fresh water) for an hour or two, change the water and keep boiling until chickpeas are easily mashed between your fingers. while it's boiling, be sure you keep skimming the husks off, which should theoretically float to the surface. don't be worried if they don't, it's not the end of the world, it's just a bit easier for the chopping part if they're removed. you're going to save the water and set it aside.

now comes the chopping bit. you want to basically puree or asclosetopureeingaspossible all of your chickpeas and at least two big cloves of garlic. mix those with salt, tahini, lemon juice, and more garlic to taste. my rule of thumb is to use about 1/3 to 1/2 as much tahini as chickpeas. if you've mixed everything together and you think it's too dry, add a little bit of the water you set aside.

for other flavours, you can always add olive oil, cumin, roasted red pepper, pine nuts, roasted garlic, cilantro, pretty much anything you can think of.

recipes revisited

i've been wondering about why i feel so weird about posting real recipes up here. i think it's partially because i think of this as a place to dump successful first experiments, works in progress, or things that are more stepping stones towards recipes.
but mostly i think it's to do with my fixation with provenance of recipes. if you look through my cookbook, every recipe is attributed (except about half a dozen i copied out of cookbook during middle school), if not to a person at least to a publication. recipes on the internet, while useful and inspiring and etc. lack that grounding in who came up with them or introduced them when and/or where. they're just search-engine fodder. and whilst i don't think anything i've come up with reaches anywhere near the level of, say Mrs. Biddle's Rolls or Lana Burwell's Artichoke Dip, or Linda's 1994 Thanksgiving Cornbread Dressing (It Was A Good Batch), somehow i feel like posting my inventions challenges the sanctity of the rest of the recipes in the cookbook, which seems an insult to their creators.
which is silly, i know. but for the present i think the real recipes will have to stay in the cookbook and this will have to put up with just being an experiments log.

hummus, again

right, forgot lunch.
i realized i forgot to put any lemon juice in my hummus, which explains why it's not quite right (it doesn't do well cold, which is weird).
so for lunch i decided to saute some onions and pepper and cayenne, then add the hummus to the skillet and heat it up with some lemon juice. served hot over lightly toasted german bread. worked much better.
hopefully i'll get round to fixing the lemon juice issue shortly, as there's still lots of hummus left.

broccoli (and sultanas)

ok, this one's absurdly simple but it makes me love broccoli more which is good as it's a relatively new addition to my (embarassingly short) list of tasty veggies i can cook.

steam broccoli until tender with lemon juice and rinds and seasalt in water until a wee bit more tender than you'd normally for steamed broccoli. i think i keep misspelling this poor veggie. grate a small cloud of fresh parmesean onto a plate, empty veggies onto plate, stir, top with more cheese as needed. eat hot.

also, wierd food discovery of the day: steamed sultanas.
(yes, steamed sultanas)
just throw a big handful in with the veggies and they emerge all nice, plump, and juicy. i think in future i will try this before baking them into things. scones are always so much better with juicy sultanas.
ooh! maybe i'll make sultana scones for my next outoftown adventure!

spinach soufflee in a frying pan

i seriously need to think up a better name for this. in any event, i was craving spinach soufflee and had little of the necessary equipment and none of the funds required for the dish, so i improvised with what i did have, with good results.

fresh spinach, washed, chopped twice
1 in of thick carrot or equivalent, peeled, chopped fine
1 tbsp or so of sultanas
1 cheese stick worth of double gloucester
lemon
butter
salt and pepper to taste

saute spinach, carrots, sultanas w/ 1/2 tsp or so lemon juice in butter. add cheese, stir til melted. add fresh ground pepper, small dash sea salt. serve hot on german bread.

real recipes

still uncertain about posting my recipes (ones that are finished, perfected, wtv) here. maybe i'll start by putting them up on a private setting or something of the kind and go from there. granted, i'll have to figure out how to do that first.

ode to food processors

y'know, i've never really been one to use food processors very often. in fact, i once spent an entire day making potato salad by hand because i disliked the subpar results which the cuisinart produced. but i must admit i now very much see their worth. early this past week i undertook to make my own hummus (a one-quid bag of chickpeas and a threeorso pound tub of tahini yeilds so much more hummus than can be purchased for as much). so hours of boiling later and i recall that the only chopping instruments at my disposal are my paring knife and my bench scraper. lots and lots of chopping later, i have still chunkier-than-desired hummus with unevenly distributed salt and garlic, and a newfound love of food processors.

apple muffins

yes, technically i have an apple-currant muffin recipe which when done properly produces excellent muffins. but i'm still looking for that absolutely to die for apple muffin recipe. this was my latest experiment, made for my adventure to stirling and adopted from the twofatals recipe, which they adapted from somewhere.
all measurements highly theoretical, due to utter lack of measuring devices.

2 c flour
3/4 tsp soda
1/2 tsp tartar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c butter
1/3 c sugar
2 T honey
2 eggs
1 1/4 t vanilla
1 chunked apple
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c sultanas

cream butter with sugar, honey. add eggs one at a time, vanilla. stir in fruit.
mix dry. add dry to wet.

bake til done.

they were quite tasty whilst hot, and the following day once they'd moistened up a bit. original called for walnuts, brown sugar instead of honey, more brown sugar, less white sugar, shredded apple in addition to chunked, powder instead of powder substitute, and streusel.
i'd definitely add some shredded apple (broke down and bought a grater today), more sultanas, maybe some chopped pecans, and the barest touch of streusel. not too much shredded apple, mind, as the dryness of the batter meant the texture approximated streusel all on its own. maybe just a tablespoon or two of shredded apple in the batter and then top with caramelized shredded apple whilst hot.
to be continued, i hope

tomato paneer

here's to creative repurposing of leftovers.

take leftover MK's Signature Tomato Sauce, add a half cup or so of golden sultanas, and a full package of paneer cut into manageable chunks. stew for twenty minutes to half an hour. serve hot.

keeps well in the refridgerator for several days.

green beans

inspired by my favorite asparagus recipes and by chrissy's sesame seed green beans
as there is no asparagus to be had for under two pounds a bunch, i subbed in green beans

wash and cut fresh green beans into inch-or-so-long pieces.
sautee them in a tablespoon or so of olive oil and a twist of lemon juice, sprinkled with a dash of cayenne, a few twists of fresh pepper, and a dash of sea salt.
serve hot and crunchy with welsh goat's cheese.

to start

so this is my solution. put all pseudorecipes here. also all food and kitchen-tool tangents and discoveries. we'll see how long i keep it up. and whether or not this actually gets it out of my system.