Prajantr, Thoughts and Wanderings

The weather has been beautiful lately. Gorgeous, in fact.  I’ve thought about cooking, but it’s not as much fun to cook for one. The last time I cooked was when the Velez family came down for a visit.  I had a blast cooking for them!

First up was a fresh mint and roasted pork salad dressed with fresh squeezed lime juice mixed with a touch of sugar and fish sauce, thin sliced shallots and garlic. The key to this salad is the toasted rice, ground up and tossed in there right at the end to add texture and a fantastic roasted flavor. Of course, the huge amounts of fresh mint leaves made it a cool and happy salad.

The salad is called “nam tok” or water fall salad. It can be made with pork or chicken, but I personally like it with pork. Besides, I’d roasted chicken to go along side as well as had chicken as the base of the next dish.

I also made red curry chicken, my way. It’s Thai style, with coconut milk and bamboo shoots, but you’ll find every Thai cook does things in her own way and the curry comes out different for every cook. I use fresh holy basil from my garden in my curry, and probably more coconut milk than most. Plus I add a kaffir lime leaf or two in there and a touch of sugar to balance out flavors. Instead of serving the curry with rice, the way I normally do, I made nom gene or Asian white rice noodles instead. They’re lighter and nicer with the curry for summer time.

I also made “sticky rice” or sweet rice to go on the side with some roasted chicken. That’s a summer favorite as well. You gotta be careful with sticky rice though, stuff continues to expand in your stomach.

See? It’s so much more fun to cook for friends than it is to cook for just one. I get a lot of joy out of feeding my friends and putting my heart into my cooking for them.

Chicken Pot Pie

This a post late in coming, but the results were uber tasty. My good friend, Mandy, celebrated her birthday a few weeks ago. In honor of her special day, we had a gathering of friends at my house and a bit of a pot luck. The theme was “Mandy’s Favorite Dishes”.

To contribute, I made my chicken pot pie for her…and cupcakes…and some other stuff, because I’m a little crazy.

There’s no real recipe, I’m afraid. I sort of made it up a long time ago and it comes out a little different every time.

The key to my chicken pot pie is that I either fry or roast the chicken thighs and legs first. Then I debone and cut up the tasty, flavorful meat for filling.

For veggies, I tend to throw in whatever sounds good – but the usual suspects are carrots, celery, yellow onions and potatoes (sometimes corn or peas end up in there too, maybe even mushrooms).  I wash and dice them into bite sized pieces.  The potatoes, once diced, I rinse and boil in salted water until just cooked but still firm.  I sautee the rest in a really big pan with extra virgin olive oil, seasoning with salt and pepper as I go. A dash of cinnamon goes in there too, usually. Don’t ask why – it’s not a strong taste but it adds a nice little something.

To the cooked veggies, I add the prepped chicken meat and potatoes and give it all a stir.  The gravy base for my chicken pot pie can be made from scratch (browning a rue of flour and butter and then adding chicken stock and finishing with cream) or if I’m in a hurry, I’ll use cream of chicken soup.  There’s usually a splash of milk that goes in there and a spoonful of sour cream. More salt and pepper are added to taste at this stage as well as any fresh herbs I have on hand that I think will add a nice flavor.

A scoop on a party plate

The whole mixture goes into my deep dish stoneware pan and is covered by two layers of puff pastry. It goes into the oven at about 425F or so until the puff pastry is puffed and golden brown and gravy is bubbling out at the edges.

This is a hearty dish, my friends, and probably not a good choice for the dieters

I’m not as original with the cupcakes, I’m afraid. I was a little crunched for time and baked them from boxed cake mix instead of mixing them from scratch the way I normally.  Still, I baked two kinds: devil’s food cake frosted with creamy chocolate and vanilla cake with little fun chips baked into the batter iced with creamy white frosting.

Omm nom nom nom. The cupcakes turned out moist and light, so I guess the box mix wasn’t bad.

Cupcakes!

My long time friend, Helen, loves zucchini. She absolutely loves it. She also loves zucchini bread, BUT the recipe her family uses is a very dessert-type sweet bread. She’s been trying to eat healthier and lose weight since January and has actually been doing a fantastic job of it (40 lbs!!!). So what could I do to help her out?

Well, I figured out a way for her to have that little taste of zucchini bread, in the form of muffins. Easy 1 serving portions, that are made with half wheat flour and half all purpose flour to be a tiny bit better for you. They’re also a lot less sweet than her family’s traditional sweet bread recipe. They’re heavily cinnamon spiced, which is full of antioxidants. And since they’re muffins and not loaves of sweet bread, she can easily have just one, not trying to exert the willpower to NOT cut an extra thick slice or eat the whole loaf. And trust me, the family recipe is that good.

So shredding the zucchini was something I’d never done before. If you have one of those nifty food processors with the appropriate attachment, this would be done in a jiffy. As it was, I shredded the zucchini by hand on a large grater and that was perfectly fine. It took only a few minutes and I really didn’t mind at all.

Zucchini has a decent water content, so I patted the shredded zucchini down with a paper towel before using it in this recipe.

Zucchini Muffins

Zucchini Muffins
For the batter:

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons honey
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/3 cups shredded zucchini

For the topping:

1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Prep the batter first…

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl, whisk together both flours, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.

In a medium bowl, whisk together milk, oil, honey, egg and vanilla. Stir in shredded zucchini so that all shreds are coated.

Pour wet mixture  into the dry ingredients and stir just until combined. No need to over-stir.

Evenly divide the batter between 12 cup muffin tin lightly coated with cooking spray or lined with paper muffin cups.
Prepare the topping…

In a small bowl, stir together sugar and cinnamon. Evenly sprinkle over the batter in the muffin tin.

Place into oven and bake until the tops spring back when lightly pressed in the center or a toothpick placed in the center comes out mostly clean, about 14 to 16 minutes.

Remove from the oven and place pan on a wire rack to cool for 2 minutes before turning the muffins out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 12 muffins.

Note: These muffins freeze well, so you can make a batch and enjoy one then pop the rest into a freezer bag and freeze for the future to keep them fresh. Nuke in a microwave for 30 seconds wrapped in a damp paper towel and they are fresh and steamy again.

I was feeling like pizza, but not feeling like pizza. You know? I decided to make strombolis instead.

Strombolis are super easy, honest. Plus, I have no tradition regarding what goes into them. Generally, I just make up a batch of sourdough pizza dough, roll it out and fill it. (Note: my sourdough pizza dough recipe makes a lot of dough. For these strombolis, I divided the dough in half, froze one half and then split the other half again before rolling out into two strombolis.)

Pepperoni Stromboli

In this case, Alexd00 was around and he has different preferences for his pizzas than I do. So I made him a stromboli filled with ricotta cheese, mozzarella and pepperoni. Once the filling was lined up, it was just a matter of rolling the dough into a sort of log form and sealing the edges. Pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees F and bake for 10 minutes or until the dough looks golden brown. The oil in the pepperoni did escape a bit and hit my stromboli, so if this might be a concern – say you’re making a separate stromboli for a vegetarian – it might be best to bake your strombolis on different baking stones.

Spinach and Mushroom Stromboli

Mine, I filled with ricotta cheese, mozzarella, spinach and mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, some people would figure this is boring. To kick it up a bit, I added a sprinkle of feta cheese and some crushed red pepper. On another day,  might be tempted to add a little chicken in there for extra protein.

All in all, very tasty. Another hint is to let the strombolis cool just a bit after they come out of the oven. That way, the melty insides don’t just come spilling out when you slice them in half. I served a little spaghetti sauce on the side for dipping and it was a hearty lunch. Honestly, just half of one of these could probably have been a satisfying serving.

I decided to have an adventure in cooking, since I was trapped in the house all weekend anyway. My adventure involved the use of most of my sourdough starter in a recipe for sourdough doughnuts. I picked the base for the recipe figuring that the longer rise time, the lighter my doughnuts would be. (That may or may not have been the correct assumption, but hey, it was my logic at the time.)

The first thing I encountered was that the recipe called for 2 whole cups of sourdough starter. That’s more than I’ve ever used for any recipe yet. I had to double my existing starter and let it proof all day just to have enough. At least my starter was active by the time I put together the dough.

The second thing I encountered was that there wasn’t nearly enough flour called for as compared to the wetness of the sourdough starter plus ingredients listed. I ended up adding flour incrementally until it stopped looking like batter and started holding together like dough. I stopped at an additional 2 cups of flour and my dough was still very soft and sticky. It was just barely holding together like dough.

Very experimental, here people.

The next step was to let it rise until it doubled. Considering the timing on it all and the fact that I’ve been keeping the house rather cool, I let it rise over night in a greased bowl covered with wax paper. This method works pretty ok for me and I figured I could finish the second half of the recipe steps in the morning when I’d actually want to eat doughnuts anyway. I left it in the oven to rise because the temperature holds fairly steady in there and the dogs can’t try to steal the dough overnight.

The last time Chelsea got a hold of dough, it was for scones, and she immediately took a puppy dump right in the middle of the floor. Eeeew. So no dough for puppies.

Next step was to turn the risen dough out onto 1/2 cup of floor and work it in, then pat the stuff out to a 1/2″ thickness and cut my doughnuts. Obviously, this was a lot more dough than I needed so I turned it out and then split off half to go into the freezer for the future. Label the dough if you do this people. I know I’ve got pizza dough in my freezer too and after a couple of weeks, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference without labels and pizza tastes down right weird if you make the crust out of doughnut dough, I’d imagine.

Had to let the doughnuts rise to double again. Depending on how warm your household is, this could take a while. Quick tip – warm up your oven for maybe a minute, just so it gets a couple degrees warmer than room temperature (maybe 78-80F). Let the doughnuts (or any dough) rise in there. I even put a little ramekin of water in there to maintain humidity.

After they’ve risen, heat up the oil. I use a fryer because it’s just easier for me. Course, this means I had to fry doughnuts just a couple at a time. Fry the risen side down first, and flip only once. Remove and cool on a rack. I dipped mine in a mixture of powdered sugar and cinnamon because I happen to like that taste. You could do a glaze but I was lazy this time.

All done. Supposedly, these reheat well and keep for a couple of days of enjoyment. I’ll let you know.

Recipe for Sourdough Doughnuts:

Ingredients:
2 cups starter
1 cup lukewarm milk
1 1/2 C flour
2 eggs
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup sugar
1 t salt
1/2 t soda
1/2 cup flour
2 cup flour
1/2 cup flour

Directions:
Mix starter, milk and 1 1/2 cup flour until smooth. Add eggs and oil and beat well.

In a separate, small bowl, blend sugar, salt, soda and 1/2 cup flour. Mix well into dough.

Turn out onto 2 cup flour and knead lightly until most of flour is worked in (dough is soft.) Place in greased bowl and turn to grease too. Cover with wax paper and let rise until doubled.

Then turn onto 1/2 C flour on board. Pat to 1/2″ thick. Cut and put on well floured sheet and let rise until doubled. (Don’t cover these!)

Fry only a couple at a time in hot fat and fry raised side (top) first, turning only once. Drain.

Optional: toss in powdered sugar and cinnamon or nutmeg OR dip in glaze

My very good friend, Mandy, has been having adventures in cooking over at her blog: From Delivery to Divine.  I decided to try out her Hungarian Noodle Bake with a couple of tweaks.

First, I decided that I’m too lazy sometimes to remember to cook up additional protein to have with my noodle dishes. Due to some of my medical conditions, I really need to be careful to have the right amount of protein:carb ratio in my meals or I suffer a  little later on in the day. Besides, I’m trying to slim and tone, and you can’t do that binge-ing on carbs, however much it  might be a good time to binge.

Since I was making this very generous casserole with leftovers in mind (meant to be quick meals for the week), I decided to add protein in the form of ground beef. On a similar thought, I also decided to add peas. That way, this massive casserole would be a one dish heat and eat.

Second, I couldn’t get my hands on fine egg noodles so I had to use medium egg noodles. Obviously it would change texture, but since there was ground beef and peas in there I figured that might be ok anyway.

The original dish looks fantastic, and I do plan to make that someday: Hungarian Noodle Bake

But my version turned out pretty nifty. I was very happy with the taste. Warning though, if you want to try either recipe, know that it is a huge casserole and in fact took up two (2!) 9×13 glass pans.

Hungarian Noodle Bake, tweaked

Here’s the recipe including my tweaks:

Ingredients:

• 2 large packages egg noodles, medium
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 3/4 lb. ground beef
• 2 cartons (32 oz) cottage cheese, fine curd
• 1 carton (2 cups) sour cream
• 2 to 3 Tb. Worchestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp. poppy seeds
• Paprika
• Parmesan Cheese

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook noodles according package directions, drain and set aside. Brown ground beef and onions.

Mix cottage cheese, sour cream, Worcestershire sauce & poppy seeds. Add ground beef and onion, mix thoroughly. Add noodles (estimate this, don’t add all the noodles unless there’s enough ‘sauce’ to keep them moist. I ended up setting about 2 cups or so aside to have with something else).

Turn into large (buttered) baking dish(es). Sprinkle lightly with paprika.

Bake for 30 minutes. Serve with Parmesan cheese

Sourdough Pizza

Sourdough starter isn’t just for bread, people. ^_^

This beautiful pizza was made with a sourdough pizza crust that was super easy to make in an afternoon.

The crust turned out just a bit chewy, in that good way, with s crisp crust that crunched just right. It’s tricky to get that combination in there without having too much of one or the other.

Hubby and I topped it with a very light touch of tomato sauce and a light sprinkling of mozzarella cheese, then scatter thinly sliced shallots and the last of the wonderful black truffle salami we bought in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

The result was heavenly. The kitchen smelled pretty good too.

Ok, so I’ve been behind on posting my recipes and I admit that. I was tossing around throwing some of them and some of my friends’ recipes into a holiday cookbook, even found a site online to do it. Maybe I’ll do that next year when there’s a little more time. (Of course, that’s what I said last year.)

So here’s the recipe hubby and I came up with for this pizza dough. Please keep in mind that we play with ingredients and nothing is an exact science in our recipes. We throw in a dash her or a splash there, sprinkle in some inspiration and try it out for dinner.

Pizza and pasta side

Sourdough Pizza Dough Recipe

 

• 1 cup sourdough starter (room temp rises better)
• 1/2 cup warm water (just about skin temp or a little warmer)
• 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

By hand or heavy duty mixer w/ dough hook attachment: In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour and salt. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the olive oil and sourdough mixture into it. Splash about half the water into the well also. Stir until it begins to form a ball. Use the remaining warm water to adjust the dough depending on humidity.

Turn it out onto a clean, floured surface and knead for about 4 or 5 minutes.

Note: Like bread, the pizza dough should be a smooth, elastic ball. It’s easier to knead by hand on a surface at about hip level, below the waist. Don’t use your hands and wrists, they’ll get tired. Get your shoulders behind it and it becomes fun rather than tiring. I do this inside my large mixing bowl to save on clean up.

Lightly oil the inside of a large bowl. Place the dough in the bowl, turning it to coat in olive oil. Cover and let it rise in a warm place until doubled, about an hour and a half. For better crust, punch down the dough, reshape into a ball and let it rise again for at least another half hour to an hour.

Note: You can refrigerate or freeze the dough at this point. I made enough for two pizzas, so I froze half the dough for use another day.

Gather the dough to be used for the immediate pizza in a rough ball, then, working on a lightly floured surface or directly on a well seasoned pizza stone, stretch the dough and work it with your fingers or a rolling pin to form a circle.

Note: Depends on how you split your dough and how thick you want the crust as to how big a pizza you get. I split this batch in half, freezing one half and making the other into a relatively thin crusted 14″ pizza.

The outer edge of the circle should be a little thicker than the body, forming a rim. Add toppings as desired.

Transfer to a pizza pan or pizza stone if you didn’t shape it directly on the pizza stone. Bake in a 500° pre-heated oven until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is melted, 10 to 13 minutes.