Quick-pickled red onions

I mention this recipe in another post, but it's so good that I feel like it deserves it's own post.



Red onion is one of those things that I always find myself to have excess of. I almost never use cooked red onions, so I'm always stuck with a good half to three-quarter of a red onions left over. I'm also not a huge fan of raw onion, especially since they tend to trigger migraines for me. It's a rare occasion when I feel like I can enjoy raw onion and not have to suffer through head-splitting pain later.



No more! I've already bought red onions specifically so I can make this recipe, it's that good. I'm too impatient now to wait for leftovers. I think these may end up being a fridge staple.

Quick-pickled red onions

Ingredients

1/2 to 1 red onion*, sliced ~1/8'' thin (just slightly thicker than the thinnest slice you can get doing it by hand)

3/4 cup rice vinegar

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

Instructions

Slice red onion. 

In small saucepan, bring rice vinegar to low boil. Stir in salt and sugar until dissolved. 

Remove from heat, stir in red onions. Let sit 5-10 minutes. Put onions into a jar*, filling with brine until onions are completely submerged. Let cool completely before screwing lid on. These will keep indefinitely in the fridge. 

Notes

*If you're using a whole red onion, increase the rice vinegar to 1 cup and use rounded half teaspoons of salt and sugar. 

*A pint (2 cup) jar is the perfect size. 

Weekly Meal Planning: A Vagary in Excess

There's something about pre-planning my cooking that's making me less prone to excess. I've been scaling down recipes (something I would almost never do in the past), making less, and using less. That might not sound like a good thing, but I'm someone who will eat the same leftovers for a week straight just because I made so much. I usually don't mind, but all this variety has been a really nice change of pace. I've also had almost zero leftovers, except for the ingredients that I planned for. I'm also pretty tight on freezer space right now, so I can't really make huge batches of stuff and freeze it for later.

More subtly, I've also had less of an excessive kitchen-sink approach to cooking. The stir fry I made last week had only 3 vegetables in it--usually I'm prone to throwing in anything I think will taste good. I refrained from adding corn, tofu, water chestnuts... I'm sure there were more. This habit of mine usually ends up making the flavors in a dish a bit muddy--it all tastes just fine, but nothing really stands out. Plus, I think everything I make kind of ends up tasting pretty similar, because I use all the same ingredients in everything. In the stir fry, the savory, meatiness of the mushrooms really stood out against the sweetness of the carrots. And while I couldn't really taste the cabbage, I still appreciated its nominal contribution to the nutrition of the dish.

Annnnd... I spent less at Trader Joe's! My grocery bill for this week's shopping came in just under $31. Since I quit my job back in June, I've been grocery shopping more often and buying more each trip. I think I was trying to fill some sort of void, and buying new stuff at TJ's always made me feel better. Super cliche, but totally true. I think I may have found some sympathy for people who buy a lot of clothing. Not saying that everyone who buys excessive amounts of clothing are trying to fill a void, but shopping therapy is totally a thing. In the back of my mind, I was aware I was doing it, but was so not interested in examining it. Surprisingly, not being able to spend as much time in Long Beach snapped me out of a funk I'd been in, and I finally acknowledged this grocery shopping therapy I'd been indulging in. I almost went crazy when I went shopping, but then I realized I was putting stuff into my cart that I just really didn't need. So I committed to a $30 limit, and stuck to it! Maybe I'll get it back down to $20, which is the goal that originally gave this blog it's name. Even still, I'm cooking more, spending less, exercising more, reading less (in my case, this is actually a good thing) and writing more!

This week's plan does a pretty good job of utilizing what I already have in my pantry. I (compulsively) bought a delicata squash at TJ's (see what I mean??) a week or two before Thanksgiving, and still hadn't used it. So I found a yummy recipe from Big Girls Small Kitchen that stuffs it with curried basmati rice. Although from what I've found on the interwebs, delicata is the new (?) butternut. It's easy to prep, since it doesn't have a tough skin that requires peeling, and roasts up just as deliciously as butternut. If I like it, maybe I'll get it again and try it out just straight roasted.

I'm also going to use up the smoked mozzarella that I also bought from Trader Joe's, but found absolutely disgusting. I was going to bring it with some bruschetta to a work potluck, but then I tasted it. Yuck. It was super dry and had a very unpleasant smoky flavor. I couldn't bear to throw it away, so I stuck it in the freezer (my version of procrastination). I'm hoping it'll be much improved if I shred it up on a bbq chicken pizza. Or maybe I'll just ruin my pizza.

Last on my list is a classic pantry dish: washoku (Japanese) curry! I was really craving soup, but something not tomato-based. This was perrrrrrfect. If I've got leftover potatoes, I'll either roast them up or toss them in another favorite, corn potage. And any leftover red onions from the pizza are getting pickled.

I have some leftover chili that I brought back with me from Jim's, so I think 2 main recipes will suffice for the week.

Meal 1 - BBQ chicken pizza

Recipes
Oven baked drumsticks (★★★★★)
The smoked mozz was great on this pizza! I used the whole package, which was a little too much cheese, but I figured I wasn't going to use it for anything else so what the heck. Also, I can appreciate cilantro on this pizza now. Lisa would be so proud. The drumsticks I did in the oven using a recipe from Cooking Planit. It was super fast and easy--oven at 475, oil and some salt and pepper on the drumsticks, flip once during cooking, done after 20 minutes. And the oven was already preheated for the pizza! The frozen pizza crusts I got from TJs were another story: they didn't quite cook through. The crust was not crusty, and it was a little gummy in the middle. The toppings were just on the verge of burning, so I had to pull it out. A bit disappointed in the crusts, but I think I just have to settle for subpar pizza until I get a pizza stone. 

Pantry
smoked mozzarella

bbq sauce (from TJs)
red onions, thinly sliced
frozen pizza crusts
cilantro

Shopping List

chicken

Notes
(none)

Meal 2 - Washoku (Japanese) curry

Recipes
Bone-in drumsticks for soup
Brown rice on the stove
Such a wonderful favorite. This is my comfort food. There is nothing like a hot bowl of warm, savory curry, with a side of rice and fukujinzuke. I don't know that I'll ever have the courage to make this from scratch, because I'm so used to the boxed stuff, no matter how terrible it is for you. I loosely followed Mark Bittman's guidelines for cooking drumsticks in a soup, and they turned out great. After the curry finished, I pulled the drumsticks out, stripped the meat from the bones, discarded the bones and put the meat back in. Much as bone-in meat may remind me of my childhood (my dad was totally lazy about removing carcasses from dishes before serving them to the extent that almost every meal he served included a poi-pot: an empty bowl that would fill up with the family's discards--ie bones, cartilage, etc--throughout the meal), I've learned that I prefer to do all the work at once, and then enjoy the fruits of my labor. 

My second time making rice on the stove wasn't a huge success, but it wasn't a catastrophic failure either. It was a bit mushy and overcooked, but it wasn't soggy. I did 3 cups of rice to 4.5 cups of water (a 1 : 1.5 ratio of rice : water), soaked it for an hour, brought it to a bubble on medium heat then turned it down to a simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour. To be honest, I wasn't timing it exactly, so that was probably where I went wrong. I used my Lodge porcelain enamel cast iron that I got for my birthday last year. Love the pot but it's sooo heavy. I think next time I need to be better about timing. The water ratio was probably fine. I could probably skip the soaking (I don't usually do that anyway), and just cook for maybe 1.5 hours total. I may have left it on medium heat for too long, I wasn't paying close attention to the sounds coming from the pot because I was making curry and corn potage at the same time. 

Leftovers to use

chicken from pizza

Pantry
onions

Shopping List

carrots
potatoes

Notes
(none)

Side 1 - Corn potage

Recipes
Simple corn potage (★★☆☆☆)
Ooookay... so I've actually tried using this recipe in the past and it just doesn't work well for me. Maybe it's because I don't have chicken stock, and I use dashi instead, but dashi is not that flavorless. It's supposedly so simple, but I just can't get the same flavor using the same proportions. However, the end product turned out well after much tweaking, so I've created my own corn potage recipe for the future. 

Leftovers to use

potatoes

Pantry
creamed corn

milk
stock

Shopping List

(none)

Notes
(none)

Side 2 - Pickled red onions

Recipes
The Kitchn's pickled red onions (★★★★★)
(Update: this recipe now has it's own post!) I don't know what Kenji was smoking when he created this recipe, but it sounds crazy to me. I went with the ingredients from The Kitchn's recipe (using rice vinegar) and the the basic method that Kenji uses: Combine sugar, salt, and vinegar in small saucepan, bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, add onions, simmer for a minute or two, then turn off and let cool. Done! So easy. Looking forward to garnishing salads with these babies. 

Leftovers to use

red onions from pizza

Pantry
sugar

salt
vinegar

Shopping List

(none)

Notes
(none)

Good, simple chai

It's that time of year again. I'm craving corn potage, chai, and soup every day. The weather is crisp and cool... except, of course, when it turns 90 degrees in the middle of the week because SoCal. No matter how much the weather refuses to indulge my cold weather fantasies, I will insist on making cold weather things. Like chai.

(Don't be that person that calls it chai tea. Chai means tea, so you're calling it tea tea.)

Winter in So Cal. You can tell because no one's in the water. 

A couple years ago, I went on a chai binge. I googled recipes for hours upon hours for weeks and weeks. I tried out the chai concentrate from BGSK, some crazy recipes with 20+ ingredients, and almost almost almost brought chai to a food swap. Sadly, the perfect cup eluded me.

I've since realized that what I lacked in experience I was trying to make up for in ingredients.

This morning, I was reading Indian for Everyone (Anupy Singla), and happened upon her recipe for chai. It wasn't so much the ingredients as it was the introduction to the recipe that inspired my revelation:

As a young girl, I associated waking up on the weekends with a cup of steaming, fragrant chai. It was my job to make it for my parents, and I took my task very seriously. Now my girls make it for me. Neha, my older daughter, has been making chai since she was four and loves it with extra cardamom. It's what good chai should be--a perfect balance of spice, milk and sweetness.

When I read that her daughter had been making chai since 4, I was dumbstruck. Of course. Chai is one of those recipes that is learned through experience, not through recipes and ingredients. I've been making milky black tea only for a few years and I still haven't perfected it, and that's just tea, milk and honey.

A good cup of chai, I think, might take me my whole lifetime. So, my first long-term goal: make a good cup of chai. Since I'm still a beginner, I'm going to start with Anupy's recipe.

Good, simple chai

Ingredients
Yields 2 generous cups

10 green cardamom pods
5 whole cloves
5 whole black peppercorns
1 small cinnamon stick, lightly crushed (~3 in)*
2 in piece of fresh ginger, thinly sliced or grated (~2 tbsp grated or 1 tbsp dried ginger powder)*
1-2 fennel seeds (optional)
2 cups water
3 servings of black tea (either loose leaf or tea bags)
1/2 cup milk
1-2 tsp sugar

Grind dry spices (cardamom, cloves, peppercorn and fennel, if using) to a powder using a mortar and pestle.*

In a small pot, combine ground spices, plus cinnamon stick, ginger, water and tea. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 3 minutes.

Add milk and sugar, then boil for another 2 minutes.

Remove from heat, let sit for 1 minute. Pour into mugs using a very fine strainer.* Best when shared with a friend before breakfast.


Notes
* Put the cinnamon stick on a cutting board, and lay the flat side of a large knife over it. Hit gently but firmly with the heel of your hand until you feel the stick break.
* Fresh ginger is best, but you can use powdered if necessary. If you have a problem with fresh ginger going bad before you use it, freeze it! Peel the fresh ginger before freezing whole. For best results, cut the ginger root at each junction where it splits, so you only have straight pieces. To use, grate or slice the frozen ginger just as you would fresh. It will keep for quite a while in the freezer. 
* You could use a coffee bean grinder/small food processor/blender if you don't have a mortar and pestle, but something just feels right about using the M&P. You could also put the spices in a ziploc baggie and crush them with a rolling pin. To rid your coffee bean grinder of the smell of the spices, throw in a handful of rice afterwards and grind to a powder.
* I found the perfect strainer at an Indian grocery. It's a double lined, flexible mesh strainer. It strains out everything but the super fine sediment--the kind that's so fine, you barely notice it. If you don't have one of these, you could use a regular mesh strainer lined with a coffee filter, paper towel, cheesecloth or clean kitchen towel (that you don't mind getting tea stained). Alternately, if you lack any sort of straining implement, let the tea sit for an extra couple minutes, which will let all the spices settle to the bottom. As gently as possible, slowly tip the pot and pour the tea into mugs. 






Recipe adapted from Indian for Everyone by Anupy Singla

Corn potage (cream corn soup)

This is a classic recipe that I always have a craving for come winter. While I'm always tempted to just keep some packets on hand, I refuse to believe that this soup is difficult to make. It's basically just corn and cream, for chrissakes. Then again, the simplest recipes can be the most challenging. It's the same with writing--saying what you want to say in fewer words is always harder than using more. But I am determined to get this corn potage soup right, packets be damned.



Because my cravings only come once or twice a year, I've never bothered to create/record my own recipe. Seems like too much effort for something I rarely eat. But I'm doing it this year!

Every year, I inevitably find these two recipes from Little Japan Mama: classic corn potage and easy corn potage. Every year, I'm inevitably tempted by the easy version. Last year, I was so tempted I stocked up excessively on cans of creamed corn. So excessively that I still had a can leftover this year. Every year, I think that this is the year that the recipe will work for me. What do they say about insanity? Oh yeah, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results -_-

So I tried the easy corn potage recipe again, and without fail, it produced incredibly subpar soup lacking in flavor. It tasted like milk with half-blended corn mixed in. Which it basically was. Even after I blended like crazy with my hand blender. So, I added about another cup of frozen corn, some dashi, lots of white pepper, and decided to try out my roommate's fancy new Vitamix.

I don't know how I'm going to be able to make this soup again without the Vitamix. That thing is amazing. Whenever I've tried blending this soup in the past, it comes out chunky, no matter how long I blend it. The membranes of the corn kernels just refuuuuuse to break down. And straining it seems to remove half the volume of the soup. Not with the Vitamix! It really did make the soup silky smooth. (I feel like at this point I should be saying that they sponsored this post, but sadly, they did not, and I was not given a Vitamix for free just to write this post). Since I may not always have access to a Vitamix, any blender will probably work, but my old hand blender tends to give fairly paltry results.

After blending it, I added in some potatoes and about 1/4 cup of frozen, whole corn kernels. And more white pepper. Always more white pepper!



I had to cook the potatoes still, so that took more time. I should have just boiled them in water separately and then added them in. I did make sure to use the waxy variety, so they would hold their shape, although I realized that starchy would just mean thicker soup, and wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. So with all the lessons I learned from this year, here's what I'll do next time!

Corn potage

Ingredients
1 can creamed corn, no salt added (~14 oz)
1 can whole kernel corn (about 1 3/4 cup or 9 oz), 1/4 cup reserved
1 2/3 cup milk (the fattier the tastier, and anything from 1% to cream is fine, just don't use nonfat!)
~1/2 cup potatoes, small dice (optional; waxy like white or yukon gold is preferred, but whatever you have on hand is fine)
1 tsp white pepper, more to taste
2 tsp dashi granules or any powdered stock (use however much they recommend for 2 cups of water)

salt

Instructions
If using potatoes: in a medium pot, bring diced potatoes to a boil, then simmer until fork tender, about 10 minutes. Drain, and set aside.

In a medium pot*, add the creamed corn, whole kernel corn (minus the reserved 1/4 cup), milk, dashi/stock, white pepper and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes.*

Using a blender, blend until very, very smooth.*

Return to the pot, taste, then add salt and more white pepper if needed. Add the cooked potatoes and 1/4 cup reserved corn. Heat on medium until just beginning to bubble, then remove from heat. Serve in your favorite mug.


Notes
* Like the one you just used to boil the potatoes in; hurray for less dishes!
* The milk has a tendency to burn on the bottom, so it's best to use a nonstick pot and stir occasionally. If you're not using nonstick, then stir frequently.
* Vitamix is best, a non Vitamix is second best, and my old hand blender is worst. The final consistency is up to you--if you don't mind it chunky, then blend it until you're satisfied. But if you want a true replica of a corn potage packet, then strain out all the little bits until it's silky smooth. 

Fridgefood: Japanese-style eggs on toast

My fridge food lunch today: multi-grain sourdough toast, spread with nori tsukudani and mayo, topped with scrambled eggs + corn and furikake on top!

What made this special was the kewpie mayo and white pepper. Kewpie mayo is richer and creamier than American mayonnaise, and it uses rice vinegar instead of regular white vinegar.

I melted some butter in a pan on med-low heat and added some salt and white pepper. I find that white pepper really evokes Japanese flavors for me. I tossed in some corn from the freezer, turned the heat up, and just barely browned them. I took the pan off the heat to crack the egg in the pan, and then put it back on the heat to scramble it together with the corn. At this point, I popped some bread in the toaster. By the time the egg finished, my toast was done. I spread a thin layer of nori tsukudani on the toast, then a thin layer of kewpie, then topped with the scrambled egg and corn, then shook some furikake on top! Fridgefood at its finest.

Nori tsukudani

Kewpie Mayo

Mexican Wedding Cookies

I'm going to a birthday/white elephant/Christmas-y party this weekend, and I thought it'd be a great excuse to try out another cookie recipe! I love love love these not-too-sweet cookies that have a great crunchy exterior but then they just totally melt in your mouth. I always knew them as Mexican Wedding Cookies, but some google searching revealed that they are known by quite a few names: Polvorones, Russian Teacakes or Snowballs. Turns out in Mexico, they're not even called Mexican Wedding Cookies (they're called polvorones)! They're also not.. Russian. Leave it to the US to attach random, unrelated ethnicities to a food item.

I found quite a few recipes with some slight variations among them. I'm all for simple and straightforward, so I did what I'm wont to: mixing and matching, picking and choosing. I went with the basic proportions found in smittenkitchen's recipe, which was originally from epicurious which was originally from bon appetit! Based on some reading of other recipes I did, I wanted to make these the easy, one-bowl way. Forget creaming the butter, fuhgeddabout clarifying it first. Being a highly inexperienced baker, I can't tell you what the difference is going to be between doing those things or not, but there were recipes that didn't call for those time-consuming, electric-mixer-needing things. So I went with those.

I wanted to do a test run of these first, so I quartered a batch. Because the ratios are so beautifully even, and it doesn't use any fussy ingredients like baking powder/soda, this is an extremely easy recipe to scale.

If your nuts aren't already toasted, toast them over med-low heat in a pan on the stove. Let them cool, then grind them up either in a coffee grinder, blender, or by putting them in a ziploc baggie and crushing a rolling pin over them. You want them pretty fine and dusty, but be careful not to make it into nut butter if you're using an electric grinder. These are perfectly ground:

Next, you'll whisk together the nuts, powdered sugar and salt. Once that's well blended, you'll work the vanilla and cold cubes of butter into the dough with your hands. This is my favorite part! I love squishing butter in between my fingers. It reminds me of playing with playdoh as a kid. While it's not totally essential that the butter stays cold, it'll take less time to chill if you're working with already cold butter, especially since the warmth of your hands will melt it a bit. Once the butter's well incorporated, start adding the flour gradually (about a 1/2 cup or so at a time), working it in with your hands.

Pretty much the only fussy thing about this recipe is that you have to chill the dough before you bake it. This is absolutely essential, unless you want your cookies to turn out like this sad one:

[Pati's Mexican Table]

So if you're in a hurry, divide the dough into half or quarters, then flatten it out into discs. Wrap it in plastic wrap and stick in the freezer for 5-10 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of your discs. If you've got time to spare (or a good book to read), just scrape the dough into a ball in the bowl, wrap it closely with plastic wrap, and pop it in the fridge for about an hour.

Once the dough is chilled, scoop 2 tsp sized balls onto a heavy baking sheet lined with parchment. While the last oatmeal cookies I tried spread like crazy, these don't (shouldn't if you chilled them sufficiently!) spread much, so a 1/2 inch of space in between them is fine. Try to handle the dough as little as possible, so it stays cold. I don't have a fancy baking sheet (yet?), so I just added an extra baking sheet underneath the ones the cookies were on. If you have especially thin baking sheets (and you know your oven temperature is accurate), your baked goods are apt to burn on the bottom before the tops are done. Double panning solves this problem! You may need to do this in two batches, so keep the extra dough in the fridge while the first batch is baking.

After 18 minutes (or 21 if you double panned), check them. The bottoms should be golden brown on the bottom and lightly browned on top. I really had to resist keeping them in longer, since I also love love love super browned cookies. Take them out to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then dust the still-warm cookies with powdered sugar using a sieve (or a powdered sugar duster if you're fancy like that). A lot of the recipes I saw called for rolling and shaking the cookies around in a pie tin filled with powdered sugar, but I had zero success with that. The warmth of the cookies melted the sugar, just leaving them with an unappetizing gray, patchy glaze. Dusting them on top gets plenty of sugar onto the cookie and is much cleaner, too.

According to some recipes, they're only good for a couple days in the fridge, but I bet these'll keep for a good couple weeks (uhh.. if they last that long). They're already crunchy and crumbly, so there's not much that drying out can do to them, I bet. IF I have any left, I'll update you in a couple weeks!

Enjoy the absolutely heavenly smell that will fill your kitchen while these bake, and try to resist eating these all yourself.

Mexican Wedding Cookies / Polvorones / Russian Teacakes / Snowballs

Ingredients
Makes about 4 dozen

2 sticks butter, softened or melted (not hot) (225g / 1 cup)
2 cups all-purpose flour (250g)
1 cup toasted pecans (or walnuts, skinless almonds, skinless hazelnuts) (110g)
1/2 cup powdered sugar, plus more for dusting (60g)
2 tsp vanilla extract (10 ml)
pinch of salt (less than 1/8 tsp)

Instructions
If your nuts aren't already toasted, toast them. Spread them on a baking sheet and let cool. If using a blender, food processor, or other electrical grinder, add 1 cup of flour* to the nuts and grind using short, quick pulses. Or put them in a ziploc baggie without the flour and run a rolling pin over them.

In a large bowl or food processor, whisk together the ground nuts, 1/2 cup powdered sugar and salt until well blended.

Add the vanilla and butter and work them into the mixture. Add the flour gradually, working it into the dough as you add.

If you're pressed for time, divide the dough into discs, wrap in plastic wrap and chill about 5-10 minutes in the freezer. If you're not in a hurry, scrape the dough into a ball, cover closely with plastic wrap and chill for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Once the dough is chilled, work quickly* to scoop 2 tsp sized balls with 1/2 inch spacing onto a heavy baking sheet lined with parchment. If doing in batches, keep the extra dough in the fridge while first batch is baking.

Pop them in the oven for about 18-21 minutes, until bottoms are golden brown and tops are just barely browned. Take them out to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then dust the tops of the still-warm cookies with powdered sugar using a sieve or sifter. Remove to a rack and let cool completely.

Notes
*When grinding nuts using an electric grinder, the heat and the friction causes them to release their oils more quickly, which can turn your nut flour into nut butter if you're not careful. Adding a cup of flour to the nuts absorbs the oil as you grind, giving you more room for error or allowing you to grind them finer.
*If the scooping ends up taking too long, stick the entire sheet with the cookie dough scoops into the fridge or freezer for 5-10 minutes before baking.

Brown is beautiful

While the vegetarian chili I made tonight wasn't anything special, I made the best tofu "ground beef" I've ever made. To be fair... this was also my first attempt at tofu ground beef. But I was shocked at how well it turned out, especially since I basically just used the first recipe I found on the interwebz. In the future, I think pre-freezing the tofu could really make a difference, though it seems a bit space-intensive to keep a block of frozen tofu in the freezer just for this purpose.

I used this recipe from Glow Kitchen as my starting inspiration, but I didn't have enough soy sauce. Rummaging through Jim's fridge, I found what I assumed to be another steak-sauce imitation. Boy was I wrong.



I opened the cap and took a sniff, then took a taste, then another taste. I was impressed. It (thankfully) lacked that weird taste of worcestershire sauce that always put me off to it, with a pleasing punch of umami and the just right balance of sweet, savory and vinegar-y.

I also skipped the nut butter in the original recipe, because measuring nut butter is such a pita. I upped the chili powder (because I had like 2 tsp left, so why not), and used our broken-toum-cum-garlic-oil in place of the garlic and oil.

After mixing up the sauce and marinating the tofu (just because I had other things to do, not because it necessarily needed it), I used a hot stainless steel pan with oil to cook up half the batch. I used a generous glug of oil, which the tofu ended up soaking up. It kept it from sticking to the bottom, but I think it turned it unnecessarily greasy. The other half of the batch I microwaved for 5 minutes, since I remembered reading about this technique in another cookpad recipe. Apparently it's supposed to dry out the tofu a bit more, which gives it a meatier, chewier texture. I don't know how much it helped, to be honest. Which is why I really want to try giving the frozen tofu method that I saw on norecipes.com a try.

To be fair, the tofu turned out great, even if a bit greasy. But once it was mixed into the chili you could barely notice. So if I did it again, here's what I would do:

Ingredients
1 block of tofu (16 oz)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce*
2-4 tbsp Country Bob's freaking-amazing All Purpose Sauce*
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp garlic oil (from your failed attempt at toum; or 1 tsp garlic powder and 1 tsp oil)
1/2 tsp black pepper

*If you have neither, you could substitute tomato paste or ketchup (no more than 2 tbsp total), anchovies/anchovy paste, marmite, fish sauce, or basically anything else that qualifies as an umami bomb. More soy sauce if you're absolutely desperate. But adding an even amount of each is best in order to ensure that no one flavor will overwhelmingly stand out. Or, if you're using it in a specific type of dish/cuisine, you could up the flavor that matches the cuisine.

Freeze the block of tofu in it's packaging for at least 24 hours. When you're ready to use it, defrost in a bowl of water (like you would meat), or leave it in the fridge the night before. Open the package, drain, and gently squeeze. You could probably even defrost it in the microwave if you're impatient, since that shouldn't have an adverse effect on the texture (we just froze it, for chrissakes).

Now, at this point, Marc recommends rehydrating the tofu and rinsing it to get rid of the soy flavor. Since we're going to be marinating, you won't be able to taste the soy flavor (if you do have a problem with, which I don't), and we're also going to be adding some liquid back in. So let's skip that. Set the block of tofu aside for now.

In a large bowl, thoroughly mix all the other ingredients. Crumble the tofu with your hands into the bowl, then thoroughly mix until the tofu is well coated.

Heat up a pan that is NOT non-stick. Stainless steel, cast iron, whatever. I can't guarantee results in non-stick pan. Add about a tablespoon of oil with a high smoke point (like grapeseed). Heat on med-hi until shimmering. Add about half of the tofu, or as much as you can without crowding the pan. This next part takes awhile, so just be patient. Stir fry the tofu, scraping from the bottom as necessary (using a wooden/plastic utensil), and turning down the heat if it starts to burn. Keep going until the tofu turns into beautiful, brown, crispy crumbles. It will happen, I promise. Just be patient and don't burn it.

When the first batch is finished, repeat with the second batch.

I would not recommend letting the tofu sit in any sort of liquid after you've done this. My guess is that would rehydrate the tofu and it would lose it's crispy-meatiness. For the chili I made, I added it a generous amount on top like a garnish. It didn't get soggy during the course of the meal, but if it were to sit overnight in the chili in the fridge, it probably would.

If you're serving with chili, top with a dollop of greek-yogurt-sour-cream (1 tsp white vinegar to 1/3 cup greek yogurt--because I always have greek yogurt in my fridge but never sour cream!).

Oatmeal Cookie Cravings

Every time I try to bake sweets, I always end up with something fairly inedible. I have a tendency to reduce the sugar by too much, producing a pretty disgusting result. I've decided that I need to start by baking by the book, and then once I've learned the ropes (much like I've done with cooking), then I can start breaking the rules. I need to get familiar with how much sugar produces what level of sweetness. Right now, I just see a cup of sugar and I'm like WHAAAT SO MUCH SUGAR.

Most recently, I tried making a batch of oatmeal cookies, reduced the sugar by 3/4, took one bite, and gave the rest to James. Seriously, he'll eat anything. It's great having a food-black-hole when you're going through a food experimentation phase. He dipped them in rice milk and pronounced them edible. "Not bad," he said.

So that was a failed scratch for my oatmeal cookie itch. I'm trying again with this oatmeal cookie recipe from smitten kitchen, with NO CHANGES. Rarely do I fully commit to a recipe. I almost used whole wheat flour instead of regular but I resisted! So proud of myself. I did have to make some practical substitutions, swapping white sugar for brown and multi-grain oats for regular, since I just didn't have that stuff on hand. She also doesn't mention whether she used salted or unsalted butter. I happened to only have salted on hand (and by me I mean my roommate--I was plain out from cooking Thanksgiving dinner at my place), so I reduced the salt down to a pinch. They did turn out slightly salty, so definitely go with unsalted butter and only the 1/4 tsp of salt that it calls for.

I did have a slight softened-butter-snafu. The recipe called for softened butter, and of course, mine was fridge-solid. I put a stick in the microwave for thirty seconds, and half of it melted promptly. I tried mixing it together, hoping the other half would still be cold enough, but no dice. I stuck it in a (fresh) bowl and put it in the freezer, hoping it would cool off by the time I had everything else ready. Just five minutes later, I had a bowl of perfectly softened butter that was not going to pre-cook the eggs I was about to cream them in! Amazing. Mistakes in my kitchen rarely work out that way.

Anyway, I went with the modification she mentions in the description, "no nuts, 1/2 cup of raisins and 3/4 cup chocolate chips... and drop the sugar down to a heaped 1/2 cup." I skipped putting the batter in the fridge, because I actually prefer my cookies thin, mostly crunchy and golden brown on top.

Oh boy did those babies spread. I put 16 large scoops onto a baking sheet because I was too lazy to get out more parchment and another baking sheet just for 4 cookies. They turned into pull-apart-oatmeal-cookies, but no less delicious. They are sweet, for sure, but not as sweet as their original Quaker Oats recipe. With all those chocolate chips, I think next time I might try reducing the sugar to 1/3 cup (or 1/4 if I'm feeling feisty).

All that being said, I think this recipe is a great candidate to make again with less sugar.

Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 stick unsalted butter, softened (1/2 cup, 4 ounces, or 115g)
1/2 cup sugar, packed (125g)
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (95g)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (120g)
1/2 cup raisins (80g)


In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth.

In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture.

Stir in the oats, raisins and walnuts, if using them.

At this point you can either chill the dough for a bit in the fridge and then scoop it, or scoop the cookies onto a sheet and then chill the whole tray before baking them. You could also bake them right away, if you’re impatient, but I do find that they end up slighly less thick. Either way, heat oven to 350°F (175°C) before you scoop the cookies, so that it’s fully heated when you’re ready to put them in.

The cookies should be two inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake them for 10 to 12 minutes (your baking time will vary, depending on your oven and how cold the cookies were going in), taking them out when golden at the edges but still a little undercooked-looking on top. Let them sit on the hot baking sheet for five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool.

Original oatmeal cookie recipe from smitten kitchen

Weekly Meal Planning: A Well Stocked Pantry

I'm trying to be more careful about how much I spend on groceries. Part of my problem is that I love grocery shopping, so the more I buy, the more time I get to spend shopping! It's great. But not great for my bank account, especially since I've been doing the whole independent IT contractor thing recently. Although I am happy to report that I was recently accepted as a HelloTech "Hero"! It's basically like Uber for tech support. While the pay is about half of what I make on my own, I'm hoping it will provide some more steady supplementary income. Maybe I'll at least be breaking even on my expenses instead of living off my savings! Wouldn't that be great.

So part of being careful about my grocery shopping is meal planning. I'm going to plan 3-4 meals for the week. I really don't eat that much, and a recipe usually makes way more than what I can eat in one sitting.

Hopefully this will keep my grocery bill down, eliminate waste, use more (all) of the ingredients I buy, and provide some tasty meals during the week! Consequently, I think I also get a nice little ego boost every time I look at most recipes: I'm like, pssh... 3/4 of this recipe are pantry ingredients for meeeee! I take some serious pride in having such a well-stocked pantry. That's probably one area of my life where I would have a really hard time going minimalist. I could easily go minimalist with clothes, furniture, cosmetics (I barely use any as it is) and pretty much anything else, but don't you dare try to pare down my pantry.

Here's my first meal plan for this week. I think one of the keys of planning successful meals around leftovers is using different flavors from meal to meal. My first meal centers around Mexican flavors, the second is Indian and the third is Chinese. I'm using the same base ingredient (pan seared tilapia), but avoiding repetition by varying the cuisine.

Some of the recipes call for too many servings, so I'm using this recipe servings converter to scale them down.

Meal 1 - Fish tacos with pico de gallo and chipotle cream sauce

Recipes
Pan seared tilapia (★★★★★)
Yum! I don't think something could taste bad if it has chipotle crema on it. Also, first time ever pan searing fish... success! Kenji was right, it really is foolproof. I grew up eating tacos so often that I didn't really use a recipe besides for the fish. I did forget to add the corn (I love adding corn to everything. And lime. Everything tastes better with more lime), but I think that ended up being for the better. 

Pantry

2-4 frozen tilapia fillets 

eggs 

flour 

panko breadcrumbs  

tortillas 

chipotles in adobo sauce

greek yogurt 

white vinegar 

corn 

tomatoes 

onions  

Shopping List
1 bunch of cilantro

1 head of cabbage 

2 limes 

1 box jalapenos (from TJs)/or just 1 jalapeno if you can buy singles 

Notes
1. Remove fishy taste from fish by marinating in cow's milk for no more than 20 minutes.
2. Pan sear all fillets, use 1-2 for the tacos, save leftovers for next meals.
3. Pico de gallo: mix equal parts chopped tomatoes and chopped onions; minced cilantro (to taste), minced jalapeno (to taste), juice from 1/2 of a lime and salt
4. Make a sour cream substitute for the chipotle crema by mixing 1 tsp vinegar : 1/3 cup greek yogurt
5. Make a chipotle crema to drizzle on top of tacos by mixing 1 tsp vinegar, 1/3 cup greek yogurt, 1 tsp chipotles in adobo and juice from 1/2 of a lime.
6. Assemble tacos with shredded cabbage, corn, pico de gallo (drain well before adding), fish and chipotle crema. Garnish with slices of lime.

Leftovers from this meal
1-2 pan seared tilapia fillets
5-7 jalapenos
cilantro
1/2 of an onion
cabbage

Meal 2 - Yogurt ginger curry

Recipes

Yogurt ginger curry (★☆☆☆☆)
I was so disappointed with this recipe. When I tasted the finished curry sauce, it tasted like watery yogurt. I did use powdered ginger in place of fresh, but I also added extra dried minced garlic. To fix the curry, I  fried up half an onion in ghee and a heaping tablespoon of curry powder, then added it into the curry sauce. I also added 1 tbsp of tomato paste, 1 tsp of soy sauce, 1/4 tsp of dashi granules (for some umami kick, but not enough where you could taste it specifically), and 5-6 curry leaves. It was also extremely thin, so I thickened it with cornstarch. After improvising for a good 45 minutes, I felt that it was finally passable. I garnished with chopped cilantro and a heavy squeeze of lime--the lime really helped. Instead of using the fish fillets, I used TJ's masala burgers and triangles of whole wheat pita bread. What I put on the table ended up being not bad, but what this recipe initially produced was incredibly disappointing. After all my fiddling, I'd give the final product a solid 3 stars.

Leftovers to use
1-2 pan seared tilapia fillets or masala burgers
cilantro

Pantry
yogurt
cumin seeds
asafoetida (sub with garlic or onions if unavailable)
fresh ginger
turmeric
coriander
paprika
cayenne
rice or flatbread

Shopping List
(none)

Notes
1. Reheat fish on wire rack on baking sheet, covered with foil at 275° until they reach 125-130 internal temp (~15 minutes for 1" thick fillets)

Leftovers from this meal
3/4 cup curry sauce

Meal 3 - Black bean stir fry

Recipes
Tilapia with scallions and black bean sauce (★★★★★)
This was delicious! I mostly used the recipe for the sauce, since I already pan seared the tilapia. But I couldn't help but tinker with the sauce, as I'm wont to do. Mind you, this was before I even tasted it. But in my experience, just using the black bean sauce can be fairly overwhelming, so I added some stuff to balance it out. I added 1 tbsp sake, 1 tbsp mirin, 1/2 tsp chile garlic sauce, 1 tsp garlic paste and 1 tsp ginger paste. I stir fried carrots and mushrooms in sesame oil with some salt and pepper (white and black), then added a few pinches of chinese five spice. When the mushrooms and carrots were just about done, I threw in some shredded cabbage and put the fish in the oven to reheat it. When the vegetables were cooked, I turned the heat down (so the sauce wouldn't burn) and poured in about 2/3 of the sauce. I put it back on the heat and let it reduce down just a little. I filled a bowl with brown rice, broke up the tilapia into chunks, then scooped the saucy veggies over it. The neutral flavor but seasoned flavor of the fish balanced the strength of sauce, and the brown rice provided a warm, nutty background for it all. Overall, an excellent dish. 

Leftovers to use
cabbage

Pantry
black bean garlic sauce
oyster sauce
soy sauce
sesame oil
rice vinegar
chile sauce (e.g. sriracha)
carrots, corn, water chestnuts or other good stir fry veggies

Shopping List
1 box of mushrooms

Notes
1. Omit fillets if none left
2. Stir fry mushrooms, leftover cabbage and any other stir fry veggies in sauce
3. Serve with tilapia and rice, top with a fried egg for something heartier

Leftovers from this meal
stir fried veggies
1 tilapia fillet

Side 1 - Mason jar farro salad

Recipes

Farro salad (☆☆☆☆☆)
My barley had gone bad! It was the quick-cooking kind from TJs, so I imagine it expires more quickly than the raw kind. So I skipped this and made the coleslaw instead. 

Leftovers to use

cabbage

Pantry

green apple 

mayo 

milk

white wine vinegar

honey

mustard

poppy seeds

farro/barley

dried cranberries

nuts

Shopping List

(none) 

Notes

1. Skip if no cabbage leftover. 

Side 2 - Kenji's creamy coleslaw

Recipes

Creamy coleslaw (★★★★☆)

(Let's be real--this is a Kenji recipe, so I might as well just give it 5 stars right away. If it's anything less than 5, then I screwed up.) 
Update: Soooo... as much as I love Kenji and his recipes, this turned out just a little too dry. Granted, I did scale it down by a factor of something ridiculous like 16 because I had so little cabbage to work with, so the dryness may have happened in translation. Not to worry, because a little extra mayo made it perfect. The flavor was great, and even James ate quite a bit. It was perfect with the chili we (I) made! I think this is probably my new go-to coleslaw recipe. 

Leftovers to use

cabbage 

Pantry

carrots 

fresh parsley (from herb garden)

white sugar

kosher salt

mayo

apple cider vinegar

dijon mustard

sugar 

Shopping List

(none)

Notes

(none)

Side 3 - Pickled jalapenos

Recipes

Pickled jalapenos (★★★★★)
Good, but spicy! I'm such a wimp when it comes to spicy. I did not add any additional spiciness to this recipe, but I still find them quite hot. They actually tasted pretty good as a garnish to the curry though. My friend--who has a much greater spice tolerance than I do--reported that they were extremely tasty, and both of my sisters love this recipe, so I'm going give it five stars on the merit of their judgment. It's not the recipe's fault I can't do spicy. But I am looking forward to putting these into cornbread muffins with a dollop of cream cheese and eating them with chili! 

Leftovers to use

5-7 jalapenos 

Pantry

white balsamic vinegar (for best flavor; champagne works well too)

sugar

salt

fresh garlic

Shopping List

(none)

Notes

1. Skip if no jalapenos leftover.