domesticity in the south

Oh. Hi. I moved to Georgia. Here are a couple of recipes from my brief stint as a housefiance.

Fruited Chicken Curry

2 T. oil or ghee (I used olive but it's not traditional for Indian flavors)
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 onion, chopped
2 T. grated ginger
1 garlic clove, minced
1 T. cumin
1-3 T. curry powder (to taste)
2 T. flour
2 c. broth, stock, or water
1 lb cooked chicken (if starting with raw, brown seasoned chicken in oil in the pan before beginning)
1/3 c. dried apples, chopped fine
1/4 c. raisins
cilantro
almonds
coconut
cooked basmati rice

In a large, deep frying pan, saute carrots and onions in oil until onions begin to soften. Add ginger, garlic, cumin, curry, and flour and stir for three minutes. Add broth, cooked chicken, apples, and raisins and stir until well combined. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. If too thick, add more broth. Season with salt and pepper and adjust curry if necessary. Serve over basmati rice and garnish as desired with chopped cilantro and toasted chopped almonds and coconut.

For extra credit, mix the leftover cilantro, almonds, and coconut with MOAR CURRY, more ginger, and some minced onion, then stir into about a cup of yogurt and use as a dressing for chicken salad.


Peach Pancakes
Based on Joy's recipe for Pancakes or Griddle Cakes

1 1/2 c. ap flour
3 T. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. plain yogurt
3/4 c. milk
3 T. melted butter
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. diced frozen peaches

In a large bowl, whisk together dry ingredients. In a separate, smaller bowl, beat yogurt, milk, butter, eggs, and vanilla. Swiftly mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients, just until moistened, ignoring lumps. Fold in peaches and let batter rest while preheating electric griddle to 350 degrees or so. Make one test pancake and adjust batter and griddle as necessary. Keep finished pancakes in toaster oven, stacked on plate with paper towels in between.

If you have to wake your insomniac roommate up before noon on a Sunday, this is a pretty good way to do so. Best served with warmed maple syrup--the real stuff, dammit--and coffee (if, unlike me, you remembered to buy coffee filters).

(Slightly) Grownup No Bakes

Comfort food continues to be a trend in restaurants, though in these leaner times I'm surprised that they haven't swung farther away from things that you really can make yourself. My middle-of-the-road deli/bakery employer has a "truffled mac and cheese" that consists of a simple 4-(non-fancy)-cheese sauce enriched by a very, very small amount of white truffle oil, and it is delicious, for the record. Just goes to show you how simple it is to reproduce restaurant taste with a few secret ingredients, but that's for another post.

One of my favorite nostalgic recipes is the Chocolate Oatmeal No-Bake Cookie, which is really more of a candy. I love that it is a confection I can make without a candy thermometer, since candymaking gives me fits. The original recipe calls for margarine and jif-style creamy peanut butter, which contains, in addition to peanuts: sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, fully hydrogenated vegetable oil (read: bad fat), salt, and mono- and diglycerides. This is a good list of stuff I try to avoid. So! What to do every 28 days or so when the chocolate craving comes around? Revamp the recipe with whole foods and a kick of spice, of course.

The original is here, for purists. My revamp doesn't replicate the taste or texture precisely; my version takes longer to set up and is a bit grainy but I suspect that's what comes of using real dairy, so that's ok with me. Advice from folks with more pastry experience would be much appreciated!

Grown-Up Chocolate No Bakes
2 c. sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 c. unsalted butter
1/2 c. milk (any fat content, I use skim)
1/4 tsp. chili powder
1/8 tsp. salt
1/3 c. smoothly ground 100% almond butter (or sub peanut butter)
2 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 c. whole rolled oatmeal (whiz the oats in a blender if you like the texture of using instant oats)

In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, chili powder, salt, and cocoa powder, then add butter and milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a rolling boil. Continue to boil and stir one minute. Turn heat to low and stir in almond butter. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Fold in oats and drop by heaping teaspoons onto wax paper or foil; cool completely and store (ha!) in an airtight container.

Pretty things

I have been trying to hone my plating and presentation skills. I can't share the results with you as my camera is missing (hence the lack of updates, sigh) but I've made some lovely food this weekend:

Beer and Beef Stew, based on Mark Bittman's recipe, served with homemade half-whole-wheat parmesan and peppercorn biscuits and maple roasted brussels sprouts

PPK's Carrot Bisque, with a grilled cheese made with local bread, local raw gouda from the $3 and under bin in the Bfoods cheese section, chard, and my friend Mari's Fruit of the Doomed (pomegranate-habanero hot sauce).

YUM. I'm nervous about running my first big meeting with the whole back-of-house crew tonight. I am not used to managing people so I hope everything goes well. Fingers crossed.

I am trying to post something every day, so forgive me if things get really mundane.

I didn't cook much today, just an over-easy egg on wheat toast and orange-grapefruit juice for breakfast. My mom and stepdad came down and took my (neighbor and nursing student) sister and I to the ever-tasty Lennie's for lunch, where I ate four buffalo wings (my kryptonite) and a deliciously giant bowl of spinach, cooked chopped beets, candied pecans, and goat cheese. Then we went to Bloomingfoods East and I was allowed to go absolutely nuts thanks to my darling mother who is concerned about us starving. Here is what I acquired:

celery
chard
garlic
ginger
brussels sprouts
a fuckton of carrots

and from the bulk section:
SO MUCH brown rice
7-grain hot cereal blend
fair-trade sugar
unbleached flour
mung beans for sprouting (a new experiment! will report soon)

I already had a fairly well-stocked pantry at home and am planning on making Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Curried Carrot Bisque from Vegan with a Vengeance* before I go to bed so that I have something reasonably healthy to nom on after work tomorrow. I made a Curried Carrot soup at work last week but I believe it was a bit too spicy for most people's tastes (we only had some bland-ass and really old curry powder in our kitchen and I overcompensated a bit with cayenne). I will be interested to see how it sold over the weekend and whether our manager thinks we should price it out and add it to our regular soup menu.

I declared a potluck at my house on Tuesday to force myself to clean a bit and get creative again, and will try to *gasp* remember to take pictures. I'm definitely making madeleines for dessert but haven't decided yet about the entree, so stay tuned...

* a great and unexpected holiday gift from my dad, who can sometimes be a bit of a "cool dad" and said, upon my opening it, "I know that you eat meat, but don't you have some deviant friends who don't?" Thanks, Dad.

Dinner: an improvement

For me, one of the drawbacks of working in a restaurant is that, just like when I cook at home, I graze and taste and nibble almost the whole time that I'm there. (Don't worry, I use tasting spoons and gloves and wash my hands and all that jazz.) This means that when I come home from work, I have eaten some vast but unknowable amount of calories from raw vegetables, cream cheeses, sauces, breads, and empty sweet things, accompanied by coffee and spread out over an 8- or 9-hour period. Predictably, if I feel hungry again it is not until several hours later, often after I have woken up from a truly epic nap. I am trying to replace these habits with better ones, but for now my body no longer recognizes normal mealtimes, so at 4 pm on my day off I started working on dinner: marinated seared tempeh (method stolen from Ham Pie Sandwiches) stir-fried with frozen broccoli, over brown rice. It's not perfect, but it's an improvement, and I feel good, like I have enough energy to clean the house a bit before settling down with a grapefruit, Hulu and my mom's way-overdue Christmas gift.

I could eat tempeh for every meal, incidentally, and have to make it super-spicy with help from my favorite Chili Garlic Sauce so that I will have leftovers. It is responsible for both my recent spate of at-home vegetarianism and my rapidly-improving relationship with soy, though you will still be hard-pressed to find me replacing cow's dairy with soy in my quotidian cereal-and-coffee life.

And what brings you here?

I'm hoping to rededicate myself in 2009 to making and eating more whole and healthful foods. Thanks in part to my new job in the food service industry (more on that later), I have been resorting often of late to fast food and grazing at my (bakery and deli, i.e. not very good for you) job, which isn't like me at all, or at least hasn't been for the past few years. I had what I believe is known colloquially as an "a-ha moment" when my S.O. and I were getting into my car for a trip to Indianapolis and he was horrified to find a Wendy's bag, evidence of my shameful response to the sweet siren song of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich. Busted.

The thing about Spicy Chicken Sandwiches is that they are so nutritionally void that for me, they do not even count as a meal, so when I get one, it happens surreptitiously and late at night, and when I wake up the next day I feel shockingly as though I ate 1500 milligrams of sodium as a healthy part of dinner #2.

So eff you, Spicy Chicken Sandwich. I can and will eat food that is much more delicious and much better for me and the planet than you this year. Even if it means having to clean my kitchen as well as my job's.