food, food and more food

I’ve made several yummy things I wanted to share, but wasn’t really in the mood for writing until this evening. So, here’s a big long post with several yummy things. sadly there are no pictures. I got pissed off at my laptop and didn’t bother to take photos I wouldn’t be able to retrieve (although really, it would’ve been possible to get the pics… just… inconvenient).

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So one night, pete convinced me to try making gnocchi. But he wanted yam gnocchi. :) I was craving mushrooms and peppers, so i got some of those too, and asparagus.
I went out and bought groceries, then came back and put 2 potatoes and 2 yams (washed and poked with a fork) into the oven. Then went back out because i’d forgottten to buy asparagus :P when i got back again i chopped some peppers and got the other gnocchi ingredients prepped. I took out the potatoes and yams… And then wondered, how do i peel the cooked potatoes? Later on we googled and found that holding them in a teatowel and using a peeler is best, but at the time i used a fork to cut them open like baked potatoes, then gingerly peeled off the skin in as big chunks as i could manage – split open skin side up i could pull the skin away without too much burning :)

I did the potatoes and yams as separate batches. The potatoes went fairly well, although i didn’t really understand how to shape them. I also didn’t notice i was dehydrated and tired until i suddenly really needed to sit down :P so then pete helped make some while i looked up video instructions online (which it seems I forgot to bookmark).

Next came the yams. They had leaked delicious syrup onto the baking tray, and peeled and mashed easily (yay cooling). They weren’t starchy like potatoes, though… When i added them to the flour mix, it didn’t go quite right. It was all gooey and mushy and wanted to stick to everything. Pete added more flour… Then more. And more. I left him to work on that while i fried up the peppers and mushrooms and put on a big pot of water for the gnocchi. I also heated up the pasta sauce and added some soy milk to it. When pete had somehow produced gnocchi from the crazy yam goop, we started putting them in the boiling water. As they rose to the top, pete scooped them out with a sieve, while i kept an eye on the other stuff and cooked some asparagus. I love how easy asparagus is if you have a double boiler- just get a little water boiling in the pot, rinse and snap off the ends of the asparagus, put them in the steaming thingy, then put that on when the water’s boiling and in only two minutes they’re bright green and done. A little oil/butter and salt and they’re delicious.

The yam gnocchi, while it did come out as gnocchi, didn’t taste much of yam. It was a fun experiement, but next time i’d rather just have potato gnocchi and mashed yams. :)

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I was going to a friend’s party a while ago, and needed to bring something to bbq. I asked a couple of vegetarian friends for suggestions and got lots of yummy ideas – asparagus, yam, tofurkey beer sausage, kebabs… But one that i tried and really loved was the portobello mushrooms.
I actually had a portobello burger in boston, too – jefferai was nice enough to get me veggie food of my choice when he was picking up some of the gsoc students – but we tried teriyaki sauce that time and it turned out… Not bad, but not memorable either. This time i found the secret to making them awesome ;) i put some soy sauce (kikkoman’s tamari, iirc) and water in a bowl (i’d guess it was 3:1 water:soy, maybe 2:1), and added plenty of grated ginger and garlic (the kind of grater with small holes, not the regular sort). Mostly i grated them because i was in too much of a hurry to chop, but it worked out well. :) I took the stems off my two mushrooms, put the caps in a ziploc bag, and poured the soy marinade over them. Afetr sealing the bag i put it in a box just in case – and that was good, because it did leak a tiny bit.

I shoved my food in the fridge at the party, and a few hours later i took the mushrooms out and put them on the bbq. I also brought some blue cheese to go on top. :) I found the best method was to put the mushroom upside-down on the bbq, pour a bit more of the marinade into the cup, then add thin slices of cheese right away. It cooks fairly fast – really you just need it to get hot and soften the cheese.
I’d forgotten to bring hamburger buns, but whatever, they were awesome on their own. :) And i was too busy licking the plate to care about the dumb anti-vegetarian comments. :P

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Next up was mushroom soup. I’ve made that several times before; I use this recipe but with half the paprika or less. I skip the lemon juice and red wine, too, because very few people are actually around at dinnertime.
This time i did a triple recipe, although i didn’t triple everything… I decided four onions was quite enough :P i also used just a tablespoon and a bit of paprika (i have two one-tbsp measures but no half-tbsp; aren’t roomies great?) And i’m sure i added far more dill than nescessary – how do you measure fresh herbs?
For mushrooms, i used two bags of regular (button?) mushrooms, one pack of shitake, some button and shitake mushrooms i found in the fridge, a pack of oyster mushrooms, and two packs of enoki. I’m afraid I can’t give more accurate measurements; I forgot to save the receipt. The enoki i put in just a few minutes before the end, and tthis time i chopped them in half too, so they’d be a bit less stringy. :)
Getting three cups of soymilk into the roux wasn’t going to happen with the little pan I used (I needed something I could hold up high with one hand while full), so i added the third cup of soymilk (plus a bit) straight to the soup. Btw, there’s a different recipe with a good explantion of how to make a roux – it helped me a lot. :)
The soup turned out great, and there were loads of leftovers. :) Pete just finished the last of it today.

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This sunday i was quite busy, so i wanted something easy to cook. I chopped up some peppers and half a red onion (it was a humongous onion), peeled a bulb of garlic (and cut some of the bigger cloves in half so there were more pieces), added some seasoning and roasted them. I hadn’t bought any herbs, but we had a bunch of leftovers wilting, so i used a bunch of dill, dried basil, salt&pepper, and some “italian” seasoning. I almost forgot the olive oil, because the herbs were happily sticking anyways.
I put those in the oven, but i put them on the top rack on broil (at 425, the usual temperature) and i’d cut fairly small strips, so instead of needing 40 minutes they were smoking after 15 – it came up out of the stove :P I kinda wanted them crisp anyways but not so fast… I turned them over and considered cooking the other side, but instead i turned off the oven and left them in there to keep warm.

While the peppers had been quietly burning, i’d been improvising a dressing for the pasta. It was vaguely inspired by pesto. I used up the wilting parsley and mint, added lots of dried oregano and basil, chopped up some walnuts and tossed in a bit of nutritional yeast.

After rescuing the peppers I put water on for the pasta, rinsed and snapped the ends off the asparagus, put the pasta (linguini) into the boiling water, and put on some water for the asparagus… When i put the asparagus on I kept checking on it and letting the steam out, so it took a bit longer, but soon everything was ready. I pushed the veggies over to make space on their tray, laid the asparagus out there, drizzled flax oil over it and added a little salt. I drained the pasta and put it back in the pot with flax oil and the herbs. Mixing that into the pasta was a little harder than i expected, but once i’d done that, dinner was ready. :) And all in just an hour and a half – including time spent washing some dishes beforehand :P

bean salad FTW; dell laptops FTL

another yummy dinner. :)

I actually woke up this morning from a dream about various things I could cook for dinner. lots of ideas there – lentils, corn, gnocci, and something I’ve forgotten… but somewhere there was also the idea of beans, competing with my craving for salad – and so I decided to try making bean salad. :)

I also made regular salad and corn on the cob, but those are both fairly simple. bean salad I’d never made before. in fact, I’d never even heard of it until a month or two ago when I was in safeway looking for instant dinner and found they make a really nice 7-bean salad.

so, I looked up some recipes, and found a three bean salad recipe. I’m not really a fan of chickpeas, so I used a can of romano beans instead, and some mung beans too (绿豆). those were dry, though, so I tossed a bunch of them in water and let them cook for 40 minutes. while that was cooking I washed some dishes and cleaned the kitchen a bit (I dunno if it’s pancake batter or wax on the counters, but it’s gonna take some scrubbing…)

when I first opened the tim of romano beans, I thought the salad couldn’t possibly work – they were soggy and covered in slime. but I rinsed them well, and all the other beans too. the cans of kidney beans and romano beans were larger than the recipe called for, and I vastly underestimated the volume of mung beans, so the salad was looking rather… green. somehow it looked just fine when it was done, though. :) I didn’t use any extra onion or celery. as for the rosemary and parsley, I’m not sure how you’re supposed to chop those finely – my knife just wanted to push them around – but I got them mostly chopped up and tossed them in. for the dressing I made 1.5 times the amount, and it just vanished into the beans instantly – next time I’ll make twice as much.

once I finally had the bean salad done (at 6pm – a bit more than an hour after I put those mung beans on the stove) I put it in the fridge and started on the regular salad. red, orange, and yellow peppers, a perfectly ripe avocado (I got quite lucky, that shop rarely has any ripe ones), some cherry tomatoes, a prepackaged lettuce mix, and a few slices of strawberry. :) then I tossed the corn in the pot – I love how easy corn is, you just peel it and boil it for 10-15 minutes and that’s it. or you can microwave it in its husk if you’re really lazy ;)

I’d almost forgot to make salad dressing. for that I just mixed some nice balsamic vinegar with olive and flax oil, and added some dill that needed using up.

when the corn was ready I pulled the bean salad out of the fridge (yeah, it was supposed to sit for more than an hour, but I was hungry!) and… well… I took a photo, but this damn laptop isn’t reading sd cards any more. wtf… it seems to be failing piece by piece. :( usb, dvd, webcam, now sd too…

in other news, I’m feeling more optimistic about scripty again :) yay.

more food

so I did the roasted veggies & tofu thing again. :)

last time I think I used two packs of tofu – this time I used three. I also got more veggies, including a small butternut squash. I used less soy sauce and a spoonful of some garlic chili sauce for the tofu – that didn’t turn out so well, they didn’t really soak up *any* flavour. I’m not sure if I just need to use more, or if there’s something else I can do.

as for the veggies, I decided to time how long chopping them took, because I always seem to underestimate that step. :) washing and chopping four medium potatoes took 5-10 minutes. peeling and chopping two yams took ten minutes. peeling and chopping the squash took twenty. I was a bit unsure how to handle that squash – hte peeler didn’t take off all the skin, so I ended up cutting some off with a knife too, and then I had to take out the seeds inside – turned out to be easier to just chop slices away from the outside of the part with the seeds.

washing and chopping four peppers took seven minutes, and so did the bulb of garlic. the onion jason offered to chop – apparently his contacts protect his eyes. :) after that I spent about 5 minutes putting oil, salt, pepper and herbs onto the veggies. there was no fresh rosemary at the shop today, so I tried thyme. plus a bit of dried rosemary. :) yum.

I made the gravy with a little less miso & soy sauce this time, plus more mustard. it was nice, and much milder. somehow we barely had enough though – strange, because last time there was lots of leftover gravy. maybe I just used less soy milk this time, or let it thicken more. or maybe people just ate more. :) we had a guest staying that I’d forgotten about, too, so while we did have leftover tofu and veggies, there was just exactly enough spinach (another thing we’d had more than enough of last time).

I remembered to chop the spinach before washing it this time, and to flip the veggies and tofu. :) unfortunately we have a rather small oven, and I had two pans of veggies and one of tofu, so they weren’t cooking as fast or as evenly as I’d assumed. I ended up shuffling them around a fair bit, and the veggies came out ok, but the tofu suddenly went from barely-cooked-looking to puffing up. oh well, it made some of it a bit tough, but with gravy on top it was still good. :)

instead of tomatoes around the edges, I sliced up some strawberries and apple :) a nice spring plate. it’s kinda funny how rarely fruit is used in meals, because it works quite well.

and this time, I remembered to take pictures. :)

pretty plates:

the hot food:

ready to eat:

fooooood

so I was going to blog about food again, wasn’t I?
last weekend I was at LFNW, so I didn’t cook. tomorrow I need to cook, but I still haven’t decided what I want.
but the week before my last food post, I made something yummy that I don’t want to forget about. roast veggies, baked tofu and miso gravy on spinach. :)

it was pretty simple, really. I sliced up and marinated a pack of firm tofu in soy sauce (and a tiny bit of hot sauce). I chopped up some potatoes, a yam, a couple of peppers, most of a bulb of garlic, and possibly a onion into bite-size pieces, coated them with oil, salt and pepper, and… I think I used half a pack of rosemary, too. then I put the tofu and veggies onto baking sheets, stuck them in the oven, and started on the miso gravy.

I used an online recipe for the gravy… iirc it was this one. I only used a cup and a bit of water (that way the ingredients fit easily into my measuring jug with the nice spout) and added extra soymilk later. I think I forgot about the pepper, though, and didn’t add any salt as it was *quite* salty enough already.

with that cooking, I forgot to turn the veggies and tofu over (oops), chopped the ends off a bunch of spinach, washed it, and chopped up a tomato or two. I would’ve sliced some avocados but couldn’t find ripe ones that day. by then I think everything was nearly done (roast veggies generally take 40 minutes at 400-ish; here’s a veggie roasting tutorial). I took everything out of the oven, poured the gravy back into the measuring jug (it’s not fun to pour liquids out of a frying pan), and dinner was done. :)

for my own plate I put down a layer of spinach, added a pile of tofu and veggies on top, arranged some tomato slices around the edges, and poured gravy over it all :) I like it when my food is pretty as well as delicious. shame I didn’t take a picture.

hmmm. maybe I’ll do that again tomorrow. or maybe I’ll do mushroom soup. decisions, decisions…

food, glorious food (baked potato & chili)

mmmmm, food. :) I just finished dinner. it was yummy.

for the last few months here, everyone in the house has been cooking dinner once a week. it works out pretty well. when we started this in january I was quite nervous – I’ve had hardly any experience cooking, and there were lots of basic things I didn’t know, the kinds of things that recipes always assume everyone knows. by now, I’m really enjoying it, and I feel quite confident. :) with some help from friends and google I’ve been learning a lot, and cooking’s not so scary any more. figuring out new delicious things to try is kinda fun, even.

the dinners here are all vegan (sometimes with optional dairy products – I like cheese). sometimes I’m frustrated by this, sometimes it’s an interesting challenge. :) I’m quite surprised at how well soy milk replaces milk in stuff like mushroom soup. the other challenge is cooking for 6-7 people; everything has to scale up well. some stuff that works for 2-3 people would take far too long when cooking for six. anyways, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been making – especially since I’m starting to wander away from recipes now, and I don’t want to forget how I made these yummy things. :)

tonight I did baked potatoes with chili. the potatoes are easy – www.howtobakeapotato.com explains that quite well. I didn’t go for the wrapped-in-foil method because I had eight of them, so this way scales better. I also didn’t bother with putting the potatoes directly on the oven rack. I just lined them up on a tray and shoved it in the oven, checking them halfway through.

as for the chili, I had a bunch of spinach that needed eating, and I was craving mushrooms (ok, I’m *always* craving mushrooms), so I looked up some chili recipes, especially ones with mushrooms in. there was a lotof variation in chili recipes, so I ended up asking aaron to explain what makes chili chili. :) (answer: chili powder, cumin, lots of beans, a fair amount of tomatoes, and whatever other veggies you like. and apparently molasses is good, but I didn’t have any.)

I ended up kinda making it up as I went along, based on aaron’s advice and several online recipes. I chopped two small onions and a half dozen cloves of garlic (almost every recipe starts with onions and garlic) and tossed them in a large pot with a dash of oil. (yes, I’m explaining things that will be obvious to anyone with cooking experience. it’s hard to learn this stuff when everyone assumes you already know it.) I chopped up three tomatoes while that was heating up, then tossed in the spices… a lot of chili powder (the bag slipped, so I’m guessing there was well over a tablespoon in there), and nearly as much cumin. then I chopped up some old chili peppers that were conveniently sitting beside the garlic, and one… um.. I think it was a jalapeno pepper. it was green and small and pete wanted me to put it in. :) I tossed those it with the tomatoes, and a couple of teaspoons of tomato paste. I think next time I’d use a fourth tomato, I’d like a more tomatoey flavour.

next I chopped up a few small carrots, and two bags of mushrooms. according to the receipt, two bags is 1.26lb. I added the carrots first (secretly hoping they’d dissolve; I don’t care much for chunks of carrot but I like the flavour ;) and the mushroom stems, turned the stove down to about 3 and covered the pot to not lose too much liquid, then went and dealt with the potatoes.

once the potatoes were in the oven I tossed the rest of the mushrooms into the pot. I added two 540ml cans of kidney beans and one of black beans. there wasn’t much left to do by then… pete chopped up some peppers for me, but said they shouldn’t go in until 15 minutes before the end. I chopped the stems off the spinach and rinsed it, but that hardly needs to cook at all. I grated some cheese, cleaned some dishes, checked on the potatoes, and waited…

almost an hour after the potatoes first went into the oven, I added the peppers to the chili. it was actually looking, and smelling, like chili by then. :) ten minutes later I added the spinach, took the potatoes out of the oven, and took the fake sour cream out of the fridge (tofutti- it’s a pretty good fake). another 5 minutes and dinner was ready. :) baked potato, cheddar cheese (for some of us), chili and sour cream. yumm. I’m quite happy with how it turned out, especially since I had no idea how chili was made 12 hours ago. :)

…and I’m really tired and have another exam tomorrow, so last week’s awesome dinner will have to wait for another blog post.