a recipe for disaster?

How would one go about writing up a recipe for disaster? 

- It might be cooked in a slow cooker, simmering for hours and hours until at last it results in a food item that falls apart at the slightest provocation, like fall-off-the-bone ribs (ribs?  Some kind of pot roast meat?  My vegetarianism makes me ignorant of many meat-related analogies and descriptions).

- It might be sloshed together in a fry pan, and then flambéed

- It may be baked in a ramekin, placed in a hot water bath, then blowtorched upon reentry out of the oven and into the kitchen

- Perhaps disaster is like a Caeser salad, tossed tableside and included the dreaded, stinky anchovies

- Could disaster be an item that has been freezer-burned, forgotten in the chilly depths of the freezer?

- Or maybe disaster is like a banana that has been left out to ripe and become overripen and ridden with fruit flies.  (Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.)

Recipe: Hagrid's rock cakes

I deliberately didn't follow the directions for the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I made yesterday.  The dough ended up very dry, and when I pulled the cookies out of the oven I instantly thought "Hagrid's rock cakes."  In the Harry Potter book series the gamekeeper Hagrid makes notoriously inedible food-- I think that Ron almost chips his tooth trying to eat a scone.  The cookies I made ended up much softer than they look, but they're still really ugly and I suspect that as they get more stale they will really live up to their namesake.  It's all the oats that make the cookies look very hostile and suspicious, but also the oats are soft and add a lot of nutrional content.

Ingredients:
8      tablespoons (one stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2   cup dark brown sugar, packed
1      large egg
1/4   cup milk ( I used soy)
1      teaspoon vanilla extract
1      small jar of pureed vegetable baby food (I used green pea puree)

1.25cups+1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1        teaspoon baking soda
1        teaspoon salt
1        teaspoon ground cinnamon
3        cups oat (the quick start kind, I think)
1        cup of chocolate chips (can subsitute with raisins or dried cranberries)

Prep work (useful but not necessarily)
- whisk together the egg, milk, and vanilla extract
- sift together 1.25 cups of flour, the baking soda, salt, and cinnamon
- sprinkle 1 tablespoon flour on the chocolate chips and stir (this helps to combine the chips with the batter, to keep it from all sinking to the bottom)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line cookie sheets with parchment paper (aluminum foil is okay)
1.  Use a wooden spoon to smoosh the butter so that it's uniformly smooth and creamy-looking
2.  Add sugar and stir until uniformly mixed in.
3.  Add egg, milk, vanilla extract mixture slowly, while stirring
4.  Add vegetable puree
5.  Gradually add flour mixture; stir
6.  Gradually add oats
7.  Add chocolate chips, stop stiring when everything looks well-combined
8.  Drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto the cookie sheets, press down to flatten out the dough ball and leave about an inch between the scoops of dough.  Cookies won't puff up too much.
9.  Bake for 12 minutes or until the cookies are golden-brown on the outside.  Let cool at least 5 minutes before consuming. 

Baking: At What Cost?

I made sticky buns today, and now the whole kitchen is wafting with the scent of cinnamon and slightly-burned sugar.  Smells like heaven, I imagine.  But it took a lot of work to make those baked goods.

What was all the fuss, you ask?  Well, I've made sticky buns on several occasions and each time I use slightly different recipes and tweak them, and I make them from scratch.  That's a lot of work and time:
1) Make the dough
2) Knead slightly
3) Let it rise for an hour
4) Knead again
5) Roll out
6) Dot with butter
7) Sprinkle sugar, cinnamon, and pecan mixture
8) Roll it up tight
9) Cut it up
[10) Fridge it overnight]
Time so far: 1 hour 20 minutes
11) Take the buns out and let them rise again for an hour
12) In the meantime make the goo that differentiates the buns from regular cinnamon buns (or make this during the hour in step 3)
13) Spread cooled goo in pans
14) Place buns in pans
15) Bake it for 30-40 min
16) Let cool for 20 min
17) Eat, finally
Total time from start to eat: 3 hours 10 minutes, plus 6-8 hours depending on how long you sleep overnight

Worth all the trouble? Yes, but this is not something to make and eat on a regular basis.  Makes an ordinary breakfast extraordinary, and a great treat for a special day.  I think I've finally perfected what recipe works for me, so unless I feel sadistic I don't have to try another version of it.  Delicious, yes, but it's going to be a while before I muster up the time, energy, and excuse to make them again.

My summer sandwich

I bled for this sandwich.  While I was shredding the carrots with a mandolin, the base of my thumb got snagged on the teeth.  Three days later I still have five little parallel marks to commemorate one darn tasty lunch.

Ingredients:

Two slices of bread, toasted if you plan to eat it later, untoasted if you plan to eat it immediately after sandwich is constructed

One medium-sized carrot, shredded

3 tablespoons hommus (my favorite kind is garlic hommus)

One large leaf of Romaine lettuce, cut in half

3 tablespoons of your favorite shredded cheese (I think I used a pizza blend with mozzerella and asiago and two other ones I can’t remember)

Optional: one teaspoon of your favorite mustard

1. Spread a thin layer of hommus on each slice of bread (1.5 tablespoons on each side)
2. Pat the shredded carrot onto one slice
3. Put the lettuce on the freshly-carroted slice
4. Pat the shredded cheese onto the other slice
5. Drizzle mustard over that
6. Sprinkle the green onion over that
7. Unite the two slices of bread

Eat sandwich when ready.

Not another food post!

On this day last year I had one of the most memorable food experiences of my life.  But that day I was sleep deprived, dehydrated and jet-lagged.  I need to explain-->

Last year I went to Nicaragua for the third time for another week-long short-term mission with members of my church.  No, I didn't do traditional/(stereo)typical mission work like the kind that's been satirized by the multiple Tony Award-winning musical Book of Mormon.  No, most Nicaraguans are Christians-- Catholic, in fact-- and our aim was not to convert.  But I digress.

The flight I had to take left at 5-something a.m, so I had to meet the others at the airport by 3 a.m, so I had to leave my house by 2:30 a.m., so I basically got very little sleep.  Luckily there I slept a little on the plane but not until I got my complimentary beverage (Mr. T's Bloody Mary mix, I think).  Landed in Miami International Airport for a second hobbit breakfast before catching the connecting flight to Nicaragua (we ate some egg salad sandwiches and clementines while waiting to board the first flight).  Slept a little on that second flight but again I was determined to stay awake to get my second beverage (Dr. Pepper) and unfortunately the combination of caffeine, nervousness, and sunlight streaming in from the window made it hard to get some shut-eye.

Finally we arrived in Managua, the country's capital, at noon their time (making up for our Daylight Savings Time). Lord, I was hungry.  And confused.  Going through immigrations and customs was a pretty simple, straightforward process, except I was tired and hungry and my brain was not functioning at it's Typical Performance Level.  Somehow I got separated from the group for a few minutes, and in that time I started to panic slightly.  But it worked out in the end, and before I was fully aware what was happening we were in our missionary-coordinated pastor's van and headed to what is probably the only Korean restaurant in Nicaragua.

And the food! Best Korean food I've ever had!  I ordered kimchi jjihgae, which is this stew that has kimichi n it-- spicy, fermented, pickled cabbage, aka Korea's national dish (and rumored reason why the SARS epidemic never touched that peninsula).  It looked like the only vegetarian thing on the menu,  and I knew I'd like it, so I that's why I ordered it.  Oh, but the menu...so confusing...it was in Korean and Spanish.  Mind you, I am only fluent in English and prefer to use it to speak.  Ah, but my poor little brain was still recovering from all the events of the previous 12 hours, and while I could read and understand the menu I was starving to read and hear some English.  I know, I sound like a crass, typical Stupid Ugly American who Wants E'r'one Ta Speak English, Ya Hear?! Eh, but consider the fact that I had been drifting in and out of sleep and had little to eat at that point.  It wasn't that I was upset about the fact that the menu had not been in English, but that I was too exhausted and wanted everything to be a simple as possible until I had recovered.  Man, but the food was just what I needed.  It was warm and filling and woke me up (and made my nose run like the river Nile).  Oh and also...it had meat in it.  Darn!  I suspect that the soup was cooked with that beef, and so I was partially drinking beef broth, and had inadvertently veered off from even my own rather liberal take on vegetarianism...but it tasted good.  And I needed food.  And that was the best choice I could've gone with.  And I know I will never have a more satisfying food experience that was so appropriate, so just-what-I-needed-at-the-moment meal, never again in my life.  So I choose to savor it, despite all these factors that indicate that it probably was special only due to the extraordinary circumstances.

Oh, also: best iced coffee I've ever had.  I usually like mine with lots of cream and just enough sugar for it to be just a little more sweet than bitter.  But this coffee was cooler than cool (ice cold!) and very sweet but not so sweet as to create that feeling that I simultaneously killed my pancreas and gave myself a few cavities.  When I (finally) read Watchmen this year and read the description of how the Silk Spectre/Laura or Laurie something likes her coffee (something like, "Black as the night and twice as sweet!"), I thought about this magic coffee from this Korean restaurant in Managua, Nicaragua.

Bloody Mary

The recipe for the Bloody Mary I made myself this afternoon:

1 tsp.  Sriracha hot sauce
1 tsp.  Cholula hot sauce
1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 6 oz. can of V8, chilled.

1.  Mix first three ingredients in a glass
2.  Slowly add V8 while stirring ingredients.
3.  Drink.

I put the apple cider vinegar instead of the typical lemon juice, and I didn't have the requisite celery salt or vodka around.  Even if I did I wouldn't add them; I was thoroughly satisfied with the concoction I made.

The History of a Zucchini

(Image taken from delish.com)

This post is a bit of a cop out, I know. It's an unworthy homage of "The History of a Squash", an article written by the character Beth (as Tracey Tupman) for "The Pickwick Portfolio", from the book Little Women. Recipe with at the end.)

Once upon a time a cook went to market in search of ingredients she would use to make supper. Among the items she carried home with her were two large zucchinis. One she chopped up and put in a savory vegetable stew; the other she sliced into matchstick-sized pieces and set aside. She stirred freshly-creamed butter with sugar, then added one fresh chicken egg and gradually added flour and oats to the mixture. In went the sliced zucchini and a handful of nuts. The mixture was then carefully spooned onto a baking pan and went into the oven until the heavenly scent wafted into the kitchen and the entire household. That night the stew and cookies were enjoyed by the household for which the cook worked. No one guessed that the same ingredient was used in both recipes.

* * * * *
Kitchen Sink cookies (adapted from the recipe for Quaker Oats' "Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies" and Momofuku's Compost Cookies.)

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 sticks of butter
2/3 cup of brown sugar (light or dark brown, doesn't matter too much)
1/3 cup of granulated (white) sugar
2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups of flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)
2-3 cups of oats
Any combination of the following ingredients that add up to 2 1/2 cups:
dried cranberries, raisins, chocolate chips, pecans, almonds, walnuts, shredded zucchini, shredded carrot, puréed peas, puréed sweet potatoes, crushed pretzels, crushed potato chips.

DIRECTIONS1. Sift second group of ingredients together.
2. Combine all ingredients in first group, adding the egg after butter and sugars have combined.
3. Gradually mix the sifted ingredients into butter-sugar-egg mixture.
4. Add optional ingredients (optional).
5. Put dry ingredients from third group into a plastic bag, add a tablespoon of flour and shake.
6. Gradually mix remaining ingredients into the dough.
7. Drop rounded tablespoons of the dough onto cookie sheets lined with parchement paper, put in oven for about 12 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown.

~
I play it sort of fast-and-loose when it comes to cooking and baking. The proportion and measurement of ingredients is much more important when it comes to baking because mistakes can't be as easily remedied. Some times I'm very careful about getting the exact amounts and following instructions to a T, but most of the time I get overzealous and tweak the recipe to my whims. Though my creations don't always turn out the way they were intended, they're usually all enjoyable. Or, at the very least, edible. I call these "kitchen sink" cookies because I like to put "everything but the kitchen sink" into the dough. It's a good way to sneak a small serving of vegetables into a dessert.