Moderately offensive recipes #1: F*ckin’ carrots.
In an attempt to get myself writing again, but in a way that lets me ease into it without having to be creative at all, I'm going to post the occasional oddball recipe I come up with in an attempt to feed myself.
So.
Today's recipe is inspired by... I kind of want to say Thai food, but I'd be lying. In reality, it was inspired by what was in the fridge when I got hungry yesterday.
In order to truly understand some of the origins of this recipe, and possibly those of some to follow, let me explain my current situation.
Lately, I have been living as something of a nomad. I signed an agreement on an apartment that starts at the beginning of August, but in the meantime I am bouncing around town, depending on the charity of friends and family -- and family of friends.
This has led to an interesting confluence of requirements when it comes to my (and my hosts') kitchen(s):
- The things I take from place to place can't spoil easily.
- These things also need to be portable, because I am lazy and hate hauling heavy things around.
- The things I buy I need to be able to eat for almost any meal, so I can use them up quickly, and also because I hate having to go back to the store because I'm missing one crappy thing that some meal depends on.
- Everything should be fairly inexpensive, because... well, because I'm a cheapass.
So essentially, my pantry is comprised of two shopping bags; one full of my knife, spices, and various fats, and another one with an assortment of fruits and vegetables.
I can honestly say though, it's been a while since I've enjoyed cooking as much as this.
All right, so on to the first and possibly last recipe.
This was created... let me see... yesterday, when I realized that my latest trip to the store, combined with a bout of absent-mindedness, had resulted in a fridge stocked with two pounds of carrots, three limes, a lemon, and a one-pound bag of dried garbanzo beans.
Don't ask me why the garbanzo beans were in the fridge, I couldn't answer you even if I wanted to.
Dinner time rolled around, and of course the garbanzo beans had to soak overnight, so I couldn't use them.
I contemplated the carrots, willing them to become a carnitas burrito, or a steak.
There must be, I thought when this proved futile, some way I can inject spice and fat into this equation.
And so I came up with this. I have no idea if it's original at all, and it still needs some tweaking, and of course I am just guessing at the measurements, but I've had this for two dinners in a row now and I'm pretty sure it's delicious.
Ingredients*:
- 1/2 lb of carrots (about 4 good-sized carrots), peeled and sliced into rounds or strips.
- 1/2 a lime: Shave or grate the rind off -- that's right, finally here's an opportunity to use that MicroPlane you bought five years ago after watching Rachael Ray. Get rid of as much of the lime's pith as you can, then roughly chop the flesh and set aside.
- 1/2 of a lime: That's right, another 1/2 of a lime. Math wizards will notice that this means you need around one lime. Don't do anything with this half, you'll just need a little bit of its juice.
- Butter
- Extra virgin olive oil (optional)
- Fresh garlic, 1 large clove or equivalent, minced.
- Fresh ginger (same amount as the garlic), minced.
- 2-3 Bay leaves (optional)
- Dried japones chilis (if you desire/can tolerate the heat), cut in half if you don't like bits of super-hot chilis in your carrots, otherwise torn/crushed/chopped. You could use dried red chilis of any kind really, but I've discovered japones have a great aroma to them that just kick chile arbols' ass all up and down the flavor street. I used about four large ones, because I am a MAN.
- Salt (preferably kosher, I guess, but I can't really tell the difference)
* If you want a simpler version that's "cleaner" tasting, get rid of the ginger, bay leaves, lime rind, and chilis.
Prep time:
5 minutes, 7 if you include peeling the carrots.
Cook time:
10-15 minutes, depending on how crunchy you like your carrots.
- Melt some... I dunno, maybe a tablespoon... of butter in a skillet, along with another tablespoon or two of olive oil, over medium heat. Vary the proportion of butter to olive oil as you like; I personally kind of prefer using all butter, but I feel guilty using that much butter, mostly because I've seen Paula Deen's show. The point is to have enough fat to fry the aromatics and coat the carrots, so do as your conscience and cardiovascular circumstances dictate.
- Once the butter has fully melted, dump in the rind and chopped flesh of half a lime, bay leaves, ginger, dried chilis, and garlic.
- Let them gently fry until the garlic is just starting to turn brown, then dump in the carrots and toss to coat.
- Give it a healthy pinch of salt, turn the heat down to medium-low. Squeeze in a little bit of lime juice and toss from time to time. Continue cooking until the carrots reach the desired level of tenderness; I like them a little soft all the way through, but still with a little bit of bite. If I were a hipster foodie, I would probably airily call them al dente while casually adjusting my vintage black glasses frames with no lenses.
- At this point, fish out whatever spices you don't want in the final dish (I just take out the bay leaves, but for most this will be the point where you remove the bay leaves, lime rind, and chilis).
- Season if needed, and squeeze in a few more drops of lime juice.
- Serve.
Serves 1 me for dinner, or three to four normal people as a side dish, which is how I'd serve it if it wasn't just me sitting around in my underwear eating the stuff.
The bay leaves and sour/bitterness of the lime rind hit first, tempered with the creaminess of the butter. Then the heat from the chilis and the slightly sweet caramelized lime flesh shows through, and finally you get the sweetness of the carrots, all of it with a thread of saltiness.
It's kind of a weird flavor combination, I'll grant you, but I've been finding it addicting.
Chicken soup for the… bowl
There are, of course, countless soups in abundance in China, from the humble tomato-egg soup, to the popular pork sparerib and lotus root soup, to ultra-expensive shark fin and swallow's nest soups.
But, well, I was missing a good old traditional Western chicken soup, without ginger, green onions, soybean sprouts, rice vermicelli, cubes of coagulated chicken and pork blood, pig's liver, winter melon, dried shrimp, various entrails, and so on. It's cold, I'm at home all day working, and sometimes I just want a bowl of soup.
In San Diego I'd probably just walk over to Henry's and pay a surprising amount of money for a paper bowl of halfway decent chicken soup, but screw it... over here it's zero degrees outside, maybe three degrees inside - turning my heater on only convinces it to blow cold air at me -- and I don't feel like changing out of my leopard-print bath robe and matching fuzzy slippers.
So partly because of all that, and partly in preparation for the commencement of my first "4-hour-body" experiment tomorrow (which is just testing out this slow-carb diet he talks about... I think mostly because of that one glorious day a week you can and are supposed to over-eat whatever the hell you want), I made a pot of chicken soup with the ingredients I happen to have on hand (plus some chicken wings from the market).
It. Is. AWESOME.
I basically have no idea how to make traditional chicken soup, except I remembered the cooking shows would never shut the hell up about mire poix whenever the subject of soup came up.
So essentially, this might be a bog standard chicken soup, but I've never actually had much success making chicken soup before (tried it a few times, and each time it was so bland I just added premade or granulated chicken stock in despair), so I just wanted to brag and get the pattern down so I can remember how to do it again next time.
The ingredients list kind of got out of control once I got started, but I swear I can taste every single ingredient in there... possibly with the exception of the bay leaves. I dunno, I feel better about soup/stew when I have a couple of bay leaves in there, but I can't really tell what they bring to the party.
- 1/2 large red onion, diced
- 1 medium carrot, diced
- 2 large ribs celery, diced (I also added the heart of the celery and leaves, chopped)
- 3 cloves garlic, lightly crushed and peeled.
- 8 locally produced chicken wings (the middle part only), washed and patted dry. These were maybe 1/2 to 2/3 the size of the monster mutant chicken wings you get in the U.S. Either way, believe me, you want to wash them and everything that touches them in their raw state.
- Seriously like, 5 bay leaves (I was so surprised I had these I went a little overboard)
- A few shakes of herbes de Provence, maybe 1/2 tablespoon total (there so happens to be a shaker of this stuff in the cupboard; lucky me)
- A couple splashes of white wine (one of my roommates left an open bottle of sauvignon blanc in the fridge, so I figured what the hell)
- Pat of butter
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Salt (I only have normal/crappy table salt)
- Pepper, I guess? Maybe right before serving.
I got the biggest pot I have -- I think it only holds about 1.5 liters -- and melted the butter in it over low heat, along with a splash of olive oil for no other reason than I think it's cooler that way.
Once everything was all melted together, tossed in the diced carrot, onion, and celery (i.e. mire poix), along with a big pinch of salt.
Mixed/tossed it up to get everything coated with the fats, and left it alone for a while, occasionally stirring. It looked like way too much mire poix... the damn pot was half full of the stuff. Sweating, not sauteeing; something else I vaguely remember hearing, probably from Good Eats.
Whatever.
Went for the chicken wings next; washed them, then laid them into a preheated skillet on medium with extra virgin olive oil, dusted some salt over them, and let them sizzle until they had some color; flipped them over, seasoned again, let them cook into some color on the other side.
Once they were nicely colored on both sides, layered them into the pot with the mire poix, arranged the bay leaves over them, shook a little herbes de Provence over it all, and tossed the garlic in.
Boiled up a liter of water (...or Litera water) in my handy electric kettle; rinsed the skillet with boiling water into the pot, getting the last bit of olive oil and chicken... well, grease... in there. Poured the rest of the water in, added a splash of wine, covered, and slapped it onto my induction stove, set to lowest heat (low simmer) for an hour.
After an hour, pulled the meat off the wings, discarded the bones and bay leaves, dumped the meat back into the pot with another splash of wine, and salted to taste.
Put it back on simmer for another 20 minutes, for no other reason than I felt it deserved a victory lap.
Tomorrow's lunch is going to be chicken soup with spinach and chick peas; I guess kind of an f-ed up Tuscan soup? Maybe a side of cauliflower roasted in the oven with garlic and olive oil.
Dammit, I'm already hungry.
Also, as part of my experiment and for my own records, I'm going to start posting daily photos of my meals (taken with my phone) here.
Ghetto Cookbook : Part 1
I've had the opportunity to explore some of my more outlandish food ideas here, partly because I am more limited in my ingredients selection here than in the U.S., and partly because I'm unable to get a lot of the flavors I'm used to in the normal course of my day/week/month.
So when I get the urge for Indian, Mexican, or Italian food, I either have to pony up an extraordinary amount of cash for a standard of dish that is, frankly, not in line with the price, or make it myself. For example, a plate of "nachos" at what I believe may be the only Mexican restaurant in Shanghai costs about $11. While the size is not a concern, the chips are stale and kinda greasy, and the dish is quite obviously a double handful of chips with scattered cheese stuck in the microwave for thirty seconds or so, then slathered with the remaining ingredients.
Having very few actual cooking utensils, and access to a comparatively limited array of ingredients, I'm obliged to take shortcuts and experiment in ways I haven't before, which has led to some surprisingly satisfactory results.
As I think misery is best experienced when shared among friends, I've decided to post some of my less unpalatable creations here.
You'll notice there aren't really any measurements. I tend to just wing it when I cook anyway, and it's pretty hard to screw up these recipes if you know how to cook at all.
Here's a new favorite of mine -- partly because there's zero waste and very little actual work, and partly because it's actually pretty good.
Apparently it's also not all that unhealthy... though you might want to tell that to the butter I tend to use in Part 2, or shut him out of the party entirely by using something else.
Anyway.
Soy milk is made by pureeing/blending/processing soy beans, adding water, boiling them for a while, then straining out the solids.
This leaves you with the soy milk, and a clump of solids, called okara by the Japanese, that is seldom actually consumed by humans; it is most often used as animal feed. A shame, because it's reportedly full of fiber, protein, and other goodness.
Some people will dry it and use it in baked goods, but I like to use the stuff fresh. This is primarily because I can't bake worth a damn, but also because the only thing remotely close to an oven I have right now is a toaster oven that cooks at either room temperature, or 450 degrees.
The only 'weird' ingredient is dried soybeans, which you should be able to find at any asian grocery.
Part 1 (morning): Fresh soy milk.
Ingredients: Dried soybeans, water.
- Previous night: Wash a couple handfuls of dried soybeans, then soak in water overnight.
- Morning: rinse the beans, throw them in a blender or food processor, cover with water and blend/process until just short of smooth, like undercooked oatmeal.
- Place in large pot; add an equal amount of water and bring to boil, then simmer for a few mins (this will foam like an absolute bastard, so be careful) while you make some coffee or toast.
- Strain out the bean husks and flesh, through a fine-mesh strainer, coffee filter, or the more traditional cheesecloth. If you're using a strainer, do it quickly or else you'll get an unacceptable amount of bean sludge in your cup/bowl.
Note: The Japanese reverse the straining and cooking parts of the process, which apparently does away with the foaming problem. I haven't tried this yet for some reason.
- Reserve the solids and put them in the fridge (this is the okara part; i.e., lunch).
- Soy milk for breakfast! Add sugar for sweet, or a splash of white vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and scallions for salty "tofu flower" soup. Miso paste is also a great option instead of the soy sauce/sesame oil.
Part 2 (lunch/dinner):
Ingredients: The okara from breakfast, butter, oil, onion, garlic, chilies, ginger, curry powder.
There are basically infinite variations on this, but I basically treat the okara like couscous, or some other grain. My latest obsession is:
"Curried" okara.
- In a non-stick pan, heat up about 1Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and a knob of butter.
- Throw in finely chopped red onion, garlic, serrano chilies, and ginger. Mix in some curry powder and let the flavors cook together a bit. I don't have easy access to cardamom, but I feel like adding some at this juncture would be appropriate and probably awesome.
- Mix in the okara. If the mixture looks too dry, add some butter, oil, or water. This is your 'base,' and is perfectly fine as is. I like to give it some more body by adding things like grilled chicken, peas, sultanas/raisins, water chestnuts, almonds, vegetables, etc.
- Add curry powder, salt, and pepper to taste.
I've also mixed the okara in some leftover beer batter, thickened with a little extra flour; season with cumin, garlic, salt, various chopped herbs and onions, and fried quenelles of them in vegetable oil.
Ghetto falafel!
A food post
Apropos of nothing, in the middle of watching "The Men Who Stare At Goats," I decided to make my Sunday dinner... for kicks, it's French toast.
Since JJ likes to see what I make, probably so she can pick and choose what she wants me to make for her... pictures:
Clockwise from top: Freshly whipped cream (with a little powdered sugar), blueberries macerated with some red wine and castor sugar, fresh blueberries, and french toast (custard was one egg + yogurt + milk). Ran out of custard halfway through soaking the last piece of bread; oh well.
Boom! Assembled.
I am going to have to atone for this on the elliptical later.