Parsnip/Pumpkin Beer Soup

2 tbsp olive oil
1 lb parsnips, peeled, trimmed, and chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
1 small onion, diced
1 stalk celery, chopped
two medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
one cup pumpkin beer
three cups water
two bouillon cubes
dash nutmeg
salt
pepper

In a large pot, heat the olive oil; saute onion, carrot, and celery about five minutes. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add parsnips and potatoes; saute about two minutes more. Add beer, water, and bouillon; bring to a boil, reduce to simmer; simmer about twenty minutes, until all veg are soft. Puree in a blender or with immersion blender. Garnish with sour cream (reduced fat works well) and croutons (homemade are always delicious), and serve with pumpkin beer.

Fried Eggs

I fried my first egg the other day. I had one bite and Ian finished it. Apparently some of my food conditioning has worn off; it's still tough for me to swallow eggs that are cooked with the whites and yolks separate. Plus that goop underneath it is a very rich cheese sauce that just made the whole thing too rich; I ended up eating the bread and sauce while Ian ate the egg. I'll try this again. I will. Drat you eggs.

Brown Sugar

Have you ever made your own brown sugar? It's as easy as adding molasses to white granulated sugar and whizzing it up in the food processor. It's great in a pinch--I'm making cinnamon rolls and so I added the cinnamon (and a little nutmeg) right into the mix. Should be yummy!

Pattypan Potato Soup

I recently bought a ten-pound bag of potatoes, which is twice what I normally buy, but the grocery store employees were having a nice, leisurely chat while "restocking" the five-pounders, and I wasn't in the mood to interrupt them. So I figured I ought to make potato soup, which used up about a pound of them (only nine more to go!). I'd also bought a few pattypan squash at last week's farmer's market and needed to find a use for them (they're so cute, I couldn't resist). So I chopped them up and threw them into my pot. Once everything had gotten nice and soft, I ran the whole mess (potatoes, onion, thyme, squash, garlic, chicken stock) through the food mill, and boy was it a satisfying dinner, and healthy to boot. I added a little low-fat sour cream to our bowls before serving, but other than that there really wasn't much fat (I maybe used a quarter cup of oil to saute the onion). It was hearty and sort of sweet and nutty; all the great things about potato soup and squash combined. Hurray for last minute inventions.

Everybody Can Can!

Obviously, I haven't been posting much. I've made a few new things, though I'll admit I haven't been sticking to my 7 recipes a week model. Funny how that happened. I got to this part of my resolution and suddenly I didn't feel so excited to learn new methods of cooking. But then, this weekend, I got to try canning for the first time with a friend I rarely get to see, and it sort of reminded me why I got into cooking in the first place.

You see, I'm usually in my kitchen cooking alone. I'm usually staving off boredom, or trying to convince myself that one day I'll have people to cook for besides my husband, people to cook with besides my husband. Not that I don't love cooking for and with my husband; it's just that we live here, with these pots and pans, every day. There isn't much special about making chili for the millionth time, even my special pumpkin chipotle turkey chili. It's practical. It's normal. At one point, cooking together was super romantic and it bonded us together, but at this point I don't know that there's any bonding left to do. It's like saying you'll bond with your own organs.

But this weekend, I was able to cook with someone I've never cooked with before. On top of that, she taught me something: she taught me the basics of canning. We made blueberry syrup and blueberry butter (no part of the blueberry was wasted). It was a cool fall morning with a bit of a bluster outside, but we cooked the fruit on the deck, on this super cool gas stove, and we put screens on top of the pots to keep the pine needles out. While we waited for the juice to drain for the syrup, we talked about Cary Grant and how we really prefer him in comedic roles, like in Arsenic and Old Lace (which Ian and I watched when we got home, later that evening). And when we were done, we had lovely sealed jars of some really fantastic product, good for keeping for at least a year. My friend also sent me home with several other jams and such that she'd canned earlier this year, several of which are experiments in a special kind of pectin that allows jams and jellies to set with less sugar. I can't wait to try them all. I'm going to have to bake some bread.

Lentils and Brown Rice and Kale, Oh My!

Last night I set out to make a variation on Giada DeLaurentiis' goat cheese, lentil, and brown rice rolls, which involve rolling a hearty vegetarian mixture into swiss chard leaves, but alas and alack! The kale leaves I planned to use weren't big enough. So instead, I chopped it, blanched it, and stirred it in with my mixture, which contained brown rice, lentils, ricotta, mozzarella, tomato sauce, and onions. Baked it all together with a crust of Grana Padano (purchased in lieu of Parmesan because it's cheaper... not bad, but definitely not Parm), and boy was it satisfying. A perfect hearty dinner that didn't weigh us down... we had yoga class at seven.

Beer and Pretzel... Caramel!

I have discovered the world's most addictive caramel. If you're going to make this, be sure you have a lot of people to share it with, or you will end up consuming a pound of sugar and fat in only a few days. This caramel is sweet, but not too sweet, with a dark depth to it. It's salty, especially on the finish, because it is full of pretzel pieces, which also give it a fantastic texture. It's a wonderful fall dish, perfect for any event where you'd normally serve beer and pretzels; my husband actually had a poker game on Friday and it was only after he got back that we realized we should have sent the caramels with him as his snack contribution. Next time.

Of course, next time, my caramel might taste more like beer. You see, I got this recipe from Food Network Magazine, and it called for me to reduce a certain amount of beer (I used Sam Adams Oktoberfest) down to two teaspoons, which I tried to do--but when it was at maybe a quarter cup, I went and checked my email, and by the time I got back, it was just a sticky film inside my pot. So, lesson learned. A neglected pot over-reduces. Anyway, this syrup was supposed to be stirred in at the end of the caramel's cooking process, along with the pretzels, and this would give it a little more beery kick. Which would be good, but I have to say, it was wonderful without it.

If you want to try this recipe, click here.

A Strange Little Snack

A while ago, we bought butter crackers for out beet green gratin, which is something we never do--having crackers in the house is like an invitation for me to binge. But this time, I was pretty good about rationing them, and along the way, I created my new favorite breakfast/lunch/snack.

You see, I went through this phase a couple weeks ago where I was craving eggs. I don't know why--other proteins just didn't seem to cut it. So one day I scrambled up a few, and it occurred to me that I had this wonderful havarti cheese in the fridge, and the crackers in the cupboard, and... voila. Topped it with a little ketchup (I know this makes the whole thing sound silly but it needs a little acidity to cut the richness of the eggs, cheese, and crackers--it's also delicious with green chili sauce). Oh my goodness. Silly, but good.

Wilton Flower

Last night I went to my very first cake decorating class and made my very first frosting stars on some sugar cookies (I realized later that I should have tried a new recipe for this, since I had the opportunity, but I have found that very few recipes provide truly flat cookies to decorate and so I went with my tried and true unleavened holiday sugar cookies). It was an interesting experience, one designed to get me out of the house and among other living, breathing human beings (the people in my TV set apparently don't count). It was also designed to teach me a few things about decorating cakes, which I did, though I also had to sit through a lot of babble about things I already knew and resist the urge to snark about the decorating frosting being called "buttercream" when it contained no butter (except the Wilton butter flavoring) and choke when the instructor said things like "I don't put salt in any of my food" and "I'm not an icing person, even if it's really good icing."

Needless to say, this class was not at Le Cordon Bleu. It was in the break room at Michael's. I had five classmates, none of whom would speak (except the two college girls who whispered incessantly to each other), forcing me to be the nerdy kid who reads the instructions as the teacher demonstrates. But, like I said, I did learn to make little frosting stars. I also learned a couple of interesting things, some of which I have to take the teacher's word for (until I get a chance to test them) and some I saw in action.

1. Many off-brand powdered sugars are made with beet sugar (I believe that), which changes the consistency of frosting (needs testing).
2. When filling cakes, make a dam out of frosting to keep the filling in. (So simple, but a lightbulb clicked on!) This means you should pipe a thick line of frosting around the bottom layer of the cake, then fill inside that, then add the top layer.
3. Shortening used to contain Trans Fat, but it doesn't anymore. This means older shortening-based recipes might need adjusting with the new product.
4. When filling a piping bag, here's a very handy technique: make a "sausage" by putting the frosting in plastic wrap and twisting the ends. Cut off one of the ends and place that end toward the tip of the bag. This makes for super easy clean-up and no frosting on your hands!

Heirloom Tomato on Toast

I had my first ever heirloom tomato today (no, I don't remember which variety... I was so excited to find them at the farmer's market that I forgot to write it down). This isn't really a new recipe, exactly, as I kind of made it up based on what I had in the fridge, but it was a yummy and satisfying lunch. Even my tomato-hating husband liked it (or pretended he did). Here's what it was:

Toasted bread (I used my homemade sourdough that isn't really very sour) rubbed with a cut clove of garlic, spread with neufchatel cheese (the low-fat cream cheese), sprinkled with balsamic vinegar, topped with a hefty slice of tomato, sprinkled with salt.

Yum, yum, yum.

Beet Green Gratin

When I buy beets, I often tell myself I'm going to use the greens, but inevitably they end up in the trash. Which is a shame, really, because they're a viable food--chard is actually a form of beet stem, according to Alton Brown (I tend to believe him). But like celery tops or fennel fronds, I often save them until they wilt or take up too much refrigerator real estate, and then, since I haven't thought what to do with them, they get tossed out with the trash.

But not last night. Oh no--this time, I had more use for the greens than the beets themselves. In fact, I have two beets leftover, waiting to be roasted some night this week. This time I found a recipe in my Good Eats cookbook--a beet green gratin. I had to modify it a bit--I didn't have a full pound of beet greens so I rounded out the filling with some finely diced potatoes and the flesh of two beets (which, of course, turned the mixture pink, even after several rinsings--I am convinced that beets' pinkiness could be parlayed into enticement for little girls to eat their vegetables--pink potato puree!). Together with some sauteed mushrooms and garlic and a ricotta cheese mixture to bind it, this was a delicious and hearty vegetarian dinner. Good eats, indeed.

Kohlrabi

Day before yesterday, I had my first kohlrabi--I also prepped it, though Ian did the actual cooking on the grill. I had read that it tasted like broccoli stems, but I didn't expect it to taste EXACTLY LIKE BROCCOLI STEMS. Strange to buy a spiky reddish purple thing at the farmer's market and discover you could have simply bought broccoli.

Carbonara

Tonight, I made my first real spaghetti carbonara. I've made pasta dishes that call themselves carbonara before, but they've involved bechamel type white sauces instead of the saucy eggs the traditional recipe calls for. I have to say, I was nervous about that part. I expected the eggs to scramble or curdle on me and make a big old mess. But, magically, the pan was the right temperature as I swirled in the eggs and it created this lovely creamy sauce, just as planned. Of course, my dish wasn't perfect... I used turkey bacon instead of pig bacon, so it wasn't really crispy and there wasn't that real bacony flavor, which, for a recipe with so few ingredients, is pretty important. But it was still tasty in a slightly less fattening way, and super quick. This will definitely grace my table again.

Kettle Corn Innovation

I have this recipe in a low-cal cookbook for maple kettle corn, and today I decided to try it. Except I didn't have the maple sugar the recipe called for. I did have maple syrup and white sugar, so I used a combination of the two. I don't think this is the only reason for my kettle corn failure, but I think it's a big one.

The biggest reason I think my kettle corn didn't turn out is that I didn't heat the oil before throwing in the corn kernels and sugary stuff, which meant it all blended into a caramel far too soon. The second reason is that I used a liquid sugar which, again, formed a premature caramel. This caramel trapped the corn kernels, keeping most of them from popping. The kernels that did pop were trapped within the unpopped kernels, and by the time a few handfuls have popped, the caramel was burned.

So there was that.

But that's how you learn, right? You make a mistake, you learn from it. Next time I try kettle corn, I will not make these mistakes.

The Approach of Phase Three

September 1 is right around the corner, which means the year is almost two-thirds over, which means my project is set to switch gears. Switch gears? you might be thinking. Were you in gear in the first place? Touche, you. I have been sitting around idling lately, it's true, not blogging about food at all. I've been attempting to lose weight while battling a difficult bout of post-graduate depression (the economy is bad enough, but living in an armpit college town while not attending college means that most jobs are hogged by college kids and professors' spouses, or the spouses of the engineers at the town's one major business--all of whom have more specific qualifications than I do while not having the overqualification of a master's degree... plus I'm a depressive sort, anyway, and I've had some difficult rejections for my fiction lately... who cares, right?).

SIDENOTE: Let me ask you a question. If you had the opportunity to be a full-time writer, no pressure to contribute financially, would you do it? Or would setting your own deadlines/working alone/risking total failure without even a pittance of a salary to make you feel like time wasn't totally wasted be too daunting? Or would you rather get a job assembling electronics? (That really was one question... with sub-questions.)

Here's where my life stands right now. I've applied for just about every non-customer-service job opportunity in town, and I'm currently waiting for a phone call about an interview for a job I actually want (most of the other applications were for jobs I didn't care much about, which I'm sure showed in my cover letters and led to my not being hired). I'm volunteering at the animal shelter once a week, and have a scratch down my arm from one particularly feisty kitten that could make someone think I tried to commit suicide. I'm getting a little bit of writing done, but not enough. I have no local friends. I've dropped cooking/eating for this project because it seems pointless to me right now, and because for me, weight loss often means eschewing food as pleasure. I do have a ton of time right now, but I'm crossing my fingers that I won't soon, because I'm always happier when I'm busy. And if I do get busy, here's how I want to handle phase three: Instead of one recipe a day, I will cook seven new recipes a week.

Thoughts on the Lentil Festival

Every year, Pullman hosts the National Lentil Festival, which is a pretty big deal. I mean, for Pullman. This event, which the town spends a good amount of time and energy on (usually the poster designs are better than this year's), lasts a whole weekend--the weekend before school starts. This means that as WSU students pour into town with their modular furniture in tow, they stop at the giant pot of lentil chili and browse the booths before (or after) redecorating their dorms. Which means the Lentil Festival is the most crowded you will ever see downtown Pullman. Ever.

Somehow, every year, the Lentil Festival incites in me a sort of amnesia. It goes like this: I hate the Lentil Festival, but in the weeks leading up to it, I remember only a few highlights from my first Lentil Festival: a used book stand, a craft stand, and the novelty of lentil chili. Unfortunately, those booths were only there the first year. The rest of the booths feature fried foods, which I just can't find joy in with the crowd and the heat, or are advertising radio stations, WSU organizations, and various other town junk I couldn't care less about. There's also a beer garden, which I've never gone to, but which each year I think will be the highlight until I actually get there. After fighting my way through the shoulder-to-shoulder foot traffic, I find myself faced with a parking lot--no shade at all--and a line of people waiting (in the sun) to get a table (in the sun) to listen to mediocre music (which you can hear from the shade by the train tracks, anyway) and drink beer that is available all year round if you just poke your head into the local breweries (both of which are less than a mile from my apartment). And suddenly, seeing this, the lovely picture I had of the Lentil Festival is gone, replaced by stinking crowds and sunburns. What is the opposite of festive?

What's Happening

So, you might have noticed that I haven't been posting lately. This doesn't mean I haven't been trying new foods and recipes. I've attempted to make cheese out of buttermilk (not wonderful results). I've had some new salad greens that I forgot to ask about. I turned leftover duck into burritos and put it on a pizza. Just today, I tried yellow tomatoes. I haven't been inactive.

The thing is, I get a little lazy. And if a particular food doesn't have a great story behind it, I start to think, what's the point in blogging about it? It's just going to be disappointing. You know what I mean?

Of course you do. You read all the little disappointing posts. Or maybe you don't. I don't really know.

Day 221: Yucky Ducky

The other day, I roasted my first duck. Which means I also ate my first whole-roasted duck. Not that I ate the whole thing; I'd just never had duck cooked that way. It's always confit or seared duck breast. Whole roasting produces very different results. Of course, I can't be certain--the ducks I've eaten in the past might have been full grown, but by the portion sizes, I think they were ducklings. Canetons. You see, I used Julia Child's recipe for roasting this duck, so I figure I ought to use the French term. Even if my duckling was American.

Basically, my duckling drove me crazy. I got it all set up in the roasting pan, which turned out to be too big, which meant that the vegetables I strew around it burned to ash instead of absorbing all the duck fat and caramelizing. I discovered I didn't have any string that wasn't green (if you need to know why I didn't use that to truss my bird, watch Bridget Jones' Diary and watch her make blue soup), and I didn't trust my cat alone with the duck, I made do with toothpicks, until my duck looked like it was receiving acupuncture. Which is okay, really, because you need to prick the duck to let the fat drain out. Then I cooked it, stirred the burnt veggies, spooned out the fat (my turkey baster is apparently useless; I threw the darn thing away), and when it was done I let it rest and then carved a beautiful breast off the carcass, grabbed it the with the tongs, and attempted to put it on my husband's plate.

It was slipperier than I thought.

So, though I'd managed to take my other duck obstacles in stride, when that breast hit the floor, I started to throw a tantrum. You might have called it a hissy fit. I jumped up and down, slamming my feet into the linoleum and yelled a stream of profanities that I won't repeat here. My husband, ever the pragmatist, quickly grabbed the breast off the floor and washed it, telling me it was okay, he'd still eat it, it was okay. Me, I retired to the living room for a few minutes to cool off. And then I came back and attempted to eat the other breast.

The skin was far from crisp. It was kind of disgusting. The meat was tender but nothing like I was used to being served in restaurants, the meat paler than I had imagined. I hadn't been able to make Julia's sauce since my vegetables were charred, so I stupidly opened the packet of orange sauce the company I bought my duck from provided. Beyond disgusting. That, plus leftover polenta that had congealed strangely. I ate one bite before switching to popcorn for dinner.

Day 220: Sausage and Grapes

Did you know that roasted sausage and grapes are a traditional Italian combination? I certainly didn't. Credit that, of course, to the fact that I've never really been to a good Italian restaurant--the good Italian food I've had outside my own kitchen is usually in noncommittal Mediterranean restaurants where the menu is mostly Greek, some Italian, and maybe a little North African thrown in. I am part Italian, but none of my family exudes that Italian zest you see so often on TV. The English and German blood strangle it out, I think.

But: sausage and grapes. I am so thrilled to have tried this, and I will definitely be making it again. I used chicken sausage instead of pork, generally using this recipe, though with adjustments for portion size and the fact that my sausage comes already cooked. Also, I didn't serve it with bread, but with a lighter version of rosemary polenta, made with skim milk. It is amazing how well grapes turn savory. Part of me says, duh! Grapes are in wine, and wine is in a lot of sauces, so why not put grapes in sauces? It's particularly good for me, not being the biggest fan of fruit in the world, to find new ways of exploring savory fruit applications. This exploration will continue as I begin experimenting with duck, per Julia Child's recipes. Tonight I'll begin with a plain roast duck, but there are ducks with orange, ducks with cherries, ducks with peaches. I'll let you know how it goes.

Day 219: Playing with Blueberries

Last night, I made a grand discovery. I made my very first savory blueberry sauce and had it over a pork chop--you must try this immediately. I got the idea from a roasted raspberry barbecue sauce that got me wondering if I could innovate my own roasted berry sauce, plus a fancy blueberry and mustard reduction I had with venison sausage at West of Paris when it was still open. I couldn't get my hands on any venison, but I certainly could find an abundance of pork, and I figured pork goes with mustard, pork goes with beer--this will be good. And it really was.

Here's how I did it:

Toss about two cups of blueberries in a tablespoon of olive oil, plus salt, pepper, and a half teaspoon of dried thyme. Roast in the oven at 400 degrees for about 5-10 minutes, until the berries start to pop.
Meanwhile, cook your pork chop on the stove top.
Once the chops are done, let them rest and ditch any excess fat you had in the pan. Deglaze with wheat beer (a couple turns of the pan) and add a generous tablespoon of grainy mustard (you could even go up to two). Stir until combined, then add your roasted blueberries to the mixture and allow the mixture to cook and reduce for about five minutes.
By then your pork chops should be rested. Spoon the berries and their lovely sauce over the chop.
Eat your heart out.

I also made something I could call Blueberries Ender, kind of like Bananas Foster, but its recipe was less perfect. It did involve white sugar, butter, and orange juice being cooked awhile in a saute pan before berries were thrown in and cooked, then alcohol was added in the form of Grand Marnier, which isn't alcoholic enough to produce a good flame but gives a lovely depth to the syrup. But that's the thing--I didn't really cook this long enough to get it to where I wanted it to be. Too thin, with too much alcohol. But it was still yummy, and I will perfect the recipe next time. I did, however, meld several pound cake recipes together to create what I will now claim as my own. It was fantastic with the blueberry syrup or even solo:

Orange Honey Pound Cake

Preheat your oven to 325F, with the rack in the center of the oven.
Butter and flour a standard loaf pan.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
the zest of one orange
2 tbsp honey
1/3 cup light sour cream

Sift together the first three ingredients; set aside.
Cream together the butter and sugar until they are light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time until they are incorporated. Add vanilla, orange zest, honey, and sour cream; mix until smooth.
On low speed, add the sifted flour mixture in three batches, allowing each batch to fully incorporate before adding the next.
Scoop batter into loaf pan; bake for 60-70 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.