Oh, nuts!

And I mean that literally. BFFT and I did quite a bit of entertaining this week, for which I am apologizing profusely to Chester (my liver). I figure that if Chester has a name, I'll be less likely to terrorize him in the future. Why Chester, you might ask? Well, for no reason other than it's sufficiently obscure that I have never known - nor am I likely to know in the future - someone by that name. Anyhow, in the process of experimenting with various appetizer recipes (I was obsessed with dips for awhile but decided to change things up a little), I recently discovered the wonders of spicy nuts. Despite that they are time-unintensive and can be made several hours ahead without compromising flavor, texture, warmth, et cetera, guests inevitably devour them. There may even be a risk of the nuts overshadowing the meal itself!

Our first dinner party was Wednesday evening with two friends (another couple) who live in the area. I prepared an Indian-themed menu, which included homemade naan (good but in my opinion not quite restaurant caliber - I'll blame my lack of one of those special Indian ovens, even though I don't know for certain whether they actually exist!), pureed spinach with chickpeas, dhal (curried lentils), pistachio rice, tomato chutney, and a mango lassi parfait for dessert. But the real showstopper, based on feedback from everyone involved, was the roasted nuts I served over drinks beforehand. The recipe is from the January 2008 issue of Fine Cooking.

Indian Spicy Nuts

4 c unsalted cashews (I only had about 1 cup, so I used a mix of cashews and almonds)
1 large egg white, beaten slightly
1/4 c granulated sugar
4 t garam masala
1 1/2 t kosher salt
1/2 to 1 t cayenne pepper (as you may have guessed, I went all out here!)

Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a large bowl, toss the nuts with the egg white, coating evenly. Add the sugar, garam masala, salt, and cayenne. Toss again to combine.

Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Spread the nuts on the baking sheet and roast, stirring every 5-10 minutes and breaking up clumps if they form, until nicely browned, 25-35 minutes (I did 30). Break up any clumps again while the nuts are still warm. When the nuts have cooled, put them in a serving bowl, and cover if making ahead.

For your viewing pleasure... this actually looks like the picture from the magazine!













The second dinner we hosted was Friday night, with (gasp!) seven people total. This time I decided to follow a Mediterranean theme and served rosemary walnuts, mini-caprese (one cherry tomato and mozzarella ball per toothpick, sprinkled with chopped fresh basil and brushed with a little olive oil - I usually grind some black pepper to top them off, but this time I forgot), risotto with spinach and manchego cheese (which I couldn't find, so I used asiago instead - no one seemed to notice, and there were some tough food critics among us!), pear and arugula salad, roasted asparagus with figs and goat cheese, and tiramisu. Although our guests purportedly enjoyed everything on the menu, in keeping with my nutty personality (ahem, blog post theme) here is the walnut recipe. It's from The Gourmet Cookbook by Ruth Reichl, a birthday present that BFFT gave me a few years ago.

Rosemary Walnuts

2 1/2 T unsalted butter
2 t dried rosemary, crumbled
1 t salt
1/2 t cayenne
2 c (about 8 oz) walnut halves

Put a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a baking sheet with sides in oven (I cheated and used the microwave). Stir in rosemary, salt, and cayenne. Toss walnuts in butter until well coated and spread out into one layer. Bake for 10 minutes, and serve warm or at room temperature.

Sorry, no picture for this one. They were gone before I knew it (I should have realized that was what would happen if I put them right in front of four men who really like to eat!), but that's a good sign, no? Speaking of men, it's time to sign off and figure out what to make for dinner. Because I'm taking a temporary hiatus from wine, at least one other man in my life besides BFFT (yes, Chester) will reap benefits from whatever culinary concoction I come up with.

Pesto is a lot like bread pudding

Before you write me off as strange (I am but that's a whole different story!), let me explain. One of the things that really attracted me to bread pudding recipes when I first started cooking was how flexible the ingredients are. Now you may have been made aware from my previous posts that I wasn't an avid experimenter in the kitchen. But it was still reassuring to know that I could always substitute dried cranberries or cherries for raisins (which BFFT hates), use pretty much any type of bread (with a few obvious exceptions - herbed focaccia pudding, anyone?), and the like. As it happens, the same holds true for pesto. I discovered this on Sunday while concocting a last-minute dinner with as many leftover ingredients as possible. I had the makings of (not to mention a craving for) pasta genoese... fussili pasta, potatoes, green beans, but alas no basil or pine nuts for pesto. However, I did have a bunch of kale in the fridge and some almonds, and because I suspected that the bitterness of the greens and nuts would complement each other well, I went to work. This is what I came up with, and according to BFFT, it "passed the pesto test" (wouldn't that make an excellent tongue-twister?).

Kale-Almond Pesto

1/4 c slivered almonds
1/4 c walnuts
1 clove garlic
2 c loosely packed fresh kale (I used about half a bunch)
1/2 c oil (I used canola because it's more neutral, but olive would probably work fine too)
1/2 c grated Parmesan cheese
Salt

Combine the nuts and garlic in a food processor, and process to chop coarsely. Add the kale and oil and process to a coarse paste. Add the cheese and process briefly, just to incorporate it. The pesto should be fairly smooth but still have some texture. Season with salt to taste.

The other day I did a Google search for "kale almond pesto" and actually found some results! So maybe I'm not that strange after all...

P.S. Writing about bread pudding titillated (funny word, no? I still remember sitting in an Asian American literature class sophomore year in college and trying to suppress a giggle when I heard my uber-serious professor use it for the first time) my sweet tooth even more than usual. Someday soon I'll have to post my bourbon chocolate bread pudding recipe, which my former roommate and good friend Jessica loves. (Jessica, if you're reading this I miss you!!) But tonight I'm going to try my hand at tiramisu instead, for a dinner party we're hosting tomorrow evening. I'll let you know how it turns out - well, assuming the end product is good!

I'm back, with ketoprak!

Sorry, I just couldn't resist the cheesy rhyme. ;-) I'm finally back in Columbus after having been gone for over two weeks, and I missed my kitchen terribly. Now don't get me wrong, I love eating out, especially when decadent desserts are involved. Which reminds me, if you haven't tried the chocolate lava cake at Morton's Steakhouse, you must (I repeat, must!) at some point in your life. Even BFFT admits that it's amazing. I had it for the first time at a New Year's Eve dinner with family a few years ago, and when I went back with a group of girlfriends during my "visit" to California - in quotes because I still can't fathom the fact that I'm a tourist in a state I never thought I'd leave - I insisted that we get two of them to share. Even despite our being traumatized by the live lobster that the waiter paraded around our table as he described the menu items (or shall I say introduced them in person! it reminded me a little of that scene in "The Little Mermaid" where the crazy chef chases Sebastian around the restaurant with a knife while singing at the top of his lungs), we devoured the cakes. And funnily enough, none of us ordered meat that night. I wonder if Morton's realizes that their lobster beauty pageant is actually counterproductive for some customers.

Anyway, I'm happy to be in cooking mode again, and the first recipe I made this week was one of BFFT's old favorites. The dish is called ketoprak, and it originated in Indonesia as a street food, although some sit-down restaurants are starting to serve it as well. The "real" version is apparently rolled into a banana leaf and boiled, but I'm not that adventurous - yet! I was introduced to ketoprak one evening when I visited BFFT for dinner at his old stomping ground (otherwise known as Google), and they happened to have it on the menu. It was so delicious that I looked up the best ketoprak recipe I could find on the Internet, adapted it to suit BFFT's and my taste, and tried my best to reproduce it at home. Below is the end product; similar to the lentil burritos, BFFT never gets tired of it and has claimed he could eat it every night!

Ingredients (for 2 servings):

2 T peanut oil
1 egg, beaten
1/2 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced (sometimes I like to substitute 1/3 c scallion white parts)
1 small jalapeno (or crushed red pepper flakes to taste)
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 lb firm tofu, well drained and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
4 oz wide rice noodles (fettucine works fine too)
1/2 lb green beans (sometimes I do snow peas instead)
3/4 t lemon juice
1/4 c soy sauce
1/4 c peanut butter (crunchy is best)
Parsley leaves for garnish

Instructions:

1. Put 1/2 T oil into nonstick skillet and heat over medium-high. Pour in beaten egg, reduce heat to medium, and cook without disturbing a few minutes until well set. Turn and cook other side briefly. Slide out onto a plate to cool, then roll into tube and cut into long thin strips.

2. Wipe out skillet and heat 1 T oil over medium-high. Saute onion until tender, about 5-7 minutes. During the last minute of cooking, add garlic and jalapeno, being careful not to burn them.

3. Wipe out skillet again and heat 1 T oil until hot but not smoking. Stir-fry green beans over high heat for 5 minutes, or until crisp-tender. (If using snow peas, 2-3 minutes will suffice.)

4. "Fry" tofu using my method (see "Betcha can't tell this tofu isn't fried!" post). Alternatively, you can deep fry the tofu in oil for 5 minutes, until golden brown.

5. Boil noodles in water for 10 minutes (or cooking time indicated on package), and drain.

6. To make sauce, mix lemon juice and soy sauce in a bowl. Gradually stir in peanut butter.

7. To serve, toss tofu, noodles, and green beans with peanut sauce. Garnish with slivered egg, onion/garlic/jalapeno mix, and parsley.



I have no idea how well this recipe conforms to traditional ketoprak (or whether the Google recipe even did, for that matter). But I do know that it's tasty and, as BFFT was quick to point out, better than it looks! He managed to take this picture just before Claude lunged at the plate in a last-ditch attempt to burgle some human food.

Chayote Ugly

Ever cooked (or even eaten) a chayote before? Neither had I, until Monday night. During my week in San Diego, I was determined to prepare at least one full meal. Well, I actually expected to spend a lot more time in the kitchen than that, but instead I ended up eating several dinners out with friends and family. When I lived in the Bay Area I always overestimated the amount of "free time" I'd have on my trips back home, and relocating to Ohio has further exacerbated this tendency. I guess I had to move 2,500 miles away to start feeling like a rock star with a full social schedule... heehee, I sound kind of like my older sister. ;-) For those of you who don't know Krissy, she is the popular one. And, I should add, the self-identified beautiful one. The latter is a running joke between us and originated circa 1995, the day that she gazed at herself adoringly in our bathroom mirror and tossed her hair back like a shampoo commercial star, exclaiming "God, I'm beautiful!" Meanwhile, I looked on in my gangly, pubescent (lack of) glory and seethed.

Okay, back to my cooking excursion. On Monday afternoon I went to a local supermarket in search of exotic, fusion-y ingredients that wouldn't necessarily be as accessible to me in Columbus. And I stumbled upon a stack of chayotes. Admittedly, one of the reasons I brought two of them home with me was so that I could post a blog entry with this title. (Until I looked it up on dictionary.com I actually thought it was pronounced "coyote". For those of you who are curious and/or have a worse sense of pronunciation than I do - in other words, for an infinitesimal percentage of the population - it is "chai-OAT-ee".) The chayotes themselves weren't too ugly, but the plantains next to them were hideously brown and/or withered. Too bad, because I had hoped to make a chayote-plantain saute inspired by a purported seasonal flavor of Jeni's ice creams. (Best. Ice. Cream. EVER.) I substituted bananas instead, and neither my mom nor stepdad seemed to mind. Some of the rest of the ingredients I pulled from a Cuisine at Home recipe for banana-sweet potato mash. But mostly, this is a Kim-made creation:

Ingredients:
1 t butter or canola oil
2 chayotes, diced into 1-inch cubes
2 bananas or plantains, sliced
1/2 jalapeno
1 T brown sugar
1 T orange juice
a dash of salt

Instructions:
Saute chayote cubes and jalapeno in butter or oil in a skillet over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, or until crisp-tender. (If using plantains, saute them with the chayote. If using bananas, add at the end just to heat through, or they will break apart.) Add brown sugar and orange juice; cook until sugar is dissolved and juice is evaporated, about 2 minutes. Finish with salt.

The taste was, in my stepdad's words, interesting. (Believe it or not, that's a compliment! Keep in mind it comes from a man who would always quip, "Does your face hurt?" when I'd complain about not feeling well.) The jalapeno added a little twist to the sweetness of the other ingredients, and the chayote tasted... well, pretty neutral. But definitely not ugly. I had hoped to post a picture with this recipe, and although I did take one on my cell phone, I only recently realized that I can't upload it to a computer. So alas, it wasn't meant to be. Once I'm back in Columbus and have BFFT's digital on hand, though, I'll be fully back on board.

Italian burritos, and my fusion fixation

So I landed in San Diego this morning, and I now have some time to kill before heading off to a wedding in Julian for the weekend. Julian is a quaint mountain town about 1 1/2 hours to the northeast; I haven't been since I was about 3 years old, when my family drove there to play in the snow! (Yes, they have mountains near San Diego, and yes, Californians make an event out of "going to the snow".) Because I'll no doubt be enjoying all sorts of delicious food cooked by other people tonight and tomorrow, I figured I might as well post something of my own now. For better or worse, this blog really has led me to change my approach to cooking, as what you are about to read is yet another original!

On Wednesday night I decided to try my hand at an Italian-style burrito made with cannellini beans. (I confess to just having spell-checked "cannellini", and it's a good thing because I thought there was only one "n"! See, as much as I try not to let my obsessive-compulsive personality infiltrate my writing, I can't help myself.) I actually got the idea a few months ago, when I made a "black bean and cheddar" burrito recipe from Fine Cooking but all I had on hand were white beans. BFFT loved it anyway, and I started thinking of some ways to make the filling more true to the bean type. A few years ago I took a two-week-long vacation to Tuscany with BFFT and the in-laws (I think I see a raised eyebrow, or two, or unibrow - believe it or not his parents are wonderful!), and at dinner one night we had a delicious cannellini-rosemary side dish. So I decided to recreate it on paper - I mean, in tortilla - and here's what I came up with:

Italian "burritos"

Ingredients:
1 T olive oil
1/3 c onion (preferably yellow)
2 cloves garlic
1 small tomato (I used green this time - went well with the herbs color-wise!)
10 oz canned cannellini beans
1/2 t dried rosemary
1/2 t dried sage
1/3 c grated fontina cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
2 burrito-size tortillas (sundried tomato flavor is tasty)

Directions:

Saute onion in oil over medium heat for 5 minutes, or until tender. Add garlic and saute until fragrant, about 1 additional minute. Add tomato, cannellini beans, and herbs. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook until all ingredients are heated through, 2-3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

While filling is cooking, bake tortillas (with fontina cheese spread across the middle) in a 350-degree oven for about 3 minutes. Transfer to plates, spread half of the filling over each tortilla, roll up, and serve.



Is it just me or does looking at this picture make you kind of dizzy? Anyway, on the side I served roasted green beans with half a head of leftover radicchio (the double-consonant Italian words are killing me today! well, I actually got this one right according to my spell checker). Radicchio develops a wonderful, nutty flavor as it cooked, so it complemented the burritos quite well.

Considering my very first post, you might be tempted to think I have some sort of burrito fixation. I actually don't... it's more a "fusion fixation", which if you consider what I've blogged about thus far, could begin to describe much of my cooking. So I am developing a style, or perhaps am just becoming consciously aware of it at long last! Awesome.

P.S. Don't worry, that comment about the unibrow in no way referred to you. I have been up since 3am Pacific time (and didn't sleep for most of last night because I kept having nightmares about missing my plane!), so I'm in a strange mood. Or maybe I'm just strange, period.