13 Dec-Day of Cooking

*Cod baked then broiled with mango (green that was never going to be ripe but wanted to use), coriander (since no fresh cilantro), jalapeno, pepper and bit of Spanish paprika. Tasty, but wow was the cod stinky. Every time we leave and return home, it still smells like cod.
*Steamed brown rice.
*Lamb loin chops rubbed with the Cool Chile Co's Achiote paste, browned on stove and then baked at 450 degrees for 10 minutes. Soooo good.
*Red wine risotto with mushrooms, onion, garlic, balsamic vinegar and homemade chicken broth. Parmesan added at end.
*Brussel sprouts cooked in same pan that I'd used to brown the lamp. I didn't even wipe the pan down, using the same oil and Achiote seasonings that remained on bottom of pan.
*Pan fried quinoa cakes-quinoa, yogurt, grated beets, grated parsnips, grated carrots, jalapeno, gram flour, sauteed onion and chili powder. Aren't they a pretty red color?

Had risotto, lamb and brussel sprouts withe Dourthe Saint-Emilion 2004. Marked as good with lamb, but certainly a bit too oaky for us. Of course, we still had two glasses a piece.

Gluten Free Goodness

I would not be happy if I could not have pancakes, brownies and chocolate chip cookies. Since I'm suppose to avoid gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kalmut), I have to bake these items myself. Luckily I like to bake, and, since my mom rarely bought mixes of any kind when we were kids, I've always understood that if you want sweet treats, it's going to take a bit of work and preparation.

The UK is definitely gluten free friendly, and I've located all the necessary ingredients: brown rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, gram (chick pea) flour, almond meal, gluten free baking powder and xantham gum. My pancake recipe is just a modified version of a Betty Crocker one where I substitute a mix of brown rice flour, gram flour and almond meal for one cup wheat flour. I also add 3/4 tsp xantham gum which helps bind the pancakes (this is what gluten does and xantham gum mimics this behavior). Now, I'm an approximator (I fill up the one cup measuring cup with the flour mixture-I don't measure each ingredient separately), so the pancakes may turn out differently each time. Today I made them with a little more gram flour (about 1/3 cup), and we think it made them lighter.

The brownie recipe is also a modification of a recipe-Epicurious' Best Cocoa Brownies. The recipe is easy to modify without too much of a change in flavor because it only calls for 1/2 cup flour to begin with. Once again the mixture I use changes each time, but I mostly use brown rice flour and a bit of almond meal. I sometimes use gram flour. I'll also add about 1/2 tsp xantham gum to the dry ingredients. I've also made them cholesterol free (for M*) with egg whites and vegetable based shortening. Thanks to the use of high quality cocoa and sugar, these are still moist and chocolaty enough to serve to friends.

Once I find a bag of chocolate chips that contains more than 12 pieces, I'll be making chocolate chip cookies. The recipe is from a fabulous gluten free cookbook-"Gluten-Free Baking Classics" by Annalise G. Roberts. Her recipes first appeared in Gourmet magazine in November 2005. The big plus about her book is that you don't have to create a gazillion different gluten free flour mixes to make the recipes in her book. There's one basic one using finely milled brown rice flour, tapioca flour and potato starch. Then there are a few modifications if you want to make breads and certain cookies.

Oven Fries

CI had a recipe in 2004 for oven fries that were suppose to taste as good as if they'd been deep fried. CI did all the research, including determining the best type of potato to use; russet was the winner. My sister made these with great results, and now I've made them twice. M* and I have scarfed down the fruits of my labors, but thrift has kept us from buying russets since we have unknown varieties of organic potatoes delivered weekly that need to be used. Can't wait to make these with the correct potato and in a pan that does not dip on the sides (the fries that are in the dip tend to cook quicker). One of the CI tricks is to soak the peeled potato wedges in cold water for 10 minutes and then to cook them covered for 5 minutes before removing the cover for the remaining 30 minutes or so. I do recommend making a lot of these because it's so sad to have ketchup left on your plate with nothing to dip in it.

Love the Stockpot

Finally bought a stockpot. With our old 3 1/2 quart pot, making soups resulted in much liquid spilling over the sides and onto the hob (as a range/stove top is called in the UK) and required adding the required water or broth in stages, once some liquid had evaporated. Our new 7 1/2 quart pot is just perfect. Made chicken soup last night. Correction-made a lot of chicken soup last night.

Saturday Night Cooking

Gluten-free apple cinnamon cake, corn chowder soup and roast chicken with rosemary, thyme, onion and garlic. M* and I didn't set out to spend a few hours in the kitchen, but after a trip to the Whole Foods-like Waitrose, we felt inspired with our bags of high quality groceries.

First, the GF apple cinnamon cake. This recipe was actually for muffins, but we don't have muffin tins here and couldn't bring myself to spend $38 on a 12 count muffin tin. The recipe was from the cookbook "Gluten-Free Baking Classics" by Annalise G. Roberts. Gourmet magazine published a few of her recipes and her brown rice flour mix in November 2005. Thanks to her, I made irresistible chocolate chip cookies that people didn't realize were not made with wheat flour and thin-crust pizza that a friend said was the best pizza she had tasted in Los Angeles-she moved to LA from NY about 18 years ago. So how was the apple cinnamon cake? I'll let the photos tell the story.

(Sat night left, Sun night right)

With M* no longer in classes (he's still finishing a few projects), he took a break and made his yummy corn and bacon chowder. The recipe calls for two cans of cream corn, but no one at Waitrose had heard of it before. They do sell it in the UK, but maybe Waitrose is too upscale. M* just pureed some corn in the blender instead. Other ingredients include potatoes, bay leaves, celery and celery leaves, vegetable broth, chili pepper, milk frozen corn, onion. Simple recipe with pleasing results.

Roasting chicken in the oven is pretty basic, and I have taken the CI recommendation to rotate the chicken from one wing side up to the other wing side up and finally to the breast up. Having a v-rack is recommended to keep the chicken off the bottom of the pan, but I've just been approximating this effect by making an aluminum foil grid on the bottom of the pan. I didn't have time to brine the chicken, so I just created a rosemary, thyme and garlic paste and rubbed into under the skin. I also put a bit of onion and rosemary inside the chicken. Chicken was really yummy, and it made great chicken broth when we cooked it down the next day.

I still have to master using the thermometer. After the chicken had been in the recommended time, I tested the temperature, and it was certainly above the suggested level. However, I thought the chicken could have really used another 10-15 minutes. I hate cutting into a dish, only to have to have to put it back in the over. I'm still not sure if it was my temperature-taking technique or the super-cheap Tesco thermometer that was the problem.

Lebanese Taverna's Lentil Soup

My sister took a cooking class at Lebanese Taverna in the DC area a few years back, and she served us the lentil soup that she learned to make. I am only slowly becoming a fan of the taste of lentils, however even I was a fan of this hearty, filling soup. M* copied down the recipe that night, but we had yet to make it. I had already made a satisfactory recipe with green lentils since arriving in Cambridge, but once I realized that we had this recipe with us, that one was soon forgotten.

I'm happy to report that our efforts were as successful as my sister's, and this recipe will be a staple in our cadre of winter meals. The only real prep is to remember to soak the lentils for about 12 hours. Besides the sumac, spinach and lemon, we had all of the ingredients: cilantro, garlic, potatoes, cinnamon, onion, olive oil, salt, pepper. I certainly would not make it without the sumac, as it certainly lends a distinct, strong, slightly sour flavor. Like most soups, it tastes just as yummy one, three or five days later.

Finally An Excellent Meal: Salmon Dinner with Indian Flavors

While I've made plenty of tasty meals since being here, I could tell by M*'s expression after one bite that this one was a keeper. I searched for salmon and chard on CI, and I came up with a menu for an Indian meal: Easy Salmon Dinner with Indian Flavors. There were actually four recipes for the meal, and I made two: Tender Greens with Indian Spices and Grilled Salmon with Indian Flavors and Fresh Mango Chutney. I skipped the mango sorbet and Indian-spiced rice pilaf, as we already had brown rice and there are only so many loads of dishes that I can manually wash per day. Fortuitously the accompanying chutney for the salmon called for a mango. I've only bought one since arriving in Cambridge, and it was sitting in our fruit/ veggie bowl perfectly ripe. The marinade actually made the thawed, Tesco-boxed salmon steaks delicious.

It's such a good feeling coming across a recipe like this where I have almost all of the required ingredients: chard (from our weekly organic vegetable delivery), mango, fresh ginger, curry powder, garlic, ground cumin, ground coriander, onion, oil, salt 'n' peppa. I did have to pick up some a chile, cilantro (fresh coriander in the UK) and a lemon, and I just used a mix of chili powder and Spanish paprika for the 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (which I have since bought because it is in many recipes). The Tender Greens recipe called for adding heavy cream and brown sugar at the end of sauteing the chard with the onion, garlic, ginger, chile, curry powder and cumin. Since M* is watching his cholesterol, I skipped the last step. Also, I didn't find heavy cream at the store, and I'm confused at the difference between all the creams anyway (clotted, single fat, double fat, whipping, etc).

In general this recipe is really easy. The sauteing of the greens with the above ingredients takes no time. The salmon just needs to be rubbed with some oil, cumin, coriander, ginger, salt and cayenne pepper and left to marinate in the fridge for about 1/2 hour. Then I placed the salmon in the bottom of the oven on what I believe was the broil setting for seven minutes per side. The only time consuming aspect of the chutney was peeling the mango. After that, one just has to add some lemon juice and cilantro. Will definitely make again and again.

Smoked Turkey Breasts, Roasted Turnips with Shallots and Oven Fries

Once again from Cook's Illustrated - they just seem to have the root vegetable recipes. OK, so the Smoked Turkey Breast recipe calls for smoking one turkey breast on the grill. No grill here and I have four individual turkey breasts versus one large one. Basically, I just used the rub from the recipe (cumin, corriander, cardemom, ginger, pepper, cayenne pepper)- without the allspice or fenugreek - and cooked the breasts in the oven. Because they were weren't roasted on the grill, the rub ended up staying on like a breading. Cooked the turkey last night, and will reheat tonight to eat with...

Roasted turnips, parsnips, small potatoes and shallots. Simply toss these in a baking pan with some rosemary (or thyme) and cook. After about 30 minutes, you add a head of garlic. What I really liked was there tip for quickly peeling a head of garlic while softening it up a bit. Simply throw it in a pan with enough water to cover and, once the water is brought to a boil, you simmer it for 10 minutes. After rinsing the garlic off with cold water, the skin of both the head and cloves comes off very easily. So after adding the garlic and giving all the veggies a toss, you cook for about 20 minutes at increased heat.

Since I had potatoes left over from last weeks organic vegetable delivery, I'm attempting the famous Oven Fries recipe from CI. My sister made these, and she swears that they are just as good as if you'd deep fried them. You are suppose to use russet potatoes, but I'm just using the ones that we have (not sure what type they are). Also, they are much smaller than what is suggested (8 ounces per). Everything else is the same. This will be a very starchy evening!

Chicken Broth

When we have a chicken (previously, in the US, bought cooked from Whole Foods), we like to throw the chicken, after our meal, in a pot, add some water, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, assorted spices and end up with yummy, healthy chicken broth. I thought that we'd get more flavorful chicken broth by cooking a raw chicken in the pot - figuring none of the juices would be lost in roasting the chicken first in the oven. Well, I was wrong.

Cooking the chicken in the pot takes quite a while - hours - to adequately allow the boiling/ simmering water to absorb the flavor of the chicken and other ingredients and leech the fatty goodness (the umami) out of the chicken. Since we currently do not have a large stockpot, I had been cutting out the raw chicken breasts first and saving them for another meal. However, I definitely felt that we wasted the other meat on the chicken as I didn't have patience to take time to thoroughly pick through the remains. We used to pick the carcass clean of any edible meat before moving onto the broth phase when we bought cooked chicken.

The morning after making Roast Chicken with Root Veggies, I put the chicken carcass (including the congealed fat) in the pot with water, chili peppers (should have only used 1, not 3!) and fennel stalks. Within 1 to 1 1/2 hours we had delicious, mustard colored broth with intense chicken flavor. From now on, we're cooking our chickens first, and then we'll make the broth. We'll get more meat and better broth. This time we used the broth the next day to make risotto - an unusually spicy risotto thanks to the chili peppers in the broth.

Roast Chicken with Root Veggies

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated. I wanted to try brining a chicken, and it was really easy. Only thing was recipe called for two chickens to be brined and then cooked at one time. I don't have a pot truly big enough to brine one chicken to their specifications let alone two let alone an oven big enough to cook two. I will buy a real stockpot, but in the meantime I cut down the sugar and salt in the brine to 1 cup each from 1 1/2 cups because I could only fit about 10 cups of water when the recipe called for 16. Kept the garlic at two heads (yes, heads not cloves) and bay leaves at six. Basically just brine the chicken for an hour or so, cook and then use the same pan to cook the root vegetables under very high heat. Root vegetables are really up to you. We used potatoes, fennel, sweet potatoes and onions. I threw in some leeks that we had to use at the very end so that they wouldn't overcook.

Cauliflower Pakora

From Hungrymonster.com. I made this before, and, while tasty, the batter did not come close to covering 2 pounds of cauliflower. It was thick as the recipe said it would be, but I was even wondering if it was too thin. When I dipped the cauliflower in the batter and thoroughly coated a piece, it seemed as though I was left with 1/4 cup less batter. The first few pieces where thoroughly coated, but the rest were partial at best. I'm not 100% convinced that one needs to do the frying of each batch in two stages. Because my pieces were so delicately battered, moving them in and out of the pan two times caused some batter to flake off.

However, M* loved, loved, loved this dish. He was eating it as fast as I was taking it out of the hot oil. Could it be because deep frying makes everything taste better? I liked it, but I wanted each piece to be thoroughly coated. My unhappiness had only to do with presentation.

I bought a smaller cauliflower head this time, so we'll see what happens.

update - Well with about half of the called for cauliflower, double the amount of yogurt and double the amount of chili powder, M* and I really enjoyed this dish again. I'm still struggling with the batter not fully adhering to the cauliflower. It often just stuck to the bottom of the pan - and some fell off during the process of taking the florets out halfway through the process. I think that I will try another recipe or use elements of another recipe next time. I do like this recipe because it calls for yogurt and besan (chick pea flour) only, as I can't have any gluten containing flours. In general this recipe is very easy - although I have yet to master the disposing of all of that oil. I did save it once, after straining out the pieces of fried dough. I'm not comfortable reusing it more than once though. I should probably get passed that.

Easy Split Pea Soup

From Epicurious. I made this a month or so ago with a smoked ham hock that I bought from the local butcher. It was a massive ham hock that yielded plenty of meat that I trimmed off and added to the soup. The hock was so large that it made it impossible to add the 8 cups of water to the pot. I had to add 1 or 2 cups later, after some had evaporated off. A large stock pot didn't come with the furnished flat, but I think it's a necessary investment. Cambridge in winter is definitely a prime soup location.

I didn't add any additional salt, but the ham hock provided more than enough - too much actually. M* and I are both salt minimalists. I also didn't puree the soup, as I like it chunky. I just let it cook for an extra hour or so. Didn't have the marjoram, so I added thyme.

Today, I used some leftover back bacon that M* had bought while I was gone, instead of the ham hock. This time all 8 cups of water fit in the pot since I didn't use the volume hogging hock. Left fat on the bacon - as pork fat is good, good, good. Substituted 1/2 of the butter with olive oil - but I didn't measure and I may have overdone the total butter/oil amount. Once again I didn't use marjoram - added thyme, garlic and bay leaves.

One of the reviewer comments on the Epicurious site mentioned using turkey instead of pork - may try that next time. Another comment mentioned adding miso at the end to bring out the smoky flavor, if making it vegetarian. Since I am not using the smoked ham hock this time, I'm going to add some Spanish paprika towards the end. It's supposed to have a smokier flavor than other paprikas. Oh, almost forgot - I threw in a potato that we had to help thicken it. M* loves his potatoes.

update - If I was going to use bacon again, I would trim off the fat or put it in a sack or something. The bacon fat had separated from the bacon - and it was hard to decide what was bacon fat and what was a garlic pieces that I hadn't cut all that small. Also, if one wanted to puree any amount of the soup, the bacon should be kept in a bag as well. It had come apart to the point that it was too hard to pull the pieces out. I guess I could have pureed it with the bacon in it, but that just kind of weired/ grossed me out. The paprika was a nice add to the soup. In general, it was muy tasty.