Vegetable Adventures, Week 1

In the interest of eating more produce, supporting local farms, and forcing myself to be even more creative in the summer, I signed up for a farmshare this summer.  Yesterday was the first pickup day, and because I like to post my culinary adventures, I've decided to share what I get and what I do with it.  So here goes:

This week's takings.  Labels start from top left and continue clockwise. Not pictured: asparagus

Mustard Greens: lightly sauteed with browned onion and garlic, seasoned with sesame oil and salt, following the instructions here.  So good.  But I'm a little afraid I was mostly tasting the onions and sesame.

Radishes: eaten raw with a little salt.  These being spring radishes, their flavor is a lot milder than the kind you find at the grocery store.

Lettuce: part of a couple (fake) egg salad sandwiches.

Mint: 1 spring eaten as-is (it was so tasty), 2 sprigs in a jar to hopefully take root (it does not look good), 2 sprigs used with other leftover mint to make raspberry mint lemonade (recipe here).

Swiss Chard: Chopped and steamed for about 10 minutes, following the instructions from this blog.  The result tastes a lot like steamed spinach.  The stems taste really good, though the leaves are a little bland when cooked...

Asparagus: Chopped, roasted in the oven for 10 minutes, and then added to spaghetti and a sweetened balsamic reduction following this amazing recipe (minus the parmesan).  Seriously, if you have asparagus, make this.  I have never tasted pasta so delicious.

reclaiming campus

The past couple weeks have been a whirlwind of graduation visits, students' final projects, exam proctoring, and giving people space so that they can get their last insane push of work done before not having that kind of work at all for a while.  Final exams here are over at the end of the week, and I am looking forward not only to seeing my friends more, but also (especially?) to the fact that most of the undergraduates will leave campus and not come back until August.

It's not that I think undergrads are awful - it's just that in the summer when many of them are gone, graduate students get the opportunity to take ownership of campus.  We can go to Green Street (the C-U equivalent of South U for my Ann Arbor friends) for lunch at noon without encountering long lines and equally long waiting times.  We can have picnics on the Quad, be it Engineering or the regular one.  It's possible to ride one's bicycle to the gym without encountering straggler pedestrians in every bike lane.  With such a drastic reduction in the university's 40,000-odd crowd, those who stay are granted the chance relax and breathe a little.  Oh, right, and the outdoor pool is open all summer, which has nothing to do with undergrads at all but makes me immeasurably happy.

At the Big House for Tony's graduation.

It seems my family doesn't understand the grad student summer very well: when I was home a couple weekends ago to see my little brother graduate, I had to field various questions along the lines of "So what do you think you'll do for summer break?"  For me, there is no summer break.  Yes, I might get a break from teaching, but I have already completed my required classes and spend my working time doing research.  The end of the semester changes nothing.  However, I'm hoping that the extra time I'll have from not teaching will allow me to complete this start-up project I've been working on for so long.  With that out of the way, I will be able to focus on the weighty task of finding a prelim topic (more on that in another post).

Throughout all this, I have continued with my baking endeavors.  I confess that I've started looking forward to the completion of this project, as the various ingredients have increased my grocery bills, sometimes significantly, and the time commitment has begun to feel just a bit onerous.  Do not fear that I will cut this off abruptly, I am committed to completing my cookie project on time.  I have learned so much about baking in the past 34 months and although I tire of this project, I still look forward to what I will learn in the next seven.

147. Coconut Cookies with Passion Fruit Curd
Living in Illinois, it can be kind of difficult to find something so tropical as passion fruit puree.  In general, I look for ingredients first at Meijer, second at Strawberry Fields, and then I start going to specialty stores.  I ended up finding passion fruit pulp at what should be my default third store to check, World Harvest.  This is a little Pakistani-owned shop (the owner is a great guy) close to campus that stocks ingredients from around the world.  And so, frozen fruit in hand, I rejoiced in the fact that I would finally be able to try this recipe.

The cookies themselves were amazingly easy to make.  I had most of the ingredients on hand, including unsweetened coconut flakes, which I found at the grocery store some time ago on the same shelf as carob chips.  The dough was kind of sticky, so I found it was important to pay attention to the chilling instructions in the recipe, and to use large quantities of flour to roll them out and cut them into circles.  Funny story: all my round cookie cutters were too big, so I ended up using a shot glass - well, a measuring shot glass, for tablespoon measurements and the like - to cut the cookies.  After baking, the result was a strongly coconut, already tasty cookie.  I guess these were supposed to turn out kind of crispy but maybe I undercooked them a little, as they turned out a little soft.  Honestly, though, I think I prefer the chewier texture.

As the cookie name indicates, passion fruit curd serves as the filling here.  The curd is made with passion fruit pulp (the recipe called for puree, but I'm not sure with this fruit that there's much of a difference), lemon juice, sugar, butter, and egg yolks, as well as a couple other non-flavoring ingredients.  The result was both sweet and sour, with a custard (curd?) texture to it.  If it weren't so rich, I probably would have just attacked the curd with a spoon and not bothered with the cookies.

I managed to behave myself and constructed these sandwich cookies as directed by the recipe.  Together, the passion fruit and coconut were AMAZING.  There are some tropical flavors I really don't like - papaya, for instance - but these flavors made a fantastic mix.  Given that I have half a bag of passion fruit pulp left in my freezer, these cookies will definitely be making a return appearance this summer.

148. Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookies
I mentioned above that I recently traveled to see my brother graduate.  Well, that weekend was an insane 67 hours of driving, visiting, celebrating, and not getting much sleep.  I left Champaign at 6:30am on Friday and returned at 1:30am on Monday, with no time in between for baking cookies.  I toyed with the idea of skipping the week's baking entirely, but I've been very strictly following the one recipe per week rule I set when I started, and decided that I could give an hour to make a recipe I was saving.  It was a little disappointing to have to use this now, as I kind of hoped to save it for the very end, but as I flipped through my cookbook before bible study, I realized that no other available recipe would allow me to have cookies ready to share with my small group.

These cookies have slightly less butter in them than standard chocolate chip cookies, and have more white sugar than brown sugar.  This makes them more dense and a little more dry, but not dry in a bad way.  I'm not sure if I would describe these specifically as being like cake, but it's probably the closest comparison.  I was very impressed by these cookies, and I think they might actually be my favorite iteration of chocolate chip cookies from this book (there are 3 total).  It's possible that I may have to compare them side by side, but I liked these, and so did my friends.  As a side note, since I've been making very fancy stuff lately, I brought these into my office and one of my labmates scoffed at their simplicity.  I told him if he had a problem with it, he didn't have to have any cookies.  So there.

149. Prune Rugelach
Some recipes take a long time from start to finish.  The best ones typically don't call for much active time.  This specific recipe falls somewhere in between.  It was necessary to prepare the dough the night before and chill it, and to soak the prunes in brandy overnight.  The next afternoon, I rolled the dough out into very large circles, spread the pureed prunes on them, followed by white bread crumbs and sugar, and then rolled the wedges up.  These had to chill for two hours in the fridge before being baked for 40 minutes.  From start to finish, this meant about 24 hours with approximately 2 hours active time.

I realize that you're probably thinking that prunes are old people food.  Indeed, they are high in fiber, but they also taste pretty good.  The brandy soak really perked up their flavor, although most of the alcohol evaporated away during the baking process.  It was important that this filling was very sweet, as the dough involved is a simple cream cheese and butter dough with no sugar in it.  Once baked, this dough was delightfully flaky and lent a fantastic richness to the whole recipe.  Overall, I found these cookies to be better than expected, and had a difficult time keeping myself from consuming several of them.

You may also notice that there is some mysterious jello in the picture above.  This was a recent experiment, where I made French Lemonade jello shots.  As a result of wasting time on Pinterest, I stumbled on a blog whose writers make cocktails into jello shots, and so I had to try making some.  You can check the blog out here: Jelly Shot Test Kitchen.

Alright guys, that's all I've got tonight.  I hope those of you in the Midwest are staying cool with this latest heat wave, and that you all stay safe with the subsequent possibly severe weather.

scatterbrained

The past several days have been a mess of distractions, mistakes, and things forgotten that should have been remembered.  This means dirty dishes have accumulated (they are clean now), gym shoes have been left at home, and - perhaps the worst thing to happen - it completely slipped my mind to take a picture of the cookies I made this week.

I am so embarrassed.

It's not like I didn't plan to take that picture.  I mean, I have three or four days between baking cookies and them being completely gone, but this week... well... I'll blame it on the wicked awesome thunderstorm we had last night.

For now, I guess I'll put in some placeholder picture, and hopefully (considering I have various specialty ingredients left over) I will make a batch again soon and actually take a picture.

146. Chocolate Chip Cookies for Passover
When I first looked through this cookbook, and even when I first started this project, I figured I would end up skipping this recipe.  After all, what would I do with matzo meal and matzo farfel (matzo farfel is broken up bits of matzo crackers)?  After spending so much time (and money) hunting down special ingredients and baking tools, I realized that it would actually be no big deal to make these, and since I should be done in November, this was my last Passover to give the recipe a shot.

Now, what's so special about Passover cookies? Well, during Passover the Jewish people remember the tenth plague of Egypt, the plague on the firstborn, where the plague passed over the Jewish families that had lamb's blood on their doorways, and subsequently led to their being freed by Pharaoh.  In part of the instructions about the Passover meal,

"Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it as on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.  In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.  For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses.  And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born.  Eat nothing made with yeast.  Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread."

(Exodus 12:17-20)

 Basically, in order for these cookies to be acceptable for Passover, they need to have no leavening agent in them, nor any dairy.  All-purpose flour typically has some leavening in it, and so matzo meal and matzo farfel were used instead.  Furthermore, vegetable oil was used in place of butter, and the recipe asks for non-dairy chocolate chips.  Add in your usual vanilla, eggs, and brown sugar, and some walnuts, and you've pretty much got the whole recipe.

The results of this recipe were surprisingly delicious!  The cookies had a nice soft texture, and although you could tell that they were made with matzo instead of flour, all the people who tasted them had no complaints.

unflappable as a giraffe

It's nice to not be taking any classes this semester. While my younger friends, little brother, and students are stressed out with exams and final projects (and some older friends with quals and prelims!), I just float along at my regular level of sustainable chaos, fretting over research that won't quite turn out and unfortunate substitute kickboxing instructors.

With longer-lasting worries, I find that I am more likely to find joy in small things, almost as if they are a break from my concerns. Thus, riding my bike to and from campus yesterday was the most amazing twenty minutes ever. And my dinner - well, you make yourself some black beans, broccoli, and quinoa with a raspberry chipotle sauce and see if you are not the happiest camper on the block.

The cookies I've made have also made me happy, some for how they look, and some for how they taste.  Unfortunately, you only get to experience the former.

143. Mexican Wedding Cookies
I guess crunchy almond-butter cookies are not only made for Mexican weddings, but I am not responsible for their name.  As the previous sentence indicates, these cookies are made with lots of butter, and have ground toasted blanched almonds in the dough.  These cookies resemble a dry almond shortbread, and the confectioners' sugar coating makes them more pretty and just sweet enough.  Needless to say, these did not last long around my friends.

144. Chocolate Ginger Leaves and Acorns
Leaves and acorns are boring, so I decided these needed to be chocolate ginger stegosauruses instead.  These cookies have ginger (both dried and grated), molasses, and a hefty dose of cocoa in them.  They were supposed to be crunchy cookies, but I chose to underbake them a little, and they turned out to be really soft and awesome.
I know I've complained about the balance between chocolate and ginger in other cookies, but I found that the two flavors complimented each other nicely, with neither being overwhelmed by the other.  Between the flavor and the cuteness of the dinosaurs, these cookies were a big hit.

145. Orange-Cardamom Madeleines
Having already purchased a madeleine pan and needing something to make quickly, I jumped at the opportunity to make these cookies.  If you've read any previous entries, you'll know that I'm a big fan of cookies that look good without taking much effort, and madeleines fit the bill.
These madeleines are made with lots of cardamom in them, and not much else flavor-wise.  After being baked, they were covered with an orange glaze made with zest and juice.  I think I didn't make the glaze thick enough because it soaked into the cookies a little bit, but they were still really good.  These cookies were not as cake-y delightful as the lemon madeleines I made before, but I enjoyed the cardamom flavor.

A taste of summer

Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox, which means that winter is finally over!  It is now spring, at least on paper, and we know what spring in the Midwest means, right?  Magic 8-ball forecasting.  The next several weeks will be a roller coaster of temperatures and humidity, mixed with some rain and maybe even a decent thunderstorm.

Spring is a bit of a tease.  On the first couple warm days, like today, it is so tempting to pack away all my sweaters, get my bike out for the season, and go buy ice cream.  Of course, I'll need those sweaters this weekend, but for now I revel in the promise of beautiful weather that sticks around.

In this spirit, I chose to make something light and lemony for my weekend cookies:

142. Lemon Madeleines

These cookies have been looming on the baking horizon for a while.  I put them off because I wasn't sure where to go to purchase the appropriate pan, but after shopping around a little I realized I was going to end up spending $15 anyway, so I bit the bullet and bought one last Saturday.  Madeleine pans are basically molds: they're flat except for the shaped indentations where you pour the batter.  With such a pan, it turns out to be trivially easy to make very pretty and classy-looking cookies!

These specific cookies are made with lots and lots of lemon - both freshly squeezed juice and zest - which creates a wonderfully bright taste.  Otherwise, these have the normal set of ingredients, with the exception of cake flour, which is more fine than all-purpose and doesn't have a leavening agent, and lots of eggs.  Between the flour and the abundance of eggs, the final product of this recipe was very much like a cake - moist and a little spongy.  Although they don't actually need improvement, I suspect these might be pretty good with a lemon glaze on top.

As far as fancy cookies go, I think these look really good for minimal effort.  Even when I turned them out of the mold (shown in the picture above) the visual effect was impressive.  I plan on experimenting more with this pan, especially considering the fact that madeleines from a bakery (or from Starbuck's) are way more expensive than they need to be.

Pre-St. Patty's Update

I was going to wait to talk about these, but oh my goodness these are the most amazing cupcakes I've ever had!  AND they are vegan.

Let me start from the beginning.

Being mostly (well, probably summing up to half) Irish, I approach St. Patrick's day with a strange hodgepodge of food traditions gathered from both sides of my family.  It's funny to realize that my cooking has been largely influenced by my mostly German grandmothers, but some of my family's traditions come from Americanized cuisine, and some are the result of catering one of my grandfathers, who is mostly Irish.

It's perhaps silly for me to talk about family members being "mostly this" and "mostly that," but this is how we identify ourselves.  Yes, from the outside we're American.  From the inside, well, let me put it this way: As far as I know, my entire lineage can be traced to people who immigrated to the United States from - you got it - mostly Ireland and Germany in the mid to late 19th century.  The most recent immigrant in my family is one of my great-grandfathers, who came to America from Germany as a little boy.  What ethnic traditions that have trickled down through the generations are miscellaneous and diluted, but still a part of how I identify myself as a member of my family.

All that said, I like to cook something Irish when St. Patrick's day rolls around.  In the past, this has meant corned beef and cabbage, and maybe some Guinness with dinner.  This year, since I'm eating mostly vegan (yes, the 'mostly' qualifier is ubiquitous today), I've had to be more creative with my food choices.  Also, this year, since I'm busy and Thursday is not a day to cook for 3 hours, I've been doing a lot of prep work this week.

Tonight, I decided to go ahead and prepare a vegan Chocolate Stout cupcake recipe I found last weekend.  The recipe doesn't require any unusual vegan ingredients, but it does call for about half a bottle of chocolate stout.  That's right, there's beer in these cupcakes.  And oh, are they delicious.  I tasted one while it was still warm, and ended up eating two.

As of when they were still a little warm, these are fluffy, moist cupcakes, with a rich chocolate flavor.  That flavor is due, of course, to a hefty helping of unsweetened cocoa powder both in the cupcakes and in the crumbs topping them.  The bitterness of the stout really enhances the chocolate, adding a depth of flavor I never would have expected.

I am posting this now so that if you want to make some of these for Thursday, you can have a little bit of time to go ahead and try them.  Seriously, you will not regret it.  Unless you end up eating them all, and then you might.

Aw, nuts!

I don't really have too much to say as an introduction or a life update today, except to say that it's Lent now, and in the spirit of following the Liturgical calendar, I've decided to quit watching TV as a means of filling quiet and/or bored times.  I'm hoping to cultivate a better appreciation of quiet and solitude, as well as to spend more time reading, journaling, praying, and so on.

This also means that whatever bad movie is being shown on TBS is not distracting me from taking care of the things at hand, including cookie posts!  The title of this post pretty much gives you the theme of these cookies, but I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you that to figure it out.

140. Hazelnut Jam Thumbprints
I'm sure by now I sound pretty lazy, but there are some Saturdays when I just don't want to spend 5 hours in the kitchen, and I guess that's fair considering the hundreds of hours I've already put into this project.  I try to alternate between simple and complicated recipes, and for some reason I imagined that this one would be kind of labor-intensive.

Well, I was wrong.  These cookies were fantastically simple to make.  The dough consists of very typical ingredients: egg, flour, sugar, etc, which were mixed together, chilled, and then separated into balls which were rolled in toasted hazelnuts.  After putting thumb-sized holes in these balls they were baked and filled with apricot jam.  Tada!  A cute and colorful cookie!  The hazelnuts really make the flavor here since, well, there's not much else to do that job.  I chose apricot jam because that's what I had open, but I think it was a good decision as it wasn't overly sweet.

Now, I know I've talked about hazelnuts before, since I bought them chopped from Meijer and the skins on them ended up making that recipe kind of bitter tasting.  This time, I went to Strawberry Fields and bought whole hazelnuts (minus the shells), which worked so much better.  After toasting the nuts, I steamed them in a towel for five minutes and the skins came right off.

141. Pine Nut Cookies
Warning: Do not make these cookies unless you are willing to spend $20 or more on ingredients.
Oh my goodness, pine nuts are so expensive.  This recipe calls for 2C of them - about half are ground up in the dough and the rest end up on the outside, and so following this recipe cost me probably $18 in pine nuts alone.

Aside from the pine nuts, these cookies are much like almond macaroons, with typical ingredients, including almond paste, which is another (slightly less) expensive ingredient.  Fortunately, I had half a can left over from a previous recipe, so that was one thing I didn't have to buy.  Because of the recipe's simplicity, everything came together quickly, and I was able to bake them over the span of about an hour on Saturday morning and share them with a few friends last night as we gathered to watch Beverly Hills Cop and drink home brewed beer.

These were actually really good cookies.  They're not very sweet, and the flavors are subtle - I mean, of course the pine nuts are dominant, but the almond paste adds an unexpected but pleasant twist.  If it weren't for the expense, I would definitely make these again for some kind of summer party thing, as pine nuts seem like a warm weather food.