Archives for December 2007
Soup…liquid love
Soup is all I want right now. I made a big batch of chicken noodle soup for the men and curried rice and vegetable soup for me and I’m content to eat it twice a day. Toast is also quite appealing, as is ginger ale over ice. Thank god we’re all on winter holiday and we have no where to go and nothing to do. Hours are literally swirling down the drain as we lounge about on the couch, surfing the internet, reading the paper, or playing mindless games. Of course we have managed to dress ourselves and go out to the movies; we saw Sweeny Todd and No Country For Old Men and loved them both for entirely different yet vaguely similar reasons.
Chicken soup needs no recipe, just homemade stock (the stock was in the freezer), noodles, and fresh chopped parsley.
Curried rice and vegetable soup
Printable version here
1 tbsp butter
1 onion diced
1 russet potato peeled and diced
1 acorn squash peeled and diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 can coconut milk
1 quart chicken stock
1 quart water
1 cup jasmine rice
1 tablespoon Penzeys Hot Curry powder, madras style
In a large pot melt the butter over medium heat and add the onion. Cook until tender. Add the curry powder stir into the onions and allow it to heat up. Add the water, stock, potato, squash, and carrot. Cook until tender. Add the rice and cook until tender. Add the coconut milk and allow it to heat through. Serve with basil and plain yogurt.
Merry Christmas
We’ve been sick with a dreadful bout of flu for the past 2 days. I went down first, followed 12 hours later by GH. Luckily, Christmas isn’t a big deal around here. We’ll pull ourselves together and go see a movie with the boys and then perhaps dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant. I’ve always thought of the spices in Indian food to be the perfect antidote to illness.
I bet you’re munching on a cookie right now, aren’t you? The next time you bake, include these delightful Italian gems. Crumiri cookies have long been a favorite of mine. A stroll through San Francisco’s North Beach always included a stop for some of these, but now I make them myself…and they’re really easy. Plus you’ll get to use your pastry bag…always fun!
Crumiri [printable version]
1-3/4 sticks unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
2/3 cup yellow cornmeal
Preheat oven to 325 F. Eggs and butter should be at room temperature.
Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar for about 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla and mix in. Mix together the flour, salt and cornmeal and add to the butter mixture.
The cookie dough will be thick. Smoosh into a piping bag fitted with a star-shaped tip (3/4” to 1”).
Pipe the cookies onto parchment covered baking sheets in an overlapping oblong about 3 inches long.
Bake until the cookies are golden around the edges, anywhere from 12 to 14 minutes. Cool and freeze then dip one end in melted chocolate.
Fideo killed the radio star
The food blogosphere seems to be totally about cookies right now. I get it because I’ve been busy baking my own but right now I don’t feel compelled to contribute to the glut of cookie recipes. Instead I’ll offer you something quick, easy, economical, and deeply satisfying.
According to Wikipedia, fideo is the spanish word for a noodle of any type. I picked up a bag of fideo in the Mexican food section of Woodman’s and after checking out what the interwebs said about it, I decided to strike out on my own. I wanted a quick, easy dinner that everyone would eat and that wouldn’t turn the kitchen into a disaster area. My efforts yielded exactly that. Sure, it wasn’t very pretty, but it did have a robust spicy flavor, a comforting texture, and molten cheese….mmmm, molten cheese. I couldn’t help but think of it as the mostly organic, homemade version of hamburger helper. From start to finish it took less than 30 minutes, one pan, and no leftovers. What’s not to love?
Spicy fideos with ground beef and black beans
Click here for the printer-friendly version
1 pack age of fideos
1 pound ground beef
1 onion diced
¼ cup Penzeys spicy taco seasoning
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 cup water
1 jar canned tomato puree
1 can black beans drained
8 ounces pepper jack cheese, shredded
Brown the ground beef in the skillet. Drain it if necessary. Add the onion and let it cook for a few minutes. Add the fideos and stir to combine. Add the seasonings, water and tomatoes and stir to mix it up. Let this bubble and cook for 10 minutes. The liquid should be mostly absorbed by the fideos. Add the black beans. Preheat the oven to broil. Top the fideos with the cheese and stick the pan under the broiler to melt and brown the cheese. Serve with a salad alongside.
Video Killed The Radio Star, The Buggles - 1979
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