Two Recipes: I was hungry.

So, unfortunately there are no pictures this time around. I was hungry, and in focusing on the food I was planning to eat, I forgot to take pictures for you. Bummer, right?
Technically, one of those food items isn't actually food. It's a drink, because I'm hormonal and was having cravings that couldn't be denied. (That's a lie, they could be, I just didn't feel like it.) I was craving a chocolate peanut butter milkshake. However, as usual, we lack ice cream. So, I made chocolate peanut butter MILK.
(I would like to take this moment to state that blenders are AWESOME.)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Milk (because people can't figure this out on their own)
Serves 1.5

a lot of peanut butter
a lot of chocolate syrup
a lot of milk

Directions:
1. Combine and blend!

Don't you love one-step beverages? Unfortunately, now that I've discovered this, we're going to go through peanut butter reeeeeeally fast and I will no longer be on a HFCS-free diet (Hershey's Chocolate Syrup has HFCS, unfortunately. This is among the many things I love to hate about it). Add a banana and swap out the milk for soy milk and you can KIND OF pretend that it's healthy. Kind of. Not really. But we can dream, right?
Okay, so, onto something healthier.
We all know that I am a devout lover of mozzarella, yes? Well, I am. I've been drooling over this recipe for months (minus the capers, not big on capers), and decided today that I was going to roast some leftover peppers that were about to go iffy. So, in an act of bad judgment, I decided I was going to roast them over a stove burner. Like a marshmallow. (I can hear family members laughing already.) Well, let me just say that is the wrong technique and we're not going to try that again. So instead I took a different approach and ended up with something completely different from what I was aiming for.

Mixed Pepper Saute, Without Capers
Serves 2

1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 yellow bell pepper, diced
1/4 yellow onion
2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
black pepper
1/2 cup mozzarella, shredded
grapeseed oil

Directions:
1. Dice all peppers and toss into a lightly oiled pan on medium-high heat.
2. After about two minutes of occasional mixing, added diced onion, and sprinkle liberally with black pepper. Stir gently and then ignore it for a minute or two.
3. Smash two cloves of garlic, dicing as fine as possible. Add to the pan and stir, lowering heat to medium-low.
4. Continue moving veggies around until the garlic is aromatic and slightly cooked and golden yellow, but not brown. Brown means your garlic is burnt, and therefore terribly bitter.
5. Remove from heat, serve on two plates, and top with mozzarella as desired (you know I'm a little heavy-handed with the mozzarella), or eat plain.

Now, this is very different from Smitten Kitchen's dish in a lot of way. No vinegar, more garlic, different oil (no big deal there), no capers, and no parsley. If you don't like your food to be very garlicky, one clove of garlic is fine, but I'm a total garlic junkie. Parsley would have been a good idea, but I was winging it and didn't think of that. If I have fresh parsley to work with next time, I will definitely consider the addition. For now, I'm happy with it.
My audience (Carolyn) rated this as a "cook again" dish.
Considering that she isn't big on peppers or onions, that's a high compliment.

Stale Bread, Cupcakes, and an Explained Absence

To the few who may actually follow my little blog, you may have noticed that I've been absent for a while. Like, a month (unless that's just my imagination). A week of that absence was spent in utter tummy rebellion, resulting in my fourth stomach flu of the year thus far. Icky icky. This one takes the cake, however, for landing me in the hospital with cramps so bad that I thought my appendix burst.
Anyway, that's all you get for an explanation. I'm back now. Not dead yet.
On to fun stuff... This past weekend I played caterer for my niece's birthday party. By caterer, I mean maker of all things, decorator of cupcakes, and creative director. In other words, mom wants fancy lettering on the cupcakes, I have the right to say no. Yay me! Yay power! So, nothing terribly abnormal was served up (Alas, no experiments were done my family), but I wanted to share the cupcakes.They are, in no way remarkable or special. In fact, they're the scary Betty Crocker boxed stuff. However, I just wished to demonstrate the fact that they're PRETTY. This is not how cupcakes looked when I was given them in school and on my birthday. Parents liked to smear the frosting around to HIDE the cake. I, however, have discovered the great art of improvised piping bags (i.e. a Ziploc bag filled with frosting with one corner snipped off), and decided I wanted to make nice, neat little piles of frosting. It's prettier. It's also heavy enough that a layer of saran wrap won't pull off all the frosting. So, yay physics.
Now, with all the stressful party stuff behind me, and no real food left over (things disappeared more quickly than I thought they would), I'm back to making my own. What was left over, among various snack foods (like a bag and a half of potato chips [we had FOUR]), was about one third a loaf of French bread. Getting home this afternoon, I was STARVED. I craved that thing that I always crave. Pizza.
So, as the house is utterly devoid of other human beings, I decided to make myself a French bread pizza. Mmm. I've seen recipes for this online, and I wasn't sure that it would work with bread that had been sitting since Friday evening and was undoubtedly stale. In all honesty, the cuts in my mouth say that I should probably use fresher bread next time. I enjoyed how this tasted, despite not containing all the optimal ingredients (we're out of garlic!), and there will DEFINITELY be a next time.

French Bread Pizza Made From Leftovers
Serves 2-4.

1/3 loaf French bread, slightly stale
1 small can tomato paste
~1 cup tomato juice (yes, we have that now)
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp garlic (I was forced to use jarred, icky), diced
1/2 small yellow onion (or other onion. This could be really good with scallions...)
basil
2 cups mozzarella, grated
1/4 cup parmesan, grated

Directions:
1. Slice French bread in half and arrange on a cookie sheet.
2. Empty tomato paste into a small saucepan with tomato juice, garlic and olive oil. Stir together to thin out the tomato paste. I aimed for a thick sauce, but if you want it thinner you can add more tomato juice. DO NOT USE V8 FOR THIS. If you do, I will hunt you down and stab you with a can opener.
3. Heat tomato mixture over a low flame, adding as much basil as you like.
4. Dice the half onion, and stir into sauce, cooking for another two or three minutes.
5. Cut 1 tbsp butter into six relatively even pieces, arranging three on each half of the bread. Place in an oven heated at 400°F until butter is soft, then spread.
6. Remove tomato sauce from heat, spreading sauce over buttered bread.
7. Top liberally with mozzarella, and sprinkle with parmesan. Top with more basil.
8. Place prepared bread back in the oven (still at 400°F) for 10 to 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and slightly bubbly.

Eating this with a fork and a knife is recommended until it cools slightly, in which case it's stable enough to pick up and eat like a very sturdy open-faced sandwich.
This recipe makes a very sweet tomato sauce, but it has great flavor and the thickness was entirely agreeable. The only downside to this was that the stale bread was not softened at all by the butter (which I had planned on) or the sauce, and left me with little cuts all inside my mouth. Furthermore, as I was hungry, I didn't really leave any for anyone else.

A Sweet Weekend Snack

It's pretty, isn't it?

Mmm, snacks.
We all love snacks, right? I know I do. I'm a notorious snacker.
This little recipe combines two things I find myself craving most: peanut butter and chocolate. However, on the plus side (the "let's feel less guilty for eating this" side), it also uses fruit! So, while reading Instructables today (about food, of course) I found myself wanting snacks. Yes, snacks. I had already had lunch and so forth and it's too early for dinner.
I wanted something sweet. Something tasty. And, of course, something with enough mass to fill me up a little bit. What I really wanted was essentially a peanut butter s'more, but we have no graham crackers (mmm, graham crackers would be good on a banana).
So, meandering around the kitchen (as I often do), I found myself gravitating towards bananas. I like bananas. They're sweet, they're fairly filling, and they make for a decent blank slate. Conveniently, bananas go well with both chocolate and peanut butter.
So, I'm not going to give you a recipe, because if you can't figure this out by the picture then you should really consider getting some help for that. (I would say try something easier, but this is about as easy as it gets. Just as easy as toast or a PB&J.)

Oven Fries with Herbs and Parmesan

Okay, so I cheated. As usual I did not follow the recipe.
Yes, this recipe is not my invention, as brilliant as it is, and has been modified to my liking. The original recipe can be found at KitchenDaily, here. Sadly (for me), theirs are so much pretty than mine. Though I have no doubt that mine are just as tasty (if less crunchy).
So, I chose to make this out of a wild craving for potatoes (it happens frequently), a fear that no one would come home to make dinner in a timely manner, and a brick of Parmesan that no one was using. Resolving to make JUST these delicious little fries (for JUST me), I journeyed to the kitchen to assault some potatoes. Unfortunately, as I started cutting into a potato, half the family showed up, which meant I had to make DINNER. Like, dinner dinner. Dinner dinner dinner.
So what, that isn't chicken, goes well with fries? Steak. I'd make a joke, but I didn't make steak fries. The steak, by the way, was a tremendous failure. Out of fiscal necessity my family freezes meat. That's not a big issue. The big issue is the big steak that was languishing in the freezer like a grizzly bear on Valium. This was a BIG steak. Not in length. The stupid thing was over an inch deep. So, upstairs to the trusty microwave, where I assume I will ruin what could generally be considered a beautiful steak.
Ten minutes of radiation-based thawing does NOTHING aside from make it slightly moist.
Oh, right, this post isn't about steak. Let's just say the steak took forever too cook and made the fries look like a lovely little blessing from wherever food-based blessings come from. They were so blessedly easy that I plan to make more tomorrow (they've been requested for lunch).
As I assume you've looked at the original recipe by now (if you haven't, please do so, just out of respect to the poster), here's my rendition:

Oven Fries with Herbs and Parmesan
Serves 4 greedy people

3 large red potatoes, cut into slim sticks
~1/3 cup grapeseed oil
3 cloves garlic, mashed and minced
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 cup Parmesan, freshly grated
salt
pepper

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425°F (I made an oopsie and set my oven to 475°F, which seems to have worked out fine). Toss potato sticks in a large bowl with oil until evenly coated. Spread potato sticks on a baking sheet in a single layer (I had overlap. Also, using wax paper may be a good idea, the fries WILL stick). Bake in the upper third of the oven (Again, I didn't listen. One of my racks is too high for my liking, the other is low, but just where I want it, so I used that), turning once or twice with a spatula (a note on technique: when your fries stick [and they will] flip the spatula over and use it like a plow), until they are golden and crispy. Should take about 30 minutes.
2. Sprinkle with minced garlic and herbs (and salt and pepper and cheese, if you're me and attempted to commit this recipe to memory and winged it when you realized you forgot). Roast for about 5 minutes longer (or until the kitchen begins to fill with the smoke of burning herbs and cheese on the bare spots of the pan), until herbs are fragrant and the garlic is lightly browned.
3. Deviate from the recipe complete and realize later that it's completely pointless to continue writing out the proper instructions when you clearly didn't listen. Eat happily and be grumpy and sad that people ate so much and didn't leave a huge pile for you.
4. Smile happily ate "make-again" requests and gloat about the virtues of real cheese.
5. Barter for more cheese that comes in brick form, rather than "pre-shredded." Remember to use the cheese grater as a point in your favor (i.e. "Why do we own it if we don't use it? It's there for a reason!")
6. Promptly be ignored.

Anyway, back to the fries.
I generally don't like Parmesan, but there are certain flavors that I find it works beautifully with. If you give me steamed broccoli and top it with parm, I probably won't eat it. If you give me a pizza with roma tomatoes, basil leaves, and olive oil on a delightfully tender crust, topped with Parmesan and some other cheese that I've forgotten the name of (this is a Margherita pizza at Lui Lui's), I will devour it with great enthusiasm.
Like all cheeses, Parmesan has it's proper applications and some people abuse it while others forget it entirely. Unfortunately, I'm guilty of forgetting it almost entirely until I find it in my mouth. And I'm sorry for that, as I often label parm as a cheese that I hate when really I just under-appreciate it's glory when I have it in a dish that I like.
What really makes this dish work is the combination of the still pungent, half-cooked garlic and the parm. The herbs really are stuck playing second fiddle, but are still noticeable and delicious. While my fries did not come out golden brown, or perfectly crisp, they were wonderfully tender and an absolute tactile joy.
So, while I can't say that I'll use parm a whole lot now, I can say that this particular side dish/snack/binge food holds a special place on my list of amazing potato-based based foods. I will definitely be making this again, and soon.

The Do-Over

This, my friends, is my late night dinner.

So, I'm pleased to report, I'm not ill. I appear to have dodged food poisoning.
With this happy news, I felt the need to try again at cooking for the day. No one felt like making dinner (it was 95°F) so I was hungry and decided to cook (because I'm insane).
So this is it. It's quick, it's simple, it's amazingly tasty.

Sauteed Salmon and Veggies
Serves 2. But I'm hungry.

1/2 medium onion, diced
1/4 yellow pepper, diced
1 small can of salmon (in water)
salt
pepper
parsley
grapeseed oil

Directions:
1. Warm up pan and grapeseed oil.
2. Add onion and yellow pepper, cooking until 2/3 done.
3. Drain salmon and add fish to pan, mashing with a wooden spoon to ensure even distribution.
4. Add a dash of salt and as much pepper as you like.
5. Cook only until salmon is warmed through (canned fish comes pre-cooked, I think).
6. Serve and top with parsley.

Things That Lurk

If only this were so innocent as it looked.

So, today has inspired rage and disgust in a number of ways, as well as a minor concern for myself. See that little bowl of rice? That was going to be part of a recipe that I was going to feature on my blog. It was also intended to be my lunch.
Yet, for some bizarre reason, I don't trust my nose. So this post is all about kitchen hazards and trusting your nose. As many of us know, chicken stock was the preferred medium for growing bacterial cultures before agar-agar was used, primarily because it was pH neutral and contained adequate nutrients.
Ideally, I would've remembered this when I went to start my rice. Maybe you'll see why.

Chicken Tinged Rice with Cloves
Serves an unknown number, as it was swiftly discarded.

1 cup chicken broth
1 cup water
1 cup white rice
liberal pinch of cloves

No directions, as they're just not worth posting at the moment. Just make it like you'd typically make rice. If you make rice.
So, the part where I should've just trusted my nose.... If you open up your (untouched) carton of chicken brother, and you're greeted with a scent reminiscent of dragon flatus, THROW IT AWAY. Don't just assume that it's something else. And don't let yourself be placated into believe that maybe there's a dead mouse under the fridge.
Furthermore, don't assume that cooking it will necessarily kill anything living it (as there obviously is). So... I'm a fool.
I cooked. I ate. I tasted nothing identifiably suspicious.
I rethought, I double-checked the scent of the broth, I threw everything away.
Current health status: slightly nauseous (but that's in my head, I think). Otherwise healthy. Missing lunch, end of the week prevents a do-over.
The lamentable thing is that we have four more cartons of the stuff, and two ancient ones at the back of the fridge.
So, Pasteur and Lister, if ever you come back to life, I have PLENTY of chicken broth for you.

Something AMAZING

Guess what I'm making?

Okay, so I confess. The egg obsession continues.
I like eggs. I like adding things to eggs. I like all the possible combinations (my computer is insisting that combinations is not a word), and I like eggs every way I've ever had them. Omelets clearly being my favorite.
Doing four miles of biking every day, though, my body craves protein, and drives me towards the nearest protein-y foods (like peanut butter. And eggs.) and demands that I eat. Who am I to say no?
As some of you may have noticed, I bought basil yesterday for that failure of a smoothie. Thankfully, awesomely, I had some leftover for today and didn't really feel like giving the V8 a second chance. It's just a waste of good basil (well, goodish, the Co-op's selection wasn't great) and garlic. So, I decided to spoil myself with another omelet.
What makes this omelet different from the others is that, while the others are entirely edible and delicious, this one takes the cake. In fact, this is possibly the best omelet I've ever had, and easily my FAVORITE omelet now. However, there is one thing that could make it better. See that white square in the upper left hand portion of the photo? Yeah, let's replace that with a pile of mozzarella, please. Preferably fresh.
This omelet was smooth, and bright with little dark notes. It's well suited for anyone who'd happily just sit in front of the TV with a bag of basil leaves, nomming away. Or anyone who's favorite sandwich is just basil pesto smeared on bread. Or anyone who would rather have a bouquet of basil than a bouquet of roses for Valentine's day. Eh, I'm just talking about myself here.


The Princess Omelet
Serves 1 really greedy princess.

1/2 small onion, diced
1/10 red pepper, diced (I wasn't in a peppery mood, but still wanted pepper)
1 handful of basil leaves, fresh and chiffonaded
1 slice American cheese (or a handful of mozzarella)
2 eggs
black pepper
butter for the pan

Directions:
1. Dice all vegetables and basil, set aside while enjoying the delicious fragrance of basil filling the kitchen and even overpowering the onion (is my onion lazy?).
2. Crack eggs into a bowl, whisking with a fork. Add a very generous amount of ground black pepper, and whisk some more.
3. Heat pan, preferably teflon (I'm too scared to use the cast iron pan for eggs, even though I've seen Will and Julia [Ms. Child] do it easily), buttering the bottom. Users of canola spray or Pam, just go away. Don't look at my blog again, you're a disgrace to foodies everywhere.
4. Pour in eggs.
5. Wait thirty seconds after adding the eggs, shaking the pan gently. Add filling. I, refusing to stick to omelet protocol, cover the whole surface of the eggs, rather than just half or one third. I also added my filling in this order (first item at the bottom, last at the top): cheese (in strips), basil, red peppers, onions.
6. Gently poke around the edges of the pan to make sure your eggs are not sticking and to make sure you'll be able to get your spatula under the damn thing. If you make a mess, that's okay, it's still edible. When the bottom has solidified slightly, attempt to flip it in half. I made a mess of this as I always do.
7. After cooking for another minute or so, flip the entire thing over to cook the other side somewhat.
8. When done, flip your omelet out onto a pan and bask in its glory for a moment before diving in with great greediness and vigor.

For those of you getting tired of my egg obsession, don't worry. We only have three eggs left in the carton until Friday. There's a good reason why my mother buys 18 eggs a week. Hopefully soon I'll be able to do something interesting as a main dish. Some things in the garden are ready to be harvested (lettuce mostly, but if it's more than Boston lettuce or iceberg I have an idea, sort of), so maybe there will be a post with some fresh veggies.