Rikki and the Fat Wrinkle

Thanks for everyone's good wishes for the pugs.  Rikki had her tumor removed and she's all good--no cancer.  She does have a series of stitches on the back of her front leg that make her look like FrankenPug.


In order to prevent her from scratching the stitches, I've been squashing her into a little robe with sleeves.


Here's a snapshot of what life is like in our household...

Hello Rikki, would you like to pose?

Wait, wait a second there.  Must get close-up of that massive wrinkle fat-fold that's squeezing your face.

From another angle...

She breaks the pose...

...aaand falls asleep...

...while sitting up...

...not the smartest dog in the world, but pretty damn cute.

Potato Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette

[sung to the tune of Maria Maria from West Side Story]

Potaaatoes! 

Potatoes potatoes 

I looove you! 

With butter or sour creeeaam, 

or just a bit of cheese, 

oh pleeease!!

I'm a musical genius.  Says who, you may ask? ME!!

I originally made this potato salad for New Year's dinner and loved it so much, I decided that it would be a great main course all by itself.  Says who, you may ask?  ME!!

Adapted from Epicurious

Ingredients

• 2 lb small (1- to 1 1/2-inch) potatoes, preferably new potatoes (this just means small taters)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped shallots (about 2)
• 1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
• 1 tablespoon white-wine vinegar, or to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

The original recipe has you cook the potatoes whole, then drain and cut, but I missed that part and started hacking into my potatoes willy nilly from the get-go.

Then I realized that it turned out for the better because if I had cooked them whole I would have to wait until they cooled down to cut them.  That kind of process + my impatience = ouchy singed fingertips.

Anyway, wash and cut your potatoes into about 1-inch pieces. 

Place potatoes in a pot and cover with water so that the water is about 1 inch above the potatoes.  Add in 1 tsp salt (which I forgot to do and towards the end, realizing in a panic that I was going to have unflavored potatoes, threw in what I thought was a teaspoon of salt which was actually a tablespoon and then ensued all kinds of hijinks involving siphoning off salty water and replacing it with regular water to cut down on saltiness why am I telling you this).

Heat over high heat until boiling, then lower heat and simmer until tender.  The original recipe said to simmer for 10 minutes, but mine took about 20 minutes (which may be in part due to above hijinks).

While the potatoes are cooking, make your vinaigrette.  Combine the chopped shallot, mustards, vinegar, pepper, and remaining 1/2 tsp salt in a large bowl (this is the bowl that you will add the potatoes to, so get a big one).

Gradually whisk in oil.

It's an action shot! An action shot!

When the potatoes are done, drain them and then add to the vinaigrette.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley and you're done!

I don't know if this can really be considered a nutritional main course, but I really don't care. Oh wait a second I remember I served it along roasted brussels sprouts.  Hm, I guess I *do* care about having a balanced diet.

Creamy, toothsome potato, I love thee vewy vewy much. Ta-da!

Pasta with Cauliflower and Kale

Rikki had a lump on her leg, requiring surgical removal.  Bunni has bladder stones and needs a new inconvenient diet to dissolve them. Sigh.

That has nothing to do with the rest of the post, but I wanted to share. 

Oh winter. You keep going. We need some different produce.  Signs of spring are peeking out here and there, but until the farmers' market is in full spring swing, I'll continue to make do.

This recipe is better than it sounds. It has quite a healthy dose of grated parmesan.  You can leave out the anchovies if you want to make this vegetarian, but if you're not vegetarian, keep the anchovies.  It adds a real savoriness that doesn't taste like fish at all.

Adapted from Gourmet

Ingredients

• 1 small head of cauliflower, cut into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces
• 1 large bunch or 2 small bunches of kale, stems removed and roughly chopped/torn
• 8 anchovies
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 lb pasta--the original recipe called for orrecchiete but inexplicable the grocery store didn't have any, so I used small shells.  The shape works well with the ingredients.
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup grated parmesan (or pecorino, whatever)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Prep your cauliflower.

Put cut cauliflower onto baking sheet.  Drizzle with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, and a healthy pinch of salt and pepper.  Mix till everything is nice and coated. And greasy.

Roast in oven for about 10 to 12 minutes, stirring things about halfway through and checking on progress.

Hello, you beautiful caramelization, you.

Now prep your kale. NOW!  This is good to do while the cauliflower is roasting.

To de-stem the kale, I just rip the leaves off the stem in large chunks. No biggie.

In a large saute pan or sauce pan, heat a few tsp olive oil over medium to medium high heat.  Place in your garlic, anchovies and crushed red pepper.

So pretty.

Stir to break up anchovies, and after 2 to 3 minutes you will have something like this:

That is a whole lotta good flava right there.

Add in the kale, and a little water or stock (about 1/4 to 1/2 cup).  Cover and lower heat to simmer for however long it takes your kale to get tender.  I've worked with some kale that is tender after 20 minutes, but this was a pretty tough batch and it took more like 30 to 40 minutes.  Uncover and let liquid evaporate a bit.

Cook the pasta according to package directions, shaving off a minute.  Drain pasta and add to kale.  Add in cauliflower and cook a bit to let the pasta absorb some of that kale juice (that sounds gross, but it's not).  Add in the cheese, as much or as little as you want.

Ta-da! This was a solid winter dish.  Next time I might increase the amount of kale.

Indonesian Fried Noodles

I made this dish out of a yearning for the noodles we had in Bali during our honeymoon.  Let me backtrack a little and set the scene: we spent the first part of the honeymoon at Jimbaran Bay, which is mostly resorts. Great. Except when the food sucks, and the food at our resort certainly did suck. Big time. I mean, it was tears-welling-up worth, especially for the prices.  And if you're at a resort, you're a bit (or a lot) isolated from  local restaurants and establishments.


We had heard about a farmers' market in the area. Hooray, you would think. But to get there, we had to walk about 20 minutes, with temperatures hovering around 100 degrees, a brutal equatorial sun, and, if it's possible, 50000 degree humidity.  These are conditions I do not like--ask anybody.  I will talk incessantly about how hot and disgusting I feel, and then groan as if in mortal pain and say something like "I'm meeellltttiiinngg..."


I think we both lost weight during the first few days, because we refused to subject ourselves to the food at the resort (you see, we are very principled people with a strict moral code), and it wasn't easy to get to the farmers' market. When we did get to the market, we bought scary amounts of fruit to gorge on to tide us over.  But eating even 5 lbs of fruit a day was not going to cut it.


Out of desperation, we asked one of the staff for a recommendation for somewhere we could eat outside the resort.  We were told about a little restaurant, a hole in the wall kind of place, that had your everyday Indonesian food.  Oh thank heavens.  Oh I could have shoved my face in those piles of noodles.


So I found an Indonesian Fried Noodles recipe on Epicurious. I won't pretend that my dish was as good or authentic as the ones in Bali, but who cares. You're getting the recipe anyway.



Adapted from Epicurious

• 1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth or water
• 3 tablespoons ketjap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce), or if you're like me and can't find that, 1 1/2 TBS oyster sauce and 1 1/2 TBS soy sauce (or even 3 TBS soy sauce with about a tsp of sugar)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon sambal oelek or Sriracha (Southeast Asian chile sauce), or to taste
• 3 large shallots
• 1/2 cup peanut, vegetable oil or other high smoke point oil
• 8 oz dried...noodles (okay this was weird because the recipe called for 1 pound fresh flat Chinese stir-fry egg noodles, which I couldn't find, and so I used an 8 oz package of something called "Chinese Plain Noodles". I know. There's a picture of it later on to give you an idea of what to get, although you could really use any noodle, including angel hair pasta)
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 (14- to 16-ounce) package firm tofu
• 4 large eggs
• 2 large onions, halved lengthwise, then cut crosswise into 1/2-inch slices (4 cups)
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon minced fresh red or green Thai or serrano chile, with or without seeds (with seeds if you want the dish spicier)
• about 3 cups green veggie of your choice, cut into 1-inch pieces--I used Chinese broccoli, but you could use any or combo of green beans, snow peas, bok choy, etc.
• 2 scallions, cut diagonally into very thin slices

Prep all your components beforehand.  Use your second refrigerator to store your ingredients until ready to use. What? You don't have one? Here's mine:

Which is basically our back patio, which we share with neighbors.

Mix together the chicken broth, Indonesian sweet soy sauce (or the alternatives mentioned above), fish sauce, and sambal oelek (or Sriracha) in a small bowl.

Bottles of umami standing at attention.

Heat the oil in a large saute pan over medium high heat.  Add the shallot and cook, stirring, until golden brown, about 8 to 12 minutes.  From this:

To this:

Remove shallots with tongs or slotted spoon.  Pour shallot-infused oil into a small bowl.

Looks innocent, but oh so fragrant.

Cook your noodles according to instructions.  Drain, run under cold water to stop cooking, and toss with 2 tsp of shallot oil.

In a small bowl, beat the eggs together with a fork and a pinch of salt.  Heat 1 TBS shallot oil in the saute pan over medium heat.  Pour beaten eggs into pan and cook until barely set, about 2 to 4 minutes.

This was the part of the recipe that said to gently slide out the egg onto a cutting board and slice into 1/2 inch strips.  Since I was using a saute pan and due to my amazing culiinary skills, this is what I ended up with:

Whatever, roll it up best you can and slice away.

Heat 2 TBS shallot oil (I moved to a bigger pot at this point, but it could fit in the saute pan if you're neat and careful, which I'm not) over medium high heat and saute the onions with about 1/4 tsp salt until golden brown, about 8 to 10 minutes.

Add garlic and chili.

Cook for about 1 minute, then add the diced tofu and cook for 3 more minutes.

Add your greens and cook until wilted or crisp tender, about 5 minutes.

Add sauce and bring to a boil.  Add noodles, scallions and reserved shallots and toss until warm.


Serve. And have a big big big beer.  

Ta-da!


A note: I'm not sure I'll make this dish again, but it was decent enough that I posted about it anyway. It was tasty, but was a bit more work than this lazy-ass likes to do.

As opposed to other stir-fries that I've made, this one seemed more...complicated. It might have been because I was trying to watch the Super Bowl at the same time, but there were a lot of ingredients added one at a time so it was a minute here, 5 minutes here, make this component, make that component--I was a frantic sweaty mess after making this.  Here's wishing you have a more arid experience.

Spicy Hoisin Chicken and Braised Celery

As you may have noticed, yesterday wasn't even Monday but I still labeled yesterday's post as "Monday". It was very kind of all of you to refrain from pointing it out, lest it burst my hazy semi-comatose state and kill me.  I'm all off-kilter.

I'm back, with a little coffee.

I've had all kinds of hankering for anything with soy sauce in it.  This spicy hoisin chicken dish hit the spot, and was easy and hands-down good.  

The original recipe called for chicken thighs with the skin, but I used skinless thighs instead and adjusted the cooking temp/time accordingly.  Also, next time I might cut down on the amount of hoisin and up the soy sauce, since I'd like to try making it a wee less sweet.

Adapted from Epicurious.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup hoisin sauce (I might try 1/4 to 1/3 cup next time)
• 1 teaspoon finely grated peeled fresh ginger
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 8 skinless chicken thighs with bones

Serves 8.

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  In a medium bowl, mix together the first 7 ingredients.

Place chicken thighs in large baking dish (this is a 9 x 13 dish) and pour sauce over chicken.  Turn to coat well.  By the way if you want easier cleanup later, you can line the dish with foil.  Or, if you want to stand in solidarity with me and do your share of soaking/scrubbing, and soaking/scrubbing, then some more soaking/scrubbing, please feel free.

You can either cook the chicken at this point, or you can cover and marinate for an hour (I didn't refrigerate the chicken during this hour because I wanted the flavors to infuse into the chicken as quickly as possible, but if that's some big health no-no, then don't listen to me.  You can also, of course, place the marinating chicken into the refrigerator).

Bake chicken for about 35 minutes.

While the chicken was baking, I made a side of braised celery.  I mentioned this dish in a previous post without going through the full recipe, which some of you lamented about.  Well, here it is, and you'll see how basic it is.

Ingredients

• Two bunches of celery hearts
• 2-3 tsp vegetable oil (or some other neutral oil) 
• pinch of five spice powder (optional) 
• 1/2 to 1 cup chicken or veggie broth (or water)
• 2-3 tsp of soy sauce

Trim the celery hearts and cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces.  Then cut each piece lengthwise into 3 to 4 strips.  Or, if you're smarter than me, you'll do the lengthwise cutting first.

I love cutting celery. I love that crunching/ripping noise the knife makes when it breaks through all the threads.  I made that sound kinda violent. Hm.

Heat oil in wide saute pan or skillet over medium heat.  Add in the celery and enough broth to come about halfway up the celery.  This was extremely approximate.

Add in five spice powder, if using.  Cover and braise for about 5-10 minutes--keep checking to see when it gets to your desired texture.

When the celery is done, drain off a bit of the liquid (I put the cover on off-center by a smidgen and pour over sink) and add in the soy sauce.

You're done with the celery.

Take out the chicken...

...and serve with the celery and some rice.

Ta-da!

I would totally make this again, and perhaps cut down on the hoisin a little and add more soy sauce or a touch of black bean sauce.

Monday

The pugs know it's Monday.  And they're feeling similar to their friend Buddy.

I feel the same way, my little warm sleepy bundles of fur.

Freekeh with Leeks and Swiss Chard

Sigh.  I'm running out of things to cook.  Okay, that's melodramatic. But it's kind of how I feel.  Can I have hot chocolate and popcorn for dinner?  Ooh that sounds really good.


Besides the hot chocolate and popcorn idea, I've been making less new recipes and turning to old favorites, or tweaking them a bit.  For example, I love this freekeh with kale dish, but in order to avoid burnout, I decided to make it with leeks and swiss chard.  Revolutionary, I know.


Don't feel pressured to make this with freekeh if you can't find it--farro, long grain rice, or some other hearty grain that holds its shape well will do just fine.  Just prepare those grains according to a recipe you can find, and add them to the cooked leeks and swiss chard.


Ingredients:

• 2 TBS butter (or olive oil, or combo of butter/olive oil, doesn't matter that much)
• 2 cups farro, rinsed
• 4 cups chicken broth (or veggie broth)
• 1 bunch swiss chard (about 1 lb), thick stems removed and leaves roughly chopped
• 4 small leeks (the leeks at my grocery store came in bunches of 4, so this is completely arbitrary) or 2 large leeks, or whatever--white and light green parts only, trimmed, and sliced into 1/3 inch rings
• grated parmesan or other cheese of your choice

In a medium saucepan, melt butter and/or olive oil over medium heat.  Add in the freekeh and stir for about 2 minutes.

Add in the broth, bring to boil, then lower heat and simmer freekeh until al dente, about 30-45 minutes (partly depends on what consistency you like).


While freekeh is simmering, prep your swiss chard.

Don't forget the leeks.  Slice the white and light green parts of the leeks into 1/3 to 1/2 inch rings.

I won't go through the cleaning process in detail again because I've mentioned it before, but basically put the sliced leeks in a large bowl, and fill it with plenty of water. Gently swish so that any sand/dirt falls to the bottom.  Gently lift leeks out and drain in a colander.


Heat a TBS or so of olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat.  Toss in leeks with a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until leeks are soft but not browned (although really does it matter, you can brown them if you want), from 5-10 minutes.  

Add in the chopped swiss chard leaves.  Add a pinch of salt and some pepper.

And it gets all wilted and melty like this after about 5 minutes.

Drain freekeh and add to leeks and swiss chard.  Top with cheese, if you must. And you must.


So easy, satisfying, and hearty. Seems healthy too, but what do I know.

Ta-da!