Meals on Wheeless

Fish Tacos

2008-05-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

Here in Seattle, we have a great restaurant along Portage Bay - Agua Verde. Not only do they have great fish tacos, delicious margaritas and killer key lime pie, they also have kayaks that you can take out and paddle around the bay and into Lake Union and Lake Washington. However, when the weather gets nice, they get packed, and it can be an hour or more to get a table for dinner. The weekend before last was downright hot in Seattle, especially since air conditioning isn't really something that is done here, particularly in houses, and fish tacos sounded like the right thing to do, but without the silly long wait.

I didn't really follow a recipe for this, and just made use of what I had on hand, and it was the perfect amount for two people. I chilled a bottle of Rose to serve with it, and it was just right - not very sweet, and it went with the spice pretty well.

I chose radicchio because it was so pretty - it has a bit of a bitter taste, that I think plays well off the other flavors. If you're not into that, I'd go for some cabbage or some other crisp leafy thing. As for the radishes, they got added to the mix because they were getting bored in my fridge, and I wanted something to go with the peppers. Do what you want!

Fish Tacos
Serves 2

1 fillet of halibut, cod, snapper, etc (I used snapper), washed and patted dry
2-4 corn or flour tortillas
Roughly 3/4 cup of radicchio or cabbage, chopped roughly
5-6 radishes, sliced thinly
1/2 jalapeño (or to taste - I like spicy), diced
Juice from 1/2 lime

Garnishes: sour cream, guacamole, salsa, etc

1. Heat a small pan to medium-high heat with some oil. When the oil is hot, sear the fillet on both sides for 2-3 minutes or until it is done (it should flake easily). Set the fish aside to cool for a few minutes, and then flake the fish into pieces and season with salt, pepper and some of the lime juice.

2. Combine the radishes and jalapeño and cook in the same pan as the fish, adding a little oil if necessary and seasoning with salt and pepper.

3. Combine the radicchio with the remaining lime juice and some salt and pepper.

4. Serve the fish on the tortilla with the radicchio, and add the radish mixture to taste. Top with garnishes as desired, and serve with additional lime slices.

Fool!

2008-05-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

Majuer Dilemma, guys. Our oven has broken! Our stove is fine, but for those of you who know my other half, you know that missing an oven is a big deal. How will we get our emergency cookies? Make cupcakes for our friends? Prepare our muffin-y breakfasts? While we don't have dessert every night, or even the majority of nights, the lack of an oven makes me crave basically everything that I can't have right now, including most of our typical desserts.

Dinner the other night called for a little somethin-somethin afterwards, and I refused to be thwarted by the lack of an oven. You all may remember Brian's attempt at Rhubarb Fool at St. Patrick's Day, and after that, the idea of fool had a bit of a taint to it around here. However, we had some whipped cream leftover from... whatever use whipped cream for, and some raspberries that were meant for some not-meant-to-be raspberry bars (no oven, you know?). So - to fool we go. A fool is basically a dessert with fruit puree and whipped cream. Or, basically - whipped cream.

Raspberry Fool

1 pint raspberries
1/4-1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 cup whipping cream

1. Take 1/3 of raspberries and 1-2 tablespoons of powdered sugar and mix in food processor or blender. The mixture should be sweet, so add more sugar if necessary.

2. Press the blended raspberry mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds. You won't get all the juice off the seeds, but you'll get a lot of it.

3. Whip the cream with a tablespoon of the sugar until it forms soft peaks. Add the raspberry puree and blend until incorporated.

4. Toss the remaining raspberries with a bit of the sugar, and then fold into the whipped cream.

5. Serve in custard bowls and garnish with a mint leaf if you'd like to be fancy.

Cauliflower Head!

2008-05-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks, we've been getting a produce box from New Roots Organics, which comes every other week, filled with greens, fruits and vegetables. As a result, I've been trying to use more of our new found produce in our meals. Happy kale, tons of arugula, delicious apples... but then we get something like.... cauliflower. Cauliflower. It's white, without nutrients, without flavor... what's the point? Under normal circumstances, I would never buy cauliflower... order cauliflower... I might use it as an insult. You cauliflower head! But now, it's here, waiting in my kitchen. Looking all white, and broccoli-like. It needs to be something - mashed? In a soup? Roasted? In a gratin?

So - I made some Asian-inspired (Asia, you inspire you me!) tofu for dinner, and decided to roast the cauliflower with some spicy spices. I enjoyed it, but if you don't like spicy things, you might just want to stick to the salt and pepper.

Spicy Roasted Cauliflower
1 head of cauliflower, broken into florets
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 tsp. ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400º. Toss the ingredients together, and spread onto a baking sheet. Roast for about 25-30 minutes or until soft.

So long, winter?

2008-04-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

I've put away the scarves, stowed the down comforter and bought my spring and summer herbs for planting. The sun is shining, the grass is being mowed, I'm wearing flip flops. However, the tease that is Seattle spring will be plunging back into sloppy cold this next week, but for now we have a little taste of what summer is like - remember it?

In honor of Seattle's finickiness, I will write about one more late winter dish - something warm and filling that will maybe remind you of the summer flavors to come. Also, I've been meaning to write up this recipe for about a month now, and I never got around to it.

Squash and Kale Lasagna

Under normal conditions, I'm no fan of normal lasagna - something about the combination of ground beef and ricotta doesn't do it for me. However, vegetarian and vegan lasagnas have a special place in my heart. I remember the first time I had pumpkin lasagna - what, you mean lasagna doesn't need ground beef and tons of cheese? My heavens!

Don't worry, this one has tons of cheese. I made this after seeing a recipe in a magazine in a waiting room and because some of my non-meat-eating friends were coming over for dinner. Fortunately for me, and for them, I ended up prepping this the night before and baking it the day of - it was a time-consuming pain in the arse, but quite tasty, which is why its here and not on But I Suck At Cooking. Though, I certainly did try.

Adapted from Sunset Magazine

Ingredients
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium red onion, peeled and sliced
3 peeled garlic cloves (1 minced, 2 left whole)
2 cans (14 oz. each) crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and Pepper
6 cups (about 2 lbs.) butternut or acorn squash, peeled and cut into 1/2-in. cubes
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1 pound dinosaur kale, torn from stem
9 lasagna noodles
1 container (15 oz.) part-skim-milk ricotta cheese
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided

1. Assemble ingredients in front of you. Lasagna noodles. Check. Dinosaur kale. check. Tomatoes. Check. Peeled, seeded butternut squash. Crap - mine's not peeled - why did I pay extra for squash that's only seeded. That's what I get for going for convenience. Whatever.

2. Ignore recipe and stick squash in 450º oven without peeling it or cutting into cubes. Hopefully, it'll scoop out after being roasted, because peeling butternut squash is a pain.

3. Make sauce - saute onions and garlic, and then add tomatoes and spices. Simmer forever until it's "thick."

4. Boil water and put kale leaves in for about 5 minutes. Forget about them and overboil. Forget to salt the water. Drain kale, chop, and then add some salt.

5. Boil more water. Add lasagna noodles. Remember to salt the water this time. Realize pot isn't big enough for lasagna noodles. Poke noodles until they relinquish their stiffness and fall into the menacingly hot water. Laugh evilly. Burn self with water accidently. Ow.

6. Remember butternut squash! Look in oven - parts are starting to singe. Realize that said squash is not squashy yet. Poke with form, splash some oil on it. Stare at it for another 20 minutes whiel sauce continues to simmer and you drain the defeated lasagna noodles.

7. Squish together ricott cheese, 1 cup of shredded mozzerella, the nutmeg and some salt.

8. Decide itse times to do something about the squash. Remove from oven. Its hot - try to remove from peel anyways. Burn self. Many times. Some parts are squishy. Some are rock hard, all are stringy. Make huge mess. Realize that even if you got all the squash out, there wouldn't be enough for the recipe. Remember leftover acorn squash from that weekend's dinner! Saved. Remove that from fridge and mash with the pitiful butternut squash. Acorn squash > Butternut squash.

9. finally, everything can be put together. Start spooning sauce onto bottom of 9x13 pan = there not going to be enough to fit. Grab smaller 7x11 pan. Sauce, noodles, squash, kale, ricotta mixture... wait... there's too much to fit!

10. Through fancy maneuvering and someone else's help, flip half-assembled lasagna into 10x14 pan. Way too big. Whatever.

11. Continue assembling. Whatever order, as long as there's lot of cheese on top.

12. Realize that this all took about 2 hours and hope that it doesn't suck.

13. Bake at 350º till its done. However long that takes.

Result: It doesn't suck! It's very tasty, in fact. You should probably follow the original directions, and not mine, but I would recommend the acorn squash over butternut.

Also, you may have noticed that the site has a somewhat fancy new look - still in tweak mode. Though, I'm guessing most of you read this in Google Reader anyway... oh well.

Food Resolutions

2008-03-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

I'm just back from traveling (Texas, North Carolina), and I'm working through the backlog of things that have accumulated in my absence. I do have some recipes that might be of interest to you, my faithful readers, but I first wanted to take a step back and look at the big picture.

I believe that food and cooking is a constant education - those who think they know it all probably make boring food. I think those who are interested in cooking (and... it's okay if not everyone is. Really.) should be always trying new things. It's too easy to just make the same dishes over and over again, but then you don't learn new skills, figure out that you may love certain flavor combinations, realize that you actually do like that food that you've been eschewing since youth, or learn that you really have no idea how and where pickled things come from.

So! Maybe it's March, but that's okay - it's time for some food resolutions for the year.

I will attempt to make the following this year:

Pickled things! Pickled cucumbers, sauerkraut, pickled beets, etc...

Sourdough Bread/Wild Yeast Bread

Sausage. Hey, I have a meat grinder now.

Soufflé. Chocolate. Cheese? Something.

Yogurt. Without a yogurt maker.

I will figure out more places where I might like... broccoli. And... is that really the only food I hate?

Finally, I will make a concerted effort to shop more locally for produce, dairy and meat.

Am I the only one making food resolutions this year?

Banana My Bread

2008-02-25T22:49:00.000-08:00

It was National Banana Bread Day sometime this weekend. Saturday? I don't remember. I can't say that I crave banana bread like some people, but there were some renegade bananas that we bought last week that went straight from green to brown, and they had to be taught a lesson. Onward!

Now, as some of you may know, I haven officially given up refined sugar until, say, March 23 (a.k.a. Easter). So, I set off on Sunday to make a banana bread that was without refined sugar, and somewhat healthy AND TASTY. Crazy you say? I think I succeeded, so there. I adapted my recipe from this one from Simply Recipes and made them into muffin form. Half were in muffin papers and half weren't, and I think the ones without the paper were a little better; they got a nice crust around the edge and didn't have any annoying paper sticking to them.

Friggin' Healthy Banana Bread
4 ripe bananas
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon flaxseed (for that kick - optional)

Preheat the oven to 350º

Mash the bananas, honey, oil and yogurt together.

Add the vanilla and egg and stir with a wooden spoon.

Sprinkle the baking soda and salt across the dough, and then stir in the flours just until mixed.

Add that optional flaxseed, dontcha know.

Bake in a greased loaf pan or greased muffin tins for about 1 hour or 35 minutes, respectively, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

"What's for Dinner?"

2008-02-24T17:00:00.001-08:00

This is a delayed response to Penney's question of "How do you decide what to eat?"

Living with Brian, the first question to answer in our household is "Who will cook?" (We do not cook well together - too alpha). After our first few months of living together, Brian and I realized that deciding the answer to that question the night of dinner would probably mean that we were
(a) eating cereal for dinner,
(b) going out to eat, or
(c) not getting dinner until 10 or so.

So, I started "assigning" mealtimes for the week on Sundays, based on how busy we each are and what else is going on. For example, last week, Brian made dinner Monday and Wednesday, and I made dinner Tuesday and Friday, while Thursday we went to a friend's house for dinner. Since Brian will be pretty busy with a paper this week, I'll be cooking some days, and we'll probably go out to eat and eat leftovers as well. We've talked about planning meals on Sundays, but neither of us feels inspired enough to do that, so we each plan our meals separately.

Ok, then what? In my parents house, there weren't many "new" things for dinner - there was more a rotation of meals that my mom pulled from. And can you blame her? With kids, job, dog, husband, who wants to think of new things to cook, especially if you don't know how they'll turn out? Here, we're still building the rotation - that is, thing we're willing to cook over and over and have. In fact, the only things I can think of that's in our rotation are beef stroganoff (for wintertime) and turkey meatballs (in summertime).

For ideas of what to cook: We get two cooking magazines right now - Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit. Fine Cooking is a little more approachable and has more recipes, while Bon Appetit focuses on food in general, and has fewer recipes, though I have gotten some killer ideas from it (nom, Cinnamon Rolls. I subscribe to a number of food blogs - I will usually add one I come across and follow it for a few weeks and then unsubscribe if I don't feel inspired by the recipes or the writer. These are the ones that have had staying power:

Simply Recipes: This is the first food blog I started reading regularly, and I really enjoy it her style of writing and variety of recipes - most are pretty approachable, but she's not afraid of trying new things.
Chocolate & Zucchini: I love this site - it's written by a French woman who lived in California for many years, and her recipes are always inspiring. When summer comes, check out her Zucchini Chocolate Cake, which is the best chocolate cake, hands down, that I've ever had.
Lunch in a Box: This is less a recipe site and more lunch/bento site. I've gotten some good ideas of things to take for lunch, since sandwiches bore me and there's nothing good to eat around my office.
Epicurious: I get a daily recipe on my feed reader from Epicurious - they span a whole range of food-making abilities and genres, so it can be a good source of inspiration.
Bitten: This is Mark Bittman's blog on the NY Times. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything was the first real cookbook I owned, and I enjoy his minimalist style of cooking.
Slashfood: This more just a deluge of foodie-related information, but I occasionally find inspiration (for example, yesterday was National Banana Bread Day. So I made Banana Bread. How cliche.)
And of course, all my friend's food blogs! Make Things Tasty, Ellie May, Recipes from the Peapod, Penney's Palate, Traditional Cake, But I Suck At Cooking (oh, the inspiration).

Since I've started working full time, I'm especially on the look out for recipes that are quick to make after I get home from work, or will allow me to do most of the prep work the morning or night before. For example, crock pot recipes can be prepared the morning of, and lasagne can be assembled the night before, to be merely popped into the oven. On the weekends, I'm more willing to do something more time-consuming. I usually don't scale what I'm making to two people, because I like leftovers for lunch (goal: make my lunch as cool as possible). And I'm always on the look out for something that will be healthy or vegetarian but still taste good. If I know what I basically want to make, I use epicurious's search feature, and occasionally Allrecipes, though they can be more inconsistent since they are user-submitted.

And then we eat dinner. And then someone needs to take care of dishes. Brian and I had been going under the "If you didn't make dinner, you have to do dishes" game plan, but since Brian creates tons of dishes, and I create many fewer, this isn't totally fair. We're trying out flipping-a-coin during dinner to see who does dishes, which could be a mildly interesting decision-analysis case study. Only mildly interesting.

Ok, now: Food/Recipe blogs you love?

Spicy Slow Cooked Chicken

2008-02-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

"Do you have anything earth shattering to say about dinner, Brian?"
"It was earth shattering!"

I think he's humoring me. Anyways, it was good! Let's talk about it.

I've had a package of chicken thighs hanging out in my freezer for a while - I was afraid they were reaching the end of the time which they would be tasty right out of the fridge, so I decided to use them in a crock pot dish. The slow cooking takes away the toughness that can come with overfreezing - so, into the crock pot! I'm not just a crock pot cooker, but Mondays are great for these dishes, since I can come home and plop on the couch while dinner finishes cooking.

Spicy Slow Cooked Chicken

1 yellow onion, chopped roughly
1 red pepper, seeded and chopped roughly
1.5 pounds of chicken, trimmed of fat
1/2 cup of chicken broth
Package of Fajita Seasoning*
8-10 white or crimini mushrooms, quartered

Combine all ingredients, except the mushrooms in a crockpot over low heat. Leave over low heat for 7-10 hours. Add the mushrooms and cook for another hour, increasing to high heat if there is excess liquid. Serve with tortillas or over corn chips, garnishing with salsa, cheese and sour cream.

Fajita Seasoning

If you don't have a packet of seasoning, but you do have way too many spices like us, you can use this recipe. Just combine and then shake over the ingredients in the crockpot.

1 tablespoon cornstarch
1.5 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon chicken granules/chicken bouillon
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (less if you don't like spice)
dash cumin
dash red pepper flakes

Egg Drop Soup with Noodles

2008-02-03T20:51:00.000-08:00

I've been sick all weekend with some sort of cough-grossness, so I didn't do much other than watch a LOT of TV and knitted the beginnings of a hat. How productive of me.

I didn't really cook much, or eat much as a result (for example, lunch yesterday was an avocado with olive oil and salt. Maybe a little weird, but good). Tonight, though after my day of toast and tea, I wanted some soup to soothe my throat. Unfortunately, I didn't have any canned soup, and I was too icky feeling to walk to the grocery store (about five blocks away, but hey, it's raining, and there's a hill. ew). So, I decided to make this egg drop soup with egg noodles. A little different from your typical egg drop soup, but it takes the best parts of egg drop soup and chicken noodle soup in one recipe. I basically followed this recipe from my Gourmet Cookbook, though I didn't have fresh ginger (I used jarred, about two tablespoons), I only had wide egg noodles (eh, who cares), and I didn't have sesame oil (I toasted some sesame seeds in some oil, but I'd probably skip this next time).

Chinese Egg Drop Soup with Noodles

Crockpot Pulled Pork

2008-01-27T20:59:00.000-08:00

When Brian and I moved in together last July, one of the first "new" things I got for our place was a crock pot. I found it for $5 on craiglist, and I think it's been a stellar investment. I've heard that newer crock pots cook faster than older crock pots... which sort of defeats the purpose of a slow cooker? In any case, mine looks like it's from the early 80s with an ugly floral pattern on the outside. It's a little small and a kind of pain to clean, but I luvz it anyways. If I ever want to get a bigger one, I'll look first for a used, old one.

I've mostly used the crockpot for overnight oatmeal (water, steel cut oats, spices, raisins... overnight... low heat... breakfast... yay), but since I've started working, I've also been looking for more meals I can cook throughout the day and have pretty much done when I get home. I've made a good turkey chili, an okay beef burgundy... and today, I tried pulled pork barbeque. That was redonkulously easy. This is not the Eastern NC barbeque that we know and love, though I think we could adapt this if we found a good vinegar sauce. Instead, it's more of a Western NC barbeque... all sweet and tomatoy. Since there are so few ingredients in this, be sure to use a barbeque sauce that you like a lot - what we used today was less spicy and more sweet than Brian and I like - next time, we'll definitely try something else.

This is based on a recipe that called for a 3-4 pound piece of pork, but I've adjusted it down for the size of my crockpot and for how much we could reasonably eat over a few days - this should double easily.

[For those of you without crockpots... I think you could use a dutch oven or heavy pot, cooked over very very low heat or in a low oven for a few hours. No guarantees on that, though!]

Pulled Pork Barbeque
~2 pounds pork top loin, trimmed of excess fat
1/2 onion, chopped roughly
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
9 oz barbeque sauce of choice (1/2 regular-sized bottle)

Combine all the ingredients in the crock pot and put the crock pot on low heat. Walk away for 6-8 hours.

Increase the heat to high for the last hour or so. Remove the meat from the crock pot and place in a bowl. Take two forks and start pulled the pork apart - it should fall apart easily. If it doesn't, put it back in the crock pot for another hour or so. Keep the pulled meat moist and warm in the crock pot while serving.

You can serve this on hamburger buns, but we just had ours with some corn bread and lima beans. Easy peasy.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

2008-01-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

Usually, I leave the baking to Brian, but it was my turn to make treats for the office this Wednesday. I felt like my officemates needed a little southern comfort to push them through the rest of the day, so red velvet cupcakes it was (along with Cara Cara oranges and blood oranges for those who wanted something "healthy")!

As much as Paula Deen scares me ("hey, y'all, let's use some butter, y'all. we gonna fry it, y'all"), I figured she would have a good recipe for red velvet cupcakes. And it's true, they were a hit! I made this recipe almost to the letter (I upped the cocoa to a heaping tablespoon from a teaspoon), but if I make them again, I would reduce the amount of oil by 1/4 to 1/3 cup - they were a little greasy on the bottom.

Rather than use the cream cheese frosting recipe with this recipe (a pound of cream cheese? 2 sticks of butter? oh my.), I used one I found in the Joy of Cooking.

Cream Cheese Frosting
8 oz cold cream cheese
4 tbsp. butter, softened
2 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

Mix the cream cheese and butter with a hand mixer. Add the confectioner's sugar 1/2 cup of time until well-mixed.

Indian Spinach with Paneer

2008-01-24T23:13:00.000-08:00

Indian food. It's tasty. At least the American version I get - I imagine the real thing is good too. To keep me from going to the little Indian food district we've got goin' on here in Seattle all the time, I make this dish from time to time. I've made it with some homemade naan and spicy chicken (show off), but I'd be pretty happy just eating this plain from the tupperware. As I may have done.

This recipe is adapted from one in Fine Cooking - it was originally for 6 servings (this is roughly 3 servings) and also called for chick peas instead of paneer, but it was a strange texture. If you don't have garam masala, throw in a bit of cumin, a bit of clove, and whatever else you feel like. Also, there were a bunch of words and warnings in the recipe, and I didn't think they were that important. And sometimes, I forget to thaw my spinach in time, so it ends up being a big block of frozen spinach in my pan. That takes a while, so if you're like me, maybe you should thaw it first in the microwave?

Indian Spinach with Yogurt and Paneer
1 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 yellow onion, or 1 shallot, chopped to medium dice
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped (about 2 tsp.)
1 1/2 tsp. minced ginger
1/2 tsp. garam masala
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
10 oz box of frozen spinach, thawed
1/4 tsp. salt
black pepper
scant 1/2 plain yogurt
paneer, diced into 1 in. pieces

Heat the oil over medium-high heat, add the onion or shallot and saute until soft and lightly browned. Add the garlic, ginger, garam masala and coriander and cook very briefly, stirring quickly for 15-30 seconds.

Add the spinach to the pan and stir until well-mixed and heated through, about 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat and add salt and pepper to taste.

Transfer the spinach to a food processor and add the yogurt and then puree. Return the mixture to the pan and warm the mixture back up. Add the paneer pieces and cook for another minute or so.

Meyer Lemon Love Fest

2008-01-20T14:16:00.000-08:00

For the past few years, around this time, I've read about Meyer lemons in my food blogs, cooking magazines, etc. Like my other favorite citrus fruit, blood oranges, Meyer lemons are only in the grocery stores around here for a limited time.

I have a few lemons in front of me right now, and they are the prettiest little lemons I ever did see. They are a very bright yellow with a thin, almost giving skin - they look like lemons should look, not like the hard little light yellow things we see in the grocery store. They have a sweeter, less acidic taste, and you could almost just eat them out of hand. I picked these up at the gourmet grocery store near our place - the regular grocery store doesn't have them - and i'm contemplating what to do with them. I used one of my four last night in a Meyer lemon dressing that I used on a spinach salad with toasted almonds. For the others, I'm considering a lemon sorbet, or maybe a lemon meringue pie?

Meyer Lemon Dressing (adapted from Bobby Flay's recipe)
1/4 cup fresh Meyer lemon juice (or 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice combined with 1 tablespoon orange juice)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon homemade garlic aioli*
3 anchovy fillets**
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup grated hard Italian cheese (I used Asiago, though Parmesan would be a bit milder)

*Substitute tablespoon store bought mayonnaise and add 2-4 cloves of garlic or 1/2-1 tsp. garlic powder
**I left these out, despite having some - I wasn't sure if my guests would enjoy the anchovy flavor. I bet they would be a good complement to the lemon, though

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor or blender except for the oil and cheese. With the processor or blender running, slowly add the olive oil until the mixture emulsifies. Add the cheese and blend until incorporated.

Mayonnaise

2008-01-05T19:40:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure when mayonnaise got such a bad rap. I blame Hellman's and Duke's and fake mayonnaise king's, Miracle Whip. I used to hate mayonnaise on my hamburgers, on my sandwiches, whenever I saw it in those gross packets. Wait, I still do. Because it's usually the wrong mayonnaise! Wrong! But real mayonnaise... oh my. Supah tasty. And very easy if you make it in a food processor or with a mixer. Don't do it by hand. Don't. Do. It. And if the idea of mayonnaise grosses you out? Call it aioli and let's call it good. [Brian would like to note that he doesn't have the love affair with homemade mayonnaise that I do]

Homemade Mayonnaise

1 egg
2 tbsp. lemon juice
Dash of cayenne pepper
Dash of ground mustard
Salt or pepper to taste
3/4 c. - 1 c. olive oil or canola oil
Other additions

In a food processor, combine the egg, lemon juice, salt and pepper and any additions. Slowly (slowly!) add 1/2 cup of the oil through the feedtube or into the bowl with the mixture. The mixture should begin to thicken - add up to 1/2 cup more of the oil through the feedtube.

Possible additions to the mayonnaise: 1 tablespoon or more of chopped herbs (cilantro, dill, rosemary, parsley, etc) or a few cloves of garlic. Enjoy on french fries, hamburgers, your sandwich... with a spoon.

Movin', Movin'

2007-12-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

I don't know the history of the food blogging world, and I don't know how I've gotten to this. But, it just seemed the time to have my own place on the internet wherein I talk about food.

I don't know what I'll be talking about.

I don't know my philosophy of food. Or of eating.

And who knows if I'll just talk about food.

Let's not be too formal about it. Okay?