lunch for 1, dinner for 2

I think I've talked about how I don't really cook for myself.

Sometimes, though, I'll buy something on a whim (like berries at the Civic Center farmer's market), or somebody will give me something (Iris and heirloom tomato) or leave behind something (former roommate Molly and yellow lentils) and I'll be prompted to make something of it.

For the heirloom tomato, I actually waited until I could get to the East Bay and go shopping at Berkeley Bowl (think Whole Foods but local and cheaper). They have the best mozzarella. So good I took a picture in case you ever see it and feel like having some good cheese.



I've been making this salad since I started cooking for myself. It's a summer classic - tomato, mozzarella, basil. And it looks beautiful when you take some time to assemble. The dressing is just olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.



The lentils I cooked with mirepoix and chicken broth. Spices: cumin, oregano, cayenne, bay leaf. I could've put some meat in but didn't.



This was my first time with yellow lentils. They taste kind of meal-y, like garbanzo bean-ish. I didn't like them the way I do brown lentils.

And it was way too much food. For all the effort put into cooking and plating, I only ate about half.

In contrast, my old roommate Tram came back to visit for the weekend and cooked up a storm for her brother - vegetable, fish, meat soup, rice, the works.



I was invited to share the food for dinner, and it was just like family meals growing up. I even ate more than I normally do. No photos to show for it, just a full belly and happy heart. The way meals are supposed to be.

accidental s'mores

If my blog had a "mistakes" category, this would go there.

So I wanted to make rice krispies. But I didn't have any rice krispies. I had cornflakes. So I thought it would be a good idea to substitute, except it wasn't. Because the cornflakes got soggy in the marshmallow mixture I made.

Maybe it would have been better if I had upped the cornflake to marshmallow ratio. But anyway, I ended up with a pan of marshmallow that tasted like it had wet cardboard bits in it.

But I didn't want to throw it in the trashcan. After all, I had used my last gelatin sheets making the marshmallows, and I wanted to serve it at my birthday board game night. So then I thought about hiding the marshmallows, in a sandwich, like with graham crackers.

The graham crackers really distracted from the soggy cornflake bits. But just for good measure, I crushed and toasted some smoked almonds and coated the remaining marshmallow sides. The almonds stuck really well to the marshmallow, and provided further distraction with their salty smoky crunch.



At the party I melted some chocolate chips with some vegetable oil in the microwave, so the marshmallow sandwiches were could be dipped and eaten. And it was kind of like a s'more, if you think about it. But next time I will omit the cornflakes for sure.

birthday biscuits

In honor of my birthday, Cris and I cooked together like old times. It started out with leftover biscuit dough. And the green beans/mushrooms/onion I'd purchased at a little store down the street.

We needed something to tie everything together. I thought about sliced turkey, my preferred deli meat. And then it came together - gravy, cranberry sauce. Champagne too, since we were celebrating. Did you know that organic Korbel tastes different/better than the conventional kind?



The biscuits he baked, the green beans I sauteed. The gravy was made from defrosted chicken stock, cooked with mirepoix and thickened with roux. Cranberry sauce was from a can! And thinned with some gravy. And there was sliced deli turkey. It doesn't have to be complicated (or even made from scratch) to be good!

sous vide: fennel (and banana!)

After proteins we switched to cooking vegetables and fruits. My group did fennel, artichoke, strawberries and bananas.

For fennel, I cut the bulb into sections and vacuum packed them with some herbs/seasonings: tarragon, thyme, bay leaf, star anise, caraway seeds.



The herbs were wrapped in plastic before being vacuum-packed, otherwise they would flavor the fennel too strongly. The package was cooked at 185F for 40 minutes.



After the fennel was cooked, I seared it with some butter, salt and pepper. It still tasted bland so I squeezed some lemon juice on it and sprinkled some cayenne pepper and then it tasted amazing. I could barely get a picture before all of the fennel disappeared.



After that we did bananas, and I cooked the caramel because I want to keep getting better at pastry things such as caramel. This was sugar and glucose syrup, with the addition of lemon and orange zest after the heat was turned off.



The zests were picked out before the caramel was added to the bananas. It was funny, the zests became like candied lemon and orange, tasty but a little bitter. Also funny was that the caramel cooled and hardened after they were poured on the bananas, and I was actually able to slide the banana logs out from the caramel, resulting in the caramel being one hard mass full of banana log-shaped curves. I guess this is the beginning to making caramel sculpture pieces...?



The caramel-covered bananas were cooked at 149F for 20 minutes. When they came out they were really soft, and the caramel had liquified. I think the next step would be to soak them in alcohol and set them on fire, or to cover them in sugar and brulee them. We just ate them.

food & fitness: quickbreads

Besides Sous Vide Cooking (and later on in the semester, Modern Sauces), the other cooking-related class I'm taking is called Food & Fitness. I was hoping to learn more about culinary nutrition than I did in the required nutrition class (that turned out much more science-y than I'd hoped). And so far, I have learned a lot about healthful cooking and what not to eat.

Sadly, I'm not big on avoidance. I'd rather eat less and exercise more than keep a list of what I shouldn't be eating and filter all of my available food options through that no-no list. Because that method requires more work/thinking, and because I believe that it also wears down your available willpower, which could be used to do other things.

Anyway! We alternate between lecture classes and lab classes. Our first lab class involved baked goods, mostly muffins/quickbreads. And the fat in those baked goods were substituted with applesauce and prune puree, which works to some degree because those ingredients provide moisture, which is a big part of what fat does for baked goods.



Our group of seven (almost all non-culinary students) tackled prune buttermilk bread and raisin bran muffins. The prune buttermilk bread used some margarine but also chopped prunes. The raisin bran muffins used a tiny amount of oil but also applesauce.



Another group did banana pecan muffins, which had also a tiny amount of oil but prune puree and nonfat yogurt.



Another group did lowfat fudgy brownies, which only had prune puree.



Everything tasted okay in terms of moistness and sweetness, but the missing fat took away from the savoriness. The substitutions are interesting to me, not because I want to be more healthy, but because it's always interesting to know what different ingredients do for a particular product. I tend to substitute greek yogurt for sour cream, because I think the tastes are similar enough (for a baked good or for a dip), but also because I'm more likely to buy greek yogurt because I can eat it with fruit and honey. I think applesauce and prune puree are ingredients I would add in addition to fat instead of to replace fat. It reminds me of the carrot cake I once made with canned pineapples - the carrot cake came out so moist because of that addition.

I think the star of the session was the apricot blackberry cornmeal kuchen, which had an interesting textural grittiness because of the cornmeal. It was almost like gritty cornbread but very airy, and the apricot & blackberries were delicious. I've never thought of those two fruits as a combination, but I'm definitely going to use it from now on.