Pad Thai

I originally got this recipe from The Far East Cookbook, but I have adapted it over the years to my taste preferences and ease of cooking. This probably takes under 1/2 hour from start to finish, and the bulk of the time is in preparing the ingredients. Once you start cooking, it goes very quickly, so make sure you have everything ready before you heat up the wok. I sometimes add other vegetables if I have them on hand. Fresh pea pods are delicious.

Pad Thai

8 oz. flat rice noodles
1 tbs. soy sauce
1/4 tsp. hot chili paste or sriracha sauce
2 Tbs. fish sauce
4 tsp. rice vinegar
1 Tbs. brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
3 carrots, in matchsticks
1/2-1 lb. cooked shrimp, chicken or egg
6 oz. bean sprouts
6 green onions, thinly sliced on a diagonal
2 Tbs. sesame oil
1/4 cup chopped peanuts to garnish
1/4 cup chopped cilantro to garnish

1. Place noodles into a large heatproof bowl. Add enough hot water
to cover noodles by 2 inches and let stand 15 minutes or until softened.
Drain and set aside.





2. Mix together the soy sauce, chili sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, and sugar in a small bowl. Set aside. Make sure all your ingredients are ready (vegetables cut up, eggs cooked, etc.) before you begin cooking, because once you start it goes very fast.





3. Heat a wok (or large pot or frying pan) until very hot. Add 3 Tbs. vegetable oil and swirl to coat wok. Add garlic and bell pepper and carrot and stir fry 3 minutes or until vegetables are crisp-tender.





Add noodles, and sauce mix and stir-fry 1 minute. Add a little water if noodles begin to stick.







Add shrimp (or chicken or egg), bean sprouts, green onions and sesame oil and stir-fry 2-3 minutes until hot.







Sprinkle with peanuts and cilantro and serve hot. Add salt and additional fish sauce and chili sauce to taste.

Quick Blender Tomato Soup

This one comes from the Williams Sonoma The Kids Cookbook, which I think is my favorite cookbook for kids because it has real food, not just decorated food and tons of sweets. It also is a good basic introduction to cooking, since the recipes teach a lot of cooking skills that transfer to all sorts of other cooking. I also like the fact that the recipes are good enough that I actually choose to make them myself fairly often. This tomato soup recipe is a good example. It is easy enough for a child to make, but soooo much better than the stuff you get out of a can.

On Monday I had a lot of fresh tomatoes, so I substituted them (chopped) for the canned ones and strained the puree after I blended it to get the seeds and skins out. I had to mess with the recipe to get it to taste right, though, and I have no idea what I did, so I'd recommend going with the canned tomatoes the first time around.

Here's my shortened version of the recipe for more experienced cooks. The kids' version is much more detailed.

Creamy Tomato Soup

3 small green onions
1 can (14 1/2 oz.) diced tomatoes
1 c. chicken broth
1/4 c. milk
1 tsp. sugar
salt and pepper

Blend until smooth: tomatoes, chicken broth, chopped green onions, milk, sugar, 1/2 tsp. salt, and a pinch of pepper. Pour into medium saucepan and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring frequently, until the soup thickens, about 15 minutes. Serves 2.

Cooking in the Kiln

I haven't been cooking much food lately because I've been spending a lot of time "cooking" pottery.

I pulled a couple of glaze firings out this weekend and have 3 or 4 whole shelves of beautiful work just waiting for Christmas shoppers (just give me a call if you want to come get first dibs).






I'm eager to get to work on a new batch, so if there's some particular item you're looking for, let me know and I'll try to include it. I want to have at least twice as much stuff heading into the Holiday season and try selling some on Etsy and at the Ellis Holiday Shoppe this year to come closer to breaking even with my costs.





So our dinner menu this week:
Sun: leftover food from tamale party
Mon: fresh tomato soup with melted cheese sandwiches
Tues: frozen pizza (storebought) with sauteed shredded butternut (cooks quicker that way)
Wed: bean and veggie pesto soup
Thurs: frozen burritos (I made them with leftover taco fixings a couple of weeks ago), lettuce & tomato
Fri: Pad Thai
Sat: frozen tamales (left from tamale party), green salad with guacamole dressing

As you can see, we had several meals from the freezer, and other three meals all took under 30 minutes.

Bean and Veggie Pesto Soup

I'm always on the lookout for meals that are healthy and easy. This soup from Rachel Ray is super easy if you already have some pesto in the freezer. I have bunches of basil in the garden this year (one of the few plants the groundhogs and deer didn't eat), so I made three batches of pesto and froze what we didn't eat that night. I still have to make more this week. Once you're familiar with this recipe, it's easy to cut up the veggies as the earlier parts of the soup are cooking. It takes about 30 minutes and is so full of veggies that you really don't need a side dish, though a green salad and some garlic bread would be good.

Bean and Veggie Pesto Soup

1 onion, chopped
1 large potato, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
1 1/2 cups green beans, fresh or frozen
1 can chickpeas, drained
1 can cannellini beans, drained
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup thin egg noodles or other pasta
1/2 cup pesto, fresh or frozen

Saute onion in olive oil. Add zucchini and potato and cook until barely soft. Stir in chicken broth and beans. Heat to boiling. Add noodles and green beans and cook until done, about 5-6 minutes (add noodles earlier if they need more time to cook than the green beans). To serve, put pesto in bottom of each bowl, spoon in soup and stir briefly.

Tamale Party

Every time we host a party, I think to myself "I'm obviously overdoing it - I've got to find a way to simplify". This time was no exception (250 handmade tamales? We're insane!), though things did go much more smoothly than the last time we had a tamale party. People mingled, the weather was perfect, and the tamales turned out fabulous. Enormous amounts of food were consumed.


I used the recipe on the bag of masa for tamales (which I don't even have to go check, because after making about 12 batches, I have it memorized). I've added my mixing method.

Tamale Masa

2/3 c. lard
2 cups dry masa for tamales
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups chicken broth

In a stand mixer with a wire whisk, whip the lard. In another bowl, measure the dry ingredients and stir together. Stir in the chicken broth. Add to the lard and beat with the beater attachment until light and airy. If you put a little dollop of this in a bowl of cold water at this point, it should float. If it doesn't, beat it some more to incorporate more air.

For vegetarian masa, substitute butter or oil for the lard (or a mix of the 2) and vegetable broth for the chicken broth.

If you've never assembled tamales before, it's easier to learn by watching someone than to follow directions, so I'm not even going to try to describe how. Maybe another post.

We used 4 kinds of fillings:
*chicken with tomatillo sauce
*pork with ancho chile and tomato sauce
*black beans with jack cheese and poblano peppers
*one that Jill brought - butternut squash with chipotle and green chiles.

We also had
*Oaxacan style black beans
*Gulf Coast Style white rice pilaf
*fresh tomato & tomatillo salsa
*Ancho and Pasilla chile sauce
*fresh tomatillo cilantro salsa
*Zoe's best guacamole
*tortilla chips
*watermelon lemonade
*grilled corn on the cob with lime and chipotle
*green salad with tangy avocado dressing
*fresh lime ice with raspberries
*homemade peach ice cream
*"Mexican chocolate" brownies (with cinnamon)

Offerings from the guests included Melissa's famous chocolate chip cookies, Amorette's smokin' roasted tomatillo salsa, Alisa's beet and carrot salad, Melissa's garden fresh tomatoes and basil, and April's fresh perfectly ripe mango chunks. (If any of you want to guest post your recipes, that would be great!). Thanks to Melissa for the photos - I never even thought about taking any. And thanks to Stephen for his monumental efforts doing the dishes.

Any requests for me to post on the other recipes? I got most of them from Rick Bayless, who is my go-to cookbook author for authentic Mexican food.

Where to find ingredients: we got the corn husks and masa at the little Mexican grocery in Oakland (just off Bates Street) -(you can also find them at Reyna's in the strip, and the masa for tamales I also saw for cheaper at Walmart), the lard came from the Forest Hills Giant Eagle in the meat section, tomatillos from the farmer's market, Poblano chiles from Walmart, peaches from our tree.

Clay says he talked to the gardener at CMU and asked if he could have the banana leaves when they cut them back next week, and got the ok. So you know that means we've got Oaxacan style mole tamales wrapped in banana leaves coming up. . .

Coffee Cake (with peaches)

A character in a book I'm reading (Strange Fits of Passion by Anita Shreve) eats coffee cake and I find myself thinking about coffee cake for days afterward. So finally, I decide to make one. I adapted this from the Joy of Cooking and scattered a few pieces of
peach over the top before I put on the streusel. It was exactly what I was hoping for. Lots of decadently sweet streusel topping (you could cut it in half), but the cake itself wasn't too sweet or rich, and the bits of peaches from our tree were like little gems of summer goodness.

Yogurt Coffee Cake (with Peaches)

for the streusel topping:
2/3 c. all-purpose flour
2/3 c. pecans
2/3 c. brown sugar
5 tbs. butter, melted
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt

Pulse pecans in food processor until chopped, then add remaining ingredients and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

for the cake:
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 c. plain nonfat yogurt
1 tsp. vanilla
4 tbs. butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups peaches (or other fruit, like apples, cranberries, raspberries, etc.), optional

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 9x13 inch pan. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, combine the yogurt and vanilla. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar on high speed until lightened in color and texture, 3 to 4 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the sour cream mixture in 2 parts, beating on low speed or stirring until smooth and scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle the fruit over the batter. Sprinkle the streusel over the fruit. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes without fruit and about 40-45 minutes with fruit.

Taco Night Menu & photos

A taco feast:

From the grill:
lime cilantro marinated flank steak
green onions
poblano chiles
corn on the cob
ancho chile spiced potatoes

Also:
fresh tomato salsa
chipotle salsa from the farmer's market
guacamole
chips
cheddar and queso fresco
black beans
lime-marinated red onions
shredded cabbage
lime
cilantro
Mexican crema
fresh corn tortillas from Reyna's
sparkling limeade

Dessert:
Lime ice with raspberries
M's famous chocolate chip cookies

Lime Ice

This turned out fantastic! I got the recipe from Rick Bayless's Mexican Everyday.
Here is his website for Frontera Grill.

Fresh Lime Ice with Berries

Nieve de Limon con Moras

Serves 6

Recipe from Season 6 of Mexico—One Plate at a Time

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Ingredients

5 to 6 large limes (or enough to make 3/4 cup fresh lime juice)
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup corn syrup
2 to 3 cups fresh raspberries, blackberries or strawberries (you’ll want to slice or quarter strawberries), for serving

---

Directions

Grate the zest (colored part only) off 2 of the limes and scrape into a large bowl. (If the zest is in large pieces, chop it finely.) Juice the limes, measure 3/4 cup and pour it in with the zest. Add the sugar, corn syrup and 1 1/4 cups water. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Pour the mixture into the canister of your ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions.

The ice will have the best texture if you scoop it from the ice cream maker into a container and let it firm up for several hours in the freezer. The ice is best eaten within 24 hours, scooped into small dishes and sprinkled with the berries.

Peach Pie

C's 41st birthday, and this is what I made instead of a cake (I wish the picture were better):

Lattice-topped Peach Raspberry Pie

It's easier than it looks when you use a premade crust. This one is Pillsbury refrigerated rolled crust. I've also liked the Trader Joe's frozen crust.

Just put one crust in the bottom of your pie pan. Fill it with the filling, cut strips of the top crust and weave them together, leaving just 1/4 in. overhang. Tuck the edges under the bottom crust and then press together with a decorative edge. Brush the top of the crust with a bit of something (beaten egg, cream, even water) then sprinkle with sugar to make the top glisten with sugar crystals. Bake at 375 until crust is golden. I also put a pie crust ring around the rim after it has mostly cooked to keep it from browning too much faster than the rest of the pie.

For the filling, I basically used M's frozen peach pie recipe from her blog, with the addition of the almond extract and a handful of raspberries:

About 4 cups of cut up peaches (I didn't bother peeling them)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. citric acid (skip it if you don't have it)
1 tbs. lemon juice
2 Tbs. instant tapioca
1/2 tsp. almond extract

Stir together and put in unbaked pie crust and continue as above.


I also brought a version of this to a party in late August, where I used a crumb topping instead of the lattice. I prefer that, but C likes his pastry pure.

Puffy Pancakes with Peach Sauce

We have a peach tree that is much later to produce than others in the area. We're just now starting to get peaches from it. Some of them are pretty great, but far too many are small and green and spotted with some kind of fungus. We tried to thin them and spray the tree, but obviously didn't do enough. The tree is weighed down with peaches and 2 of the branches have broken off because we didn't thin the peaches enough.

What to do with this bounty?

This morning we had oven pancakes with peach sauce (pureed peaches with a bit of OJ to thin it and a dash of almond extract and a spoonful or two of sugar).

Oven pancakes aka David Eyre's Pancakes aka Dutch Babies aka Puffy Pancakes

for each serving, mix together
1/4 c. milk
1/4 c. flour
1 egg
a pinch of salt
(so if you're making it for 4, use 1 cup milk, 1 cup flour, 4 eggs, etc.)

Melt some butter in a baking dish (9x13 is good for 4 servings) at 450 degrees. Use 2-4 Tbs. Pour the batter into the hot dish, and put it back into the oven. Bake until puffed up and golden brown, about 15 minutes. Serve immediately with toppings of your choice. Some ideas: fresh fruit and whipped cream, fruit sauces, applesauce, maple syrup, jam, powdered sugar...

(The photo is from our anniversary breakfast in bed, which Z made for us on our anniversary)

Kettle Corn

One of the foods I never had before coming to Pittsburgh is Kettle Corn. They sell it at fairs and farmer's markets, cooking it in giant steel vats over a jet of burning fuel that reminds me of raku firing. It's salty and sweet, but not as sweet as caramel corn. They just throw the sugar, salt and popcorn into the hot oil all at the same time and stir like mad with a wooden paddle until the popping slows, then they tip the hinged vat into a bowl to cool and ring the bell to let you know it's ready to buy. It's quite a drama, especially if you've got little kids in tow. It also seems very expensive, especially given that the ingredients are so cheap. I didn't see how I could ever make it at home - you can't stir a stovetop sized pan of popcorn without it popping out all over the stove, and shaking it wouldn't be enough to keep the sugar from burning to the bottom.

To the rescue: my new kitchen toy, a stovetop popcorn popper (never used) that I picked up yesterday at the neighborhood yard sale for $1.50. I saw someone using one of these at girls camp this summer, and I was impressed at how much easier it was to get the results of stovetop popcorn without the hassle of shaking a pan over a hot flame. You turn the crank, and a little blade stirs the bottom of the pan, keeping the popcorn moving. We made a batch of plain popcorn last night for movie night, and it took less than 5 minutes, possibly even including the time it took to wash the pan. It's so much better than microwave popcorn.

As a side note, I also made myself some "popcorn salt" by running some salt in an old electric coffee grinder that I use for various kitchen tasks (like grinding spices). The finer salt sticks to the popcorn better and less of it goes farther.

Tonight, we tried the more ambitious kettle corn. It worked wonderfully, and was just as good as the stuff at the farmer's market. I keep popcorn in my food storage, because it lasts forever, and so I always have the ingredients on hand, and it probably costs about a quarter for 4 quarts of kettle corn. The funnest part is that it feels so old-fashioned, like pulling taffy or something, and just the thing for a family game night, but it's so easy. Next time you come over, ask for some popcorn or kettle corn, and I'll be happy to make some for you.

Warm beans with herbed tomatoes and goat cheese

This seems like the perfect dish for the beginning of fall. It's warm and hearty from the beans, but still hangs on to the best of summer flavors: garden-fresh tomatoes and basil. I can't believe I haven't thought to make this recipe all summer when it's one of our favorites. As for how quick and easy it is - just look at how short the instructions are. Bobbie, thanks for giving me this recipe!

Warm Beans with Herbed Tomatoes and Goat Cheese

3 tomatoes, chopped; peeled and seeded
1/4 cup fresh basil; snipped
1/4 cup fresh oregano; snipped
2 green onions; sliced
1 clove garlic; minced or pressed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
15 oz can kidney beans
15 oz can white beans
4 ounces goat cheese

Mix herbs and seasonings with tomatoes and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes (less is ok). Heat beans to boiling in liquid from cans. Let simmer 2 minutes. Drain and mix into tomatoes. Crumble goat cheese over the top and serve immediately.

Southwestern Grilled Chicken Salad with Tomato Black Bean Salsa

New recipe of the week comes from Fine Cooking Magazine.
Southwestern Grilled Chicken Salad with Tomato Black Bean Salsa

This was a very satisfying and delicious summer meal. Good for hot summer days when you can't bear to turn on the stove and heat up the house. It used up some of those delicious summer tomatoes and the cilantro we got from the farmer this week. Also the leftovers make a good lunch. I doubled the chicken, since I had two chicken breasts, thinking we'd eat the leftovers later in burritos, but we ate it all with the salad.

School lunches

Fortunately, I have a daughter who likes to try new foods and enjoys a wide variety of things. Unfortunately, she also demands more than the usual PB&J in her lunch box. She gave me the thumbs up for her first week of school lunches. She has tended to prefer the ones she had more of a hand in. Mostly I've been figuring out ways to send dinner leftovers (sometimes difficult, since she has no way to heat them up), so don't think that I cook like this for lunch everyday!

Tuesday: Cold burrito (filled with spice-rubbed grilled chicken, black beans, cheese, cilantro, canned green chiles, and a dash of lime-cilantro vinagrette), fresh pea shoots (from TJ's, yum), mini bell peppers, and a quarter of an avocado. A kiwi, cut in half, with a spoon. Some iced mint herbal tea. I can't remember what I sent for snack. I think a granola bar. Madeleine cookies (Costco). She left a couple bites of avocado and supplemented her lunch with some mashed potatoes from the cafeteria.

Wednesday: I thought she had chosen to have the school lunch, but I knew she was staying for cross country and wanted her to have a snack after school as well as during snack time, so I sent a lot. Too much, apparently, since she thought I was sending a full lunch and only supplemented it with some sweet potato wedges from the cafeteria. She was ravenous at dinner that night. Mixed fresh veggies (baby carrots, mini bell-peppers, and sugar snap peas) with peanut dipping sauce (I usually put it on pasta) and fresh cantaloupe. Also a little bit of trail mix: almonds, dried cranberries, M&Ms, walnuts, sunflower seeds. She didn't eat the walnuts and sunflower seeds.

Thursday: Leftover grilled chicken and black bean salsa salad: This one had the spice-rubbed chicken, lettuce, black beans, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, avocados, lime-cilantro dressing. Tortilla chips. Cut up fruit: papaya, cantaloupe, and kiwi. Grapes, dill havarti, and multigrain crackers for snack. Madeleine cookies.

Friday: I mixed up the rest of the asian peanut sauce with some plain pasta I set aside from dinner last night. Added some chopped snap peas, mini bell peppers and carrots. Cantaloupe and grapes. A croissant with nutella for snack, and a banana for after school cross country snack.

Ok, so I'm realizing two things as I write this: I already know I think about food way too much, but especially so when I'm watching my calorie intake. I'm thinking this week I've been feeding her extra because I'm eating less. It probably has something to do with wanting her to get off to a good start, too. And second, there's no way I'm going to keep this up for a whole year. It's back to bagels and sandwiches pretty soon.