Cooking in Cambridge

So again, I'm spending the summer in Cambridge, visiting Benson. Both of us very much enjoy cooking, and I've been eating better here then I usually do at home, since usually at least *one* of us feels like cooking, and it's a  lot more fun to cook for two then to cook for one. So, the result of this is that Benson and I have made breakfast (or brunch) at least once every weekend since I've arrived, which has been pretty awesome. I actually brought to England with me a small bottle of maple syrup which I bought in New Hampshire last week as a gift to Benson -- it's already over half gone!
We've done pancakes, omelets, Dutch Baby, the world's best scrambled eggs, Challah french toast (from scratch -- with my friend Zahava's amazing homemade Challah recipe), and this weekend we made Oeufs en Cocotte (eggs in a pot). I'd never heard of these before (and thus had never made them before), but while we were browsing in a kitchenware store (looking for a cheese grater, amongst other things) we stumbled across these little ceramic mini-casserole dishes which were just too cute for me to pass up (my one true weakness: kitchenware). So, while commenting to Benson, waiting in line, that I had no idea what we would make with them but I had to have them anyway, the lady in front of us suggested making Cocette - a french dish she knew, with eggs and ham all made in a tiny ramekin - perfect for the little crockery we were purchasing. So, with help from Google, we had this for brunch this morning.



Oeufs en Cocotte
4 eggs
150 grams (5.5 oz) créme fraiche
nutmeg (a pinch)
salt and pepper (to taste)
handful of fresh chopped dill
butter
Optional additions: chopped up ham, bacon bits, asparagus, smoked salmon, cheese, anything else that might go in a delicious eggy breakfast dish!




This dish was quite easy to make - first, preheat the oven to 180C/350F (switching units of measurements for temperature and cooking in England has been a tad aggravating, I admit, but I'm getting used to it). Mix the créme fraiche with dill, salt and pepper, and a dash of nutmeg in a small bowl. Then, butter 4 ramekins (we just did this in the 2 little dishes, but ramekins are usually smaller) completely, and put  a generous spoonful of the creamy mix in the bottom of each one. If you are adding ham, cheese, or other things, put those in next (we just used ham, which was a nice addition), and crack an egg on top of that (in our crockeries we put 2 eggs, since they were large enough). Finally, put a dallop of the créme fraiche mix on top of all of this, and put another sprinkle of salt and pepper and a dash of dill to garnish. Put your ramekins in a baking pan, and fill the pan with warm to hot water until it comes halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the eggs have set nicely.

These are great. I particularly like the taste that the dill gives to the recipe - dill is something I really like but don't actually go out and get very often (it doesn't dry well in my opinion, fresh is the way to go, and I usually don't buy a lot fresh herbs because they only come in huge packs at the store and they go bad before I can use them all). I also associate the taste and smell of dill with my grandmother (on my dad's side) -- she was a fantastic cook, and I don't think I encountered dill very often anywhere other than her house when I was little, so it's a pretty strong sensory memory associated with her. Can't have it without thinking about her. Anyway, so yes, a delicious brunch, and pretty easy to do, if you have ramekins.

Dinner is also a thing Benson and I have been making, obviously. So we also recently made the *best* chicken wings I've ever made in my life. We combined two recipes for the task -- first, Korean chicken wings are amazing, so we found a recipe for the sauce used in San Tung Fried chicken wings (here). We lack a deep fryer, however, so instead we decided to bake our chicken wings. However, the best thing about Korean chicken wings is how deliciously crispy they are. Which means we managed to discover a recipe which crispifies chicken wings in the oven extremely well instead (here)! We modified the crispy bit a little.


Crispy, Oven-baked San Tung Chicken Wings
Wings:
4 lbs chicken wings
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour

Sauce:
2-3 scallions
10-15 cilantro sprigs
2-3 tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup water
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbs rice vinegar (we substituted apple cider vinegar mixed with white wine)
1 tsp chili garlic sauce or red peppers (AKA - Sriracha sauce!)

Preheat the oven to 250F (yes, two hundred fifty, not a typo). Pat the chicken wings dry. Mix baking powder, flour, and salt and sprinkle/coat the chicken wings with the mix -- you don't want to heavily coat your wings, because then they taste like baking powder, but you want to cover them well. This is the agent which is going to make your chicken wings crispy! You can add the flour mix through a sifter or a mesh strainer to sprinkle it lightly over the wings if you would like, rather than rolling it in the flour mix to coat it.

You are going to bake the wings on a wire rack -- so you want to put the rack on a cookie sheet, with aluminum foil covering the sheet (for easier cleaning). Then evenly arrange the wings, skin side up, in a single layer on the rack and bake at 250F for 30 minutes (this dries out the skin). Then, increase the temperature of the wings to 425F for 40-50 minutes more, rotating the sheet halfway through. The wings should be lovely and crispy and brown at this point, so take them out and let sit for 5 minutes. Then, simply toss in the sauce until they're all coated and delicious.

Ah yes, the sauce. Also an important thing you should make. The sauce is quite easy though -- just mix all the ingredients in a sauce pan, put on low-medium heat, and simmer (stirring frequently) for 5-10 minutes until it has thickened. We found that starting the sauce right after you rotate the chicken wings is about the right amount of time, giving you 20 minutes or so.

These are AMAZING. We served them over rice -- we actually made a half recipe, which was plenty for two with the rice. But for a larger group, make more!

So, all in all, having a lovely time in Cambridge. I've also gone into London 3 times now -- once as described in the last post, once for a live show of a comedy radio program I really like, and once to go to the Victoria and Albert museum as well as to track down the *best scotch egg* in London. We succeeded in this second task, finding ourselves in a really great Michelin star pub for lunch which served game and had *perfect* venison sausage covered scotch eggs. That was a good day!

Until next time!

Catching up, plus Deviled Eggs

Hey all!

It's been much, much too long since my last blog update. Very sorry about that, I genuinely WILL TRY to go back to an update schedule of every other week at a minimum. So. What have I been up to since... gosh, has it really been since last summer, basically? I've had many blog posts I meant to write. My dining experience at Per Se. The rest of my trip to Italy. The many various things I've cooked over the last 6 months or so. Well, I've been up to a lot in that time. Benson has visited twice. I've gone to Baltimore more than one might expect, including a week of housesitting plus keeping an eye on my grandfather who recently moved down to an assisted living place in Baltimore. A dear friend of mine got married and had a lovely wedding. I gave a public outreach talk on some interesting debates in the history of astronomy, plus have participated in other outreach activities with the astro department. I've been running/attending a movie night with friends in the department, too, so lots of good movies, there. My research has been going well, and I've been working on some papers and gotten several proposals in, and even accepted (well, my research group has, and I've helped). I went to the AAS meeting in National Harbour, MD, to present a poster on my research. I got glasses, and want to get a monocle (but these are a bit hard to find prescription). I bought some single malt scotch with some of my Christmas money. Benson went to Cambridge, so we've been adjusting to an all-new 5 hour time difference. I went to the beach in Ocean City, MD. I wrote a couple pieces of fanfiction (you saw the piece for the WTNV election, my last blog post!). I've been spending too much time on the internet, particularly Tumblr, AO3, Facebook, etc. I've been going to Chinatown semi-regularly with a group in my department, mostly for dim sum though recently for the Chinese New Year and peking duck (amazingness!). I went to my 5 year Brandeis reunion. There was Christmas. Iceskating and sledding with Benson. Watching too much TV, including a new season of Sherlock, starting Supernatural, the Sopranos, and the usual Doctor Who, Homeland, HIMYM, and other shows. Played a few good computer games - particularly Fez and the Stanley Parable. Movies: Godfather Trilogy, Hunger games, Desolation of Smaug, Pulp Fiction and Resevoir dogs (in a one night Quintin Terintino marathon). Hung out with my friend Lloyd and cooked with them a bit as well. Went to a Doo-Wop festival in Wild Wood, NJ, dressing all 50s in a poodle-skirt both for that AND Halloween. I may do some mini-blog entries on some of these things, we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, with this "sort of" entry, I figure I'll post a "sort of" kind of recipe. I made some deviled eggs last weekend for an Oscar party I attended Sunday night, so there we go!

I've always loved deviled eggs. It's probably one of the first dishes I made on my own without help or recipe from my parents. I'm not counting sandwiches or scrambled eggs or cake mix here, or a recipe I made 100x with my mom before doing it again by myself - I mean a recipe I sought out on my own. This is also not counting the numerous instances when I was really young when I would mix spices, water, and food coloring to make 'magic potions' - those were pretty inedible, considering they were made entirely of edible substances. Anyway, deviled eggs. I ate them for the first time... probably at my aunts New Years Eve party or something similar... and really loved them, so resolved to make them on my own. I don't know the age when I started making them, but it was probably sometime in elementary school.

Now, my recipe is a bit different than most deviled egg recipes because of this. When I was younger, I HATED mustard. Would not eat it. Could not stand it. So that very classic ingredient in deviled eggs has been substituted by thousand islands dressing, which apparently my childhood self decided was the obvious substitute for that much-hated condiment. And I think it works very well.

The other thing about this recipe is that it doesn't have 'proportions', per se. I just tend to add each thing until it looks/tastes right. My usually 'stopping' point for adding ingredients is and always has been that when I can't stop myself from tasting it because of deliciousness, that's when I can stop.

This recipe has also evolved to be spicier over the years. The hot sauce is a relatively recent (ie, college-aged me) addition. This is because, in addition to my spice-tolerance growing, my mother dislikes spicy food. In fact, I'd always fill a couple eggs early for my mother prior to adding some of the spices (like the old bay and chili powder) before making the rest of the egg fill more spicy for my dad and me. I contained this trend of a separate early non-spicy batch in college for my dear friend Kaila, who has an even more extreme spice intolerance.

So my point is, this is not so much a recipe as much as a flexible set of guidelines for how to my style of (awesome) deviled eggs. Modify and taste throughout for your best personal results. Feel free to experiment until you find the combination that's best for YOU. But DO include the Old Bay - it is my not-so-secret key ingredient.

Deviled Eggs

Eggs (hard boiled and shelled)

Miracle Whip

Thousands Islands (French) dressing

Hot Sauce

Spices:

      Old Bay

      Cajun seasoning

      Chili Powder

      Paprika

      Pepper

      Anything else you think might be delicious, like chives, if you have them!

Obviously, the first step is to boil and shell however many eggs you are planning on making. I usually make a minimum of 6 at a time. I have a very nice egg transport container, with little divots for the eggs so they'll be stable, and that will hold 20 half-eggs, so when making them for large groups I'll make a dozen, eat 2 of them, and put the rest into the container for transport! So. Once you have your eggs boiled and shelled, slice them all lengthwise (as shown) and remove the egg yolk and put it into a small mixing bowl. The egg whites go into your egg container to be filled later.

Now, first, add in *roughly* equal parts Miracle Whip and Thousand Islands dressing - not *quite* equal, though, I tend to put in a bit more of the Miracle Whip than the dressing, because I like the tang. How much of each of these, you ask? Well, that depends on the number of eggs, for one thing, so add a bit at a time and MASH everything with a fork. You want the yolks to form a thick paste - on the creamy side of crumbly, and as smooth as you can get it, like really thick icing. When the texture seems pretty good, take a taste to balance the Miracle Whip/dressing ratio, make sure that's good, and then you can start adding your hot sauce and spices. The amount of hot sauce, of course, depends on how spicy you like things and the spiciness of the sauce in question. I have a thing of "Dave's Insanity Sauce" which I've been very slowly working my way through for a while now, because a little goes a LONG way. As far as spices, I'm VERY generous with my Old Bay (being a Maryland Girl at heart). But the cajun spices are also a really good addition and I put those in with a fairly liberal hand as well. And of course, chili powder and pepper for a bit more kick, and you can't make deviled eggs without paprika. All I can say for this bit is just keep mixing and tasting. This time I also happened to have some chives in my fridge, so those turned out to be a really nice addition, but I don't usually have those around.

Once you're egg-paste is to your satisfaction, you can fill your egg yolks. I would be generous in how much you put in each egg - it's better to have nice fat eggs and just munch on an empty egg white or two than to be skimpy here, I feel. Plus, you've added mass to the egg whites by adding in the Miracle Whip and the dressing, so you should be able to fill most of them. Once that's done, for a dash of color (and a bit more spice) I toss a dash more of Old Bay and paprika (and sometimes the cajun seasoning, or in this batch, chives) over the top as a lovely decorative touch!

Anyways, hopefully this is a useful set of guidelines for deviled eggs. Also hopefully it won't take me forever to update this blog again. I do like writing it, I just got busy and then out of the habit of posting. Ah, well! Such is life. Like I said, I may try to do a few mini-blog entries describing a few of the things that have gone on in my life in the past 6 months in a bit more detail in the future!

The BEST Sandwich!

One of my favorite appliances in my kitchen is my bread machine. How often I use it varies wildly: I'll use it regularly for 2 weeks, then forget about it for a month and a half. For example: prior to last week, I hadn't used it since late February. However, last week I volunteered to bring in coffee-snack for the department (which we have every Monday and Thursday), and whenever I do this, I usually make some sort of snack (quiche on Monday, cheese cake squares on Thursday) and round it off with a loaf of fresh baked bread (peanut butter bread, pesto bread). This always works out well, because not only is home-made bread delicious, but most bread machines (including mine) have a delay bake setting, which allows you to program exactly WHEN your bread is going to finish. Which means I can bring in bread that is basically right out of the oven. Which is a treat for the gods. In addition to the two loaves I made last week, I made an additional loaf for myself this past Wednesday, and plan on making home-made pizza dough over the weekend! (Because home-made pizza is ALSO a delicious treat.)

I thought I'd include a couple of my favorite bread machine recipes here, for reference, since I'm particularly fond of the pesto bread and pizza dough recipes; and a good solid recipe for white (French) bread is very nice to have! These don't even require additional directions, since the nice thing about bread machines is you just dump all the ingredients in, press the proper setting and adjust the delay time if you want it, and press go. And then, X hours later, POOF! Delicious bread! (Or dough.) If you do not have a bread machine, I'd highly recommend getting one. They're generally not too hard to pick up cheaply, since they often show up in thrift shops: people get them, then don't use them and don't want them cluttering up their kitchens. Mine was from a yard sale, actually, and cost about $20. Worth it. While I don't make bread as regularly as I could, I feel I get good use out of mine. (Not as good as my aunt, though, who makes a loaf once or twice a week instead of buying bread!) I actually have a bread-machine cookbook, so I'm always trying new recipes for bread, but these are probably the recipes that I make the most. For the bread, I give both the proportions for a 1.5 lb loaf and a 2 lb loaf. Also note that I don't actually bother with bread flour, for the most part, though it is better to use it if you have it.

White French Bread (use regular or french setting)

Bacon-Toasted French Bread (see below)

1c.+2tbs  1+1/3      cups         Warm water
1              2             tbs           Vegetable Oil
1.5           2             tbs           Sugar
1              1.5          tsp           Salt
3+1/4       4            cups         Bread flour
1+1/4       1+1/4     tsp            Active dry yeast

Swiss Beer Bread (use regular setting)

1              1+1/4      cups         Beer 

                                               (room temperature)

1/2           2/3          cups         Shredded swiss 

                                              (or chedder!)

1.5           2             tbs           Vegetable Oil

1.5           2             tsp           Sugar

1.25         1.5          tsp           Salt

Swiss Beer Bread

3+1/3       3+3/4     cups         Bread flour

2+1/4       2+1/4     tsp            Active dry yeast

Pesto Bread (use regular setting)
1 cup       1cup+2tbs               Warm water
1/3           1/2          cups         Basil Pesto
1.5           2             tbs           Sugar
1              1.5          tsp           Salt
3+1/3       4            cups         Bread flour
2              2+1/4     tsp            Active dry yeast

(I just buy basil pesto, but you can make it yourself, of course!)

Garlic-Crust Pizza Dough (use dough setting) (found on all-recipes)

6 oz warm water

Nothing beats homemade pizza!

2 tbs olive oil       

3 cloves minced garlic

2 cups bread flour

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp yeast

In the case of the pizza dough, I do need to add a little more. Preheat the oven to 400F. After the dough is complete, remove it from the bread machine and lay it out flat on a cookie sheet (or other large flat bakeable surface) greased with olive oil, and let it rise for about 20 minutes more. After this, you can add tomato sauce, cheese, and whatever toppings and spices you so desire: in the case of the picture above, I added tomato sauce, basil, oregano, garlic salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, mozzerella, sliced garlic, and sausage! Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the crust is nice and browned.

While I'm generally happy to just eat bread and butter (or jam), bread is also a traditional component of that obscure and exotic food, the sandwich. So since I had decent bread around, I decided to make what is pretty much THE best sandwich in the world. I have expressed in several of my posts that Thomas Keller is a fantastic chef (or implied it by extolling his restaurants and cookbooks). So when I say this recipe comes from him, it should not be surprising that I am in love with this sandwich. It's actually just a variation of a simple BLT, with a couple additional elements - namely, it combines the BLT with a fried egg and grilled cheese. I add a slight variation of my own in the way I toast my bread. Keller recommends using a rustic, countrystyle bread for this sandwich, which I highly recommend. But since I had some home-made white bread, I figured that was a reasonable substitute.  I've also found that a nice sour-dough goes very well in this sandwich. The point is, you actually do want some GOOD bread for this sandwich, it's worth it.  Here are the links to the original recipe and a video of Keller making this sandwich. You cannot watch that without your mouth drooling, I swear.



The Best Sandwich EVER!
2 thick slices of good quality bread (today's bread is home-made French)
2 slices of Monterey Jack cheese
4 thick slices of bacon
4 tomato slices
1 tbs mayonnaise (I use/prefer Miracle Whip)
2 slices good lettuce
1 large egg
1 tbs butter (I use bacon fat, instead)
chives (optional, but tasty)
salt, pepper

Gooey cheese melted over toast!

First things first, cooking up the bacon is the time consuming step: cook the bacon until it's nice and crispy (some people prefer less cooked bacon, but in my opinion, crispy is the way to go). Transfer to a plate with some paper towels to drain. Now it is time to construct your sandwich, starting from the base. The original recipe just says to take toast, put mayo on it, then add the cheese on that. Now, what I like to do is to toast the bread in the pan itself, using the bacon grease that you just got from making up the bacon. This infuses your bread with a delicious bacon flavor. So what I do is take both pieces of toast, fry them up with the bacon grease, remove one from the pan and spread with the mayo, then take the other and top with the cheese, turning off the heat, covering the pan, and letting it sit in there until it gets all melty. Then set your cheesy, bacon-y toast aside (this will be the top of your sandwich). Place the bacon, tomato, and the lettuce on the bottom (mayo'ed) piece of toast (be sure to sprinkle a little salt on the tomatoes). Back to the skillet, melt some butter (or more bacon fat) in the pan, and fry your egg over moderate heat - you really really want the egg to still be runny, here! Slide the egg over onto the sandwich (sprinkling it with a bit of salt, pepper, and chives if you desire; then top the sandwich with the melty cheesy slice of toast). Now, when you cut the whole thing in half, you have a gooey, delicious, runny egg yolk all over your sandwich. Which is just AMAZING. Look at that thing, it's just gorgeous!

Beautiful!

Breakfast in Baltimore

I've been visiting my parents a bit more frequently these days, since my mother has been having some health issues, and holidays have been around. So I've been doing a fair bit more of my cooking there as well. When visiting my folks in Baltimore, we very often have our main meal of the day sometime in the middle of it - in other words, a nice big Brunch/Lunch! Breakfast foods are a staple here, in part because I don't make them as often for myself when I'm in New York. For example, I never think to make pancakes just for myself - it just feels a bit sad and lonely eating pancakes alone. There are exceptions: the recipe below for Dutch Baby is probably the breakfast food I make most often for myself at my apartment (aside from eggs, of course, because eggs are awesome), because it's easy to make just one serving with relatively little effort, and I always have the ingredients around. But I'd never make Swedish Pancakes (Crêpes) just for myself. Anyways, while I generally don't treat breakfast as the 'most important meal of the day' that it supposedly is, I DO quite enjoy a nice breakfast, even if it's a dinner time. So here are a pair of my favorite breakfast recipes that I have made (with my dad, generally) on recent visits to Baltimore. Both these recipes are just eggs, milk, salt, butter, flour (and a bit of sugar for the crêpes) - it's amazing the difference proportions can make!

Dutch Baby: (serves 3)

3 tbs butter
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup flour
pinch of salt









This is a 4 ingredient recipe (5, if you include salt), and all you need is an oven, a pan, and an Osterizer. Oh, you don't have an Osterizer? That would be the first mainstream blender ever sold in the United States, but unlike "Xerox-ing", "Osterizing" never really took hold as a household word - so any blender will suite your purposes here. My father estimates that our Osterizer is from somewhere between 1950-1955, so about 60 years old. And it still functions perfectly - let's see your fancy modern blender in 60 years, shall we? But yes, this super simple recipe is fast, easy, and delicious, looks beautiful, and is great for breakfast, brunch, or breakfast-for-dinner.


Preheat oven to 400F. Melt the butter in the pan, wobble the pan around so that the bottom is nicely coated with it. Add ingredients, in order, to the Osterizer, blending as you do so. Pour into pan, and bake for 10-15 minutes, until a loverly, puffy golden brown! And that's it! Eat right away (it starts to deflate a bit if you let it sit) with maple syrup (I always heat mine up prior to serving), or with powdered sugar and lemon, or with a bit of jam. Now note, this serves three quite nicely, and is also really really easy to divide by three. So if you want to scale up or down, it's really easy to do so! When I'm at my apartment, I occasionally make a 1/3 recipe for myself in a circular 8 inch pan, which is about right for one. If you want to make more or less, just change proportions and pan size.

Next, a more complicated but equally (or, dare I say, MORE) delicious breakfast food.

Swedish Pancakes (Crêpes)

3 eggs

1 tbs sugar

1-1/3 tsp salt

175 mL flour (~ a scant 3/4 cup)

500 mL milk (~ a generous 2 cups)

3 tbs butter – for cooking

These are just about ready to flip!

This recipe takes a bit more effort, but is extremely worth it and is wonderfully delicious. When I'm visiting home, we can use the cast iron skillet that my dad owns - we can put it atop of two burners to heat it up. However, you can also make these in a regular non-stick pan - it just harder to get the crepes out if you do it this way, and harder to maneuver around when flipping them.

Mix eggs, sugar, salt, and a little flour to the blender, and blend. Add the rest of milk and flour slowly to thin the mix and blend again, thoroughly. Let sit for a half hour before use (this is not, strictly speaking, required, but it is recommended. I've definitely forgone the half hour and it's turned out fine, though, and cut it down to ten minutes). Use a HOT skillet (the cast iron one mentioned before, or just a nice non-stick pan) thoroughly coated with butter. When we use the skillet, we generally keep a stick of butter in the freezer to keep it from melting, and between each batch we butter the skillet thoroughly with the stick to get a nice, even layer of butter. Pour out the crêpes large and thin - you can actually use some implement to make it more circular or you can tilt the pan, or blow on them in order to shape them a bit better. Watch the crepes carefully, and flip when it is just jelled, (and still has some moisture in the center) - there should be little bubble like features in the centre, see the picture. Let it sit for another minute or two, until the other side is cooked. You should be able to get under it easily with a spatula, and they should be a nice golden brown on both sides.

Now, you can just eat these like this, and they'll be wonderful. Dad and I generally have them with maple syrup, though my mother always is sure to comment when we do this that it's not the FRENCH thing to do. The 'French' thing to do is to have them with some sugar and a dash of lemon juice - this is how my mom eats them. But there are a lot of other ways you serve this base recipe that are also delicious! For example, once you've got the crepes flipped and mostly cooked, you can put a filling in the middle and fold the crepe in half, cooking it a little longer to warm the filling. If you want to make a more savory meal of it, you can use ham and cheese as a filling, letting it sit on the pan so the cheese melts. Or if you want to stick to the sweet side of things, honey and apples. Or just honey. Or berries and fresh whipped cream. Or chocolate chips (letting them melt a bit!) with bananas. Or PB&J. Or just the jam, or just the peanut butter. Or Nutella. Or go all out and make Crêpes Suzette with a grande marniere orange sauce and vanilla ice cream on the side! The point is, there are many amazing ways you can serve them, and it can be a lot fun to experiment. Bon Appétit!

Pardon the Delay: A Months Worth of Doings

So! It's been a busy month, or there abouts. Apologize to people for the delay, but I should be back on schedule now. So the question is, what have I been up to?

Various holidays - going to Baltimore for Saint Paddy's day, for one. My family has a tradition of going to Jenning's Pub (in Catonsville, MD, a hop skip and a jump from our house) every Saint Patrick's day since I was a kid, for corned beef and cabbage, and mulligan stew. Every year, they have those dishes (plus corn beef sandwiches) for $3.17 a plate - I get one of each, my dad gets 2 CB&C plates, and my mom usually gets a sandwich. And since then, I've added beer to the order. This was, in fact, the place where I had my first legal drink upon turning 21. We've had the same waitress for years --  Peggy -- she has an amazing memory for her customers, and its lovely to catch up with her. So it was nice that the week  of Columbia's spring break, I was able to start by heading to Baltimore and enjoying the meal there.

Sea Lion Colony

After St. Paddy's, I flew to Santa Barbara. Spent a few days there with Benson, then we rented a car and drove up California's Route 1 to San Francisco - it's the most amazing and beautiful drive! Benson and I have done this drive before, in the opposite direction - a few years back we took about a week, driving down through Santa Cruz to see relatives, stopping at a B&B in Monterey for a few days, followed by a couple days camping in Big Sur and trekking about, ending in Santa Barbara. This time, we did it in a single day. In addition to a marvelous view of the ocean there are several nice stops along the way for a day trip, most notably an elephant seal reserve and Nepenthe, a lovely restaurant in Big Sur with a stunning view of the ocean and marvelous food. We even could see whales in the distance, in addition to numerous birds, and of course enjoyed our delicious beet salad, and a meal of some very tasty roasted brussel sprouts.

The view from Nepenthe

This was followed by a long weekend in San Francisco. I've visited Benson there enough that I have already done most of the touristy things, and often we find ourselves simply trying to find ways to kill time between meals. Because one of the finest things about SF is the food. My uncle also lives in SF, so it is always nice to see him, as well - we all went to the Asian Art museum and the SF Symphony together, for example, in addition to wandering about and eating delicious food. Meals of note include Indian (http://www.dosasf.com/ - South Indian food with a very nice selection), Dim Sum,  Shanghai, Japanese (http://kappougomi.com/ - has AMAZING fish, very traditional Japanese, but no sushi whatsoever), and Moroccan (http://www.aziza-sf.com/ - this place hass a Michelin star, but Benson and I first ate there before it got it and raised all the prices. However, we still return semi-regularly because it has the MOST AMAZING LAMB SHANK EVER. We also tried another lamb dish there this time, which was also delicious. But the lamb shank is still the best.) So California was also lovely. And then I flew back to NY and returned to work, of course. And returned to Baltimore the following weekend for Easter. Where my family played scrabble, dyed Easter eggs, watched movies (The lovely documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi", and an old comedy called "Darling How Could You?").

The Easter Eggs were particularly fun - it had been a while since I actually dyed Easter eggs, since usually we visit my grandfather in New Jersey, but mom wasn't really up for traveling this year, so I went home instead. So I made sure to go all out on the eggs - in addition to the dye (standard Red/Yellow/Green/Blue dye in hot water with a bit of vinegar, then mixes of colors once I had the solids), I also got a couple of candles to experiment with wax drippings. Now, when I was in 3rd grade, my class made decorated eggs using some very fine wax something or others - I don't recall exactly what, but it allowed you to make super detailed designs in wax on your eggs, then dye the eggs, then remove the wax to reveal the patterns. My make shift double candle and toothpick system wasn't quite as good, to say the least. After a couple of dry runs with solid colors, my first waxy egg (with "Mom" written on it) had the wax fall off entirely when I dipped it into the dye. So that one was a bit of a wash, other than being a nice blue color. My second egg ("Jen") had the opposite problem - apparently I was a bit careless where I rested the egg when I was decorating it, because instead of the wax falling off, there was wax all over it, not just where I intended. So decorating that egg resulted in a kind of swirly pattern on half of it that LOOKED pretty cool, but wasn't wholly intentional and you couldn't see my name on it. The next one however ('Dad'), came out pretty clear. You can see in the picture that it's actually legible.  The last egg I did was first dyed a solid yellow. Then I drew large circles on it with wax and dyed THAT green, so it came out green with yellow polka dots. I was quite happy with that one - it still had a bit of a swirl thing going on for part of it, but it looked pretty cool.

Easter Egg Waxing in Progress!
While the process failed on THIS egg, it worked
well in general, so I'd recommend giving it a try.

So I had a nice Easter. Since then, I've mostly just been focusing on work and catching up on things. Not that I'm just working. I've gone out with friends a few times (I have a semi-regular "girls night" with some friends from undergrad, for example). I've cooked a few things around the apartment, but nothing particularly special. I've been rereading (since getting back from South Africa) the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. The final book of the series was released recently, and it's been a while since I've read them and it's a LONG series and I've forgotten a lot of the plot threads. So the re-read is an ongoing project - I've just started "A Path of Daggers" (book 8/14) so I'm over half-way there! However, I'm going to have to put it on hold for a little bit, as some folks in my department are doing a read of "The Great Gatsby" in preparation for the movie coming out in a few weeks - so I'll be reading that at some point soon.

I'm actually home in Baltimore this weekend, and anticipate being here for the next several weekends (and back in NYC during the week), because my mother has just had hip-replacement surgery. So I'll be visiting with her, and helping out Dad, and generally just being around. I doubt I'll be going out much while here, other than to the hospital. She should be home by the time I visit next weekend, though, so I'll mainly be around the house. Plenty of work I can do at home, one of the nice things about being an astro grad is a flexible work schedule and being able to just work off my computer, pretty much anywhere. So that's that for now! I'll be aiming to start up my once a week blogging again, not quite sure how I got out of it - I skipped one week and then all of a sudden I hadn't updated the site in a month. Oh well!

Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Quiche

I've been pretty busy catching up with work and such since I got back from South Africa, but everyone needs to eat, and if you are going to eat, you may as well eat well! This is a favorite dish of mine, which I only started making about 2 years ago - I wanted to make a quiche, but the only vegetable I had around the apartment were onions (I always have onions and garlic floating around - they are bare necessities in my kitchen), and I happened to have some goat cheese in the fridge. So, I looked up a recipe for onion/goat cheese quiches and found a LOT of them - so this is my blend of several recipes scattered across the internet.  As a bonus, this is a good vegetarian meal! 


Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Quiche
1 standard pie crust
2 red onions
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
4-8 oz goat cheese (depending how cheesy you want it, or how big the packet of goat cheese you bought happens to be... I'd tend towards more than less, but it's really up to you. I usually just put in the whole chunk of goat cheese I purchased.)
3 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
nutmeg
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper (optional, to taste)

Onions: I put this step first because it takes the longest, but while the onions are cooking, you should deal with pre-baking your pie crust, as well. But to get a nice caramelization going on your onions, you need to cook them slowly, over the course of about an hour. First, french your onions. If you are not familiar with this term, that's OK, I wasn't either when I made this recipe for the first time. What you are going for is long, thin strands of onion. So, chop of the top and bottom of the onion, and peel it. Next, slice the onion in half, down the length of the it (from the top to the bottom), like an orange splits. Then, in the same direction, cut thin slices off of the onion, so you get nice long slices - see the picture to the left! Once your onions are all frenched up, put some olive oil in a pan on medium heat. Add the onions, sprinkle some salt over them, and cook for 10 minutes until they're starting to become soft and translucent. At this point, reduce the heat to LOW, and cook for about 30 minutes more (moving them around occasionally) until they're becoming brown and very soft. Add the balsamic vinegar and mix well, and cook 10 minutes more on low until they're caramelized and delicious! Then remove from heat and set aside.

Honestly, these onions are delicious by themselves, but take a while. So if you think you'll have use for them, you may as well cook some extras up while you are doing this. They're really good, sweet, even,  and consider that they're basically onions and vinegar. Mind, it IS balsamic vinegar, the most delicious vinegar ever! Silly though it may be, I still remember the first time I had it balsamic as a salad topping, at a German restaurant in DC - I was just amazed at how tasty the stuff was, and insisted my parents buy some right away for the next time we had salad at home. But then, I do tend to have a memory for food -  seriously, I can completely forget a face I've met only once, but take me to a restaurant I've been to once before, and I'll tell you exactly what I ate and how I liked it. Ah well.

Pie Crust: Preheat your oven to 400F. Make up your pie dough. Now here, I admit I cheat a bit. I don't actually make my own pie crust very often. I've made it via a mix, and I've made it when baking with friends who have their own recipes, but when I'm just cooking for myself, I generally cheat and buy frozen Pillsbury pie dough - it's pie dough, NOT pre-baked (as those tend to get dry), which you can cut up, or pre-bake yourself, or whatever you want to do with your pie crust. I pretty much always have a box in my freezer for spontaneous pie or quiche. Very useful! Anyways, once you have your pie crust dough, fit it into a standard pie pan. If you don't have a pie pan, I have, in the past, improvised and used a 8-inch circular cake pan, which will work just fine - however, I generally use my grandmothers pie pan, much easier to deal with. At this point, if you happen to have them, you can weight the crust down with pie weights. Alternatives include dried lentils, or beans, or whatever - the point is to prevent the bottom from puffing up and deforming while the crust bakes - I generally skip this step and it works out fine, but it certainly doesn't hurt to do. Pre-bake for 10-15 minutes (or whatever your pie recipe calls for) until its a nice, light brown. It will be going back in the oven later, with quiche in it, so don't over do it or the outer crust will get a little too toasty. (Mmm... toasty.). Let cool.

Onions and Goat cheese on the bottom

Filling and Baking: Preheat the oven to 325F. Blend milk, cream, egg, spices, and up to half the cheese until liquified and homogenous. Take your onions, and spread about half of them on the bottom of your pie crust, and crumble some more of the goat cheese on top of that. (In this particular pie, I was using 4 oz of goat cheese total - 2 oz in the blender, 1 oz on the bottom, and 1 oz sprinkled on top. I generally use a little more, but that's what I had around today.) Then pour your filling into the tart. Top with the rest of the onions and goat cheese (it will sink into the pie as you bake it, but you want it layered a bit). Bake for ~45 minutes until starts browning on the top - it's a good idea to check on it every so often, as you don't want it getting overdone, either.

Filled, not baked, and topped with
the remaining onions and goat cheese

This is friggen' delicious. My department has 'morning coffee' twice a week, with people rotating to bring in snacks to go with coffee, which I like to volunteer for every once in a while. Of the various things I bring in, this is definitely one of the most popular. I also like to bring in homemade bread with my bread machine, since usually one quiche by itself wouldn't be enough for everyone (and it tends to disappear FAST). On this occasion, however, I made it all for myself (and for my roommate, who made up a nice salad to go with it), for dinner and a nice lunch tomorrow.