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!

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!

At the Farmers Market: Winter Veggies

Right next to Columbia University, every Thursday and Sunday, there is a local farmers market where you can get fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, bread and grain, and all the rest of farmer markets greatest hits. During the winter, the selection is a bit more limited, but it's still really a good place to get produce, and I try to go fairly regularly. It's good for cooking inspiration and it encourages me to eat my vegetables - I love veggies, but it's easy to neglect them. While the exact selection changes from week to week, there are some pretty standard items you see frequently. Apples, potatoes, onions, garlic, various greens, etc; and this week, I picked up a nice acorn squash and some lovely parsnips. I've enjoyed both of these vegetables a lot, and both of them were originally introduced to me by my friend Kaila (who has been featured in this blog before). The roasted acorn squash recipe I got directly from her during college, and she was the one who first made pan roasted parsnips for me (pictures of which you can see in the blog post "Fun Times with Kaila and Benson"). This post is featuring a different parsnip recipe, which was inspired, indirectly, by my father.

My dad collects comic books, and is very fond of Disney comics - particularly Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the rest of Duckburg. One of the best (or really, the best) duck writers is Carl Barks, the man who first came up with Scrooge McDuck, in the late 40s. One of his stories is "the Golden Fleecing," where Uncle Scrooge goes in search of the famed golden fleece. Long story short, he runs into a tribe of "Larkies" (based on Harpies) who kidnap him and force him to judge a cooking contest (as the richest duck in the world should have the most refined taste). He throws the contest in order to escape, but the dish that he must cause to win is 'parsnip pudding' - and his least favorite food in the world is parsnips. So when I first mentioned to my father that I had discovered the deliciousness of parsnips, this story immediately sprang to mind, and he requested that if I was going to make parsnips for him, that I make Parsnip Pudding. Now, honestly, the recipe I made was just OK, but as I tasted while I went, I found that one of the initial stages of it, when you pureed the parsnip before mixing with other stuff and baking, was pretty good on its own. Parsnips have a very nice, distinct flavor, so you don't really NEED that much more. So, the next time I made parsnips, I decided to make something more like a mashed potato, a Parsnip Puree, rather than baking it with cheese and onions and all sorts of other things. So below, I present the results of this weeks trip to the farmers market!





Roasted Acorn Squash
Acorn Squash
Butter
Brown Sugar
Maple sugar or other flavorings (optional!)

A very simple, tasty dish with very little preparation. It does take a while to bake if you want it sufficiently soft, but if you are making it, it's worth the wait for it to be soft throughout. (Also, Kaila informs me that you can take your cleaned half squash, place it face down in a bowl of water, and zap for several minutes before you bake it, so that it doesn't take as long to bake - I haven't tried this yet.) First, slice the squash in half lengthwise, from stem to bottom, so you have two symmetric halves. Next, scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff, similarly as you would when carving a pumpkin (they are, after all, closely related). At this point, you can save the seeds to roast as a snack for later, or just toss them. They're pretty tasty, though, so I'd recommend using them! Take your two halves (or just one, and fridge the other one for another day - one half is one serving) and put in a small baking pan and fill the pan with a couple inches of water so that you don't burn the bottom of the pan. Next, cut a few thin slices of butter and put around the rim of the squash to keep it moist, and a couple bigger chunks (a bit under a tbs total) in the hollow of the squash. Next, sprinkle the whole thing generously with brown sugar, the edges and the middle. Now, I also have some lovely maple sugar, which I also lightly sprinkle over the entirety of the squash, for an additional flavor. You could also try it with cinnamon sugar if you'd like! Bake at 400F for ~1 hour, until the squash is soft and you can easily poke it through with a fork. At this point, you'll find that the squash is making a nice little bowl, with a sugary/buttery sauce in the middle. To eat, simply scoop out bits of the squash with a fork (or a spoon) and dip in the buttery sauce. Just be careful not to poke through the skin, or you will find your sauce drips through into the bowl - but the flesh itself should peel off the skin fairly easily.


Now, we still have those seeds from the squash, so there is no need to waste them. You can make an easy, light, crunchy snack out of them. I got this recipe from my friend Lauren, and there are many variations you can do. I like to use just salt and pepper (as I do tend to prefer salty snacks, as I've mentioned in SEVERAL previous posts), but if you prefer, you can make a sweeter variation with sugar and cinnamon, or a spicy version with cayenne pepper and garlic powder, or whatever your snack choice might be!



Pumpkin (or squash) seeds
Pumpkin (or squash) seeds
veggie oil
salt and pepper
      (or  cinnamon sugar, or whatever you want!)

Put a bit of oil on a cookie sheet, so that the seeds won't stick - or alternatively, line the tin with parchment paper. Take your seeds and wash them (making sure they're separated and don't have any stringy squash guts stick to them), and then pat them dry. In a small bowl, add a dash of oil - just enough to coat them so things will stick - then add your spices and mix well. In truth, when I made these the other day, I just put extra oil on the cookie sheet, mixed around the seeds a bit, then grated salt and pepper (as I have grinders for both) over the whole thing, then mixed them in the pan and grinded a bit more on top - you want the seeds to be in a single layer, spread out over the pan. Place the pan in the oven at 200F and bake for about an hour. After 30 minutes you should check on them, and mix them up a bit, then spread out into a single layer again. Check again at the 45 minute point, since you don't want them to become over done. By the time they're done, they should be nice and crunchy and a toasty brown; just pop one in your mouth to see if it's done!

Whipped Parsnip Puree (2-3 servings)
2 large Parsnips
1-2 tbs Butter
~3/4c Milk
Salt and pepper (to taste)

 Start some water on to boil. Meanwhile, peel and roughly chop your parsnips. The thinner you chop them, the less time it will take to cook them - but you don't have to make them TOO fine. Add a bit of salt to the water, and boil the parsnips for 20-30 minutes until soft. Strain, then put them in the blender, with your butter and enough milk that it will blend. As you blend, keep adding milk until it's a nice, light, fluffy texture that blends easily - this will be lighter than all but the fluffiest of mashed potatoes. Add some salt and pepper, perhaps a little cayanne, to taste. And voila! A nice, simple dish which you can startle guests with by not specifying what it is and letting them assume it's mashed potatoes. They really do look like mashed potatoes!