LaughAloud

Making Paneer

Cooking for one instead of two means there are less nights it seems worth spending a lot of time to do something overly complicated. It also means, I east whatever I like, without worry if Chip will like it, even if its the same thing night after night. One of my dinner staples is Palak Paneer. Delicious spicy spinach and soft cheese. Trader Joe's has a great boxed version that is super easy, and even easier when you make it with their frozen rice. Five minutes in the microwave and you're ready to eat. But, could it really be that hard to make myself? And surely it'd be healthier.

I've looked several times for paneer cheese in various grocery stores & markets to use in various Indian inspired dishes, but I've never found it. Earlier this week, I finally looked up how to make paneer. No wonder I've never found it in the store! It's so easy to make, why bother selling it pre-made! It's basically cooked, curdled milk, strained of all whey. Today, I picked up all the ingredients for the palak paneer, and made the paneer.

I used a couple different recipes I found online to inform my paneer. Here's what I did.

• 8 cups (1 half gallon) whole milk
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 cup warm water
• cheesecloth for straining

Mix lemon juice and warm water & set aside

Bring 8 cup (1 half gallon) milk just barely to a boil. Stir in water and lemon juice and stir until the milk fat separates into large curds and the whey is clear and separate from the curds. My whey looked yellowish, but some recipes said it would look greenish.

Remove from heat & let cool. Use the cheesecloth to strain over a large bowl. Squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Rinse the pressed curds (still in the cheesecloth) under running water and press again. Apparently, this should take away the sharpness & acidity of the lemon juice. Form the cheese in a disc re-wrap in the cheesecloth. Set heavy pan or weight on top of the disc for about 2 hours to squeeze out all the excess liquid.

And done! See how easy? It took a while, but it was mostly waiting for the excess liquid to be squeezed out.

So, what about the whey left behind? I have a large mason jar of whey left over from cheese making process. A few suggestions I found online: use it as a milk substitute in biscuits or bread; use it instead of water in cooking rice; make ricotta cheese. Luckily it will keep for a few days so I have a little time to decide.

Here's the final outcome, a beautiful disc of paneer. Tomorrow I'll try using it in palak paneer. Hopefully that will be my dinner & reward at the end of the day!

Adventures in English Cooking

At the center of every English dream kitchen, is an AGA stove. A new one can, apparently, run up to £20,000, though older ones can be found in kitchens all over the country. A very fancy kitchen will have both an AGA and a regular stove. Because is AGA is not regular.

An AGA is always on, always hot. It has two large burners with lift covers. One burner is hot, one burner is warm. It has two oven compartments, one hot, one warm. You can change the "hot" temperature, but it will take hours to change. Now imagine cooking (& baking!) just with these hot and warm burners and compartments.

Our American hosts in Shropshire have one of these stoves. It seemed crazy when we first saw it, and I especially have trouble imagining baking, but I can also see the charm having lived with it for a few days and even getting a little cooking experience on it. On Saturday evening our hosts had a gala to attend in Liverpool, so we babysat the kids, including cooking dinner & breakfast the next morning. After a couple days watching how it's done & with a few instructions, I managed cheeseburgers & french fries for dinner and a full English breakfast (minus baked beans) in the morning, but including eggs, over easy. Even the toast was made on the AGA! The warm burner makes a mean toast!

I'm not sure how I'd feel about living with an AGA instead of my gas stove, but it was a fun challenge, and I can definitely see the advantage of an always on oven making your kitchen toasty warm in the damp & chilly English weather.

This beautiful pumpkin came in my CSA vegetable box last week. I was  torn between keeping it and using it for fall decor at Thanksgiving, but decided it would be more fun to cook it up and bake something delicious with it.

When I cut the pumpkin open to scoop out the seeds, I found this little seed actually growing inside of it. I've never seen something like this before, but Chip said it made sense, because in nature, the pumpkin would most like rot, and the seeds inside would start growing at the same time, eventually creating a new plant. what a cool thing to imagine.  

I have the day off on Wednesday for Veteran's Day and I plan to use my pumpkin to make chocolate pumpkin muffins. I figure pumpkin muffins with chocolate chips are delicious, so chocolate pumpkin muffins should be amazing. We'll see how they turn out.

 

A Most Delicious Mushroom Gravy

With Thanksgiving coming up, I'm planning out my menu, thinking about what I want to do differently this year, and what I'd like to do exactly the same. One dish I will be keeping from last year is the delicious vegetarian mushroom gravy. There are always a number of vegetarians at my Thanksgiving, and so I usually make one vegetarian gravy and one from the meat drippings, but last year, this vegetarian gravy turned out to be SO GOOD, it's the only gravy I'll be making this year.

I wanted to include the "recipe" here, but as I typed it out I realized, there is no real "recipe" at least not in the sense that I used specific amounts of anything, just however much seemed right. So here's what I put in, and sort of how I did it and that's about as close as it gets.

Vegetarian Mushroom Gravy

• onion
• garlic
• celery
• mushrooms
• pepper & salt
• thyme
• marjoram
• sage
• tarragon
• olive oil
• red wine (or white if you prefer)
• flour
• Imagine Vegetable Broth
• soy sauce (if desired)
• half & half or milk (if desired)

The Mushroom Mixture

Saute together the onion, garlic, celery and mushrooms in a little olive oil with pepper and salt to taste. Remove from heat and stir in fresh chopped thyme, marjoram, sage and tarragon. (or whatever herbs you prefer.) This can be done a day or two ahead of time and set aside in sealed ziplock bag or container in the fridge.

You can make this part as smooth or as chunky as you want. Last year I shredded the mushrooms in the food processor, but if smooth gravy is important to you, you can blend this mixture into nothing but flavor.

The Roux

For the roux, heat olive oil (or butter/fat of you choice) and flour over high heat, stirring constantly (I like using a wooden spoon or a whisk). This usually takes 2-4 minutes of constant stirring, as the mixture darkens.

You can make the roux Thanksgiving morning, and set aside at room temperature. Just before making the gravy, whisk together to recombine.

The Secret Ingredient

I'm sure you could use any vegetable broth, but I really think the Imagine Vegetable Broth I used last year is what REALLY made this gravy. It comes in regular and low sodium varieties and I've tried both their chicken and vegetable broths for various meals with excellent results. I buy it at the regular grocery store, but they carry it in their "organic" aisle.

Making the Gravy

Even though you're not using any meat drippings for this gravy, make this just before serving dinner so its hot and fresh. Combine in a sauce pan: the mushroom mixture, about half the container of the broth, a a little bit of wine if desired. Bring to a simmer and whisk in roux slowly, a little at a time until desired thickness is reached.  Add soy sauce and/or half and half if desired for the look and taste you want.

A teapot is a perfect way to serve the gravy while keeping it nice and toasty warm. (My gravy boat is now used for cranberry sauce :)

Thanksgiving Dinner

We finally had a huge Thanksgiving dinner this year, with lots of guests!  Well, ok, we usually have a huge dinner, just not lots of people to eat it :)  We ended up with 9 of us total, what fun!  That meant a chance to use our china (the first time we've used more than 4 place settings) & crystal & even some of our silver.  Check out our album to see some of the fun pictures, and thanks to Mike, Victoria, Machelle, Holly, Dorthea, Tracey & Paul for coming to our dinner, and of course to Chip for keeping everything together!

On the menu this year:

Beef Tenderloin
Leg of Lamb
Mushroom Gravy
Corn Pudding with Basil & Goat Cheese
Wild Rice Pecan Stuffing (except that I forgot to add the pecans) :(
Parsnips & Carrots with Snow Peapods
Buttermilk Biscuits with Cranberry Butter
Pumpkin Maple Pie
Pecan Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream

plus Tracey's Strawberry Flan, Victoria's Pumpkin Mochi, Dorthea's chocolate plate and Holly's Brussels sprouts. 

Delicious!

On the Menu

I know Thanksgiving was yesterday, but by the end of the day yesterday I was just too tired from cooking and eating to write about all the delicious food!  Here's what we had:

Beef Tenderloin (red meat is best, plus we eat ALL the leftovers :)
mushroom gravy
jalapeno & garlic mashed potatoes
green beans with wild mushrooms & walnuts
wild rice stuffing
biscuits with cranberry butter
Pumpkin Pie
Pecan Pie with vanilla ice cream

We also had a couple of my co-workers over and they added to the meal by bringing:

Brussel Sprout salad (this was SO good!  Who says brussel sprouts are yucky?)
cranberry salsa
homemade truffles
Pumpkin mochi

Needles to say, we won't be needing to make any food for a while! One of my favorite things I made for the first time yesterday, but will be making many more of, were sambusaks.  They're an Egyptian. cheese filled pastry which I had gotten the recipe for in college from an Egyptian food memoir I read.  They were fairly easy and so, so tasty. 

We always like having guests for Thanksgiving, so if this menu gets you hungry, start thinking about spending next Thanksgiving in San Diego!

Thanksgiving Dinner

Chip's parents came to visit us in San Diego for Thanksgiving.  We got to use our china and crystal and silverware for guests for the first time since our wedding.  It was really fun :) Here is what I made for dinner:

*Beef Tenderloin (yum)
*Cornbread stuffing (not actually stuffed in anything)
*Garlic Mashed potatoes with a cheesy top
*Green beans with mushrooms
*Biscuits (from scratch) with herb butter
*Cranberry sauce (this was actually an accident, I saw cranberries at the store and thought they would be good to munch on.  They weren't. They were very sour.  So I made what I thought cranberry sauce would be like.  I don't know what cranberry sauce is supposed to taste like, but everyone said it was good.)
*Pumpkin Pie (from an actual pumpkin)
*Pecan pie (there was also vanilla ice cream to go on top, but I didn't make that :)

Plus we had some little before dinner snacks, which we needed because dinner was a little late.  Especially for Chip's parents since they were two hours ahead. 

I was really tired at the end of the day.  But it sure was yummy and fun!

Lazy Sunday (Sort of)

This morning we went to the Farmers market as has become our San Diego Sunday morning tradition.  I had my hot tamale, Chip has his empanada, we got our fresh veggies, fruit and eggs, and made our way home.  Then the fun really began!

Spike tv shows 2 episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine every weekday afternoon.  I can't watch them (that pesky work) but Chip records them on the computer everyday for me.  Usually we might watch one in the evening, but that still means we're way behind when the weekend comes.  So this afternoon and evening we had a Deep Space Nine/Cooking marathon. 

Our kitchen is open to the living room, so I can cook and watch tv at the same time.  With everything we bought at the Farmers Market I made spaghetti sauce (it simmered all afternoon and by the time we have it for dinner tomorrow it will be delicious.)  Then (by this time we were on episode 3 or so of our marathon) I made a spinach & mushroom & corn quiche.  Yum, yum, yum.  Ever since I went to Alanna's house for dinner a few months ago and she made a corn quiche, I've wanted to make one, and today I finally did.  I made a crust last night so today all I had to do was the filling.  It was quite yummy, and I think it came out great for my first quiche attempt!