Dinner Guests

We usually make a lot of food, so friends and loved ones drop by to eat with us. Here is Mrs. C's cartoon rendition of one of frequent dinner guests.

His shirt says "Build Levees" because he studies rivers and cool shit like that

He's saying "I'm going to throw away this phone" because he's kinda old school and doesn't like having a cell phone.

He's thinking "Hootelolly" because he's kinda crazy, being bearded and all.

I don't know what the "I love the Jesuits" stuff is about.

In general, we like having him come around because he brings some good dinner conversations.

Mrs. Squash

Hi there! Afterhours has been bugging me to stop slacking on the blogging, so here I am. Okay, so let me make this quick.
Picture # 1: Squash bread pudding. I don't really remember how I made it. This picture is from, like, two O Chem tests ago!
Picture # 2: More squash. This time in a risotto with half arborio rice and half wild rice. Oh, those little red flecks are peppers from our neighbor's garden. The reason we ate so much squash is that there were also Delicata squash in the garden. Delicata is my favorite kind of squash, but the ones in the garden were not as good as the store-bought ones. I say, leave squash growing to the experts, especially when you live in Berkeley where the summers are chilly. Anyways, these squash dishes were cheap, satisfying, and a bit mushy. The crunchy-chewy quality of wild rice was a good counterpoint to the mushiness of the squash.
Picture #3. This was delicious! It may look a bit like airplane food from the 1990s, but the dish had a warmth and depth to it on account of cinnamon sticks and cloves. This recipe is called "Irish Stew," but it is actually a Parsi recipe from the wonderful book, My Bombay Kitchen:Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking, by Niloufer Ichaporia King.

It's Decorative Gourd Season!

McSweeney's has the most awesome article about how every fall, our nation develops a gripping collective obsession with gourds of all shapes and sizes, written from the perspective of the anti-Martha Stewart, and aptly titled: It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers!

Here is Mrs. C, tenderly looking after the gourds. Note the look of devotion (perhaps even obsession?) in her eyes.

I thought the carving was Mrs. C's self-portrait, but apparently it was a skull. Go figure?

Oxtail Soup

Whenever I tell people I'm making Oxtail soup, they genuinely ask me, "Ox have tails???" I guess in your day to day you don't really ask these kind of questions, but the answer is "yes, but not anymore."

This is one of the heartiest Korean soups you can make and by far one of the easiest. You just need 3 ingredients.

1. You get about 2 pounds of oxtail and trim off as much of the fat.

2. Put them in a pot and add water so the tails are submerged, add 4 cloves of garlic.

3. Bring to boil and lower heat and simmer for 2-3 hours. After a while the broth takes on a beautiful nutty color and it tastes really really good because of all the flavors coming out of the bone. The meat will be super tender and come right off the bone. The best part are the clear squishy tendon bits.

4. Season with salt and pepper to taste, garnish with green onions

5. Serve with rice of course!

The best way is to just use your fingers. It's more satisfying that way.

Chili Lime Cashews

We, at this blog, don't give snacks the credit they're due. We had half a bag of raw cashews left so, coated them with chili powder, ground coriander, dash of salt, brushed the whole thing with a little olive oil and squeezed some lime juice on top and roasted in the oven for 15-20 min at 370.

Cashews are pretty awesome on they're own, but they were even better all jazzed up this way.

Salmon Cakes with Yogurt Chive Sauce

Just look at these orange beauties grilling up! There's something to be said about the wonderful aroma of well-seasoned salmon filling your house. It had some coriander, cayenne pepper, chives, lemon zest and good ole mayonnaise. Check out the recipe here.

After many foodings (food+outing) Mr. A and I have come up with our ratio theory to food pricing. The more stacked a food is, the more expensive. If it is taller than it is wide, then it will be more expensive: French food, New American, you get the picture. If its wider than it is tall, it is less expensive: Mexican platters, Chinese food, Pizza! The salmon cakes were served to look more expensive than they really were (total cost less than $20 to make 6 servings.) They rested on some polenta with grilled tomatos, and a sprig of oven-roasted kale with a side of yogurt chive sauce.

Aleister being pouty because he couldn't have any salmon.

Chicken Piccata with Arugala

Hello dear reader, sorry for the delay. Exams and such. But we have been cooking up a storm this past month and have some gustatory delights to share.

Here's a very simple dish that tastes divine! Serves 4-6

Make the lemon-butter sauce:

1. Sautee 6-8 finely diced garlic cloves in TBSP of olive oil

2. add 1/2 cup of salted butter and melt over low heat, stirring so it doesn't burn

3. add 1/4 cup of water

4. add 2-3 TBSP of freshly squeezed lemon juice, depending on if you like more tartness. If it's too lemony, add more butter and water to dilute.

5. add salt to taste

Make the pasta with fixings

1. Boil water with pinch of salt, and throw in your choice of pasta. Drain out the water when it's cooked and set aside

2. Dredge chicken breast fillets with flour, salt, pepper and thyme

3. Lightly brown chicken in some olive oil. Check to make sure its thoroughly cooked.

4. Slice the breast meat after cooking so that the meat stays juicy and put back in pan.

5. Add the cooked pasta and 1/4 cup of capers to the chicken

6. Add the lemon-butter sauce to the mix

7. Lastly add about 5 cups of baby arugula and allow it to wilt, but don't overcook. You want the color to be bright green. Arugula has a peppery herby flavor that will mellow out when cooked. It adds such a good flavor to any mediterranean dish.

8. Add last sprinkles of freshly ground black pepper

Serve up with your favorite white wine!

****

We tried the pasta out with some refreshing beet salad with more arugula and asian pear Recipe from epicurious. Roasting your own beets takes FOREVER!! so just get the ones in a can--they taste pretty much the same. Even though Mrs. C doesn't agree with me.

Italian Aspirations

These eggplant rolls are tasty, easy to make, and cheap! The only ingredients you need are the following:

-eggplant
-ricotta cheese
-mozzarella cheese
-parmesan cheese (if wanted, for sprinkling on the top)
- fresh basil
- tomatoes
- red pepper flakes
-olive oil
- oregano
- salt
-pepper
-garlic
- other spices (sometimes I like to add fennel or thyme)

Cut the eggplant into slices. I find that the best thickness for each slice is 1 cm or so. Roast the slices in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit until they are tender and pliable (you need to roll up the ricotta/mozarella filling in there).

Make the ricotta/mozzarella filling. This filling using fresh basil, oregano, salt, and pepper. You can use goat cheese instead of mozzarella for a stronger tasting roll. I like to add a bit of fennel and thyme.

To make the sauce, you use some garlic, red pepper, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I like to use the fresh red hot peppers from our garden in addition to the red pepper flakes. Simmer the sauce for a while so that it takes on the spicy flavor.

Finally, wrap each eggplant slice around the filling to create an eggplant roll. Line up the rolls in a pan and cover all of them with the spicy tomato sauce. Place the pan in the oven, covered with foil, and bake at 350 for 15 minutes or so, until hot.

Bon appetit!

Tempeh Over Rice

This is Yumi here, reporting for the first time from sunny Los Angeles with a (semi)-vegetarian slant. Howdy.

When Chef Eileen asked me to write for her communal food blog as an occasional guest contributor, I was super-excited! I got so excited I decided to whip out my digital camera and take photos of the dinner I prepared that night--tempeh and stir-fry vegetables over jasmine rice.

This is hardly a difficult recipe. I threw together peas, carrots, onions, scallions, ginger, garlic, a splash of soy sauce and who knows what else in a big fat saucepan. Nothing like the rush of improvisation that comes from the ticking time bomb that is your non-perishable vegetables.


Burn, baby, burn

The hardest part of this easy-peazy recipe was unwrapping the plastic wrapping on the Trader Joe's tempeh. Seriously, that shit is wrapped tighter than the dainty soles of a Chinese empress. Our kitchen scissors and the tempeh packaging went into an epic scuffle (below), and the kitchen scissors finally won.



Rock, tempeh, scissor...

For those of you who don't know, tempeh is Indonesian fermented soy cakes and has a distinctive nutty flavor. People love it or hate it, and I fortunately fall into the former category.



I just tossed the tempeh straight onto an oiled pan and added maybe a splash or two of soy sauce. Next time I do tempeh stir-fry, I plan on marinating those suckers overnight. I did a BBQ marinade tempeh baked in the oven earlier this week, and those were mighty tasty.



Toss the tempeh and the veggies over the rice. Add a scoop of plain yogurt and a sprinkle of shredded nori for kicks. Accompany with red wine, and you are all good to go.



This is why I think I need to food blog more. I take the time to look at the meal I prepared for myself. I clear away the table so I can focus on the food. After documenting the whole process, I don't want to mindlessly nom-nom away at it. I want to really make the effort to taste everything.

Coming soon to a communal food blog near you: pumpkin ravioli? Soba noodles? Mashed potatos? Stay tuned to find out!

Eggs Florentine over Polenta Cakes

Chef Eileen: After days of eating breakfast in the car on the way to school, my favorite thing to do is spend a couple hours making and savoring Saturday brunch. The idea kind of grew organically...."oh look, we have some extra spinach and polenta....maybe we can make an eggs florentine....we'll have to somehow turn polenta mush into a cake...and of course this will need hollandaise sauce." I can verily say that making hollandaise sauce makes me feel like a professional cook.

But first the polenta!

Step 1: Normally when you cook polenta, it's a gooby, grit-like mess. Delicious but also amorphous. So, after cooking it, I wrapped it in tin-foil to shape it into a log, and chilled it in the freezer so that it would form a solid cake, then I sliced it and grilled them.

Step 2: Hollandaise Sauce

Recipe can be found here. Instead of cayenne pepper, I used paprika. Its a rich sauce, and it doesn't save too well so adjust recipe to make only as much as you need.

Our plates: Riverdog farm eggs with wilted spinach, hollandaise over grilled polenta cakes, grilled tomato and basil, plum and white peach fruit cup, Peet's coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice.