Mix it up

Fabulous article in WaPo today about mixing your own cocktail ingredients. I'm envisioning a lazy afternoon, and a bunch of girls holding cocktails! Article is here--and don't miss the recipes linked in the sidebar! I have an inexplicable desire to make Falernum, now...

Resources for Veggiesauruses

I'm just gonna put this one out there: I love meat. I love chicken nuggets, bacon, sausage and turkey. Hamburgers make me happy. I have eaten both raw horse and fried cartilage. HOWEVER, two of our members are non-meat eatin' folks, and I myself cook for a no-meat kinda guy. Thus, I'm always looking for new recipes that don't hinge around a big ole slab of meat, and don't consist of a pile of raw vegetables dressed with balsamic vinagrette. (For, as we all know, you just don't win friends with salad.)

All joking aside, I love and respect many veggiesaurs. There's always room for more veggies in your diet, and Tina recently posted a few useful links on her blog to some great vegetarian resources. Check them out there, or from our new list in the side bar, Resources for Veggiesauruses. I can't wait to try the General Tso's Tofu and the No-chicken Pot Pie!

Limey Tea With Cakelets and Pimms

Ah, summer in Virginia. Sunshiney, sticky, thunderstormy, hot summer in the northern part of the South. While I normally don't embrace the fact that yes, we ARE in the south, albeit at its northerly tip, there are a few southy things I can get behind; cocktails at 2:00 in the afternoon, for example. Last Saturday was the inaugural meeting of Teatime Knitting at my friend Wendy's house. (For those that have never met me, or read my blog, or know someone who knows me, I have been known to knit, on occasion.) As the name suggests, we get together and craft whilst taking afternoon tea. Because Matt and Wendy are awesome entertainers, and Matt is a stellar cook, Saturday's host of delights included lime tea cakelets and Pimm's.

For anyone who has not had a cocktail of Pimm's and lemonade, I say this to you: Go out now and lock that down. This is the perfect drink for a hot Saturday afternoon in the summertime. Mix 1 part Pimm's with 2-3 parts lemonade, add a little soda water for sparkle, if you wish, and garnish with slices of lemon. Lawd a' mercy, that's good!


Now, on to the cakelets. Lime is one of my favorite flavors, and while I wouldn't normally pair it with an infusion of Earl Gray, it worked surprisingly well in these. Matt used a sweetheart-rose shaped muffin tin to make them, and dusted the tops with confectioners sugar, resulting in the proshest little cakes I've ever seen. I'm seriously contemplating one of these tins, now.

Lime Tea Cakelets

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. Earl Grey tea leaves, steeped in 3/4 cup hot milk for 10-15 minutes
8 Tbs. (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, beaten with 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract and grated zest of 2 limes
Confectioner's sugar, for dusting

Directions

Have all ingredients at room temperature. Position rack in lower thrid of oven and preheat to 325F. Butter and flour wells of a swirl cake pan; tap out excess flour. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt onto a sheet of waxed paper; set aside. Pour milk through a fine-mesh sieve into a small bowl. Press liquid from tea leaves; discard leaves. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter on medium speed until creamy, about 30 seconds. Add sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes; stop mixer and scrape bowl occasionally. Add eggs, a little at a time, beating well after each addition. On very low speed, add flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with milk and ending with flour; blend each addition until just incorporated. Scrape sides of bowl occasionally. Fill wells in pan a little more than halfway. Bake until cakes spring back when touched and pull away from sides of pan, 10-12 minutse. Transfer to a cooling rack, cool to the touch and remove cakes from pan. Repeat with remaining batter. Dust with confectioners' sugar. Serves 12

Remember ladies, pinkies out and bottoms up!

Dance the Salsa

I may not be known for my prowess on the dance floor, but that doesn't mean I don't know anything about salsa! I've been using this great salsa recipe for years, tweaking and improving little by little, and now I'm finally satisfied with it. Actually, it's really more of a pico de gallo than a salsa. "Salsa" is the Spanish word for "sauce" and conjures up images of glass jars with yellow lids, full of viscous tomatoey goo."Pico de gallo" is Spanish for "rooster's beak," and refers to a condiment made of chopped fresh ingredients such as tomato, onion, and chiles. Chutney would also fall into this category, for reference.

Serving size: 1 party, or 1 family of insatiable siblings who will totally sneak into the refrigerator when you're not looking and demolish your salsa stash

Ingredients:

4 large ripe tomatoes

1 white onion

4 garlic cloves

4 jalapeno peppers

1 can corn (or an equivalent amount of fresh corn if you want to be fancy, but it really doesn't make a huge difference)

1 can black beans (frijoles negros)

1 bunch cilantro (this is KEY, if you don't like cilantro you may not want to even bother making this recipe at all)

2 limes

salt

a ginormous serving bowl

This salsa is dead easy to make; basically you just need to devote a lot of time to chopping. I like to quarter the tomatoes and cut out the sloppy, seedy part, then dice the remaining tomato-meat. Also dice the onion, garlic, and jalapenos. Be careful working with the jalapenos not to touch your eyes or any of your sensitive bits until you've washed your hands thoroughly. If you want a salsa mas caliente, leave in the seeds and membranes- if you're a big wimp, or you're preparing the salsa for wimps, leave them out. Drain and rinse the beans and corn. Throw everything together in your serving bowl and mix together gently (you don't want to smash up the tomatoes and make the salsa too juicy). Chop up the cilantro and mix that in too. Halve the limes and squeeze the juice over the salsa, then stir it in. If your limes aren't particularly juicy, pop them in the microwave for a few seconds or roll them around on the counter to get those juices flowing. Season with a pinch of salt to taste, and then prepare to defend your big, delicious bowl of salsa to the death against the hordes of ravenous family members who will no doubt be hanging around the kitchen by this point to figure out what smells so freaking good (hint: it's the lime and cilantro). Buen provecho!

First Meeting -- TBA

Ugh, forgot about a prior commitment this Saturday, so the first meeting will have to be rehashed. Sorry guys!

Pesto swirl pizza

Is there anything more summery then the smell of fresh basil? We have a huge plant growing in our yard, and often I will grab a leaf when walking into the house, just to revive myself a little after a long day.

But if you really want to enjoy a shot of basil, nothing beats pesto. My problem with pesto is that I find it a little too overpowering by itself. Its so flavorful- heady, salty, grainy, garlicky- but when you add this to something a little sweet, like say, tomatoes, then you've got a winner. Thats the idea behind this pizza, which combines pesto and plain tomato sauce in the same pizza, to delicious effect. If you are in a hurry, sub any or all of these recipes for store-bought versions. It will (probably) be just as good. But your kitchen won't smell like fresh basil for days...

Makes two big round pizzas

For the crust:
Mix 1 packet of yeast with 1 1/2 c. warm water in your food processor or a mixing bowl. Allow to sit for several minutes until the yeast dissolves. Next, add 3 1/2 c. flour, 1 1/2 tbs. salt and 1 tbs. honey. Mix with your hands or dough blade until smooth and elastic. Put dough in a bowl coated with olive oil, flip over once to coat, and cover with plastic wrap. Set it outside or anywhere warm, and work on the rest of your pizza while you wait for it to double.

For the Pesto:
You should probably have a food processor for this one, but people have been known to use a mortar and pestle. Combine the following in your crusher of choice:
2 c. loosely packed basil
2 peeled cloves garlic
1/3 c. pine nuts (you could also use pecans)
2/3 c. parmesan cheese
1/3 c. olive oil
salt/pepper

This is your base. From here, its all about testing and experimenting. Too dry? More oil. Too garlicky? More basil. Too wet? More pine nuts. You get the picture. Now, what you must do is scrape every delicious bite out of your processor, put it in a bowl with a thin coating of olive oil, and let it chill in the fridge. DO NOT, under any circumstances, try it on a cracker, or be prepared to make another batch.

For the tomato sauce:
1 can fire-roasted crushed tomatoes
3 tbs. tomato paste
1/4 c. water
2 tbs. brown sugar
salt, pepper, oregano to taste.
(Heat it up, test it out, set it aside. Or, just use storebought sauce or your secret family recipe.)

Ok, time to put it all together! Heat your oven to 475 degrees. Punch a whole in that dough and divide it in two parts. For each pizza, roll out the dough to fit on a greased cookie sheet or pizza pan, and use your fingers to stretch it out and push down bubbles. Hint: use flour on your hands and rolling pin for rolling, use water for stretching and pushing. When you are satisfied, lightly coat the crust with olive oil.

Next, grab your two sauces. Starting in the center, swirl a thin layer of tomato sauce in a spiral. Working in the area not covered by tomato sauce, spread the pesto sauce in a spiral. This is going to look very Christmassy, but fear not, its delish.

When you are happy with the level of sauciness, cover your creation with mozzarella cheese, roma tomatoes, and anything else you feel like. Pop it in the oven and watch it like a hawk- this baby shouldn't take more then 15 minutes to cook. Toss a little spinach salad, pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy.

*If this is too much pizza for your household, you can save or freeze half the dough, and its not like the pesto is going to last you very long...

Recipes: To Follow or Not To Follow--I Experiment.

So I have been meaning to write this post for a while. But things keep getting in the way.

So lets try one more time.

About a month ago I had this great idea--for my Memorial Day party I wanted to create an alcoholic drink that involved Strawberries and this bottle of peppermint schnapps that I've had in the fridge since the holidays. Essentially I wanted to make "fun" Strawberry-Mint Milkshakes.

And then the alcohol ban was instituted (essentially for a certain period of time, due to a death in my family we could not drink alcohol in the house). So what was I to do?

Not actually knowing how to make a basic Strawberry milkshake, I decided to wing it and purchased vanilla ice cream, strawberries (duh), milk, and a bunch of mint. And with some help on proportions, it came out alright. [Some of my fellow bloggers came to that shindig, and can let me know what they thought]

So my question is--how many of you are recipe mongers and how many of you are recipe ignorers?. That is do you love cooking with instructions firmly in hand, or do you prefer experimentation?

Obviously tried and true recipes are good because they give us specific cooking times and measurements, but is there a point where the internal cooking fairy in your heads goes *boink* I think this would taste better with a pinch of [insert ingredient of choice here].

Do you think this traces back to our mothers? I learned to cook from my mom who well, teaches Indian cooking in a way that is less than instructional. Its mostly and I quote "put some of this in, and some of that, and then let that heat up until the fourth whistle and sort of wait six minutes before turning it off." I like to think I've become fairly proficient in cooking without measurements, but there are times when too much salt is well too much salt--and you can't take it back!

I personally find experimentation exciting. 99% it produces something edible, but the other 1% of the time its garbage disposal worthy. When its good, though the creative energy lasts right down to making the presentation.

I do admit that I dare to experiment with certain types of food--Mexican, some baking, Italian, and creative grilled sandwiches--while others (i.e. Indian) are genres that I wouldn't dare mess with (in my heart my mom's recipes are perfection).

Maybe the best way to be stuck with experimenting is to not go to the grocery store. One finds after a while that when you're hungry, without transportation (or its really late at night) that one must experiment or go to sleep hungry (and who wants to do that!)

So possible CHALLENGE whenever we host our first get together (should we talk about setting a date?): Everyone bring three ingredients --one for a desert, one for a main meal, one for a side dish.....when we meet we plan and EXPERIMENT together.

FYI: To a certain fellow blogger. Yesterday was my sister's birthday and we had your favorite. Potato "balls" as you call them.:) We all thought of you.