Cooking notes for the week

[oyceter]

Also, I have to continue cooking, now that I've copied rilina and made myself two Swedish Chef icons! Bork bork bork!

This week, I have successfully made:

• More oatmeal:
  Tasty as always, even though I ran out of buttermilk. And the first batch was made when I ran out of jam I liked (I sweeten my oatmeal with jam; brown sugar is too sweet, imho) and ended up with oatmeal that tasted too sugary. The second batch, made yesterday, was much better. Notes to self: when recipe calls for boiling water, do not be confused when it takes longer for the oatmeal to soak up all the water. However, substituting corn oil for butter when toasting oats is perfectly ok. Dried cherries and raspberry jam with very little added sugar are also tasty garnishes. I don't know what's up... I keep getting jams that are too sweet, and it's driving me crazy.



• More lemon curd!
  This time it set! However, because I added the prescribed amount of lemon juice instead of too much like last time, it's too sweet =(. Woe! Maybe I will experiment further in tinkering with the recipe and completely botch things up in the attempts to make it less sweet/more lemon-y.



• More polenta:
  Good. Very good. No clumps this time, go me!



• Ma po tofu:
  I used an instant packaged sauce from the Japanese supermarket and added garlic and onions instead of the ground beef recommended on the back. It was good. Except next time I am going to learn to make my own sauce, because the packaged sauce is too sweet and not spicy enough. Of course, the too sweet was not helped along by the onions. At least I am finally cutting down on my tofu supply!



• Gingerbread



• Applesauce cake
  This is the very first thing I cooked in California (I made myself a birthday cake). I like it because it's apple-y and spicey and not too sweet (I am sensing a theme in my taste preferences). Also, I can make it non-dairy by substituting applesauce, and it makes it taste even better and moister!



• Non-corn scones
  Not quite so successful, given that they spread out in an amorphous blob. I think it may be because I attempted to cut the butter in? I swear, this time I did everything the recipe said! But they are still tasty, so there.



• More corn scones
  I love the corn scones. I think I can start to make them fairly consistently, now that I know the best thickness for rolling them out. Alas, the poor recipe is now going to be subject to more of my experimentation. I want to see what happens when I replace melted butter with corn oil and if I can replace some white flour with wheat flour... maybe if I do that, I will try to replace the other bits of white flour with cake flour for more tenderness? Hrm.



• More clotted cream
  Aka, my whipping cream was going to expire soon. This time I made it with no mishaps whatsoever! OMGJOY!!!!!! And it clotted and is the right consistency! And as of yesterday, I finally have jam I like to eat with it and my scones!



• Yogurt sauce
  I love the yogurt sauce muchly. coffeeandink made it for me and oracne and then posted the recipe. I have been baking so much this week (holiday season) that I started carefully measuring stuff before realizing that after assembling the ingredients, the procedure itself was really, really easy. Also, I was too lazy to dirty my measuring cups and spoons, so I sort of tossed stuff in and felt quite like a pro when I sliced and diced cucumbers and dill. (now that I've said that, I'm going to end up cutting off my own fingers) It seems to have been praised at work, and I really like it, so it is good!



• Granola
  I have been scrounging heres_luck's LJ for recipes and found one for granola! I love granola! One pre-Taiwan (aka, very early) memory involves making granola for Christmas at school! I brought mine back in a ziploc baggie and put it under the tree for my mom. But it was so tasty that I kept sneaking in to eat chunks, and by the time it was Christmas, there were only crumbs left. Uh, I hope the oats that I used are not horribly stale or something. Also, spices are expensive! I ended up getting whole cloves and whole allspice because they were just a wee bit cheaper, and then I had to rack my brain as to how to grind them without going out to buy a mortar and pestle thing.
  
  Solution: measure out whole spices with spoon, adding a bit more in to compensate for space between spices. Dump in ziploc baggie. Wrack brain for a way to grind. Take out trusty hammer and pound spices.
  
  Hey, it worked!!
  
  OMG am the most ghetto cook ever


And me and my sister are going to cook for my mom and dad on Monday! And maybe an auntie who won't eat dairy too!

Current menu plan:
(everything but the dessert is stolen from heres_luck)

Appetizers:
Carrot salad with parsley and mint - ok, this may not be the best idea because my mom hates parsley and my dad hates carrots. But... I want to eat it, so there. Maybe I'll just leave out the parsley and tell my dad that carrots are Good For Him (how gratifying to be able to say this to my parent). ETA - ixnay salad for above reasons.
Avocado, jicama, and orange salad - mom loves avocado (as do me and sister). Am wondering where in the world I can get jicama...
Adding: Fried eggplant and yogurt sauce and hummus

Main course:
White bean soup with rosemary
Spicy green beans
Squash and leek Thai-style curry
Lemon-herb chicken or 20-clove garlic chicken

Dessert:
Applesauce cake sans butter (for auntie)
Tiramisu? (sister will make)
Scones with lemon curd and jam and clotted cream

I apologize for the multitude of cooking posts in my LJ lately... Apparently, this is my new obsession! Aren't you all glad that I didn't do this when I got into knitting? Well, also, I can make a whole lot more recipes in a week than I can knitting projects.

To appease everyone, I post my first recipe!

Applesauce cake (with variations)

I tinker with recipes. I seem incapable of leaving things be. On the other hand, this means I ended up with a non-dairy applesauce cake that is quite possibly one of my favorite desserts ever. I like chocolate as much as the next person, but sometimes it's nice to have an alternative.

Equipment:
9x13 pan (for applesauce bars)
9x9 pan (for cake that is not quite as moist... I have not tried this, but am planning on it come Monday)
8x8 pan (for very moist cake... the top will be sticky, but I swear, it is worth it)

Ingredients:
1/4 cup butter (can be substituted with applesauce to make a moister cake)
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup applesauce
1 cup AP flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp cloves, 1/2 tsp nutmeg)
confectioner's sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease baking pan. Mix butter (or applesauce), brown sugar, and egg until smooth. Stir in applesauce. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Stir this into the applesauce mixture until well-blended. Spread into pan.

Bake for 25 minutes for 9x13 pan, approx. 28-30 min. in 8x8 pan (reports on time for 9x9 pan will come forthwith, but I suspect it'll be around 28 min?)

The original recipe I got this from had a recipe for frosting the bars as well, but it sounded to sweet for me, so I never wrote it down. It did say you could sprinkle confectioner's sugar on top, though! But... it's so tasty by itself that I don't see why....

Comments

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

You toast oats to make oatmeal?....WOW....and here I thought I was being hardcore by making it in a pot, not the microwave!

....there so totally needs to be a heres_luck restaurant.

[oyceter]

People make oatmeal in the microwave?? Wow.

The only kinds I've seen are instant oatmeal, and then Alton Brown's oatmeal (which is this oatmeal, of course), and I guess I just sort of figured from his show that people cooked it!

It's so totally worth it though! Especially because it's with steel-cut oats, not rolled oats, so it's got this lovely chewiness to it, and creaminess.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

It's insta-oatmeal with sugary dinosaurs that puff up, yeah, because T bought it ((facepalm)). We had diametrically opposite upbringings -- my parents fed me granola and cornflakes, and his parents let him eat the worst kind of sugary breakfast crap -- Count Chocula, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, you name it....he was still eating them in college, too!

I have heard steel-cut oats are superior to rolled oats -- the non-insta make-in-pot oatmeal I do have says it's made with steel-cut oats.

[heresluck]

I'm so pleased that people seem to actually like and use the recipe posts. Although I'd probably do them anyway, because I am a big dork like that. *g*

[(Anonymous)]

I've printed a bunch of them out for a kitchen binder!....people must have asked this before, but have you thought of doing a cookbook?

[heresluck]

Well... no, because the recipes mostly aren't mine; they're just my record of personal tinkerings with recipes by, you know, trained professionals. I'm just an enthusiastic amateur and recipe packrat.

It occurs to me, though, that one of my acquaintances from grad school does a serial-cookbook kind of thing; she has a kind of recipe newsletter that she sends out to friends at the end of the year, either electronically or hard-copy, with an updated index of everything she's sent out so far. Which is something I could probably do, if it didn't sound like way too much work. The random spontaneity thing is much easier for me. Heh.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

You want a copy of "Mme. Chiang's Szechuan Cookbook". Best Ma Po To Fu in the history of civilization. Seriously. Complex, intriguing. The first time I cooked it for my husband, he broke into song.

[oyceter]

*drools*

Twist my arm, will you? ;)

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Bork bork bork!

My mom uses a Lee Kum Kee sauce for her ma po tofu; not sure what it's called in English or how authentic it is, but it's basically spicy bean paste. Not very sweet at all.

[oyceter]

Oooo tasty! I do know the brand, I think it's Hong Kong-ese or something.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Jicama is a South American fruit used in lots of S. American and Caribbean dishes, and I bet it's even easier to find in California than New York. ;)

[oyceter]

Oh neat! I had no idea... the only time I've had it is in salad bars in Taiwan for some very odd reason.

[heresluck]

OMG most adorably multi-culti menu plan EVER. I am so amused (and tremendously flattered) that you're planning your meal based on my posts.

FYI, the best oats for granola, like oatmeal, are steel-cut oats, so that should work out nicely given your oatmeal addiction. Also, granola lends itself to infinite tinkering, as long as the proportions stay roughly the same. For example, you could use half raisins and half dried apples, or use dried apricots and walnuts instead of raisins and almonds. Also, you can subsitute maple syrup for the honey, or molasses (your new favorite thing!) for part (not all) of the honey.

As for spices: buying whole spices is an excellent idea; not only is it cheaper, the spices stay fresher. If you tire of your bag-and-hammer system (nice ingenuity, by the way), a cheap coffee grinder will do the trick nicely. I also keep a mortar and pestle on hand for certain things, but seriously: coffee grinder. Just don't try to grind whole cinnamon, which doesn't work very well. (Cinnamon is one of the few spices I buy in both its whole and its ground state, for just that reason.)

I'll post tofu recipes for you soon.

[oyceter]

Hee! I am glad you are amused instead of feeling horribly stalked.

And OMG you can use steel-cut oats for granola??!?! Yay!! I like them much better (cheweier and such). And molasses! I must finish the old batch faster so I can make more!

Thanks so much for all the cooking help, btw!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Our ma po sauce has three essential ingredients: dried salted black beans, chili bean sauce (toban djan from Lee Kum Kee), and "sweet flour sauce" (also really made fom beans I think, Lian How brand). I'm going to have to look up this book jonquil mentions, too. Ours is good, but not singin' good.

[oyceter]

Ooo, hrm. I have to check out recipes, or ask my mom, or something.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Please tell if you find the perfect Ma Po Do Fu sauce. I made it the other night and people here liked it, but they don't know what it's supposed to be like. I used black bean-garlic sauce in a jar, not bad. Did find Sichuan peppercorns for it, though! I didn't know they were illegal and just went into the store and asked. The clerk looked very conspiratorial and said, "Oh, some students told you!" Then she went in the back and brought out a bag from some unmarked carton. For all that, they were very cheap. And the real thing.

Fortunate she doesn't sell really illegal stuff--she'd be locked up by now. I doubt customs sends agents inland here to check all the little groceries.

[oyceter]

Ooooo wow! I had no idea either!

Hee.