Further kitchen experiments
Tue, Jan. 17th, 2006 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI was feeling incredibly lazy and inactive yesterday while cleaning the rat cage, which basically meant that every step of the process was interrupted by about half an hour of petting the rats, scritching the rats, squishing the rats' tummies, and having staring contests with the rats (I usually win, as the rats get very easily bored by staring at my nose). Normally every step of the process is only interrupted by about ten minutes of above activities, as I can usually tear myself away from the cute fuzziness and get off the sofa through force of will.
Anyway, so I wasn't going to cook, but then I got to washing dishes and standing around in the kitchen, and for some reason, washing dishes seems to make me want to cook. I never want to do it at first, but just swishing the sponge around in hot water is actually quite relaxing.
I made some tiramisu, except with pound cake instead of ladyfingers, because I couldn't find any ladyfingers in Safeway. I don't know how it is yet; it's still refrigerating. Last time my sister made it with pound cake, it took longer to set. I think I may have also put too much coffee in, so I hope it's not too soggy.
Also, it was my first time beating egg whites into foam! So cool! I think I nearly overbeat them, though... they were getting a bit shiny by the time I stopped, and when I poured them into the mascarpone they seemed just a bit lumpy. Oh well. I also folded for the first time and didn't ruin anything! (I think)
Folding is fun. I think this means I should make souffle. Perhaps I am overambitious.
And then, since I was cooking already, I decided to go ahead and cook my dried black beans. Black beans are very cute and make a nice noise when I run my finger through them. I followed![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heres_luck's instructions, though I wasn't quite sure what a blemished bean looked like, so I mostly just tossed aside anything too wrinkled and anything split. Dumped them in the pot around ten and proceeded to make the entire apartment smell like beans, which is actually not as bad as it sounds.
Also, black beans turn the water purple! Hee!
Then they were actually done cooking much sooner than I anticipated! I'd been thinking that I'd just refrigerate them and make soup the next day, but since they were finished in about half an hour (I only cooked about a cup and a half because my pot wasn't big enough), I decided to venture forth and continue with the soup!
I stoleheres_luck's recipe for black bean and chipotle soup and modified it extensively, largely because I got the black beans just so I could get rid of the can of chipotle peppers in my fridge and ended up making soup from all the leftovers in my fridge.
Speaking of which, can I freeze them? How long do they keep? I only use one at a time, so it feels so wasteful to buy an entire can! Also, they were making my fridge smell like adobo.
I keep forgetting how much nicer it is to cook than bake, if one is lazy and hates getting measuring cups dirty! I don't measure at all! I just chuck stuff in!
So really, it deviated a great deal from said recipe, since I didn't have carrots, onions, or bell peppers. But I did have two large leeks and a whole bunch of celery left over from cooking for my family. And then I felt bad because while I did have some aromatic veggies, maybe it wasn't enough for the soup, so I also tossed in a can of corn (unsalted).
Modified recipe:
Serves 4
Some corn oil
5 cloves of garlic (trying to use up the bulb)
2 large leeks, chopped (discard the green parts, as they are tough and fibrous)
5 ribs of diced celery (I was trying to get rid of it all)
Approx 1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
4 tsp salt
Black beans (the amount that 1 1/2 c uncooked beans makes)
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
1 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes undrained (I get the unsalted kind)
1 can of corn (I get the unsalted kind)
Approx. 1/2 c. leftover orange juice
Juice of half a lemon
2 c. chicken broth (again, clearing out the pantry, so this kind was salted)
Heat oil in large soup pot (8 qts. is a good idea. It's not so fun discovering this after you have already sweated the leeks and celery and garlic in the 3 1/2 qt. pot and really have no more room for the beans, much less all the canned veggies).
Sweat garlic and leeks over medium heat. Forget to stir because Alissa Czisny is skating on TV. Accidentally brown some leeks. Decide to throw in a tsp. of salt for the sweat to draw out water from leeks. Stir for about ten minutes, or until leeks are a little tender but not too soft.
Dump in diced celery. Stir more.
Grind cumin via extremely ghetto hammer-and-plastic-bag method. Dump in. Stir more. Get distracted by figure skating. Stir for approx. ten more minutes.
Dump in beans, chipotle pepper with some adobo sauce, tomatoes, corn, orange juice, chicken broth, and lemon juice. Cover and turn the heat down so that the soup is at an active simmer (aka, there are still bubbles, but only a bit at a time). Sprinkle in some salt every so often, to taste.
Watch more figure skating for about 20 min., or until all the veggies are at a texture you like.
Realize that you have a mental hangup about eating just soup for a meal when the soup is watery. Decide to thicken soup.
Spoon some soup into blender and puree. Remember that whole chipotle pepper is still somewhere in soup and decide pureeing it would be Extremely Bad Idea. Hunt through soup for whole pepper and hope that did not accidentally puree. Find pepper and toss into garbage, just in case later on it is mistake for tomato and eaten whole. Pour pureed blend (sans chipotle, yay!) back into soup. Admire thicker soup. Mourn the fact that pureeing black beans did not turn soup purple.
Eat and burn roof of mouth for not waiting long enough for soup to cool.
The lovely thing is that this makes the apartment smell simply heavenly, and I got rid of my perishable items in the fridge. Yay!
I sort of figured I could substitute the leeks for the onions, carrots and bell peppers since on TV, Alton Brown calls all those veggies "aromatics" and always, always sweats them first thing in the recipe before adding all the other stuff. The soup probably would have tasted better with more aromatics, but tough luck, I am attempting to get rid of things. And I added the corn becauseheres_luck noted that the soup went well with corn things and I wanted more colorful veggies because... well, one should never have to justify colorful veggies! I also dumped in lemon juice because I wasn't sure if I had enough orange juice, and because I had half a lemon sitting in my fridge that I didn't know what to do with.
I like soup! I especially like soup where I can toss in mostly random things and have it still come out tasty! I also like my blender! Muhahahaha..... I think I'm going to try to puree everything now.
Anyway, so I wasn't going to cook, but then I got to washing dishes and standing around in the kitchen, and for some reason, washing dishes seems to make me want to cook. I never want to do it at first, but just swishing the sponge around in hot water is actually quite relaxing.
I made some tiramisu, except with pound cake instead of ladyfingers, because I couldn't find any ladyfingers in Safeway. I don't know how it is yet; it's still refrigerating. Last time my sister made it with pound cake, it took longer to set. I think I may have also put too much coffee in, so I hope it's not too soggy.
Also, it was my first time beating egg whites into foam! So cool! I think I nearly overbeat them, though... they were getting a bit shiny by the time I stopped, and when I poured them into the mascarpone they seemed just a bit lumpy. Oh well. I also folded for the first time and didn't ruin anything! (I think)
Folding is fun. I think this means I should make souffle. Perhaps I am overambitious.
And then, since I was cooking already, I decided to go ahead and cook my dried black beans. Black beans are very cute and make a nice noise when I run my finger through them. I followed
heres_luck's instructions, though I wasn't quite sure what a blemished bean looked like, so I mostly just tossed aside anything too wrinkled and anything split. Dumped them in the pot around ten and proceeded to make the entire apartment smell like beans, which is actually not as bad as it sounds.Also, black beans turn the water purple! Hee!
Then they were actually done cooking much sooner than I anticipated! I'd been thinking that I'd just refrigerate them and make soup the next day, but since they were finished in about half an hour (I only cooked about a cup and a half because my pot wasn't big enough), I decided to venture forth and continue with the soup!
I stole
heres_luck's recipe for black bean and chipotle soup and modified it extensively, largely because I got the black beans just so I could get rid of the can of chipotle peppers in my fridge and ended up making soup from all the leftovers in my fridge.Speaking of which, can I freeze them? How long do they keep? I only use one at a time, so it feels so wasteful to buy an entire can! Also, they were making my fridge smell like adobo.
I keep forgetting how much nicer it is to cook than bake, if one is lazy and hates getting measuring cups dirty! I don't measure at all! I just chuck stuff in!
So really, it deviated a great deal from said recipe, since I didn't have carrots, onions, or bell peppers. But I did have two large leeks and a whole bunch of celery left over from cooking for my family. And then I felt bad because while I did have some aromatic veggies, maybe it wasn't enough for the soup, so I also tossed in a can of corn (unsalted).
Modified recipe:
Serves 4
Some corn oil
5 cloves of garlic (trying to use up the bulb)
2 large leeks, chopped (discard the green parts, as they are tough and fibrous)
5 ribs of diced celery (I was trying to get rid of it all)
Approx 1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
4 tsp salt
Black beans (the amount that 1 1/2 c uncooked beans makes)
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
1 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes undrained (I get the unsalted kind)
1 can of corn (I get the unsalted kind)
Approx. 1/2 c. leftover orange juice
Juice of half a lemon
2 c. chicken broth (again, clearing out the pantry, so this kind was salted)
Heat oil in large soup pot (8 qts. is a good idea. It's not so fun discovering this after you have already sweated the leeks and celery and garlic in the 3 1/2 qt. pot and really have no more room for the beans, much less all the canned veggies).
Sweat garlic and leeks over medium heat. Forget to stir because Alissa Czisny is skating on TV. Accidentally brown some leeks. Decide to throw in a tsp. of salt for the sweat to draw out water from leeks. Stir for about ten minutes, or until leeks are a little tender but not too soft.
Dump in diced celery. Stir more.
Grind cumin via extremely ghetto hammer-and-plastic-bag method. Dump in. Stir more. Get distracted by figure skating. Stir for approx. ten more minutes.
Dump in beans, chipotle pepper with some adobo sauce, tomatoes, corn, orange juice, chicken broth, and lemon juice. Cover and turn the heat down so that the soup is at an active simmer (aka, there are still bubbles, but only a bit at a time). Sprinkle in some salt every so often, to taste.
Watch more figure skating for about 20 min., or until all the veggies are at a texture you like.
Realize that you have a mental hangup about eating just soup for a meal when the soup is watery. Decide to thicken soup.
Spoon some soup into blender and puree. Remember that whole chipotle pepper is still somewhere in soup and decide pureeing it would be Extremely Bad Idea. Hunt through soup for whole pepper and hope that did not accidentally puree. Find pepper and toss into garbage, just in case later on it is mistake for tomato and eaten whole. Pour pureed blend (sans chipotle, yay!) back into soup. Admire thicker soup. Mourn the fact that pureeing black beans did not turn soup purple.
Eat and burn roof of mouth for not waiting long enough for soup to cool.
The lovely thing is that this makes the apartment smell simply heavenly, and I got rid of my perishable items in the fridge. Yay!
I sort of figured I could substitute the leeks for the onions, carrots and bell peppers since on TV, Alton Brown calls all those veggies "aromatics" and always, always sweats them first thing in the recipe before adding all the other stuff. The soup probably would have tasted better with more aromatics, but tough luck, I am attempting to get rid of things. And I added the corn because
heres_luck noted that the soup went well with corn things and I wanted more colorful veggies because... well, one should never have to justify colorful veggies! I also dumped in lemon juice because I wasn't sure if I had enough orange juice, and because I had half a lemon sitting in my fridge that I didn't know what to do with.I like soup! I especially like soup where I can toss in mostly random things and have it still come out tasty! I also like my blender! Muhahahaha..... I think I'm going to try to puree everything now.
Tags:
(no subject)
Tue, Jan. 17th, 2006 09:43 pm (UTC)Pureeing the canned chipotle pepper would actually have been fine; it makes the soup quite spicy, but eliminates the risk of eating it whole. Dried chipotle pepper, however, would need to be removed. So you erred on the side of caution, which is wise.
I'm so delighted you modified the recipe! It's one of the best things about soup: you can pretty much just throw in whatever and it's hard to go wrong. Corn is an especially inspired addition.
Should I add "how to make soup out of anything" to my list of forthcoming Kitchen Basics posts?
(no subject)
Tue, Jan. 17th, 2006 09:57 pm (UTC)The corn in the soup was so good! And it's so crunchy compared to the leeks and the somewhat crunchy celery! I think I'll put it in next time too. I really love your recipes, thank you so much ^_^.
And ohhhhhh I would love a "how to make soup out of anything" post! I'm all for things that help me clean out my refrigerator.