Tag Archives: 101 in 1001

101 in 1001: [037] make a new recipe from each cookbook i own

{03 February 2014}

10. Standard Baking Co. Pastries

Feb 2, 2014
Chocolate Biscotti

This cookbook was gifted to me at my bridal shower by lau; the first thing I made from it was the excellent cheddar scones, in the kitchen of our seaside cabin while on our honeymoon. The first meal my new husband and I cooked together. Since then, this book has mostly served as a guide for making croissants, which require the dedication of an entire weekend, but are totally worth it. But both of those were accomplished before I started this 101 challenge, so I needed somethign new in order to keep this cookbook on my shelves. I recently had one of those break-a-tooth rock hard sorry excuses for biscotti in a cafe. Like a raccoon washing its food, I had to soak in coffee until it turned to mush in order to eat it. I remembered that biscotti isn’t really supposed to be like that. Years ago, a co-worker’s Italian mother sent a care package with homemade biscotti in it, and when I tasted it I realized that all of those bland, crunchy logs served in cafes didn’t represent biscotti any more than hershey’s represents chocolate. Properly made biscotti has crunch, and is delicious dipped in coffee, but it also has a softness that gives way when you bite in to it.

The Standard Baking Co Pastries book has two biscotti recipes – one almond-flavored and traditional, the other chocolate walnut. The chocolate recipe was described as being “almost cake-like” because of an unusually high fat content. I liked the sound of that, so I skipped over traditional almond and went straight for chocolate. They came out exactly the way I wanted them to be. Crunchy, but not break-a-tooth crunchy. Would benefit from a quick dip in some coffee, but only to enjoy the flavor and temperature combination of the coffee-against-cookie, not to make it edible.

I brought these to a super bow party and when I set them out, someone asked, “ooh, are those, like, brownie sticks?” The answer is yes, they are basically over-cooked brownie sticks. Delicious, overcooked brownie sticks.

Make it again? Definitely. I might try to combine the almond flavoring of the traditional recipe with the butter-fat structure of the chocolate one. Maybe.

9. The Mac + Cheese Cookbook

Jan 8, 2014:
Mom’s Mac and Cheese

My mother’s mac and cheese is probably the first recipe I learned to make, and its one of those recipes I can make without measuring. But I basically stopped making it at home once I discovered Homeroom, the Mac + Cheese restaurant in Oakland. We used to meet up with my brothers there for dinner occasionally (okay, any time we could all end up in Oakland at the same time). While Homeroom serves a dozen gourmet riffs on mac and cheese, I noticed that my brother matt and I both always order the version that was closest to what our moms made. Sharp white cheddar, with broccoli and toasted breadcrumbs. Last fall Ben and I were eating there on a trip back to California and discovered that they’d published a cookbook. We immediately bought two, one for each of my brothers. And under the Christmas tree this winter there were three copies – Matt and Carrie bought us one too. It was the Year of the Homeroom Cookbook.

So all of this is to say that I decided to use the cookbook to check in on the quantities of the recipe I’ve always been making. Turns out, the Vermont Sharp White Cheddar recipe just about exactly what my mom makes.

I made a vat of mac and cheese to serve 12 people at work. It was declared a success.

8. The Science of Good Food

Jan 6, 2014:
Mushroom Risotto

Ben gave me this cookbook a few years ago. It’s more of an encyclopedia of cooking science than an actual cookbook, but there are recipes scattered throughout. It’s an excellent reference. Curious about the maillard reaction? Want to know why baking at 325 is completely different than baking at 350? This is your book.

I used the basic risotto recipe as a place to start on this mushroom extravaganza, but here are the details of what I made. So I can make it again, because, yum:

– generous glug of olive oil
– 3/4 large white onion, chopped
– 3 cloves garlic, pressed
– 1 cup risotto rice
– 2 cup mushroom broth (see below)
– 1/2 lb button mushrooms. half of them sliced, and half cut into quarters or 1/2″ chunks.
– 1/4 lb shitake mushrooms, sliced. if dried, soak them in hot water for 45 min first.
– butter. lots of butter.
– 3/4 c grated parmesan. or more. there’s no such thing as too much, really.
– salt and pepper to taste
– fresh or dried thyme and rosemary, finely chopped
– dash soy sauce
– dash worchester sauce (not vegetarian, FYI)

saute onions and garlic in olive oil until onions are soft. add rice and stir until rice is coated and warm. begin adding scoops of mushroom broth, stirring until the liquid is absorbed before adding more. stir and stir. continue adding liquid until rice reaches the desired consistency. overdo it and it’ll get gloppy, so stop when you like it.

meanwhile, saute mushrooms in butter until released liquid is nearly all evaporated. then add to the pot with the rice.

stir in seasonings, cheese and butter. serve immediately.

mushroom broth:
– 1.5 lb button mushrooms
– 1/2 onion
– 1 carrot
– 2 stalks celery
– 3 smashed cloves of garlic
(or whatever other veggies you fancy)
– salt to taste – go easy, you can always add more salt when using the broth in a finished dish later

rough chop everything and throw into the biggest pot of water you have. Simmer for 90 minutes. Drain and discard vegetables. Return pot to the stove and continue to simmer until the stock is reduced to your taste, 20 min or so. I like to freeze it in 2-cup quantities in plastic baggies for easy use later.

7. Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables

August 28, 2013:
Curried Cauliflower

This is the cookbook from our CSA Farm, Angelic Organics. It includes a vegetable identification guide, to help hapless CSA subscribers to not only identify rarities like celeriac and sunchokes, but also know how to eat them. The book is organized by vegetable, so when you have a lot of cauliflower you can turn to that section and find a variety of things to do with it, and the vegetable chapters are ordered according to the season, so you could cook your way through the book from start to finish, if you wanted to. It’s also full of snippets of wisdom and philosophy from Farmer John, snapshots of the farm, shareholder letters and comments, and, randomly, margin notes consisting of overheard conversations that seem to bear little relevance to the rest of the cookbook:

YOUNG WOMAN: I was having trouble with my roommate in college — communication problems. I kept eyeing a dead tree outside my dorm. After a week I brought the dead tree into our room and set it up between our beds. Every day I hung another dirty sock on a branch.

ACQUAINTANCE: What did she say about that?

YOUNG WOMAN: Nothing. She never said a thing.

ACQUAINTANCE: Did she know it was there?

YOUNG WOMAN: Yeah, she knew. A couple of the branches went right into her closet.

In vegetables, are on the cusp of the season change, when our CSA box is full of the long-awaited summer tomatoes but also the early fall vegetables like cauliflower. Consequently, last night I turned beautiful yellow heirloom tomatoes into 101 Cookbook’s Golden Tomato Sauce and tonight I roasted cauliflower. When I was a kid we used to eat cauliflower by boiling it and then covering it in cheddar cheese sauce or butter and parmesan. Delicious, but in either preparation the cauliflower was merely a vehicle, and tasted like nothing at all. Learning to roast vegetables, rather than boil them, was a game-changer.

This almost doesn’t count as a new recipe from a new cookbook, as I used it more for inspiration and riffed freely, but hey, this is my 101 list, my rules. I selected this recipe mainly because of the spice mixture. We have this box of Indian spices that I was itching to use and didn’t want to settle for a recipe that only called for curry powder. Not when I have turmeric and black mustard seeds and toasted pomegranate powder and fenugreek, whatever that is. The tricky part is that I have ZERO intuition for Indian spices, so it’s hard to actually select a recipe based on the flavor profile. So I just looked for a recipe that called for several of the items in my box. I combined the spice mixture from this recipe with the the oven roasting technique from Smitten Kitchen’s Cumin Seed Roasted Cauliflower (which is also very good, btw, and requires fewer Indian spices on hand).

Make it again: totally. In fact, I’m going to record what I did here so I can remember later:

Curry Roasted Cauliflower
Serves 2

1/2 head cauliflower
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp sea salt flakes
1/2 tsp crushed coriander seeds
1/2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 c greek yogurt
cilantro
fresh lemon juice
crumbled feta

– Clean and chop cauliflower. It doesn’t matter if the florets are all the same size – a variety of sizes results in a variety of textures when it roasts.
– Combine 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (ghee would probably be way tastier) and the spices.
– Toss the oil mixture with cauliflower until it is fully coated.
– Place on a baking sheet or roasting pan. Roast at 425 degrees 20-25 minutes, turning every 5 min.
– While the cauliflower is roasting, combine greek yogurt with a squeeze of lemon juice and a pinch of salt, and dice the cilantro.
– Serve cauliflower topped with a sprinkle of crumbled feta, chopped cilantro and the yogurt alongside.

photo.JPG

6. The Bread Baker’s Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum

April 26, 2013:
-Pizza Dough

i was on a quest for a pizza dough that i could mix, rise and bake all in the space of one afternoon. most recipes have you make it the night before, since a 12-hour nap in the fridge improves the depth of flavor. i knew it existed, and the first one i landed on was, surprisingly, tucked in between the excessively complicated multi-step, multi-day recipes of Beranbaum’s Bread Bible. most of the recipes in this book require that you book your entire weekend around the completion of just one (unless we’re talking about sourdough starter, in which case you may as well go ahead and clear all your appointments for the next month and warn your husband you’ll be in the kitchen with your science experiment until further notice). her recipes are delicious but needy. (haha, ‘needy’ breads…)

so back to pizza dough. there were some red flags when she insisted that only unbleached white flour could be used, and that instead of using a dusting of cornmeal to keep the dough from sticking to everything, it uses olive oil. so it’s a strange, soft, oily dough that wants to tear if you even look at it wrong, and tossing it into the air was right out considering that it was bathed in olive oil that would have flung to the far corners of the kitchen. instead of rolling it out she has you sort of press it into the corners of the baking tray. from where it springs right back. i spent about 10 minutes trying to coax the small lump of dough into two 7″ round pizzas and finally gave up and allowed it to be two 5″ amoeba-shaped pizzas.

anyway, the useful takeaway from this recipe is that it pays to cook the pizza crust for a few minutes BEFORE adding toppings — it helps the crust actually set up, and keeps the vegetables/cheese from turning mushy/rubbery before the crust has even considered cooking through.

and the whole point of this exercise was to try cooking pizzas on the gas grill outside. why, exactly, when i have a perfectly nice pizza stone in my oven? well, because i could. and it was finally warm enough and light enough at 7pm that we could find our way to the grill in the backyard for the first time since we moved in.

cooking the pizza on the grill was awesome. i will totally do that again. it had a nicely browned, crisp crust on the bottom, softer and doughier on top. it reminded me a bit of naan. strangely enough, this crust actually asks for a light smattering of toppings, not a giant mound of melty commercial mozzarella. i didn’t know such a thing was possible until we tried it, but it might honestly be because the dough was so good that the cheese got in the way of fully appreciating its many textures. and amazingly we didn’t destroy the cheap cookie sheet i used on the grill. (Beranbaum’s grill instructions call for a ‘black steel pizza pan’, of course but i just checked that my old Farberware non-stick was good up to 500 degrees and hoped for the best).

the only gripe about the grill pizza is that the top layer of cheese didn’t really brown much, but i’m not sure if we had left it on longer if it would have caught up, or if it always needs a quick spin under the broiler anyway.

make it again: i’d use this dough recipe only if i was in a hurry, or if i was trying to recreate naan. otherwise i’d rather use a recipe that didn’t shun cornmeal or wheat flour or rolling pins. but i will definitely cook pizza on a gas grill again, especially in summer when it’s too hot to turn on the oven.

5. Super Natural Everyday, Heidi Swanson

April 23, 2013:
-Weeknight Curry

i finally made a curry! i’ve made a few attempts at curry before and it was always a miserable failure. now i can’t really tell why, because this was so easy, but whatever. going up in boise, idaho in a household with a severe peanut allergy, i wasn’t exactly raised on the flavors and techniques of south east asia. (but just watch me improvise a cream sauce). so it’s taken some time to catch up.

anyway, my one complaint about many of the recipes on 101cookbooks is that they take about three steps and three pots too many, particularly for a weeknight. but this one was surprisingly simple, and has the added advantage of being a ‘back of the fridge’ recipe, adapting to whatever leftover vegetable are languishing in the crisper drawer. which in this case were mushrooms, potatoes, onion, asparagus, red bell pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, and tofu. and we have dinner for tomorrow, too.

btw, it’s worth noting that the photography in Heidi’s book is at least as beautiful as her food. this is one cookbook that i actually feel bad about spilling on as i work. (usually i think that just gives them a patina that indicates their usefulness).

make it again: yes, but trust the recipe when it comes to vegetable-simmering time. and be less shy with the thai curry paste. and this curry isn’t really right for potatoes. better to stick with vegetables and not have to cook them so long.

4. The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Deb Perelman

April 13, 2013:
-Kale, Caramelized Onion and Wild Rice Gratin

so, a little preface here: the whole point of the cook-one-recipe-from-each-cookbook assignment was that around the 190th time i moved apartments, and lugged at least two insanely heavy book boxes dedicated only to cookbooks around, i made myself a promise that i could only buy a new cookbook once i had either made something from, or given away, every cookbook i already owned. that was like 3 years and 3 moves ago, and i’m still not done. but a handy little loophole is that the rule doesn’t prevent anyone from GIVING me cookbooks. enter birthday gifts. M & C sent me the Smitten Kitchen book for my birthday last week and holy food p0rn batman, the closeups on peach “breakfast” cobbler are enough to make me wonder why we’ve been eating kashi and greek yogurt all this time if we are, in fact, grownups that can do whatever we want.

so i’m a little disappointed that the first thing i decided to make from this cookbook came out kind of meh. i’d make it again, but with a significant set of adjustments. it’s not really the cookbook’s fault, it just wasn’t my favorite set of flavors. i had conveniently forgotten that i don’t like the sweetness of caramelized onions.

make it again: yes. with adjustments. and not on a week night – B would eat one of the cats waiting for this dish to finally be ready.

next time:
– make a half recipe – we’ll be eating this all week
– double the kale
– cut the kale “ribbons” into short lengths, otherwise the dish turns into a tangled yarn ball when you try to scoop out a serving
– cooks beautifully in the cast iron skillet – do that again (only use the 8″ one)
– mix some parmesan in with the swiss cheese – it needs more saltiness. particularly if you’re using homemade stock/broth.
– add mushrooms. always mushrooms.
– try with sauteed but not caramelized onions (and cut the quantity in half)
– surprisingly, go easy with the breadcrumbs on top. they kind of overpowered the rest of the flavors
– pick (or make) a high wild rice-to-regular rice ratio. i picked a mix that only had a decorative amount of wild rice and the result was a mushy texture. the chewiness of the wild rice would have been nice. and since the rice is cooked and then gets thrown into the gratin and has more liquid added, the rice can be a bit undercooked going into the final assembly.

3. Bake the Bread, Buy the Butter, Jennifer Reese

April 7, 2013:
-Crème brûlée

i opted for this particular recipe because it was the simplest of the crème brûlée recipes i could find, and i had a hangover from the previous night’s birthday revels, and only so many hours before dinner guests were going to arrive. why didn’t i just go out and buy some cookies for dessert, you ask? well, because three months ago i started making my own vanilla extract (from this same cookbook) and it was FINALLY READY so of course i needed to make something to show off the wondrous $59 billion dollars worth of vanilla i had created at home for 12 cents worth of supplies (there’s a post forthcoming about this).

so, first-timer’s crème brûlée, with a hangover. what could go wrong?

first let it be said that hangovers don’t usually me sick, or even headachy. but they do make me spectacularly slow and stupid. but the ingredient list was encouragingly short: eggs, cream, sugar, and whatever flavoring you might wish for (i chose vanilla and cardamom). it turns out its all in the technique. suddenly i had cream approaching boil on the stovetop, only half the eggs separated, the sugar not yet measured, and wait, what’s that about a water bath? and how many crème brûlée pots do we have? 4? but we have 9 people coming to dinner tonight.

amazingly, it all came together. ben saved the day with a beautifully-timed birthday gift of two of the cutest little teeny tiny Le Crueset pots, (and we made all the couple share a dish — romantic, right?) somehow i managed to not curdle the eggs even though i didn’t really read any of the chemistry behind custard-making until AFTER the brûlées were in the oven, they were completed with enough time to chill for the proscribed four hours before serving, and we didn’t even burn the house down braising the tops.

the texture was smooth and creamy just like it should be, the top nice and crusty caramelized, and so the only disappointment was that we could hardly taste the vanilla or the cardamom. it was mostly just rich fatty eggs/sugar/cream. which is great, but misses the entire point which was to show off my homesteading ability to make my own vanilla extract.

make it again: yes. with a hangover? maybe not.

for next time: double the recipe to get 9 servings (they were a little skimpy at 1.5 times the recipe), use approximately 4 times the vanilla and much fresher cardamom (also maybe simmer cardamom pods in the cream rather than just using ground cardamom of indeterminate age), and continue to ignore the internet’s insistence upon a water bath; as long as you stick to 225 degrees and a long slow cooking time, there seemed to be no need.

2. Tassajara Dinners and Desserts, The San Francisco Zen Center

March 11, 2013:
– Mushroom Ragout, served over
– Parmesan Polenta

accompanied by sauteed greens, it was a bit ambitious for a weeknight, but so delicious. and it has completely changed my mind about polenta. i’d only ever ‘made’ it at home by slicing open the prepared tubes of yellow goo from Trader Joe’s. it turns out it’s so easy (but does require a fair amount of stirring time) and so much more delicious when made fresh. i used coarse ground cornmeal from the bulk section at Whole Foods. so much more flavor than the prepared stuff, and it and cost about 10 cents per serving. win-win.

make it again: yes, not on a week night.

1. Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, Jeff Hertzberg, Zoë François and Mark Luinenburg

March 10, 2013:
– Whole wheat sandwich loaf

despite singing all the praises of my no-knead artisan loaf, i’ve kind of been wishing for a loaf-pan-shaped loaf lately for making sandwiches. this came out pretty darn well for a first pass. i cut the honey by half since i don’t like sweet breads, and i wish i’d had some nuts and seeds to add for more textural variety. not the best bread i ever ate [but then again, wheat bread never is], but still tasty, healthy, and it held together even when sliced thin and toasted. B expressed muted enthusiasm, which i take to mean he likes the artisan bread better but he’s smart enough to know that when one’s partner is baking fresh bread, one doesn’t complain lightly.

make it again: yes, with modifications

101 in 1001: [100] fix something instead of buying a new one

{21 June 2013}

4: geek clock
jun 22, 2013

i’d first seen this geek clock in a cafe not far from MIT’s campus (go figure) and had been enamored with it ever since. ben expressed, let us say, muted enthusiasm over decorating our house with a geek clock, so i settled for ordering one for my office. i came to doubt the clock’s geek cred, however, when i discovered that it couldn’t keep time. but $12 and an hour of my time (did you know that clock movements have like, 17 different measurements?) brought me a replacement movement from klockkit.com*. six months later i finally had a free hour to install it. it wasn’t exactly a flawless installation, but nothing that a little sandpaper, rasp, gorilla glue, leatherman, scissors, and a replacement washer couldn’t fix.

now we’ll see how it long it takes me to get around to hanging it…

101 in 1001: fix something instead of buying a new one.

*doesn’t anyone realize that replacing c’s with k’s actually DECREASES consumer confidence?

3: the left glove
mar 26, 2013

…and the other mitten. Same repair. Winter has to end, right??

...and the other mitten. Same repair. Winter has to end, right??

2: the right glove
feb 25, 2013

the thumb on my glove was unraveling, so i grabbed some yarn and re-knit it. the purple yarn doesn’t match, but it made it easier to fix and now when i look down at my thumb i am reminded that i can fix things instead of just replacing them.

darning is a lost art

1: ironing board cover
feb 16, 2013

i’ll freely admit that i ruin things all the time by ignoring the “do not launder”, “dry clean only” or “spot wash” instructions. i also save a lot of money and chemicals by not dry cleaning things that just need a little woolite and a drying rack. but, let’s be honest, i also get impatient and stuff things in the dryer that ought not go in the dryer all the time. [cf. the great barbie hair-drying disaster of 1984]

the ironing board cover didn’t exactly disintegrate in the wash, it just developed a strange sort of lump at one end. i put it back on the ironing board and tried ignoring it but the lump wasn’t just hard to iron over, it also had a tendency to knock the iron over. and that seemed like a fire hazard. and one more reason not to iron, which is one more reason i fail to look like a grownup when i dress myself for work.

i actually went and bought a new cover from target, grumbling over the $25 price tag for the Michael Graves fabric print just because that’s the one that fits my brand of ironing board. but when i went to change the cover i got curious about The Lump. with some scissors i sliced in between the two layers of fabric and discovered it was just this wad of disintegrating foam. so i made the hole larger, turned the whole thing inside out, picked all the rotten foam out, reassembled minus that layer of foam, and poof! fixed. now if only i could make the damn thing stop wobbling.

it used to be an ironing board cover

101 in 1001: [43] chicken soup, infinite ways

{02 March 2013}

ben was working out of town for the past two weeks. cooking for one just isn’t that exciting, but i didn’t want to fall into an infinite takeout trap. and the cold weather was calling for soup. so i went to Whole Foods and bought a whole roasting chicken and some vegetables. i had made some leftover chicken bones into stock recently, and had been reading about the difference between stock and broth. a lot of internet sources will tell you that they’re the same or interchangeable, and that most commercially available stocks really are more like broths, but going back to the old standard – Joy of Cooking* – was helpful on this one. the actual difference is that stock is made by boiling the bones until the collagen breaks down, which gives the full-bodied mouth feel of a stock. a broth is made primarily from the meat, and is cooked for less time, so that the end product is thinner — still flavorful, but thinner. contrary to the internet’s popular opinion, Joy of Cooking recommended broths for clear soups, and stocks for fuller-bodied applications (for cooking grains, in cream-based sauces and gravy). this made sense because i’ve made chicken soup once or twice before from homemade stock, and my experience was that it always tasted sort of greasy in an unpleasant way. armed with this knowledge, i left last weekend’s stock in the freezer for future risotto adventures, and set about making broth.

i used Smitten Kitchen’s Chicken Noodle Soup as an initial guide, but her obvious lack of enthusiasm for making soup encouraged me to strike out on my own quickly. Joy of Cooking* provided the background knowledge on broth and stock, and this was a useful source on shredded chicken.

Chicken soup, deconstructed.

i unwrapped the chicken and set it on the cutting board before me. i’ve roasted whole chickens before, but that basically just requires unwrapping, seasoning and popping it in the oven. i’d never cut up a whole chicken before. at the store i had hesitated — buying a package of chicken parts would be so much easier — but a whole organic chicken cost $2.99 per lb, and a package of chicken parts cost $6.99 per lb. economy won out. i realized i had no idea how to cut up a chicken, and the task made me a bit queasy. i reminded myself that if i am going to eat meat then i’d bloody well better be willing to reconcile the actual animal with the finished food product. i dove in, and it was almost immediately apparent i had no idea what i was doing. thankfully, this video saved the day.

chicken broth:
– a whole roasting chicken (preferably organic)
– 2 Tbs butter or olive oil
– 1 carrot, roughly chopped
– 1 celery stalk, roughly chopped
– 1/2 yellow or white onion, roughly chopped
– 2 bay leaves
– handful of parsley
– teaspoon of black peppercorns
– water to fill the pot over the rest of the ingredients – tap is fine if yours tastes fairly neutral, spring water if yours has a strong taste

cut the chicken into parts. remove and discard the skin. discard the back (or reserve for making stock) and put the remaining pieces into a large cast iron skillet with the butter or oil. cook over medium high heat, flipping once until both sides are browned. don’t worry about getting it cooked through at this point. transfer to the largest stock pot you have with the remaining ingredients.

simmer for 25 minutes. when the chicken breasts reach 180 degrees (use a meat thermometer), remove the breasts. shred the meat and move to the fridge to chill. (i suppose that if you have a preference for dark meat you could harvest the dark meat and leave the breasts to flavor the broth instead).

continue to simmer the rest of the chicken and veggies. most broth-making instructions tell you to periodically skim the yuck that rises to the surface. i didn’t see a lot of yuck myself, so…just go with your gut on this one. after 2 hours, taste the broth and see if it has enough flavor. remember that you haven’t salted it at this point and we are accustomed to commercial broths being very salty, so if it tastes bland try adding a tiny pinch of salt to the spoonful you’re tasting. resist the temptation to simmer this pot for hours and hours like you would if you were making stock. the key is to get all the flavor of the meat and veggies, but NOT to break down the collagen in the bones.

when you’re happy with the flavor (mild is okay), discard all the solids and strain the broth. put it in the fridge to chill overnight and in the morning, remove it carefully without sloshing it too much. skim off any fat that has solidified and risen to the top. freeze for later use, or continue with the rest of the recipe below.

now here’s the fun part: this soup is infinitely customizable to individual tastes and preferences. the key to good fresh soup is to simmer the starch and the veggies in when you’re ready to eat, so that they don’t have hours or days to sit around getting mushy. the same night i made the broth, i washed and chopped a bunch of vegetables, stored them in tupperware, and then for the next four days when i came home from work i just had to put some broth into a small pot, heat it, add noodles, veggies and shredded chicken. vary the order and cooking time according to the ingredients’ cooking needs — some of the more delicate items can go in just before serving, if they don’t really need to cook (herbs, citrus, spinach), others that aren’t in danger of overcooking and can help flavor the broth and pasta (garlic, ginger, onions) can go in when you first start heating the broth. things like carrots and celery need about 3-4 minutes, unless you like them really mushy, in which case, boil away. or, in that case, just open a can of campbells and be done with it.

a couple of my favorite variations (in general, add the ingredients in the order listed):

classic chicken noodle:
– 2.5 cups broth
– shredded chicken meat
– whole wheat spiral pasta (wild rice or barley might work nicely here too)
– leeks
– carrots
– celery
– parsley

asian chicken soup:
– 2.5 cups broth
– finely chopped jalapeno
– grated ginger
– clove of garlic, pressed
– soba noodles
– mushrooms
– baby bok choy
– squeeze of lime

grown-up ramen:
– 2.5 cups broth
– clove of garlic, pressed
– carrots
– mushrooms
– ramen noodles
– mustard greens

*if you did not salt the broth while making it, then you’ll definitely need to salt the soup as you prepare it. start with 2-3 pinches of Maldon sea salt flakes (if you’re feeling fancy, or a shake or two of plain old table salt probably works too), taste and adjust.

this project cost approximately $30 in groceries (for organic everything; it could be done cheaper with conventional produce and poultry) and it made 8 dinner-sized bowls of soup (with plenty of vegetables left over for a few nights of stir-fry). the broth and chicken only keep for four days in the fridge, so i froze half of the broth and meat, and then defrosted them for four more meals the following week.

Chicken soup

* Joy of Cooking is like the Great Aunt Bertha of cookbooks. It has sturdy, unfashionable walking shoes, old fashioned ideas about gender roles and conservative politics. It’s easy to write her off as no longer relevant. But if you sit down over a cup of coffee you’ll discover that there are generations of wisdom to be found.

tassajara

{01 August 2010}

last weekend was an experiment in being off the grid; for my birthday my brother and sister-in-law treated me to a weekend at Tassajara, the san francisco zen center’s monastery in the ventana wilderness. most of the year Tassajara is a closed and working monastery, but they open up to guest season for a few months each summer. as a mountain retreat, they got it right. getting there isn’t easy: the road in to the center of the remote valley is the bumpiest, steepest, toughest 14 miles of dirt road i’ve ever encountered (even having grown up driving around the backwoods of idaho), so it’s not a trip to undertake lightly, and there’s no quick trips back to town once you’re there. the sense of isolation is complete. they have the required amenities (running water, delicious vegetarian food), but not the unnecessary ones (electricity, internet/phone service). this works because: kerosene lanterns are charming, but outhouse stink is not.

staying at Tassajara is the opposite of being on a cruise ship. rather than providing a day full of activities, Tassajara provides a beautiful, open space, in which guests can just slow down for a little while. there isn’t much to do besides hike, read, nap, and bathe in the beautiful bathhouses (fed by natural hotsprings). zen practice is available for those who want to participate, and though i am fascinated by it (my dojo in chicago also served as a zen temple and many of the aikidoka i trained with were also zen students), it also terrifies me. seriously, the thought of sitting sesshin for five days makes me feel panicky. i can’t even get up the nerve to attend a half-hour zazen. it’s an understatement to say that i have trouble with being still. i’m quite aware that this is something i need to come to terms with. just…i’ll get there when i’m ready. until then i creep around the edges, with things like aikido and yoga and hanging around monasteries as a guest.

in spite of the fact that i’m normally an action-packed-adventure vacationer, there really is something profound about a vacation in which there’s nothing to do. i noticed that i walk differently when i’m not in a hurry. (and i’m pretty much always in a hurry). my posture changes, i relax muscles that are normally tensed, my whole gait & posture change. and this transformation was almost immediate. within minutes of arriving, i found my whole body felt different. while hiking i’d catch myself trying to push further, faster – get some cardio exercise, or see what was around the next bend. and then i’d remind myself to try being deliberate in my actions, just to see what it’s like. there’s nothing i have to accomplish with this hike, no time i’m due back. to notice where i walk, what i see, what the path feels like under my feet. i’d grasp that focus for a few moments, then it would slip away again. like all unfamiliar habits, it only comes through practice. a practice i’m not quite ready to undertake, but i know it’s out there. but for the short duration of the vacation, i found that going off the grid was easier than it seemed. its like quitting a job you’ve worked very hard at. quitting seems like it’ll be agonizing, but once you actually pack up your things and leave, it’s easier to detach than you thought it was going to be (is there an echo of a zen lesson in here? yeah yeah, shut up little bird on my shoulder.)

also, i knocked off a 101 in 1001 list item, by the way — skinny dipping in the creek.

101 in 1001: [no. 09] learn to bake bread

{11 January 2010}


and then there was bread!


i made a few misguided attempts at bread a few years ago, but the result was always something dense and, while not actually inedible, not really appetizing either. what troubles me is that i’m not entirely sure what i did differently on this time around, other than following the directions very carefully. baking is science, people. respect the science.

the recipe, courtesy of kidchamp, is here. it really is pretty fool proof. now i’m excited about trying out this recipe that a friend sent me. it’s basically a bucket of dough that lives in your fridge and you can pull out a chunk, let it rise for an hour, bake it, and instant fresh bread. awesome.

101 in 1001: [no. 03] run a four-hour marathon

{13 October 2009}

October 11, 2009 — Chicago Marathon 2009: 3:59’01”

Okay, so I started running three and a half years ago. In May of 2006 I decided I’d train for a half marathon. the goal was just to complete it. I started out with a run-one-min-walk-one-min plan for 30 minutes at a time, three times a week. It took me 6 weeks to get up to being able to run 3 miles in a half hour.

Since then I’m four running seasons, 2600 miles, eight pairs of shoes, seven half marathons and three full marathons down the road. And I know that dry wit and self-deprecating humor is basically all that keeps this blog afloat, but i’m going to get all sincere for a minute and say that I’m really proud of that. I just am, okay? I fully recognize, and embrace, the fact that i’m a decidedly middle-of-the-pack, recreational runner. i’m never going to be anything besides that. But these miles, these races were not easy for me. The things these miles lead me to, and away from, in my life, were not easy. But I am so blessed, so fortunate, so lucky (is there a word there that’s both secular in connotation and yet as sincere as “blessed”? i can’t find it) that i found running, or running found me, when it did. It’s taught me how to break insurmountable tasks into tiny, achievable blocks. If what’s up ahead is too scary, then keep your head down, look at your feet, watch them carry you up the next block, around the corner, through the next mile, the next workout. since i’ve started my new job i’ve needed that technique in my non-running life a lot lately.

that’s life lesson number one. the second is probably even more valuable. it’s that, regardless of how you prep and organize and prepare for a big event like a marathon, the most important preparation you can do is to prepare yourself to respond to whatever unpredictable thing comes your way on race day. Being able to respond to what life throws at you with strength, grace and flexibility is, I think, one of the keys to happiness. And it’s really really not easy.

But anyway, the the sub-4 hour marathon has been a goal for a long long time. I wasn’t sure I had it in me this year, but conditions came together just right and there it was in front of me. And I reached out and grabbed it (just barely, with 59 seconds to spare, and not an ounce of energy left). So, the question is, what’s next? I have a few ideas.

1) The North Face Challenge 50k. yeah, it’s a 31 mile race. But it’s completely different from a marathon road race. A marathon like Chicago is all about finishing as quickly as you can. This trail race will be about the adventure, not the finish line. The course is on the single-track and fire roads in the hills of the Marin Headlands. Which, conveniently, happens to be my greater backyard. Participants have 10 hours to finish the course; there’s time to stop, to stretch, to refuel, admire the view, and then run some more. after pushing myself to run as fast as i can, i’m looking forward to doing some serious distance runs that are about completing the distance, not pushing for time.

2) Use marathons as a way to see new and foreign places. A couple of races I have my eye on: Stolkholm (annually in May), Dublin (October), Tokyo (Feburary), and Big Sur (April). But that’ll take time. I can only really fit one marathon into my life per year, it seems like. I gotta make sure it keeps being a hobby, not a burden.

3) Start training to be a marathon coach or mentor. I love dorking out on running physiology, and I seem to be pretty good at encouraging/cheerleading people through their goals. It’s a weird, satisfying moment when you find something that you are really suited for, you know? When you realize there’s something that you’re both good at and enjoy doing. That’s how I felt about “coaching”* a couple of my friends through their first marathon last year. Talking someone through a moment of crisis in the middle of their 20-miler, and seeing them find that inner strength, and finish, and go on to marathon and beyond, is a pretty great thing. (God, this post is all just inspiration pollyannay, isn’t it? Cue Chariots of Fire and release the slow-motion runners on the beach.)

But by coincidence, while i was on the plane home from chicago, and typing this blog post, i got into conversation with the guy sitting next to me. it turns out that, not only had he just finished running the chicago marathon, but that he’s a mentor with Team in Training (the training program/charity fundraiser that got me through my first marathon in 2007). he told me all about the mentoring program, how I could get involved. again…you know when it seems like opportunity is knocking?

* by coaching i mean, it was my 2nd marathon and their first. I’m no expert. I was more like the group cheerleader. But it was important. It got us all to the finish line (and the starting line) under some very tough race conditions.

101 in 1001: [no. 14] learn one new car repair

{25 September 2009}

so i’ve never changed my own tire before (or anyone’s tire, for that matter). when i was about 17 i remember asking my dad about changing a tire, and he told me i shouldn’t bother learning, because if the lug nuts had been put on by machine, i’d never be strong enough to get them off. okay, case closed. i used that as an excuse for not knowing how to change a tire for the next 14 years. silly, right? (also lucky and surprising that i’ve never been stranded on the side of the road and forced to figure it out). and totally unlike me, to take the “i’m a just a wimpy girl so i wouldn’t be able to do that anyway” anti-empowerment route anyway. as it turns out, that’s silly. Ben walked me through it (showing off for a boy, how could i refuse to do jump in and tackle the project?), and changing a tire was surprisingly easy. and who knew that the car comes with a spare, jack, tire iron, and everything you need, all tucked away in secret compartments within the trunk? awesome. 15 minutes, some greasy hands, and we were on our way.

no. 14: learn how to do one new car maintenance task

101 in 1001: [no. 69] bake a cake from scratch

{12 April 2009}

so, the task was just to bake a cake from scratch. a four-layer german chocolate cake was perhaps overkill for my first attempt, but, well, i had to run with the inspiration i had at hand. i’m having a dinner party tomorrow night, and it was a perfect excuse to make a cake that (according to the recipe) feeds 16. and i pretty much love dark chocolate and coconut so much that i want to marry it.

the verdict about how it tastes will be out tomorrow. right now i’m just pleased with myself that the icing all went on smoothly – i have memories of trying to ice cakes as a kid and it always turned into a big botched up mess of icing and cake crumbs. also, the baking of the cake layers made my apartment smell awesome.

the useful lesson to be learned here is that it’s not enough to read the recipe for the ingredients – it’s also necessary to read through and make sure i have all the required tools, too*. so, some improvisation was required, but it all worked out in the end. necessary substitutions included:

pastry brush = damp paper towel
flour sifter = a narrow-mesh pasta strainer, shaken gently
icing decorator tips and bag = ziplock baggie with one corner sliced off
parchment paper = butter and flour the pan the way i learned to bake from my mother
cake lid for overnight refrigeration = carefully tented tinfoil

start to finish (including cleaning up) took…five and a half hours. i may or may not have gotten chocolate in my hair, i’m not telling.

*not dissimilar to the time that i got all the way through making my own pie crust for, what turned out to be, the first time, only to discover that i didn’t own a pie plate. emergency run to target ensued.

the dirty dozen, american dream edition: food, sports and the internet

{20 February 2008}

okay, i’m taking a page out of lau’s blog and attempting the dirty dozen to make up for my distinct lack of blogging:

1. be mine. i have to say that i’ve never been on the kate spade bandwagon. i’m not on the purses-that-cost-more-than-their-raw-materials bandwagon, really. but, luxury handbag issues aside*, my attention was drawn to the kate spade website on valentine’s day which has a darn cute collection of e-cards one can send to their valentine. what the connection is between handbags and e-valentines? i couldn’t say. but they are cute.

2. things you shouldn’t buy on the internet: Hairsoreal. i swear that this was one of those sidebar ads on facebook the other day. i couldn’t have made this product up if i’d tried. it’s a hair-replacement product that, as near as i can tell, is a can of little tiny hair-shaped fibers, that you shake over your head like you were seasoning your bald patch with hair-shaped pepper. the fibers magically stick to one another and poof! there goes the bald spot. did anyone else go to the children’s science museum when you were a kid and get to play with the magnetic iron filings? i imagine it’s sort of like that. the thing i don’t get, tho, is why men worry so much about baldness. seriously. everyone’s bald! a receding hairline is like the last thing i’d notice on a guy, and it sure wouldn’t be the deciding factor as to whether i’d go out with him or think he’s attractive. balding heads areabout as common as having brown hair, or freckles. weird, the things we worry about.

3. things you maybe should buy on the internet: the under-the-sink urban-enviro-friendly compost system. this seems strange to me, because it doesn’t use enzymes and worms to heat up and chew thru the garbage, but somehow magically heats (via electricity) the garbage into dirt. that sort of sounds…too easy. but there’s a weird part of me that really really wants to try composting, but i also don’t want to make my roommate and neighbors hate me.

4. things you should do on the internet: play scrabulous with me before Big Bad Hasbro shuts them down.

5. winter. the ugliest winter in recent memory plods along in chicago. there has been some sort of snow on the ground continuously since christmas. the temp keeps dipping down into the single digits, which sends the windchill plummeting to 20 or 30 below. the locks on my car doors freeze. i think of myself as a very good, practical winter driver, and yet my car has gotten stuck on patches of ice three times in the past week. it’s also making marathon training (see item 8) particularly challenging. also, if the speed at which i am misplacing/losing mittens and hats continues to accelerate the way it has steadily since christmas, i’m going to die of frostbite long before spring arrives.

6. ultimate snow frisbee is the best sport ever. well, actually, i’d trade it for regular ultimate on a sunny summer day if i had a choice, but it has been a way to make winter bearable, at least for a couple of hours on saturday mornings. no one can run, cut, or handle the frisbee worth a damn, but dive rolls are awesome.

7. indoor ultimate frisbee. this is a historic moment, this new, ultimate-frisbee-playing self, because it’s really the first time i’ve enjoyed and excelled at playing any team sport. anyway, after six months of a pickup game, i got brave and signed up for an indoor winter league. i got totally skooled on my first day, but by the end of the season my playing has improved considerably.

8. stockholm marathon. continuing with the sports-themed news items, the stockholm marathon is breathing down my neck. picking a marathon is sort of like doing airport math. when i schedule a flight, i think to myself, “hmm, mid morning sound good.” and then i book a 10am flight, neglecting, as always, to do the airport math: to get awake, out the door, take public transit to the airport, and check in luggage requires that i am awake a minimum of 4 hours before the flight departs, which means that a reasonable-sounding 10am flight turns into a 6am wake up call. so, marathon math is sort of the same thing. may 31 sounds like a nice time of year to run a marathon, right? except that one neglects to count backwards by 4 or 5 months and realize that means runs in the double digits before the end of february. it’s really really hard to run more than an hour on a treadmill without going kookoo with boredom.

9. marathon pied piper: i’m actually feeling like something of a marathon pied piper. without really meaning to, i find myself suddenly in the position of leading a small group from my dojo in training for this fall’s chicago marathon. i’m the only one who has run a marathon before (and i’ve only done one, mind you), but somehow this makes me the expert. yikes. actually, tho, it’s weird but good. i mean, leading and organizing people and projects is what i do for a living, but i’ve really only ever applied those skills to making theatre happen before. but leading people on non-work-related pursuits (that they are equally if not more passionate about): this…sort of suits me. huh.

10. enough with the sports, let’s talk about food: C sent me the link to this food blog called 101 cookbooks, and it is now my new favorite place for recipes. mostly if not entirely veggie. gets a little out there with the hippy ingredients (where DOES one buy agave nectar?), but usually there are substitutions indicated for those of us still slumming it at the Jewel from time to time.

11. animal, miracle, vegetable: have been reading kingsolver’s book about her family’s year of farming and eating locally and…it has definitely gotten under my skin a bit when it comes to produce shopping. i look longingly at the four-dollar half pint of raspberries and think, those won’t taste like anything, they’ve been shipped halfway around the world. and that’s absurd to spend such money for something that won’t even taste good anyway. i reach for the winter fruits: apples, grapefruit, and think that summer raspberries will taste that much better for the waiting. still, its not like i’ve seen a grapefruit tree hanging around outside in chicago, either. how does one reconcile the luxury of a varied diet with the economic, political, environmental, social arguments for eating locally-produced food? i mean, what would canadians living far north in the tundra do to eat locally? live off reindeer meat for 6sixmonths at a time and risk scurvy? no, they thank their lucky stars that they can truck in grapefruit from florida, of course. it’s tricky, and thanks to this book and others, i’m more aware of the issue, but no more resolved. for about five months of the year, my CSA provides nearly all the fruits and vegetables i need, and they *are* local and organic. it’s just the other half of the year that i’m not sure what to do. what i do know is, the hyde park produce market had ripe avocados on sale for $.50 each today. and i bought one and i felt guilty about it and still it tasted SOOOOO good on my sandwich. thank you, honduras, for sending me your avocados.

12. 101 in 1001: go completely veggie for a month: check, done. i conducted this experiment for the month of january. the play-by-play is linked, but the upshot is: i can get along just fine without meat in terms of what i crave to eat. leaning how to be veggie in a non-veggie world will take a little more practice (particularly with regard to when other people cook for me), but it’s not an insurmountable challenge. the insurmountable challenge is that i think my body needs more protein than i’m capable of giving it from vegetable sources when i’m running/training heavily. while there are a lot of good reasons for being veggie that i can get behind, the primary reason that motivates me is that i think the disconnect between animals and food in our modern world is unnatural and it leads to unhealthful foods, unsound environmental practices, and unspeakable animal cruelty. (i mean, did you read the about last week’s beef recall? the nation’s school cafeterias are feeding our kids beef from cows that were too sick to even stand up. it’s horrific.) so all this brings me to the conclusion that the right path for me, i think, is to continue to be veggie when eating out, and on the occasion that i’m feeling really short on protein, i can cook a piece of chicken or turkey at home. then as a consumer i can at least make some decisions about the source of the meat, buying organic, buying locally. the same goes for eggs and dairy, too, when it comes to buying but…i don’t think i have the willpower to be vegan everywhere that i can’t be assured of the organic status of the ingredients.

13 [baker’s dozen]. the american dream: oh internets: what does the phrase “american dream” mean to you? i ask because, until this week, i’d never really thought much about it, aside from a vaguely negative connotation and association with the idea of manifest destiny. anyway, Next Theatre is producing a show called the American Dream Songbook, and as part of the lobby display, C asked the artistic associates and friends of the theatre to send in photos that represented our notion of the american dream. i couldn’t really figure out where to start for a while. i dug through old photos, and came across a series of self-portraits that A and i took the day we left for chicago. we posed in front of the Uhaul truck, one hand shading our faces, head tipped up, starting into the future like brave explorers. they were goofy photos, but i remember insisting that we take them, because we were setting off on this grand adventure, this next step in our lives, and i wanted to be able to look back and remember how we felt on that day. so i dug up that picture and sent it in with the following caption: “aug, 2003: looking into our bright shiny future the day we left idaho to move to chicago. a few years later, he broke my heart. but i still live in chicago.” some of my friends who saw it thought the caption was tragic, others thought it was hilariously funny. i realized later it was kind of both. it was weird to put up a photo of myself and A, especially in a public theatre lobby where friends of his might very well see it. but, i decided, that *was* my iconic american dream photo. the point (and this is the point of the show at Next as well) is that the american dream is elusive. it always falls short. life doesn’t turn out the way we think it will, but what we find instead sometime surprises us, and it is the hope that sustains us and gets us to surprising endings.

fast forward five years from that day in front of the Uhaul, and now we’re all grown up: A is a parent and a successful actor, he’s teaching classes at the school where, five years ago, we came to chicago so he could study. as far as theatre goes, i’m living the dream: i’m working full time in my field, no day job. i don’t have money to burn, but i can’t complain; i can pay my rent, i never worry about scraping by till the next paycheck or the next gig. i have a lovely apartment, great friends, a good life. but A and i, as a unit, didn’t survive. we found all those things we came to chicago to find, but in the pursuit, we lost the only thing that we brought with us to chicago: the us. and to be honest, i don’t know that we could have gotten to the places we are now together.

so, we end with an essay assignment, comment box: what does the phrase “american dream” evoke in you? go!

*did i blog about the time that my darling cat actually threw up into my purse? when i’m not home for too many hours he sleeps or does whatever it is that cats do all day but neglects to eat, so i get home and he’s starving and wolfs his food down and then sometimes yarfs it right back up. so one night he gulped some food, then sat down on his customary position of the footstool next to my desk. i had dropped my purse under the desk against the footstool. i left the room, and while i was gone, without even getting off the stool, the cat leaned over the side and PUKED INTO MY PURSE. what is it, a kitty barf bag? anyway, suffice to say that running the $25 canvas bag through a hot washing machine was no big deal. i laughed at the grossness of it all, and zeke looked mildly embarrassed. had i been carrying a $500 kate spade leather handbag, the cat-barf episode would have been a lot less funny.