Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

We are broccoli eaters around here, so I was intrigued by this recipe when I saw it. You cut up a couple heads of broccoli into bite-sized pieces, then toss them with salt and red wine vinegar. While the broccoli marinates, you heat olive oil with garlic and cumin seed, stir in sesame oil and a pinch of red pepper flakes and pour the whole thing over the broccoli and vinegar and let it sit for an hour to so at room temperature. The hot oil softens the florets just enough that they aren’t raw crunchy, and the vinegar adds a welcome acidity, cutting the richness of the oil. Although the broccoli will continue to soften as it sits, it will remain perfectly toothsome for several days in the refrigerator.

This is a nice change from my usual roasting or steaming method. I did have to add about twice as much vinegar as the recipe called for as there wasn’t enough to coat my broccoli, but I found that I liked having a stronger vinegar flavor. I’ve made this twice, and found that the smaller I cut the broccoli, the softer it gets. The second time I made this, I cut down a bit on the amount of cumin called for and still thought there was too much. Don’t leave out the red pepper flakes. They add just a touch of heat that contrasts nicely with the cold broccoli.

Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with mac and cheese. I love it because it is cheesy pasta. I hate it because I usually eat too much of it. Unfortunately, this recipe isn’t going to help me resolve my dilemma. This was so very, very good and so very, very easy to make. It is “drier” than most mac and cheeses I’ve made, and the only cheese in it is about a half of a cup of Parmesan. Yet, the combination of bacon, parmesan, peas and lemon juice is delightful.

This dish comes together fast. In fact, I had to take the sauce off the heat because the pasta wasn’t quite done. You start out by sauteing a couple of chopped up slices of bacon until they are crispy. Next you stir in frozen peas and cook for a minute to defrost them. Then you add a bit of creme fraiche or heavy cream (I went with the heavy cream), lemon juice and the cooked pasta. After stirring everything together until the pasta is coated, you add the Parmesan and salt and pepper. More stirring until the cheese is melted, and then lots of eating.

Seems almost too easy to be good, but it was. I did have to add more heavy cream because my pasta seemed too dry, and when I reheated it the next day, I added a bit more. We liked the dish so much, that I made it again, a few days later, and added some leftover flank steak instead of the bacon (and left out the peas because Bryan decided that peas didn’t belong in mac and cheese).

This will definitely become my go-to macaroni and cheese recipe. Forget the blue box.

Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

This was one of the first dishes I marked out of this book. Sometimes you want rice to take a more starring role in your meal, and I thought this recipe might do that. I’ve had coconut rice before, and I’ve always really liked it, especially the versions I’ve had in the Caribbean (although their “peas” usually mean our beans).

Unfortunately, I had problems with this recipe, and those problems were probably just as much my fault as the recipe’s fault, although I do wish Clark had been a little more explicit in some places. I ended up with gummy, clumpy rice that didn’t taste coconutty at all.

This is a pretty straightforward recipe. You cook brown rice in coconut milk and water until tender. During the last few minutes of cooking, you stir in frozen peas. Easy, no? Well, here’s where I ran into problems.

1. Clark calls for brown rice. She doesn’t specify long grain, short grain or medium grain. I went with my favorite short grain brown rice. She also tells you to rinse the rice first, which I forgot to do. That one is my fault and probably contributed to the gumminess.

2. Clark calls for coconut milk, but doesn’t specify regular or lite. I went with lite. I don’t know if that made a difference or not. Clark says to pour the coconut milk into a measuring glass and then add enough water to make two cups. I ended up adding less than 1/4 of a cup of water to equal two cups, and my liquid was quite thick and “saucy.” I ended up adding another 1/4 cup of water because my rice was starting to stick in the pan, but it was still somewhat chewy. I think this was the major culprit in my gumminess; perhaps the type of rice I used needed more than the two cups of liquid. Maybe I should have used less coconut milk and more water.

3. As for the lack of coconut flavor, well, I don’t know. Maybe I should try adding some dried coconut to the rice. Maybe using a blander white rice will let the coconut flavor come through better.

Key Lime Pears from Michael Recchiuti’s cookbook Chocolate Obsession. I’ve been making these for Christmas for the past few years, and it’s my go-to recipe when I have an excess of pears. My friend Missy gifted me with a box (a BIG box) of the fruit last week, and I’ve been struggling to use them all before they go bad. I’ve lost count of how many batches of these key lime pears I’ve made, but we keep eating them faster than I can make them. You take green, very firm pears and slice them thinly, then soak the pear slices in a key lime sugar syrup. The pear slices are then baked (I use a rack set over a cookie sheet, but Recchiuti just lays them on a silpat-covered cookie sheet) until crisp. Recchiuti dips them in chocolate, but I prefer them plain. I think the chocolate overwhelms the pear/key lime flavor.

Pear Bread from Bake or Break. When the pears got too ripe for key lime pears, I decided to give pear bread a try. This is like zucchini bread, except with pears. There are lots of pear bread recipes floating around, and the only reason I picked this one was because I had all the ingredients on hand. I made a few changes. First I substituted brown sugar for half of the sugar, and I added about 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground nutmeg. Finally, I left out the nuts because I didn’t have any. I ended up with two loaves of fragrant, sweet, dense quick bread. I didn’t really taste pears, unfortunately. I’m going to keep playing with this recipe, especially as my pears continue to ripen.

Corn with Tons of Herbs from Dana Treat. One night I was looking for a side dish to serve with dinner, and I remembered reading about this dish. Corn sauteed with butter, shallots and a ton of herbs, basil and cilantro in my case. Use the best corn you can and fresh herbs only, please. I liked the basil here, but not the cilantro. Thyme would be lovely as would dill.

Cherry Tomato Orzo Salad from Simply Recipes. We’ve been living off of this salad for the past few months, and every time I make it, I make it a little bit different. I’ve moved away from orzo and now use macaroni pasta; its a little more substantial. I also like this with parmesan instead of feta, and I don’t limit myself to just cucumbers and green onions. Any veggies I have languishing in the fridge tend to make their way into this salad. I especially like bell peppers, frozen peas and avocados.

Currently cooking out of Slow Cooker Revolution by America’s Test Kitchen

I’ve been looking for a good recipe for barbecued beans (sometimes called cowboy beans) for many years. In my head, my perfect dish has these characteristics:

• Beans that are tender, but not so tender they fall apart at the first touch. I like my beans to have substance, you know?

• Intermingled with those beans should be little bits of meat and onions.

• The liquid should be deeply flavored, spicy with a little sweetness. The liquid should be the consistency of a thin stew, thick enough to coat the beans without overshadowing them.

Unfortunately, this bean dish fell short of my ideal. It was okay, but I know there are better recipes out there.

The dish starts off by microwaving garlic and a chopped onion until the onion is softened. That gets put into the slow cooker along with dried (not soaked!) navy beans, water, coffee, barbecue sauce, brown sugar and a couple of slices of raw bacon. This mixture cooks, on low, for 9 to 11 hours or until the beans are tender. At the end, the bacon is fished out and a few more tablespoons of barbecue sauce and mustard are stirred in. The mixture is left to sit for about 10 minutes so it can thicken a bit.

On a scale of one to ten, this recipe gets an eight or nine for ease of preparation. For taste, I’d give it about a six. The beans were perfectly cooked, but the flavor was lacking something, I just can’t put my finger on what it needed. Molasses? More spice? More depth of flavor? Probably all of those things. Another thing that I really wanted was bits of meat. Because you don’t precook the bacon, the fat gets all limp and squishy as it gives up its flavor (hence the reason you fish it out at the end), but I missed that additional texture. My search for perfect barbecued beans goes on.

This is the last recipe out of this book. Look for a wrap-up post next week.

I have to be honest; I’m finding this cookbook to be pretty uninspiring. I’m a little ashamed to admit that, given how determined I was to make some fundamental changes to my diet. It’s beginning to be a struggle to find a recipe that I want to try. I’ve made several recipes that, for various reasons, haven’t made it to the blog, so I thought I’d do a quick wrap-up.

Braised Cabbage and Sauerkraut with Sausages—I don’t like sauerkraut. Bryan does, and in the headnotes to this recipe, Bittman says that even people who don’t like sauerkraut will like this dish. What the heck, I decided to give it a try.

I still don’t like sauerkraut, and I didn’t like this dish very much. Smoked sausage, fresh cabbage, sauerkraut and onions are quickly braised in either stock or, if you are feeling adventurous, beer. The fresh cabbage mellows the sauerkraut, somewhat, and both go well with the sausage. I think my biggest mistake was to use a turkey kielbasa. If I made this dish again, I’d go for a real smoked sausage to give the braise some depth. I also added mustard seeds because I found the dish bland. We ended up picking out the sausage and throwing the rest away.

Loaded Cornpone—I’m still confused about this dish. I was expecting cornbread in a pancake form. What I got were heavy disks of wet cornmeal. Looking back over the recipe, I don’t know why I thought this was more like cornbread since there is no flour and no leavening in the recipe.

You start by softening cornmeal in boiling water. After sitting for about 10 minutes, you loosen the cornmeal with a bit of buttermilk, some olive oil and corn kernels (I used thawed, frozen corn). Then you pour the batter, pancake-style, onto a hot griddle or skillet, cooking each side for about 5 minutes.

These were so bland that I resorted to dipping the one I ate in maple syrup. The outside of the cornpone (I’m not sure it that is the right work to describe these, but I hesitate to call them pancakes since the only thing they had in common with pancakes was their shape), was kind of hard, a little crunchy, and the inside was pretty much wet cornmeal. Very disappointing.

Roasted cauliflower. A sauce made of sauteed onions, garlic, lemon juice and tahini (ground sesame seeds). It was quick and easy,  little bitter from the tahini and a lot sour from the lemon juice. I didn’t get pictures because we ate it too fast (and it looked pretty ugly).

Currently cooking out of The Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman

After the decadence of November and December (the candy! the desserts! the chocolate!), I was feeling the need to eat simply. I craved vegetables and fruit and grains; pretty much anything but flour and refined sugar, so I started looking around. I’m a regular reader of Mark Bittman’s column in the NYTimes, and I’ve got a couple of his other cookbooks. I find his cooking to be simple, but not boring. Bittman manages to coax maximum flavor from just a few ingredients. His recipes aren’t long and complicated, and most of them use ingredients that I tend to keep on hand.

Not long ago, Bittman wrote a book about changing his diet to a more plant-based, vegan diet (that book is called Food Matters) and using sustainable, whole foods (in other words, buy as local and seasonable as possible, eat mostly vegetarian and stay away from processed foods). I haven’t read that book, but I’d heard enough about it to know that that kind of diet appealed to me. The Food Matters Cookbook is a companion to Food Matters and includes something like 500 recipes. Vegetables, grains and beans are emphasized, with meat showing up in a supporting role, if it shows up at all. Almost all of the recipes include vegan/vegetarian options.

I find this type of cooking challenging. I like meat, and I find I need some sort of protein, especially at lunch and dinner, to keep me feeling full. And a vegan diet is simply too restrictive for me. I’m hoping to find a balance that feels right, grains and vegetables gradually displacing the meat.

So, The Food Matters Cookbook. I’ve started off with a quinoa salad that combines corn and black beans with a bit of shrimp. Unfortunately, when I was making my shopping list, I completely forgot the chipotles. I ended up using some fire-roasted green peppers I had in my pantry. This turned out to be a tasty mistake.

The dish starts of by softening onion and garlic in some oil, then adding in canned chipotle peppers and some of the adobo sauce they come in (or canned green peppers if you are a forgetful dork like me). Next comes the quinoa which is sauteed for a few minutes to toast the grains. Finally, canned black beans, frozen corn and vegetable stock (or water) is added to the pan. The whole thing simmers until the quinoa is done. I followed the variation to add some chopped, peeled shrimp to the pot when the quinoa was almost done. Right before serving, I squeezed half of a lemon over the pot and adjusted the seasonings.

I found this dish to be light but hearty, and I was really glad I added the shrimp. In my mind, this turned the dish from a side salad into a main dish. Chopping the shrimp into small pieces allowed me to make a little shrimp go a long way. And I didn’t miss the chipotles at all. The green chiles were milder than the chipotles would have been. You got flavor with just a bit of heat. Leftovers were fabulous, and we found that we actually preferred the dish cold.

I could tell you how easy this was, but I’ve already done that with most of the other recipes out of this book. I could tell you how tasty it is, but I’ve done that with just about every other dish out of this book as well.

Instead, I’ll just say, “Go make this. You won’t be disappointed.”

Chicken cutlets are covered in flour, dipped in egg and coated in a mixture of panko bread crumbs and grated parmesan cheese. Then you saute the chicken in a bit of olive oil, a couple of minutes per side.

While the chicken is cooking, cut up some tomatoes (the recipe called for cherry tomatoes, but I used small regular tomatoes and quartered them) and chop some fresh basil. Toss the tomatoes with the basil, olive oil and salt and pepper.

When the chicken is done, serve it with a pile of the tomato salad. So good.

Currently cooking out of Make It Fast, Cook It Slow by Stephanie O’Dea

These smelled yummy as they were cooking, but the final product was just okay. For me, these veggies were an excuse to consume massive amounts of sour cream.

It wasn’t pretty.

The dish is pretty simple. You cut a small green cabbage into wedges and toss it with chunked potatoes, garlic, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper. The lot gets slow cooked until the potatoes are tender, which in my slow cooker took about 6 hours on low.

The vinegar flavor didn’t really come through, so if you like vinegar, I’d up the amount. Also, I wouldn’t core the cabbage wedges as my wedges fell completely apart. I ended up fishing out bits of cabbage from the potatoes.

Here’s the link to the recipe on O’Dea’s blog: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/03/roasted-cabbage-and-potatoes-in.html