Ginger Veggie Udon Soup

It's a warm fall in SF, but a little veggie soup never went amiss. This one is gingery/miso-y, with yummy soft udon noodles. It would be great for fending off a cold, with all the vitamin-filled veggies, lime juice, miso, and ginger. Knock on wood...

I bought a pack of udon noodles from the Japanese supermarket, and couldn't even read the numbers to tell how long to cook it for...Google Translate to the rescue! Their app allows you to take a picture of text and it will translate!

In a nutshell: You simmer the broth for about 15 minutes, and while that's happening boil the noodles. Chop up a whole lot of veggies in small strips, then cook some with the broth and leave some raw to be softened by the residual heat of the broth. It takes less than half an hour and is immensely satisfying.

Get your bowl, plop in a bunch of noodles, add raw carrots, then pour the broth over the whole thing. The result is a fresh, bright, light soup. Finish it all off with a squeeze of lime, green onions, and some sort of spicy situation if you want (I used a serrano chile, seeds removed and chopped fine).

To make it heartier, you could always add a soft boiled egg or some tofu. I'll probably do this with my leftovers!

Ginger Veggie Udon Soup
Yield: 3 servings

Ingredients:

• Broth:
• 3 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled (use a spoon to scrape off the skin) and chopped into 1/4 inch thick rounds
• 1/2 large carrot, chopped into 1/2 inch rounds
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 5 cups vegetable stock or water
• 10 sprigs cilantro
• Other ingredients:
• 7 ounces udon (find in a Japanese supermarket/specialty store or online)--rice noodles or soba would also be good!
• 1/2 head of broccoli (mind was leftover from roasting a head)
• 1 red pepper, cut into thin strips
• 1/2 large carrot (the other half), cut into matchsticks
• 1 rounded teaspoon red miso paste
• 5-6 green onions, white and light green parts thinly sliced
• *Note: use whatever veggies you have leftover! Thug Kitchen suggests thinly sliced snowpeas in place of the red pepper, but I bought red peppers at Costco so....
• For serving:
• lime
• serrano chile or sriracha
• sesame oil (I didn't do this but it sounds good!)

Method: 

1. In a medium/large pot, heat over medium heat and then add the carrot and ginger chunks. Cook without oil, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes, until the carrots start to brown. Add garlic and stir again for about a minute to take the edge off. Add the stock or water and cilantro and bring to a simmer for 15 minutes.
2. While you're waiting, cook the noodles according to the package. Mine went for 5 minutes into boiling water and were rinsed after cooking. Set the noodles aside (it's okay if they don't stay hot).
3. Chop up the rest of the veggies! Once the stock is done with its 15 minutes, remove the ginger, garlic, cilantro, and carrot as best you can. 
4. Add anything that you want to cook a bit to the stock now: broccoli if it's raw, red peppers, etc. I left the carrots raw, but you do you. Cook for just long enough for the veggies to lose their rawness--a couple of minutes. 
5. Stir the miso paste and a ladle or two of stock together in an extra bowl, then dump back in the soup. and stir to combine.
6. Put some noodles and carrots in a bowl, and ladle the soup over everything. Serve with garnishes or an egg as desired! (if you let this sit for a minute the carrots and noodles can warm up a bit).
7. Enjoy!

Recipe slightly adapted from Thug Kitchen.

Soda Bread: Or, reconnecting with my roots

Have you seen that video of the two Irish rowers being interviewed at the Olympics? It's great. "...got to put on the podium pants as well, so that was quite nice" like yes you did! They keep it real on the urine sampling too.

Well, I'm part Irish, and though I've never been to Ireland the rowers have me feeling a bit proud of me heritage. So, I made Irish soda bread, and loved it. It's a round loaf of bread risen without yeast--just with baking soda and buttermilk...basically, a large biscuit with slightly less butter, but you can slather as much as you want on a slice.

The bread is best the first day, but toasted the second day with butter and jam it does quite nicely for elevensies. The recipe I used calls for whole wheat flour and wheat bran, which adds a nice nutty heartiness to the bread.

Brown Soda Bread
Yield: 1 loaf

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cups (6 7/8 ounces) whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) cake flour
• 1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened, plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted, for brushing the loaf
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and place a rack in the upper middle of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment, silpat, or greased foil.
2. In a large bowl, whisk all of the flours, wheat germ, brown sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and kosher salt. Rub in 2 tablespoons butter with your fingers until the mixture looks sandy/like crumbs.
3. Add buttermilk and mix together with a fork until the dough comes together in shaggy clumps. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead just a few turns, until it comes together into a lumpy but cohesive dough (Baking Illustrated says 12-14 turns).
4. Pat into a 6 inch diameter round and place onto prepared baking sheet. Score with a serrated knife in a cross, cutting about 3/4" into the loaf (pretty deep). 
5. Bake 45-55 minutes, or until the loaf is golden brown on the outside and a tester comes out clean from the middle. If you're using an instant-read thermometer, cook until the center is 190 degrees F. 
6. Brush with melted butter immediately after taking the loaf out from the oven. Let it cool on a wire rack until room temperature, 30-40 minutes, before slicing in.

Recipe from Baking Illustrated.

Wacky Cake

I had some friends over for dinner the other night.

And seriously, I see bloggers with mason jars and flowers and ribbons and none of it's particularly difficult, but the overall effect is impressive and takes a bit of effort.

My parties are, um, effortless (and that's putting it in a nice way). Like, "oh, could you open that drawer over there and grab some napkins?" after we'd already dug into take-out pizza. But...

My mom did clean up the piles of paper on our dining room table. That's a big deal.

And spinach deep dish pizza? Also a big deal. Especially because we've been at college where the pizza is good, but not Chicago-style deep dish. One slice of this and you're full.

To give you an idea of the size, this is a full-size dinner plate, and the pie is about an inch thick. 

It's from Piero's, our favorite place to get deep dish. Spinach is the best because you get some vegetables, but also it makes the cheese layer twice as thick so you feel like you get twice as much cheese.

For dessert, we dug into this cake. Have this recipe in your back pocket. Literally all of the ingredients come together in one pan, and then you throw in in the oven.

It is more moist than any box cake with pudding in the mix and full of rich chocolate flavor.
[Bonus: it's also dairy, nut, and egg-free!]

Nutella warmed up in the microwave makes a nice, lazy-man's frosting. Everyone had seconds. I kid you not, we are 4 college girls, and we ate the majority of the cake in one evening.

It's a keeper.

Wacky Cake
Yield: 1 8x8 inch cake

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups (7 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup (0.75 ounce) cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (7 ounces) granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar
• 6 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 cup water

Method:

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 375°F. Lightly grease an 8-inch square pan.
2. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt directly into the baking pan, then add the sugar. With your finger, poke 2 small holes and 1 large one in the dry ingredients. Into one of the small holes pour the vanilla, into the other one the vinegar, and into the larger one the oil.
3. Pour the water over all the ingredients and stir the ingredients together with a table fork, reaching into the corners, until you can’t see any more flour and the batter looks fairly well homogenized.
4. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the top is springy and a tester inserted in the center comes out dry. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack, then cut and serve it from the pan. 
5. A drizzle of warm nutella is an optional but amazing finishing touch. A drizzle of cherry jam would make a great quick black forest cake. Or simply a dusting of powdered sugar to keep it simple.

Recipe courtesy of Epicurious.

Note: Though I haven't tried it, you could probably replace the cocoa powder with flour for a vanilla version of the cake. (I wouldn't, but some people prefer vanilla...different folks, different strokes, man.)

Peanut Butter Banana Granola and Strawberry Sauce Greek Yogurt Parfait

Whew. Now that you've spent a full minute comprehending the title alone...

This is amazing.
Wholesome.
Delicious.
Fancy.
and fast to make.

Aren't those happy adjectives?

So, today's a double post. The strawberry sauce is great over ice cream, by itself on a spoon (or on greek yogurt...think homemade fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt!).

The granola is fantastic in trail mix, as a cold or hot cereal, soaked overnight for muesli, with honey on top of granola, and sneaked (snook?) in handfuls from the container.

I wonder if that's how snookie got her nickname...

The layers are so pretty! Granola, yogurt, sauce, granola, yogurt, sauce, granola. Pick your ratios!

Common scents: make things that have multiple uses and store for a while. and make large quantities of them.

We happened to have a 4 pound box of strawberries begging to be used in ways other than cut up on cereal. Actually, we had 3 or 4 such boxes for a graduation breakfast (HOORAH I'm a high school graduate now!), but we ate a bunch, froze some, and gave some away.

This recipe, though, can hardly be considered precise. It doesn't matter if you have pounds and pounds of strawberries or just a pint or two. You can make it sweeter or not-as-sweet (I went the not-as-sweet route...it's been an eat-weekend), and flavor it as you like!

Morning mise en place

The granola is another great use for copious amounts of fruit: in this case, bananas. I've found that banana chunks that have been frozen are
a) usually riper and sweeter since we only freeze the really speckly bananas at my house
and b) easier to mash into a smooth puree once you defrost them in the microwave.

Oh hey sudoku! Sorry, but you're not as interesting as my parfait. It has layers.

It's a classy breakfast. You don't have to do the layers on a rushed weekday morning. No-muss, no fuss.

Strawberry Sauce (for homemade fruit-on-the-bottom for yogurt)


Ingredients:

Strawberries
Sugar (or honey or other sweetener)
Pinch salt
Lemon juice/zest or vanilla extract (or other flavorings...orange would also be lovely!)

Method:

1. Hull and quarter strawberries. Place in an appropriately sized saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Add sweetener (a bit to start, you can add more later to taste), salt, and lemon juice/zest, if using.
3. Cook until the strawberries are your preferred doneness and the sauce is thickened, mashing with a potato masher or pureeing in a blender if you like (I mashed by hand). Check the seasonings as you go--have lots of spoons ready!--and add sweetener to taste. My sauce took 20-30 minutes.
4. Add vanilla (if using) at the end of cooking so it doesn't evaporate off.
5. Let cool and store in the fridge (a mason jar works great!)

Common Scents Baking "original" (yeah, I threw some stuff in a pot on the stove...)

Peanut Butter Banana Granola

Ingredients:

3 cups rolled oats, oat bran, and wheat germ (I used 2 1/2 cups oats and 1/4 cup of each of the other two)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
Scant 1/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed banana (2-3 medium)
1/4 cup peanut butter

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees and line a baking sheet (one that has edges will keep the granola contained better) with parchment paper
2. Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Microwave to melt the honey, oil, and peanut butter, add bananas and mash/mix to combine.
4. Stir together wet and dry until combined, then pour on to baking sheet and press down (this makes clumpy granola--yum!)
5. Bake for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 or 15 minutes so the edges don't burn more than the middle. Keep baking until your desired crunch level!

Note: The big chunks are great for snacking and trail mix, and the littler chunks are good for stirring into yogurt!

Adapted from my Pumpkin Granola recipe (my first ever post!), which was adapted from Serious Eats.

Pecan Bars

Easter is this weekend!

So I made Pecan Bars. Logical.

They have no coconut or hard boiled, white and yellow eggs. But they do have a heck of a lot of brown sugar, which makes just about everything good.

And pecans. ohhhh pecans. I just found out they don't taste like walnuts! They're totally buttery and sweet at the same time. Even raw! Raw walnuts just taste weird to me, but pecans are amazing.
New love.

The real reason I made these was that I thought I was going to make a box mix pecan bar. Then we opened the box and the filling was rock hard and stuck together.

Then of course, my dad and I super wanted pecan bars, so this recipe popped up on a quick google search and I didn't think much of it. It was such an impulsive dessert making. Not that I really had time to cook, but I just wanted to, you know? And they were fast enough it didn't make too big of a dent in my homework/letsberealsomeofthatisfacebookandfoodblog time.

The filling is sticky and sweet but easy to cut into pretty rectangles. The pecans are divine. It's in their blood. And the crust is like a sugar cookie, not shortbread. I like it better than some short crusts used in other custardy bars (lemon squares, I'm looking at you) because it holds its shape better and tastes good in a chewy kind of way.

Here's the recipe!

Pecan Bars


Ingredients:
1/2 cup soft butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup flour
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup  pecans

Method:

Cream butter and 1/2 cup light brown sugar. Work in 1 cup flour by hand until smooth (using your hands help, even though it gets sticky). Pat into 8“ or 9” greased pan with your knuckles. Bake at 350°F for 10-12 minutes, cool. Beat eggs, 1 cup brown sugar, vanilla, flour, baking powder, salt; stir in chopped nuts, spread evenly over baked crust. Bake 25 minutes or until brown and firm to touch (the middle might still jiggle a bit). Cool, cut into bars.

Recipe from TasteBook.

Sautéed Chicken with Cream Sauce

This is the sort of thing I imagine French kids eating in the school cafeteria for lunch. And it so surprised me!

This is comfort food, man. Throw in what you like! I did onions because I like them, you could make it without. It all came together in under 30 minutes, and made me feel somewhat successful as a cook...see, my dad's the kitchen master and usually makes dinner, so when my chicken came together like his dinners do, it was super exciting! Still couldn't manage to have everything hot at once, but at least I didn't burn the frozen green beans!

The meat was moist, the sauce seasoned right and tangy/spicy in a very tame kind of way from the mustard.

They may be kinda ugly, but cream sauces taste darn tootin' delicious.

Here's the recipe!

Sautéed Chicken with Cream Sauce


Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (6 ounces each)
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup dry white wine or chicken broth
½ cup half and half or heavy cream (don't use milk, the sauce will curdle)
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon dried tarragon

Method:

1. Heat large skillet over medium high heat. Salt and pepper the chicken on both sides. Add the olive oil to the skillet, swirl to coat, then add the chicken. Sauté until cooked through, 10 to 12 minutes, turning once. Transfer to a plate and tent with foil to rest.
2. Add the onion to the skillet, sauté until it just starts to turn translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Pour the wine/chicken broth into the hot skillet. Let reduce by half, scraping off the crusty bits on the bottom of the pan if you have any (it is full of flavor!). Whisk in the half and half or cream, mustard, and tarragon. Cook, whisking, until thickened, about 2 minutes.
3. Pour any accumulated chicken juices from the plate back into the sauce. Serve chicken with the sauce drizzled liberally over. 

Leftovers of this are awesome, too. 

From Great Food Fast.

Microwave chocolate cake

Treat yourself right.

BIG pile of whipped cream.
lots of chocolate.

Anyone remember that raffi song about broccoli and chocolate? I loved that song.

and....studying for finals.
Livin' the dream, let me tell you.

Recipe over at Serious Eats!
(I only nuked it for 2 1/2 minutes because our microwave is stronger (1500 watts).)

Revision: Since this recipe has egg, it's sort of rubbery. My new favorite chocolate mug in a cake recipe (no egg!) is...

Nora's Chocolate Cup-O-Cake

Into a large coffee mug put:

5 tbsp. all-purpose flour
2 rounded tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 rounded tbsp. sugar
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt

Mix these ingredients together and add

3 tbs. milk
1 tbs. oil
1/4 tsp. vanilla

You can add some chocolate chips or nuts now if you want… adding a small handful of chocolate chips and pushing them down into the middle of the batter makes a great molten chocolate cake.

Put it in the microwave on half power for 2 minutes ish. Check it at one though… it cooks really fast and you don’t want to overcook it or it goes dry… if the top is bouncy and a fork stuck in it comes out clean, its ready. It’s good with ready whip squirted all over the top.

P.S. This cake is crumbly, so it won't turn out of the mug onto a plate very well. Just eat it from the cup!

P.P.S. I can never finish one of these. They're HUGE.

Recipe from eons.

Massaged Kale Salad

Some things, you just eat whole. Like...who makes croutons and then puts jam on them instead of having a piece of toast?

Wait, actually, that sounds strangely delicious.

Right. Well,this is salad. One of those things where you chop everything up and eat a bit of each thing in each bite.

I really like that about salads...and soup, and stir-fry/pasta things with veggies etc mixed in. It drives my grandmother bonkers though.

She's visiting.

She hasn't had the kale yet. But I guess since salad's pretty conventionally a small chunk item, it would be okay?

Oh, also, common scents of the day is that cake pops and meatballs are surprisingly parallel food objects (SPFOs). Mashed up stuff that's (usually) whole--meat/cake--with a binder.

So, for a zen eating experience, start with falafel, then have meatballs, and seal the deal with a cake pop.

 

This is not something you measure ingredients for. Just go for it.

It's all about giving your kale some love. 

Trim out the woody stems, roll to cut multiple layers at once, and toss them in a bowl.

Sprinkle on a good 2 teaspoons of KOSHER salt and however much olive oil seems right

Ready? Get your hands messy. Massage the kale with the olive oil and salt. It turns from a lighter, opaque green into this deep, vibrant, green.

If I were to describe the color, I'd say it's a liquid green. I promise, the salad is not soppy, though.

Squeeze on half a lemon (take out those seeds!) and crank on some pepper.

Toss again! It keeps in the fridge really well too!

We liked it with apricots or raisins and sunflower seeds, but pine nuts, almonds, cashews, or cranberries would all be great!

OH man.

These are not bitter greens. They're seriously addictive.

And olive oil makes nice hand lotion, too. Salt adds emollient benefits!