The Kitchen Post
Becoming Foodies
Cardamom, Pistachio, Ginger and Oatmeal Cookies
0This is part 1 of 2 posts for the weekend. While the second took place on our block, this first one had us venturing outside of our zip code to a place that uses a reverse osmosis water system – Waukesha!
Some friends of ours are raising adorably cute TWIN 6-month-old boys and had us over for dinner and game night. Dinner was served on a raclette, which was a first for me and the Mister. It’s a great tool for dinner parties, and since we were playing a board game while eating, it was perfect for small plate dining as well. If you’ve never eaten off a raclette before, it’s like a two-in-one grill oven. The grill on top cooks your meat, while the trays below the are heated to cook vegetables and melt cheese. Our busy parents/hosts had a tasty spread of seasoned meats, vegetables, cheeses, breads, AND cilantro. It was fun, and must have spurred the Mister onto his Settlers victory (or was that the pin on his lapel?).
We brought along some of my favorite cookies. They are more or less adapted from a traditional oatmeal cookie recipe, but rather than adding chocolate, nuts or raisins, I added chopped pistachios, dried sugared ginger, and cardamom. The exotic smoky spice adds an amazing twist that never ceases to delight those that enjoy them. But, I have to tell you that these cookies almost didn’t happen. My sister shared this recipe with me several years ago, but sometime in the last year I seemed to have misplaced it. She was out of town when I called, but luckily her sweet fella was able to provide me with the recipe. Disaster averted! Another interesting tidbit for these tasty morsels – the cardamom and ginger were taken from a wedding gift we received last year. It was part of a spice gift box from the local Spice House, and they may have gone bad had it not been for these cookies.
There are easier ways to go about these cookies (like buying the ingredients pre-ground and chopped), but the prep for this batch was a time suck – the Mister even had time to make a loaf of bread while I finished the chopping and grinding. Not only did I need to shell the pistachios, but I also needed to crack open the dried cardamom pods to get the seeds. I wasn’t sure if these were past their prime, but once I used the mortar and pestle to grind the seeds, their potent smell that permeated the downstairs area of our house had me think differently.
Cardamom, Pistachio, Ginger, and Oatmeal Cookies
Mix the following 5 ingredients together
1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
In a separate bowl, mix the following 6 ingredients
1-1/2 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2-3 teaspoons ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
Once combined, stir in 3/4 to 1 cup pistachios, 1/2 to 3/4 cup dried sugared ginger and 1 cup old-fashioned oats
Form dough into small balls, place on greased sheet (or use a Silpat!), and bake at 350 for 20-23 minutes until surface of the cookie is still soft. These tend to get hard quickly, so I usually put them in a container with a piece of soft bread.
Mushy Joes
0Early last Fall, I finally gave in to one of the America’s Test Kitchen promotional emails and ordered a free trial copy of Cook’s Country magazine. We didn’t end up subscribing to it because we chose to go with the slightly less country-sounding Cook’s Illustrated.
There is one recipe in particular in this particular copy of Cook’s Country (October/November, 2009) that has become a Kitchen Post favorite. It is especially a Mrs Kitchen Post favorite.
Reduced-Fat Sloppy Joes
Or, as I like to call them Mushy Joes
The good people at America’s Test Kitchen were able to reduce the calorie count of a traditional sloppy joe (570 calories) all the way down to 300 calories per Joe. How? Largely by replacing some of the meat with… wait for it… mushrooms!
First off, saute the mushrooms for about 5 minutes in a little bit of vegetable oil.
Then, dump them into your food processor.
Pulse them until they appear crumbled.
Mix the mushroom crumble with some onions and a sauce mixture and simmer.
Finally, add the beef.
And continue cooking until the beef is brown.
Mushy Joe!
Reduced-Fat Sloppy Joes (adapted from Cook’s Country)
serves 4 to 5
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
8-oz pkg of sliced mushrooms
1 small onion, minced
1 1/2 tsp chili powder
8 oz can tomato sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp brown sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp cider vinegar
12 oz lean ground beef
Salt & Pepper
hamburger buns
Steps:
- Heat 1 tsp oil over med high heat in large nonstick skillet
- Add mushrooms and cook until browned, about 5 min
- Transfer to food processor and pulse until mushrooms are crumbled
- Heat remaining oil in an empty skillet (one with a cover available)
- Cook onion and crumbled mushrooms, covered, stirring occasionally, about 8-12 minutes
- Stir in chili powder and cook for another 30 seconds
- Add tomato sauce, ketchup, Worcestershire, sugar, water and vinegar
- Simmer over med low heat until vegetables are completely tender and sauce is somewhat thick. 10-15 minutes
- Add the beef and simmer until the beef is no longer pink, about 5 minutes
- Season with salt and pepper to taste
- Divide among buns and serve!
Bistro Dinner Salad
3
After dining on several delicious meals from the McDonald family chefs last weekend during our Galveston getaway, it was time for a light homemade dinner. This recipe for Bistro Dinner Salad was featured in a MyRecipes.com article and was both tasty and easy.
File this one under: “will make again”
Slow Cooker Corned Beef for St. Patrick’s Day
0
7:00 am — Cabbage to be added once the meat is cooked.
We’re still here!
1
Sorry for the lack of “posts” lately. We had one long weekend of vacation in Vegas (that will get a foodie post here soon, but if you’ve been following my Facebook page, you know a good deal about that trip already), but other than that, we’ve just been kind of lazily awaiting Spring, I think!
Anyway, stay tuned for the aforementioned Vegas dining tour, a tasty Curried Rice with Shrimp dinner and if you ask nicely, maybe a post about the baby shower dishes that Kelley put together last weekend.
In Law Valentines Weekend
4715 days
A week spent fighting with a cold has left me with some catch-up to do here.
Kelley’s parents came to visit on Valentine’s weekend. We headed to lunch at the Iron Horse hotel, where we all had Bloody Marys — which came with pickle, celery, brussels sprout, olive, pepper and of course, slim jim. No beer chaser though, since the Iron Horse doesn’t have draft beer.
Following lunch, we headed to the Harley museum, which was surprisingly fascinating.
Then, it was back to our place for dinner. It was a slow cooker meal from good ol’ Christopher Kimball: Slow-Cooker Chicken with White Wine, Tarragon and Cream
On the side, we had Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Figs from the New York Times.
Of course, I sorta failed in not having some fresh bread to go with this meal.
Link Soup – 2/17/2010
0Serious Eats’ Technique of the Week is an awesome slide show about beating egg whites
The Bitten Word with some tips on finding a CSA (we use Tipi Produce)
And a bunch of great articles at The Kitchn:
- Quick Guide to Every Herb & Spice in the Cupboard
- How to Sew Napkins and a Table Runner (my better half could do this)
- All About Salt (funnily enough, we were discussing finishing salts with Kelley’s parents this past weekend)
- A collection of 30 small tips for the kitchen (example: did you know you can get 3 times as much juice from a lemon if you slice it lengthwise? Whoa!)
How to Buy and Store Bulk Foods from re-nest. This one included the following (which I had never thought of before):
When we get home from the store, we like to place dry goods like flour in the freezer for 48 hours to kill any pests. (We do this with all grocery store grains, not just those from the bulk bins.)
Have any great links you’d like to share? Send them our way.
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Similarities between me and Hurley (from Lost)
2Hurley: won millions in the lottery, crashed on an island
Me: has won a few games of Settlers of Catan, lives in a house surrounded by snow piles
Hurley: one of the stars of the best TV show ever
Me: has appeared in local news interview segments twice in my lifetime
Hurley: has a blog — his most recent post currently has 99 comments
Me: has a blog — my most recent post has like 3 comments
Me: has been blogging about making bread
Hurley: blogged about making bread!!!
Link Soup – 2/5/2010
0A few share-worthy links for this week:
- The Kitchn has been featuring “Home Hacks” lately. One of them is a process I need to get better at: How to Clean a Cast Iron Skillet
- In local dining news, there is a new Vietnamese restaurant near our house, a new wine store/bar in Shorewood, an overhaul coming at Trocadero and more family-friendly pricing at the Hubbard Park Lodge.
- 2 blog recipes that sound especially tasty this week: Brussels Sprouts Braised in Red Wine with Bacon and Lentils (Too Many Chefs) and Chewy Soft Pretzels (My Kitchen Cafe)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread
4The saga of the sourdough starter has come to a close.
This was my second attempt at creating a sourdough starter from scratch and it was indeed a success! I started the seed culture on January 15th. After 10 days of diligent stirring and feeding, the culture was most definitely alive and ready to transform into a mother starter. That step was a pretty simple one, but involved some resting time on the counter before hitting the refrigerator. Once in the cool and cozy confines of the refrigerator, the starter is good for 5 days before it needs to be “refreshed.”
Well, at the four day mark, I had some time to whip together a bread dough using this mother starter. I chose to go with the San Francisco Sourdough bread. I mean, that’s the gold standard right?
So, I took the 2 ounces of mother starter I needed. Wait. What? 2 ounces? Do you realize how small of an amount that is? What am I going to do with the rest of the starter? The “refreshing” process only needs 4 ounces of starter. Hmmm… This could get wasteful. More on that later.
After mixing the sourdough, well, dough, and letting it proof, and storing it overnight in the refrigerator (man, this is a long process), it was finally time to bake! For loaf #1, I forgot to turn down the temperature of the oven after putting the bread in, and I didn’t rotate the loaf. It still turned out just fine, but it cooked a little faster than it was supposed to, and the lack of rotation caused it to rise a little faster on one side and lean a bit. No big deal. Loaf #2 included a much more careful following of the directions and turned out awesomely.
Here’s one of the loaves:
And here’s a look inside after we cut off a slice:
Check out those air pockets!
The bread was delicious. It had a heartier, yet spongier quality to it than the lean breads we’ve been making to date, and it had a really nice flavor.
Now, as I alluded to before, the downside is the maintenance of the sourdough starter itself. Realistically, if I was going to keep that starter going at the same size, I would either need to bake about 20 loaves of bread a week, or basically discard 3-4 cups of flour every week. One of those options is just not gonna happen (I mean, who would eat it all?), while the other seems super wasteful. So, after some careful deliberation, it was decided to discard the mother starter that I had taken so long to grow and focus on the non-sourdough bread varieties for a while. At least I know I can successfully create a sourdough starter though, so maybe this experiment will live on again someday.
By the way, this recipe and the process involved all came from Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Bread Every Day book.
