Tastybuds

For lunch today I had an awesome lamb burger from Universal Cafe, which is just down the street from me. I like the restaurant because they change their menu every day, and almost everything is delicious in there.

This lamb burger had goat cheese, arugala, aioli, and caramelized onions on a nice toasty bun. Think it was the first time I had a burger without ketchup or barbeque sauce, but it honestly didn’t need it. The oozy goat cheese was enough of a sauce.

Having breakfast today at Atlas Cafe because I am too lazy to make it myself. Luckily, they make the most delicious breakfast croisant sandwich.

They steam their eggs, which is kind of like scrambled, but they are super fluffy. White cheddar cheese and black forest ham on a super flaky buttery croisant. Add some tapatio (hot sauce), salt, and pepper,and it is an unstoppable combo.

I’d make this myself, but the recipe I found for croisants in the Tartine Cookbook is 5 pages long and takes at least two days. I need to find a recipe for croisants for beginners.

Another simple recipe using basic ingredients. I used a purple potato for this, which gave the dish a nice color, but you can pretty much use anything. This is actually way tastier than it looks. This is modified slightly from the Joy of Cooking.

Boil:
   3 medium potatoes, washed and cut into small pieces
   3 carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces

Cook for about half an hour, or until the veggies are very soft. Drain them, and put them back in a pan over low heat. Mash them in the hot pan, and add:
   1/2 cup milk or cream
   2 tablespoons butter
   salt
   pepper

Cook and mash until smooth and fully heated. Top with:
   caramelized onions
   butter
   2 tablespoons watercress, chopped

A very basic recipe, but delicious. Goes well on lots of dishes. I’ve cooked with onions for all sorts of things, but I never realized they could taste so good until I had this.

Melt over the lowest possible possible heat:
   1 tablespoon butter
   1 tablespoon olive oil
   salt

Add:
   1 onion, thinly sliced
   salt

Cook for one hour, stirring every once in a while. Keep the heat as low as possible for the entire hour. Once the onions have softened properly, turn the heat up to medium and cook until brown, about 25 minutes, stirring so they don’t burn.

If you want, deglaze the pan with:
   a splash of water or dry white wine

After the onions finish, remember to sprinkle some more:
   salt
   pepper

Recipe borrowed from Joy of Cooking.

I never used to eat much breakfast as a kid. Sometimes I would have a bagel, or an English muffin, but usually I didn’t even eat anything. Now I love it, and try to eat as big and well rounded one as I can. Today I had a kiwi, strawberry yogurt, rosemary scrambled eggs, and rosemary wheat bread with butter.

Eggs were pretty simple. Mix:
   2 eggs
   salt
   pepper
   chopped rosemary

Heat over medium low heat in a small pan:
   1 tbsp butter

Pour eggs in and let the bottoms set a bit. Scrape the bottoms up every few minutes. Usually done in about 8-10 minutes.

I am trying to always have a homemade loaf of bread available for breakfasts and other meals. This one is running low, so I will have to make a new one soon.

I’ve been drinking a bunch of this bourbon recently, and I don’t normally drink bourbon. Has tastes of orange, caramel, and oak. Very smooth for a bourbon, and tastes almost sweet.

As one of the four “Mother Sauces”, I use this quite a bit.  I use the recipe from the Joy of cook, although it can be modefied in quite a few ways.

Combine in a small saucepan over very low heat:
   1 1/4 cups milk
   1/4 onion with 1 bay leaf stuck to it using 2 whole cloves
   Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Simmer gently for 15 minutes, and then discard the onion. Meanwhile, melt in a medium, heavy saucepan over medium-low heat:
   2 tablespoons butter

Stir in:
   2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Stir the mixture occasionally for about 2 minutes or until it gets just slightly brown. Whisk in the milk, and stir for about 8 minutes. Season with:
   Salt
   White or black pepper

Note that you can use more or less milk to get a thicker or thinner sauce. Also, it is not fully necessary to preheat the milk with the flavorings, but they will make it taste better. Don’t feel like you can’t make the sauce just because you don’t have cloves or nutmeg.

Chicken is such a basic meat to cook with, that sometimes I forget that even the simplest ways of cooking it taste delicious. In the past few nights, I’ve made the chicken twice the same way, but have changed the sauce and sides to make it a completely new meal.

To make the chicken, put salt and pepper on boneless skinless breasts (or any other piece), and then coat them in flour. To fry them, heat up some butter on medium-high (I used 1.5 tablespoons for 2 chicken breasts) until it starts to get a bit brown. Add in an equal amount of olive oil, and then throw the chicken on. The chicken cooks for around 4 minutes on each side, and you want the heat as high as possible without burning the butter. When I made it, I had the heat a bit too high, and I got a bit of blackened butter, but somehow it ended up working fine, and tasting delicious, in the sauce.

The first time I made this, I ended up making a veloute sauce, and serving it with fettuccine in a bechamel sauce. The second time I made this, I used a made a balsamic citrus sauce, and cooked up some lentils with spinach and soy sauce, served over rice.  Both recipes are from Joy of Cooking.

I am just now beginning to immerse myself into the online wealth of information and community there is surrounding cooking. I have always seen and heard about these tools before, but have never quite gotten how to use them, or how they would apply to me. On the other side, I have always tried to search around on Google for information about cooking, and have always ended up at the same few places: About.com cooking, Epicurious, FoodNetwork.com, etc. Not that these are bad places, but I am beginning to see that there is way more out there.

For starters, I am now finally actually using Twitter, rather than just having an account (http://www.twitter.com/dgabriner). I have started off by following a dozen or so people, but I could see how that list could expand rather rapidly. I am only following people who talk about cooking or food, rather than the boring tech people I used to follow. Already I have been blown away by how much information is out there, way too much for me to handle right now. However this is only the beginning, and I realize that I will soon have way more information, and need a nice way to process it all.

By scouring through everyone’s tweets, I found a link to a baking book that is hosted on Google. I’ve known about the Google Library for some time, but never had a reason to use it. My library not only serves as a resource for others to look at what I am interested in, but is a tool for me to stay organized. I’ve added this first book, “Baking: From My Home to Yours”, written by Dorie Greenspan, who worked a bit with Julia Child. It’s got some amazing pictures of food, and the recipes look fairly simple. Can’t wait to really dive into it.

To start my morning off right, I decided to make a nice breakfast from my new Talisman Italian Cookbook. Saw a dish in there for “Savoy Style Omelette”, but was partially dyslexic and thought it said “Savory Style” (yum). Heres the recipe:

2 tablespoons butter
2 small potatoes, diced fine
4 eggs
1/4 teaspon salt
1/8 teaspon pepper
1 tablesppon milk
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in frying pan, add potatoes and brown. Beat eggs lightly, add salt, pepper, milk and cheese and add to potatoes. Cook over moderate fire 12 minutes on each side and serve. Serves 4.

Reading this now, I realize I totally forgot the Parmesan cheese. That would have made it even more delicious, but it was good without it. I used some leftover potatoes that I had pan fried with butter, salt, pepper, and rosemary the night before. I also definitely did not cook the eggs for 24 minutes as this describes. Around 10 was plenty.

To complete my breakfast, I had a piece of sprouted wheat toast with this amazing cream cheese (from Rainbow grocery), an orange type thing (Satsuma mandarin maybe?), orange juice, black tea, and water. I never used to eat breakfast, but now I love it.