Madhu Knits and Cooks

Recipe, knitting, and sewing project notes

Author: madhuknitsandcooks

  • Andy’s Papaya Shakes (Vegan and Wonderful!)

    This weekend, Andy made some Papaya shakes with soy milk.  They were incredibly tasty and healthy, so I asked him to email the recipe to me for madhuknitsandcooks.com.  They are not too sweet and wonderfully creamy.  I highly recommend you try them! 

    Papaya_shake_with_cinnamon

    Here is the recipe, which makes 4 large servings or 8 smaller (approx. 8 oz.) servings:

    • 1 ripened papaya that is skinned, pitted and cubed
    • 1/2 large carton of cold vanilla soy milk (approx. 4 cups)
    • 3-4 tablespoons of sugar
    • 1 teaspoon of vanilla
    • Ground cinnamon

    Note:  If you have a standard size blender, you will probably be able to only make two shakes at a time so just halve the ingredients for each blend cycle.  These directions reflect usage of a standard size blender.

    Directions:

    • Place half of cubed papaya in the blender
    • Cover the papaya with soy milk
    • Add 1-2 tablespoons of sugar
    • Add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
    • Blend until there are no more papaya chunks (the mixture is smooth)
    • Pour into glasses
    • Add some ground cinnamon as a garnish.  Although you may think that cinnamon makes no sense at all in this recipe (as I did), just try it — you won’t regret it!
    • Serve immediately

    Papaya_shake

  • Bendakaya — My Mother’s Recipe Definitely Works!

    Madhus_bendakaya

    The two things I learned from making this dish:

    • It will probably take more than 15 minutes to cook — more like 20-25 minutes.  But the good thing is that it requires little effort while cooking (just stirring every several minutes or so).
    • Don't be afraid to really salt it up toward the ending of cooking.  Even if you think it seems probably salted about 5 minutes before it's done, check before you are completely done to see if there really is enough salt because salt REALLY brings out the other flavors of the dish.

  • A pizza I didn’t mess up!

    A few years back, when I was living in D.C., I bought a $9 pizza stone at Target thinking it would change my life.  Since then, I have never made a good pizza.  I usually use the Trader Joe’s refrigerated pizza dough, which you can find in a variety of delicious flavors at any Trader Joe’s for under a $1.   You can make an entire pizza for less than $7 that is much, much better than any other place (unless you live in New York or New Haven).

    At first, I didn’t realize you need to pre-heat the pizza stone which of course meant I was cooking the pizza for an hour and inevitably burning the cheese, while waiting for the dough to cook. 

    And then I found on the internet that you should not only pre-heat the pizza stone, but also pre-heat the crust to avoid the burning of the cheese problem. 

    So finally, I put all of these pieces of advice (which I now feel may actually be common sense) to make a great pizza.  Recipe is below the picture.

    Trader_joes_pizza

    For this awesome pizza, I used:

    1 bag of Trader Joe’s refrigerated whole wheat pizza dough

    Pizza sauce — very easy to make and the recipe makes 2 servings of sauce.  Another recipe from AllRecipes.com:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-Pizza-Sauce-I/Detail.aspx

    • This recipe uses tomato paste, garlic, dried basil and oregano, salt and pepper, water and olive oil.
    • I highly recommend that you make the sauce a day ahead to let the flavors blend.
    • I also highly recommend that you reduce the water needed for the recipe to no more than 1 cup of water and if you want a thicker sauce, you should also reduce the amount of olive oil you use.

    1 – 1.5 cups of part-skim, low moisture shredded mozzarella

    Any and all toppings that you want — I usually just mince 3-4 cloves of garlic as well as maybe 1/2 of a large fresh jalepeno for my pizzas.

    To make the pizza:

    • Preheat your pizza stone at least 30-40 minutes at the full temperature recommended for your dough.
    • Follow the Trader Joe’s directions to roll the pizza dough (and depending on the dough you use, you might want to hand stretch it to prepare it as some of the flavors do not take well to a rolling pin!)
    • Throw the dough onto the hot stone, and preheat the dough for 5-7 minutes.
    • Take the preheated dough out of the oven, sprinkle mozzarella and toppings.
    • Bake another ten minutes, or until the cheese is completely melted AND the center of the pizza dough is fully cooked through (poke in a knife or fork in the center of the pie to make sure it is no longer doughy)

    Enjoy!

  • HUGE Chocolate Chip Cookies

    The birthday baking for co-workers continues to get more and more delicious.  This time around I made some gigantic cookies for Carlos.  I found the recipe at AllRecipes.com at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Best-Big-Fat-Chewy-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie/Detail.aspx.  The recipe is really easy and quick.  However, you only get about 12 cookies or so in a batch because you drop the cookies onto the baking sheet at a quarter of a cup of dough for each cookie.   I would recommend making a few batches at a time because these soft and chewy cookies go quick!

    Instead of using just regular semi-sweet chocolate chips,  I also used white chocolate chips as well.  I put in about a cup of regular chocolate chips and about 3/4 cup of white chocolate chips.  The result was fantastic.

    Giant_cookies_for_carlos

  • Mouthwatering Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

    I’ve made a positive life change recently — I’ve been buying fruit on a regular basis.  Unfortunately though I have not been eating my fruit before it ripens too much, but this has created a whole new baking opportunity for me with bananas which I ALWAYS buy too many of than I can eat! 

    So I recently made fabulous banana chocolate chip muffins, using the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home Muffin Madness recipe.  I highly recommend picking up this book, especially for vegetarians.  All of the recipes I have made thus are easy and very tasty, including these muffins which I could not keep my hands off of!  And as you can tell, others also couldn’t keep their hands off of them because the banana smell out of the oven will make your mouth water.

    Banana_chocolate_chip_muffins

  • Birthday Lemon Bars from the Gourmet Cookbook

    Given that four of my co-workers have had birthdays the past few weeks, I have been quite busy making them their promised choice of baked goods.  For Heather, I attempted my first batch of lemon bars.  Although it was a great learning experience, and I got to dust off my zester which I thought I would never use again, unfortunately Heather was unexpectedly traveling for work when the lemon bars were brought in and was unable to eat them.  So, it looks like I will be trying to make lemon bars again, potentially with a different recipe than the Gourmet Cookbook one I used this time (p.690 of the 2004 version).

    Lemon_bars

    Although my other co-workers really liked the bars, I think there is room for improvement, especially with the lemon topping which I thought could have a more smooth consistency.  So I’ll make sure to post if I find a better recipe.

    The best picture though out of this baking experiment was of my co-worker Carlos who enjoyed a lemon bar while browsing www.madhuknitsandcooks.com!

    Carlos_and_lemon_bars

  • Gourmet Tiny Chocolate Chip Cookies

    I finally started using the Gourmet Cookbook that I bought last year by using my last egg in a soon-to-expire carton to make the Tiny Chocolate Chip Cookies on page 662 of the 2004 version of the cookbook.  The recipe is also available free online at epicurious.com at:  http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/106172

    Tiny_chocolate_chip_cookies

    I made two modifications to the recipe: 

    • I substituted mini chocolate chips for regular size semi-sweet chips
    • I reduced the baking temperature by about 25 degrees and shortened the baking time to about 4-5 minutes because the first batch got a little too burnt at the bottom even though the baking sheet was placed on the farthest rack from the heat source.

    These are a really great snack — no one can say no to them given how small they are.   They also melt in your mouth given how buttery and small they are.

  • White Chocolate Dipped Chocolate Chip Cookies

    There have been a number of summer birthdays in my current workplace, and I have promised all of the members of my department that I will bake them something delicious for their birthday.  For Danielle, who I sit next to, I recently made her (and of course for the rest of the staff!) some white chocolate dipped chocolate chip cookies.

    White_chocolate_dipped_cookies_2

    To make these cookies, I followed the same Allrecipes.com recipe I used here:  http://madhuknitsandcooks.typepad.com/madhu_knits_and_cooks/2006/10/simple_chocolat.html

    After baking the cookies and letting them cool, I then slowly melted about 1/2 – 2/3 cup of white chocolate chips in the microwave.  You should be really careful with melting chocolate in a microwave by using a reduced power and only microwaving in 30 second or less increments until just melted.  I then dipped the cookies in the melted white chocolate and used a butter knive to evenly spread the chocolate over a sizeable part of the cookie. 

    I would then place the dipped cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet, where they would then be placed in the fridge for about 45 minutes for the chocolate to harden (until the cookies can be lifted off of the parchment paper without leaving any chocolate behind).   

  • Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Festival

    Midwest_fiber_and_folk_art_festival

    It’s great to be back in the Midwest — especially because of all of the fiber festivals that happen in the summer.  On Saturday, July 21, 2007, Andy and I went to the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Festival.  I found out about the festival only 2 or 3 days in advance, so I was happy that it was only an hour’s drive from Chicago, in Crystal Lake, Illinois.  The weather was perfect — about 80 degrees and sunny and they had a decent amount of standard summer fair-type food in the event Beer Tent.

    Although this festival had much fewer yarn options than the larger fiber festivals in the country (e.g. Maryland and New York), it had a lot to offer over 4-5 tents, including some vendors that I don’t think I had seen at some of the other festivals throughout the country.  There was also a really friendly feeling from the organizers of the festival and the folk singers added a nice touch to the Beer Tent/food area.

    I bought two skeins of the same alpaca yarn — natural brown and black alpaca fibers twisted together into at a fingering weight.  If you would like to purchase some of this great alpaca from a family-owned and operated farm in Indiana, visit http://www.frontierfibermill.com/index.htm.  Andy picked out this yarn for a pair of gloves he would like me to knit him this fall.

    Brown_black_alpaca_for_andy_gloves

    I also bought a great bag from Bridget, who designs for Biggie, her company in Grayslake, Illinois.  I’d recommend this fair to any Chicago-area knitter — especially if the weather is as good as it was this year!

    Madhu_at_midwest_fiber_and_folk_art

  • Fabulous Fingerless Mitts for Kara

    At school this past fall, I participated in a public interest auction for the Initiative for Public Interest Law at Yale.  I auctioned off two custom hand-knit items:  a scarf, mittens and/or hat.  I was very excited that a few people bid on the items and the winner was a great person, Kara, who I had not previously met.  Kara actually knew exactly what she wanted knit — she already had found patterns on the internet!  So that made my job much easier because all we had to do was go yarn shopping.  We ended up going to the Janet Kemp Fine Yarns and Needlework in Stratford, CT — a great small shop that I highly recommend.

    The first item I made Kara is this pair of fingerless mitts, based on a pair worn by Rose, one of the main characters in the new BBC version of Doctor Who.  I got the pattern from Christina Slattery’s website at:  http://www.christinaslattery.com/rosepattern.pdf.  The project turned out really well:

    Kara_fingerless_mitts_modeled

    I used about 1 1/4 balls of Plymouth Baby Alpaca DK on size 5 dpns.

    I hope Kara enjoys them when she gets them!

    Kara_fingerless_mitts