Madhu Knits and Cooks

Recipe, knitting, and sewing project notes

Tag: Cooking — Snacks

  • Best Butternut Squash Soup Ever — Not Surprisingly, from Cook’s Illustrated (and Roasted Butternut Squash Seeds)

    The ongoing issue of what to do with leftover leeks continues to inspire new recipe experimentation.  The latest in the series of efforts to use up remaining leeks is the Cook's Illustrated Sept. 2011 Butternut Squash Soup recipe.  The soup is easily the best butternut squash soup I have ever had — unsurprising given its source.  Very simple to prepare, rich and extremely deep flavor, and incredibly healthy.  The key to developing the flavor appears to be pre-cooking the squash in the microwave, and developing a brown fond while further cooking down the squash on the stovetop.  And to add even more rich flavor – and an interesting contrasting texture to the soup — I followed the recipe's recommendation to pair the soup with some fried leeks as a garnish.  Additional modifications follow the picture of the prepared soup.

    Butternut Squash Soup - Cooks Illustrated
    I used slightly less squash than called for in the original recipe — 5 cups instead of 7 cups, and correspondingly decreased the amount of liquid in the soup to 4 cups of water with 2 vegan bouillon cubes (instead of vegetable broth).  I used slightly more chopped leeks — perhaps 2 cups — and used the remaining chopped leeks for the fried leeks, to use in total, just under one leek total for the recipe.  The only modification I would make the next time I prepare the soup is to either add more plain water as called for by the original recipe, or reduce the amount of bouillon used because the soup was a bit salty, despite using only one bouillon cube with sea salt (the other had no salt added).

    In addition, instead of throwing away the butternut squash seeds, I ended up washing them, patting them dry, and roasting them in the oven.  I haven't roasted winter squash seeds in years, and ended up following a recipe from AllRecipes.com, though of course, I used far fewer seeds because I only prepared one squash for the soup.  Roasting the seeds was a good reminder to me to be more wary of throwing away the "leftover" parts of vegetables — every part can have a role!

    Butternut Squash Seeds

  • Kale Chips — Amazingly Good! And Not Just a Qualified Kale-Good, Rather Standalone Good!

    I have recently discovered homemade kale chips, and they have completely changed my eating routine this fall!  I have to admit that I previously found eating kale to be a bit of a chore.  No matter the kale type, the strong flavor and tough texture just overwhelms any positives of the dish.  This experience shifted when I decided to forgo making a kale pappu — which did feel like a chore — and instead try a NYTimes.com recipe for Crispy Kale Chips with Chili and Lime.  Except, I didn't really use the NYTimes.com embellishments on the standard kale chip, and just consulted the recipe, as well as others on the internet, to guide the preparation of this snack, which can be prepared while the oven is heating up.  I have made this recipe a few different times, with both curly and dinosaur kale, kosher salt and sea salt, and different oven temperatures, and it is surprisingly flexible.  

    Basically, take the amount of kale you have, rip it into 1-inch pieces, wash the pieces in a bath of cold water, and spin dry in a salad spinner or pat dry.  Even when I use my salad spinner, there is still some remaining water, so I usually just do a quick pat dry with a clean dishcloth, even though I can never get the kale fully dry.  That lingering water hasn't made a noticeable difference yet with the baking process.

    Finally, toss the kale pieces with a small pour of olive oil, kosher or sea salt, and lay the pieces in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet.  I have baked the chips at temperatures ranging from 275 – 350, and the cooking time has varied from 10 – 20 minutes.  Remove the kale from the oven when it is just crisp.  Even if the chips are browned, I find they still have a good flavor, but folks on the internet seem more squeamish than me on this point.  You can serve immediately or let the kale cool.  

    It's SO easy.  Pick up some kale next time you are at the farmer's market — I promise eating healthy will not feel like a chore!  And don't just take my word for it — when I first made them, Andy remarked that we never need to eat potato chips again!

    Kale Chips

     

  • Brown That Butter! Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie Update

    Last year, I attempted Cook's Illustrated Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies from the May 2009 issue.  The cookies turned out really well (note the positive comments from my cookie taster friends) even though I didn't quite follow the recipe.  A few weeks back, I decided to give the cookie recipe another go, but this time that I would actually perform the recipe's most critical step — browning the butter — instead of just melting it as I had done the first time.  

    The difference in the result was amazing — the cookies had this amazingly rich, caramel and butterscotch-like flavor to them that I don't think I have ever experienced in a cookie.  The first time I made these cookies without browning the butter I thought they were rich and had caramel undertones, but wow, actually browning the butter made such an impact to enhance these cookies.  To brown the butter, I used an All Clad skillet and heated the butter for much longer than called for in the recipe — maybe 7 minutes instead of the 1 – 3 the recipe indicated it would take.  I also recommend baking the cookies until they look completely set because if you follow the recipe's baking instructions (just until the edges are set, and centers are still soft), the cookies seem way too underbaked, at least for my taste.  

    So, brown that butter!  And let me know if there are other baked goods that would benefit from this technique!

    Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies -- Updated

  • Scallion Pancakes at Home — Couldn’t Be Easier!

    Among my favorite menu items at Chinese restaurants are scallion pancakes.  I really love the simple flavors of the pancakes, and particularly when I am at a restaurant where the vegetarian options are slim, I can definitely make a full meal out of this one dish.  I have never made them at home before, and following a recent farmers market, I found that I had a glut of scallions in the fridge (ok, glut may be a little much, but it seemed like a lot).  After I couldn't find suitable reciple ideas in my cookbooks and cooking magazines (yes, I have it a good faith effort), I decided to search the internet for recipe ideas and somehow realized that I should try to make scallion pancakes.  I did a new search, and came across several recipes.  The easiest, which also seemed to have the simplest set of ingredients, was Ming Tsai's recipe.  

    I quartered the recipe to make just enough scallion pancakes for one (me!), but decided to use 1/2 the amount of scallions called for in the original recipe.  The pancakes were very easy to construct and cook, and I'll definitely be making them again.  The only downside of this recipe was that the pancakes were a little flavorless, so I may substitute multigrain pancake mix for the flour, which is what a former co-worker's mother had previously recommended.  I also used a simple dipping sauce of soy sauce and chili garlic sauce mixed together instead of the Tsai's ginger dipping sauce, and I may try to construct that sauce the next time around.

    Scallion Pancake

  • Homemade, All-Natural, Dare I Say Healthy (Ok, Healthier) Chile Con Queso? My Life Has Been Forever Altered.

    I admit it — I love chile con queso.  Yes, the Velveeta/unknown substance mixed with jarred salsa.  I love it.  I actively seek restaurants that serve it.  It's just so, so good.  In fact, I think I want it now.

    I haven't made queso at home in years though — the steps of purchasing a block of Velveeta and jarred salsa, slicing the oddly-textured Velveeta, and then zapping both products together in the microwave (let's be honest — probably in a plastic container that seeps BPA) really make the queso experience feel like a cancer-causing activity.  So my queso eating has been confined to restaurants, where somehow I justify that the product is somewhat less horrible for my body.  

    I haven't really found any restaurants in my new neighborhood that serve chili con queso, and my need to eat it led me to finally search the internet to see if there could possibly be anyway to prepare a "real food" version of queso at home.  The search ended up being fairly easy, with the Homesick Texan's chile con queso recipe standing out as a clear winner.  I halved the recipe, but otherwise followed it precisely.  I purchased organic cheeses and milk, and got most of the vegetables at the local farmer's market which was definitely an added bonus to making this a "real food" adventure.  Just a half portion of the recipe lasted me almost half a week of eating queso and chips pretty much nonstop.  The queso was spicy, had a great consistency, and definitely tasted like "real" cheese.  I can't say much more than that — I will certainly be making it again and again in the coming months!

    Queso

  • Madhu Knits and Cooks Returns with Mark Bittman’s Mango-Coconut-Lime Bars!

    Hello again!  I recently moved and the relocation process unfortunately included putting most of my apartment stuff (including all of my cooking equipment) into storage.  The unpacking/settling in process has also taken more time than I envisioned, so blogging — though certainly not knitting or cooking — has fallen a bit by the wayside.  I am happy to finally return though with another library cookbook experiment — Mark Bittman's mango-coconut lime bars from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  

      Mango Lime Bars

    I picked up the book while browsing the shelfs at my new public library branch, and was very excited to see it.  I have been debating for years whether I should buy this book which is supposed to be a comprehensive vegetarian cookbook (and written by Mark Bittman, who I adore, of course).  I have held back though given my previous track record with neglecting the cookbooks and cooking magazines I own.  I haven't made a final decision on the Bittman book yet, but will probably pick up the book again from the library in the coming months to try a few more of the recipes before making the final decision.

    I decided to try the mango-cococut-lime bars after flipping through the index to find recipes that incorporate mangos because I had a rapidly ripening mango sitting on my new kitchen counter for days.  The mango-coconut-lime bars seemed perfect because I also had half of a lime in my fridge from some salsa I made, and could easily buy shredded coconut on my next trip to the Indian grocery store.  

    The bars were pretty easy to make — basically a variant of lemon bars, with a shortbread base, a citrus-custardy topping, and toasted coconut flakes on top instead of powdered sugar.  While I enjoyed these bars, I have to admit that I found them to be a little bit too eggy in flavor.  After the bars sat in the fridge for the day, the mango and lime flavors came out a bit more, but I still felt like I was eating some sort of egg custard instead of a citrus bar.  If I make this recipe again, I will probably add more than 1/4 cup of the mango puree and maybe increase the amount of lime zest and/or juice used.  

    Mango Lime Bar Close Up

  • Vegetarian Times Baked Onion Rings — A Healthier Alternative to the Fried Favorite

    I have found that "healthy" alternatives to more indulgent fare almost always fail to live up to their claims (for example, see my Note on Low-fat Brownies from 2009).  For some reason though, when I saw the Baked Onion Rings recipe in the latest issue of the Vegetarian Times, I immediately felt that I had to try this healthier preparation to the traditionally fried (and delicious) snack.  Generally, this might be a sign that my favorite fried foods — jalapeno poppers, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, and cottage cheese pakoras — have far too great of a hold on me.  

    These baked onion rings were fantastic!  Crisp, sweet, and not greasy at all!  The preparation was a little messy (dipping the onion segments into the batter with my hands), but could not be simpler to make.  I now don't understand why anyone would fry onion rings — and risk a soggy, oily mess — when baked onion rings taste just as good, if not better!  The only caution I would have in making this recipe is to make sure you are preparing them for a crowd — I halved the recipe and still ended up with many too many rings for two of us who ate them.  

    Onion Rings on Table

    Onion Rings on Baking Sheet

  • Parmesan Chive Scones…A Bit of a Disaster

    I recently had leftover frozen chives and parmesan from the Cook's Illustrated Almost No-Stir Risotto, and after failing to find a parmesan chive biscuit recipe that I was convinced I had somewhere, I turned to the internet to figure out what kind of savory dish I could make with the limited quantities of those ingredients that I had.  I found a Parmesan Chive Scone recipe online, and decided to give it a go, with a few modifications.  I think some of the modifications — reducing the amount of chives to what I had on hand (about 1/2 of what the original recipe called for), adding a tablespoon of chopped parsley, and substituting 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose flour simply because I ran out of all-purpose — would have been fine on their own, but fatefully, I decided to freeze and grate the butter, a la the Cook's Illustrated Blueberry Scones recipe, to achieve light and buttery scones.  

    Although this recipe cautioned against working the butter too much and ensuring that the scones just held together without too much mixing, the frozen, grated butter and heavy cream seemed to not bind the dough together enough.  I decided to plow forward though with the loose dough thinking that the baking would solve the texture issue, but the resulting scones unfortunately fell apart while handling them.  The flavor was fine (perhaps though the whole wheat flour I would omit in the future), but the overly crumbly texture really made these scones unenjoyable to consume.  In hindsight, I would perhaps freeze only half of the butter, and maybe add some additional heavy cream to achieve the right texture.  Ugh.  On to the next one.

    Parm Chive Scones

  • Apple Carrot Muffins — Perfect for Anytime of Day

    I don't think I have ever consumed a carrot muffin before, so its actually a little confusing that when I noticed some leftover carrots in my fridge last week, I thought it would be a great idea to make carrot muffins.  Wherever the initial urge may have come from though, I am definitely happy I decided to start looking up carrot muffin recipes because 1) the muffins were AMAZING, and 2) I noticed that a number of popular recipes online incorporated apples into carrot muffins.  I had one remaining Empire apple on my countertop that had I not baked it into something, I probably would have just thrown it away (though I would have undoubtedly experienced a lot of associated guilt for not eating it).  

    None of the carrot/apple carrot recipes online or in my cookbooks could be made with only ingredients in my kitchen, so I decided to improvise an apple carrot muffin recipe based on the great Muffin Madness base  in the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook (on google books now).  I wasn't entirely sure how the muffins would turn out because the carrot/apple mixture seemed to have a different texture than the suggested modifications contained in the original recipe, so I didn't know what proportions of carrot and apple made sense in relation to the batter base.  My worry about the edibility of these muffins continued until the muffins came out of the oven because the muffin batter was incredibly dense and seemed too dry after I stirred in all of the ingredients, and the muffins were well under-baked at the 20 minute time called for in the original recipe.  

    Thankfully though I resisted the urge to throw them away and continued to bake them an additional 5 – 7 minutes.  The baked muffins really were wonderful — lightweight, perfectly spiced, and very lightly sweetened.  They had great color with orange and light apple-colored flecks showing throughout the surface.  I couldn't really taste the carrot at all, rather just the apple (which maybe is how apple carrot muffins generally taste?).  I brought the muffins in to my Tuesday printmaking class, and they were definitely a huge hit with multiple people asking me for the recipe!  The recipe modifications follow the picture below.

    Apple Carrot Muffins
    Apple Carrot Muffins — Modifications to the Moosewood Muffin Madness Recipe

    • Added 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon and 1/4 tsp. ground ginger to the dry ingredients
    • Added 1.5 cups grated carrot (from 3 medium peeled carrots) and 1 Empire apple, peeled, cored, and chopped into small pieces (NOT grated) to batter at the end.
    • Baked for 25 – 27 minutes, until a wooden skewer came out clean.

  • Incredibly Easy Homemade Smoky and Spicy Salsa

    My Rick Bayless adventures continue with another of his free online recipes, Fire-Roasted Tomato Salsa.  The salsa took virtually no time to prepare, with most of the preparation time being passively spent waiting for the jalapeno peppers and garlic to roast on the stovetop.  I used a can of fire-roasted tomatoes with chipotle peppers, which definitely added to the nice smoky flavor of the salsa.  The salsa had a bit of a kick to it, but it was far less spicy than the Bayless arbol chile salsa I made several weeks back.  This recipe was another good way to use up leftovers in my fridge and pantry, and would be a perfect addition to any March Madness parties you host this month!

    Rick Bayless Fire Roasted Salsa