Madhu Knits and Cooks

Recipe, knitting, and sewing project notes

Tag: Cooking — Thoughts for Future Projects

  • Recipe Review Roundup – Lose Most, Win Some (Onion Frittata with Sherry Vinegar, Easy Pancakes)

    Welcome to the first post of the slimmed down Madhu Knits and Cooks – my recipe notes targeted to an audience of one, me.  Most of these recipe attempts resulted in fine-but-not-repeatable-dishes, but one was a true standout that I look forward to making again.

    Sichuan Broccoli 

    This isn't so much a recipe review, as a "I should follow the recipe more closely" note.  I improvised the seasonings a bit, though followed the cooking technique.  I should try to make again, the next time actually following the recipe proportions (my attempt seemed heavy on the rice vinegar flavor) and by toasting and finely grinding the Sichuan peppercorns beforehand instead of just mashing them to throw on top of the final dish (too grainy a preparation).

    Lentil and Asparagus Soup 

    Also a bit of an odd one – I substituted caviar lentils for the barley, resulting in a black soup.  The lemon flavor was pretty good, and it was a nice light soup, but the color and blandness overall means I probably won't make again even if I make it properly with barley for the lentils.

    Garbanzo and Spinach Stew

    Another bland soup.  I substituted smoked paprika for the pimenton, and made this more into a soup than a stew with more water (4 cups?).  I used fresh spinach instead of frozen, and threw the julienned pieces at the end of the cooking.  I used black garbanzos (approx. 3 cups cooked, 1 cup dry which I pre-cooked).

    Spring Minestrone

    Another bland soup.  Pesto or another strong herb bomb would have helped (I omitted).  

    Cabbage, Tofu, and Red Pepper

    Pretty good dish – strong flavors, and great textures from the bell pepper and cabbage, neither of which was overcooked and retained their natural flavors.

    I used some Trader Joe's high-protein tofu, which I seared pretty quickly without cornstarch.  I used 2 tbsp. water instead of broth, omitted the walnuts, and just put sesame oil at the end because I forgot during the cooking period.

    Excellent Onion Frittata with Sherry Vinegar Sauce

    The winner of the bunch – a tangy, relatively easy frittata.  Perfect for a brunch for 4 people, otherwise 2 meals for me and my husband.  I'd pair this with a salad.  I used dijon instead of whole grain mustard, which added more tanginess but still resulted in a great sauce.  I'd probably reduce the sauce ingredients by half because you don't need that much for serving.

    Easy Pancakes – Weekend Winner

    For some reason, I can't find my past pancake posts so ended up searching for a new simple recipe.  Enter America's Test Kitchen Easy Pancakes, which yes, were both very easy to make and delicious to consume.  Fluffy with a lightly sweet flavor, I will probably make these frequently on weekends.  I halved the recipe, which made the recipe appropriate for 2 adults and a toddler.

  • Pureed White Bean and Tomato Soup – Luscious and Creamy

    As I've been working my way through my Rancho Gordo dried bean stash, I've finally had to confront the beans that…I don't like that much.  I know, I know – who doesn't love every single costly Rancho Gordo artisanal bean that one covets for months before finally convincing yourself the price is "worth it"?  

    Now that we're (hopefully) past the judgment reaction, we can get to the topic of today's post – Rancho Gordo's Creamy Lima Bean, Tomato, and Feta Soup.  This soup not only used up the giant lima beans that have been hardening in my cupboard, but also produced a fantastic one-post dinner as well.  

    White Bean Tomato Soup

    I precooked 1/2 cup of dried lima beans in the Instant Pot (soaked overnight, 25 minutes high pressure with a natural release – in the future, I may increase to 30 minutes of cooking time) a day or two ahead of time, which made the soup prep just 25 minutes.  

    The result was comforting, rich, salty, slightly briny, and coated your mouth with a pleasing fulsome texture.  I could have sworn this was a heavy cream-based soup, which is a wonderful mental trick from pureed white beans.  I will keep this idea handy for thickening future soups with a healthier protein than dairy.

    Some modifications I made – I used traditional feta instead of Valbreso and 1/2 of a 140z can of crushed tomatoes.  I think you can experiment with cheese types here as well – other salty or flavored cheeses will probably add their own special imprint to this soup, even a sharp cheddar or herb-inflected cheese.

  • A (Humid, Summer) Return to Bread Baking! Pumpernickel Everything Bread

    My baking block continues to gradually lift as the months go by.  I'm not sure if it's inertia, boredom, or in this case, guilt from letting my various specialty flours languish, but I've been very happy to slowly return to the scale and the oven.  

    My latest recipe attempt finally put to use the pumpernickel flour I had ordered from King Arthur Flour I purchased many moons ago and drove from NYC to New Orleans as a "critical" move item.  I chose KAF's everything bagel pumpernickel bread recipe because of how much I miss pumpernickel bagels (not as common in New Orleans!).  

    Pumpernickel Bread Side Baked

    This ended up being a pretty easy and quick recipe, with start to finish in only a few hours.  I would make this recipe again because the flavor was salty and very reminiscent of everything bagels, though I did not love the stodgier texture.  
     
    The bread was probably underbaked because the interior was fairly thick and squishy, with very little bounce back from pressing.  I also may have messed up the texture by adding slightly too much water and not checking the bread for the proper final rise before baking. 
     
    The bread's temperature was over 200 degrees from the instant read thermometer after about 39 minutes of baking.  I did not get a huge amount of rye/pumpernickel flavor which was disappointing.  
     
    Pumpernickel Bread - Straight
     
    I wonder if the humidity and heat of the New Orleans summer also affected the rise and cooling of the bread.  The crust on top was relatively crisp, but the bottom was still sweating a bit and somewhat moist after being fully cooled.  So might be underbaking, humidity, and/or the rye flour which would naturally result in a heavier bread?  I will try this bread again during a cooler day, and see if it makes a difference.

  • Hetty McKinnon’s Cumin Tofu and Cauliflower – Work in Progress

    Competing with Madhur Jaffrey's Vegetarian India for cookbook supremacy in my household is Hetty McKinnon's excellent To Asia With Love.

    One of my latest recipe attempts is her Cumin Tofu Stir-Fry, which is a riff on the Western Chinese cumin lamb that nearby Xi'An Famous Foods is famed for producing in NYC.

    Cumin Tofu and Cauliflower

    I am really happy I tried this recipe as I love cumin and have often wished for a vegan / vegetarian version of this western Chinese favorite.  The recipe was packed full of ground cumin, and that strong flavor was nicely offset by the onions, cilantro, and sesame seed garnish. 

    I think the one challenge with this recipe is that the dried spices – cumin, gochugaru – are added at the end of the cooking time and are added just dry, with no water or oil to make into more of a sauce.  As a result, the spices seems to get clumped in certain areas and were dry on the mouth in some bites.  I will experiment with either adding the spices earlier to the cooking time, adding some water or oil to the dry spices to make it more of a paste that gets added, and/or reducing the amount of spices added moving forward.  

    I look forward to making this again and adapting it to my tastes!

  • A Very Bad Attempt at Using the Instant Pot as a Slow Cooker – Undercooked Black Bean Chili

    The title of this post says it all.  Almost. 

    Yes, I tried to use my Instant Pot as a slow cooker for the first time. 

    Yes, it was an uncooked disaster. 

    But did I utilize a poor approach to adapt the Instant Pot to slow cooking?  Yes.  

    Slow Cooker Instant Pot Chili

    I think I committed three fatal errors on this first attempt.

    First, I used a random glass lid which "seemed" to fit over the inner Instant Pot stainless steel pot, but it was not a perfect fit. 

    Second, I opened the pot to stir the mixture once or twice because it seemed to my naked eye that water had evaporated too much from the pot.  It hadn't.  I subsequently read that removing the lid during a slow cook can disrupt the cooking process by letting too much heat escape from the pot.  Oops.

    Third, I used Rancho Gordo's Chiapas Black Beans which I have found require a VERY long cook time compared to other black beans.  

    Unfortunately, even though I halved the recipe, the beans just weren't that cooked after 8 hours.  So then I did two rounds of pressure cooking, at 5 minutes a piece, but the beans were still not that cooked!

    So maybe I will attempt a slow cook again, but only with a proper fitted lid and perhaps with non-dried beans (either canned or at least soaked overnight). 

    And/or a 10+ hour cook time.  Just to be safe.

    Slow Cooker Instant Pot Chili Served

  • Food Processor Pizza Dough Take 3 – Over-proofed but Decent

    I recently tried to adapt my standard, no scale (gasp) pizza dough recipe to a food processor version, to experiment beyond my first two food processor pizza dough attempts. 

    The main changes I made to the original recipe were to combine the dry ingredients before slowly pouring in the bloomed yeast / warm water + cold water mixture to the running food processor.  

    Food Processor Pizza Dough v3 Side View

    While all seemed to go well in producing a smooth, glossy dough, the challenges started pretty quickly during its fridge cold rise.  The dough balls just over-proofed by tripling if not more (quadrupling?) in size.  I tried to resuscitate the dough by deflating it and letting it rise again.  The crust did still rise nicely in the oven, but I found it to be ultimately too chewy.  That was a similar result to our first food processor dough attempt.

    What's my diagnosis?  My early theory is too much yeast.  This recipe calls for 1 tsp. of yeast for 2 dough balls, and a number of other recipes I've used call for smaller amounts of yeast, even for fridge cold rises.  With the proper kneading from the food processor, which is probably more than I do by hand, I think yeast just activated more quickly and then led to the result? 

    But…who knows?  After nearly 20 years of pizza dough making, I still feel like a novice in a lot of ways!

  • Pizza Dough with a Food Processor? If Chris Kimball Says So…I Will Try!

    I have one tried-and-true pizza dough recipe that has yet to be displaced, despite many attempts at new dough preparations.  Could I be narrowing in on an alteration that could take this recipe standard to the next level?  Cautiously, yes. 

    FP Pizza Dough - Cut on Cutting Board

    The recipe innovation?  Kneading the dough in the food processor instead of by hand, a tip we picked up listening to Christopher Kimball's Milk Street podcast.  Kimball made a passing reference to using a food processor for pizza dough, sparking our minds that this could be the accelerant to extra delicious dough.

    FP Second Dough Full

    Fueled by this tip, I found a Williams Sonoma food processor dough recipe online.  I added 3 teaspoons of the King Arthur Flour pizza dough flavor to this fairly standard recipe.  With a regular metal food processor attachment – not a special dough attachment – I developed very smooth and glossy dough in just under a minute of processing.  I then halved the dough into two balls, covered them in olive oil, and put them in the fridge for a 24 hour cold rise.  The dough balls rose significantly in the fridge, perhaps even more than doubling?

    When I prepared the pizzas themselves, I found the dough less easy to roll than my standard dough, even at room temperature.  I used my fists to drape the dough over as I found gravity more helpful than anything else I was trying.  

    I then did my standard pre-baking of the dough on a heated pizza stone before adding the toppings to place ~4 inches away from the broiler.  The result was a chewier dough than we are used to, but not one that was unpleasant.  The crust held up to the toppings, and had a nice yeasted flavor.  

    FP Second Pizza Crust Close Up

    I think my next step is to try my standard pizza dough recipe (with King Arthur pizza flour) using the food processor and going from there.  Excited to see what this innovation, that is so much easier on my arms, results in!

  • Out of Pie Practice – A Brown Butter Pumpkin Pie Mess

    Pie doughs have generally caused me trouble in the past.  But boy oh boy, was my latest pie dough attempt a disaster!  Don't let the pretty pictures below deceive you 🙂

    Brown Butter Pumpkin Pie - Out of Oven

    First, I didn't work the butter into small enough pieces – there were far too many larger-than-pea-size chunks in the dough.  Second, I used too much liquid from the iced water and apple cider vinegar which obscured that the butter needed to be worked more.  I promptly ordered a pastry cutter following this effort so I can work the cold butter in faster and more uniformly, and not end up with a tough unappetizing baked crust.

    On the upside, the flavor of the pie was very good and unique thanks to the included carrot juice, which added a sweet yet earthly flavor to the pumpkin.  Thank you my favorite pie book from the Elsen sisters!  However, to finish off the set of disasters, the custard didn't fully set even after 58 minutes of baking which I think might be due to an oven calibration issue.  So that's another thing to fix before my next pie attempt!

    Brown Butter Pumpkin Pie - Baked and Cooled

  • Jim Lahey’s Pizza Dough – Very Good, But Doesn’t Displace My Favorite Recipe

    I loved Jim Lahey's pizza restaurant Co. when it was open in NYC, and was so sad when it closed.  It was a regular go-to whenever I was anywhere near that side of town.  And so when I saw that Jim Lahey had a pizza recipe book while browsing my local library stacks, I grabbed it with high excitement.  

    Jim Lahey Pizza Dough - Baked

    The resulting two pizzas I made from the half portion of his no-knead dough recipe were very good with nice salty and yeasty flavors in every bite.  I didn't follow any of his pizza topping recipes, rather just the dough and baking method.

    Jim Lahey Pizza - Measuring Flour

    Jim Lahey Pizza Dough - Dough Together

    Jim Lahey Pizza Dough - Ready for Rise

    The dough required an 18-hour room temperature rise, which led to a slightly sticky dough that was hard to stretch out nicely.  I imagine my lack of experience shaping pizzas by hand v. rolling probably contributed to this difficulty though.  

    Jim Lahey Pizza Dough - Risen

    Jim Lahey Pizza Dough - Stretched for Baking

    What I most liked about Lahey's pizza approach is that he calls for pre-heating a pizza stone 8 inches from the top of the oven at 500 degrees before then turning on the broiler to bake the pizza.  That high heat leads to a nicely cooked pizza in just a few minutes. 

    Moving forward, to really make use of this technique, I should pre-heat the broiler for longer before putting in the shaped pizza and leave the dough in the oven slightly longer until there are more black spots across the pizza.  I will probably continue to pre-cook the dough, which I generally do, before adding toppings to avoid the toppings overwhelming the thin dough.  

    What I least liked about this pizza was the relatively small pizzas that his portions led to.  One Lahey pie is enough for slightly more than one person, but not quite enough for two.  As a result, for the slightly higher effort of an 18-hour room rise instead of a forget-about-it fridge rise, I think I'll probably continue to default to my standard pizza dough recipe, but now coupling it with Lahey's broiler bake approach.

  • Churro Brownies – Great Idea, Terrible Execution

    Ah, the self-generated errors that I thought I was past in year 13 (!) of this blog.  This latest one was a doozy – not adjusting the recipe to accommodate a Pyrex glass baking dish instead of a standard metal brownie pan. 

    The result – an underbaked, gooey mess.  And because I was on my way to an event, I didn't have time to properly attempt to save it, instead just put it back in the still-hot oven to cook a bit more as the oven cooled down.

    Churro Brownies - Unbaked

    At least using that method, some of the edges were cooked through when we came home.  The edible edges were fairly tasty too, though definitely overbaked while the center remains a bit gooey.

    So I don't really have much to say in this post, except that the batter came together fairly easily.  Especially with microwaving butter, no need to use an electric mixer, just a rubber spatula to combine everything together.

    Churro Brownies - Glass Pan Buttered

    Churro Brownies - Brown Sugar and Eggs

    Churro Brownies - Wet Ingredients Combined

    Churro Brownies - Melted Butter

    Churro Brownies - Wet Ingredients Combined (1)

    Churro Brownies - Dry Ingredients

    Churro Brownies - Ingredients Combined

    Churro Brownies - Batter in Pan

    Hope to attempt this the proper way in the months ahead, with perhaps slightly less cinnamon and sugar to accommodate my preference!