Midnight Feasts

     Lets get this straight: I am Indian (not British, though I was born in England and lived there for a good few months or so in my baby-hood), I never went to boarding school, and I have lived in America since I was nine. Still, I am an absolute Anglophile, and I spend far too much time (especially for a twenty year old) reading boarding school books. Have any of you ever read Enid Blyton? She writes the best boarding school books. Full of pranks and half-term holidays and Midnight Feasts.

     Midnight feasts in these books tend to consist of anchovies, and canned peaches, and condensed milk...and foods I generally don't really have an interest in. But they just sound so good all together! And what sounds best of all? Shrimp paste spread on toast. I don't know why, but when I was rereading (again) one of those books, I just got an intense craving for shrimp toast.

     This craving didn't mean I decided to turn our bag of frozen shrimp into shrimp paste. I looked up a shrimp paste recipe, but it seemed far too complicated. Instead, I came up with my own time-saving shrimp toast method. First, thaw frozen shrimp. Then, lay them out on a baking sheet and sprinkle them with herb infused olive oil, because you don't know exactly what you are going to do next. Bake them until they are rosy pink, take them out, and get stricken with inspiration! Take a handful, chop them up, throw them into a small frying pan with garlic and butter, and then squish them onto a huge hearty slice of white bread. Place back into the oven. Eat. Ahhh.

     Needless to say, this was a success. The shrimp was perfectly cooked (I had the oven at 450 degrees and the shrimp literally needed 3 minutes, watch them well and do Not let them overcook). The bread was deliciously crusty and buttery under the soft shrimp, and it all tasted absolutely gorgeous. Like an upscale garlic bread and so much more. Midnight feast worthy!

The Aftermath

Shrimp Toast
Makes 5 Toasts 

Italian White Bread (I'm sure other bread would do, but this was so good!)
25 Shrimp (I used about five shrimp per toast, so this number is dependent on how many people want toast!)
Herbed Olive Oil (if this is not available, use regular olive oil, a dash of salt and pepper, and sprinkle some oregano or thyme over the shrimp) 
3 Garlic Cloves, Minced Finely
2 tbsp Butter (plus a little more to butter the bread)

Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees. Cut the white bread into five 1 inch slices, make sure they are big enough to fit a large handful of shrimp (not from the end of a loaf) and butter the slices. Take the shrimp, thawed if they were frozen, and scatter them on the baking sheet. Sprinkle the olive oil (or herbs and olive oil) liberally over the shrimp, and turn the shrimp over so they are covered in olive oil and herbs. Put the baking sheet into the oven for 3-5 minutes, only until the shrimp turn light pink. Take the shrimp out and allow them to cool a little. Peel them if they are shelled, and then chop them into small pieces. Next, place a large frying pan on medium heat. Add the butter and garlic, allowing the butter to melt. Stir in the shrimp, making sure all are coated well. You only have to cook them for a minute or two, then turn off the heat. Use a large spoon to get about a handful of shrimp and press it into one slice of bread, it should require pressing and be barely fitting on the slice. Prepare all the slices, and then carefully place them on a baking sheet and put them back into the oven for two minutes, until the bread is heated through. Then serve! This went great with the tomato soup too.

Tomato Soup

    

     Grilled cheese and tomato soup. What could be a better dinner? Sometimes, I just don't know. And so, I give in - and that is exactly what I made for dinner last night.

     Pause: This was quite a long pause. Um, a couple of weeks to be exact? I made this dinner sometime in August for my family. But you know how it goes, it was summer's end, I moved back to school, started settling in, and the poor blog got left behind. But now I'm back! Hi world!

     This recipe is, after all, just too good not to blog about. I had never made tomato soup from scratch before, and I always assumed it would use something bad for you - like cream. Instead, all I used was veggies! Tomatoes, celery, potato, oh my! The potato is what gives this vegan soup its creaminess you see, we didn't need real cream after all. This soup still had the thickness and richness of tomato soup, but also felt hearty and wholesome. What more could one want?

     There's something about tomato soup that is so comforting. As I was standing stirring at the stove, on one of those inexplicably gloomy summer evenings, I just felt so content. The smells of rosemary and well...tomato soup, wafting up were as good as a massage. For the soul at least, my body would still like a massage. And after whipping up a few grilled cheese in the oven (good Italian bread, butter, and chunks of cheddar placed under the broiler for a few minutes do wonders for one's mood) and dunking them into the soup, I wished I could feel that way always and you could too.

Tomato Soup
Loosely adapted from The Innocent Primate Vegan Blog

2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 Small Red Onion, Finely Chopped
4 cloves Garlic, Minced
1 Celery Stalk, Chopped
1 Large Russet Potato, Diced (the bigger the dice, the longer you will have to cook it...)
2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Oregano
1 tsp Rosemary
2 tsp Sweet Paprika
8 Medium Sized Tomatoes, Diced
2 cups Vegetable Broth

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil at medium heat. Add the onions and garlic, sauteeing them for a few minutes. Then, add the celery and potato. Stir everything together, and lower the heat to medium-low. Once the potatoes are softened, add the salt, oregano, rosemary, and sweet paprika. Stir in the tomatoes, and then the vegetable broth. Allow the soup to come to a boil, stirring occasionally, and then reduce the heat to low. Let it simmer for ten minutes, still stirring once in a while, until it has thickened. Then turn off the heat and pour it into the blender (feel free to do this in two or more steps if your blender is small - you do not want flying tomato soup!). If you want a chunkier soup, blend just a little, otherwise continue blending till you get your desired consistency. Pour the soup back into the pan or a prettier serving vessel, and ladle it out!

Note: This served five people for dinner, but if you were serving it as an appetizer it could probably serve at least eight.

Experiments in Brown Rice

     

     I have too much brown rice. Some people came over for dinner yesterday, I overestimated and made two cups too many of rice. So, what do I do with a giant bowl of brown rice???? Well so maybe I have a few ideas: grilled rice balls, rice pudding, rice soup...risotto? Can I make risotto with brown rice? Let's take a minute to Google. Yes, yes I can. And I have just found the perfect recipe: Creamy Carrot Brown Rice Risotto. Yum.

     It's just that my life on the weekends is very sedentary: sit on couch, watch Lord of the Rings Again because it is coming on the television (I love the Lord of the Rings, did you know? Yes, I'm one of Those people. Absolutely and irrevocably. Now you know.) Re-read all the books of my childhood, cook, eat, hang out with friends - Repeat. So, having just eaten breakfast and retreated to my favorite corner of the couch (which is not a corner at all but the middle where all the cushions are nice and sunken in - it's one of those comfy couches with ridiculously large and fluffy pillows, be jealous), I am just not inspired to get up and cook again. I need people to feed. Where are You when I need you? *Pause for laziness*

    I found people to feed! Also, I forgot that if you wait long enough sitting on the couch, you do inevitably get hungry and then need to eat something. Oh the effects of time. So, I got up. And completely bastardized the recipe I found online. I'm sure the recipe made by Happy Healthy Mama (whose blog is very nice...even though the name makes me feel very....young and twenty and inferiorly un-mama-like) would have been delicious. It's just, she used basil and tarragon and thyme - I could not find any in my mother's spice cabinet. She used vegetable stock; I only had water.

     So, this went from being a not very traditional risotto to a completely and utterly untraditional risotto - which is nevertheless Delicious. I followed the same basic pattern of the recipe: cooked brown rice, carrot pureed in the food processor, cooking up the onions and then adding rice, carrot puree, and liquid, but changed all the details. I used garlic and ginger paste instead of garlic cloves, and rosemary, oregano, and a bay leaf as my spices. I also added red chili flakes on top, what is life without a little spicy?

     The resulting risotto is a very very satisfying lunch (and dinner). It is creamy, with just a little bit of that bite of brown rice. The rosemary accentuates the sweetness of the carrots, and the hint of oregano and red chili flakes cut in with just the right savory and spicy notes. I do love coming up with a good recipe. But I love even more having a big bowl of hot steaming food to devour while watching my movie, and the bunny rabbit living in my yard!

PS. Not that I approve of the sedentary lifestyle...but it's a weekend and summer vacation people! I'll go back to work during the week.
    
Creamy Carrot Brown Rice Risotto
Adapted from Happy Healthy Mama

3 cups Cooked Brown Rice (i.e. 1 cup uncooked brown rice in 2 cups water cooked in either a rice cooker, the microwave, or a pot on the stove) 
3 Medium Carrots, Sliced (I used two medium, two small and sliced to 1/4'' thickness) 
1 tbsp Olive Oil 
1/2 Onion, Finely Chopped 
1 tsp Garlic Ginger Paste 
1 tsp Ground Oregano 
1 tsp Rosemary 
1 Bay Leaf
1/2 tsp Salt (or more to taste) 
1/2 tsp Black Pepper (or more to taste)  
1 1/2 cups Water 
1/2 tsp Crushed Red Chili Flakes 

Fill a large saucepan a few inches with water, and suspend a colander over it. Heat the water until it is boiling, then lower the heat to medium-low. Add the carrots to the colander, cover it loosely with a lid, and allow the carrots to steam for five minutes or until they are tender. Then, put the carrots into a food processor and blend them until they are a fine puree, I added a few spoonfuls of the hot water from the saucepan to make the puree smoother. Set the food processor aside.

In a large skillet at medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the onions and garlic-ginger paste, and allow them to cook until the onions are translucent (5-7 minutes). Then, add the oregano, rosemary, salt, pepper, and bay leaf. Stir them, and allow them to fry up for 1-2 minutes with the onions. Next, add the rice and carrot puree, stirring the spices in to combine. Add the water, and stir. Lastly, add the red chili flakes, stirring gently to make sure everything is combined. Stir and cook until the water has evaporated and the rice is creamy to taste, if the rice is still not tender, add more water and cook longer. When it is soft and creamy, season with more salt and pepper if needed, and serve!

From Scratch

     

     I love making things from scratch. I mean, obviously, I do have a food blog after all. My extreme redundancy doesn't bore you does it? I'm sorry if it does. But, I was just musing. I do love making things from scratch. I love starting a bread dough, I cannot stand the sight of cake mixes (ah, bad pretentious me), and I start feeling slightly sick if I eat too much pre-prepared food. A month in my family's house with my whole family away? Yields too much frozen, restaurant, and take-out food. And no matter how much I missed the restaurants of Brookline, I have to start cooking again.

What could it be???

     That's why I haven't blogged lately by the way, I haven't cooked! What I blogged yesterday was an ancient post (from July 12 actually, I looked) that I had just forgotten to publish. Of all the silly things... But oh well, one moves on. And when one has not cooked at all for a month, one (if one is me) cooks a Lot. Goes quite overboard in fact. Starts making paneer from scratch.

     What is paneer? Well for those of you not obsessed with Indian food already, Paneer is a kind of cottage cheese. If you've ever been to an Indian restaurant and had Saag Paneer or Palak Paneer, paneer is the white cubes - kind of tofu-like in appearance, but so much better in taste! if I do say so myself. It is not slippery like tofu, but more like a firm ricotta and is a great palette for all sorts of vegetarian curries. It's also ridiculously easy to make (ignore all the me making from scratch stuff- it was all just empty bluster, trying to impress you with my...fairly non-existent...skills).

     It's especially easy to make when, because one's family is gone and one's family get's milk delivered to one's home, one has far too many bottles of milk. What am I supposed to do with all that milk? Well, boil the bottles (ok...the Milk In the Bottles...picky picky) that are starting to go bad. This is a Very Good use of sour milk, what else are you going to do with it after all? So, boil, add lemon, add yogurt, and hey presto! Paneer. Ignore the funky smell: when you boil slightly bad milk and then start adding lemon to it, there is going to be funky smell. After all, what you are doing is separating the milk into curds (the white solids) and whey (the leftover liquid)! The curds are what will become the paneer once you drain the entire mixture through the cheese cloth overnight, get them all nice and dry, cut them up, fry them up with some spices (cumin seeds, salt, pepper, just a touch of red chili powder)....oh so good. Creamy and melty inside, crisp on the outside. Yum. I am going to go eat more now.

Fresh Paneer

3/4 Gallon Milk (I used 1%, but we've made it with 2% as well)
3 tbsp Lemon Juice
3 tbsp Yogurt
Cheesecloth

Put a very large saucepan (I used my pasta pot) on medium heat, and add all the milk. Stirring occasionally to keep the milk from burning, heat the milk until it boils. Once it is boiling (don't let it boil over!), lower the heat to low and add the lemon juice and yogurt.There is no need to stir. Keep an eye on the pot, if the curds (white solids) start separating from the milk and floating on top of the liquid, you have added enough lemon. If it's been a few minutes and there's no separation, feel free to add a tablespoon more of lemon juice. After about 15 minutes at low heat, the milk should look very watery (it will not be clear - just very thin), and there should be many white solid masses. At this point, turn off the heat. Let the mixture cool thoroughly.

Meanwhile, layer your cheesecloth on a colander, allowing enough cloth hanging off the sides so that you can wrap the curds inside once they are drained. Place your colander in a large steel bowl, so that it has something to drain into. If you own a very large colander, I'm sure you could pour all of your cooled mixture into it and allow it to drain in peace. Since my colander is small and I had a lot of milk, I did it in batches - first just pouring in a lot of liquid and letting it drain, then adding all the curds. When there was very little liquid left, I wrapped the rest of the cheesecloth over the curds and left it overnight. In the morning, I unwrapped the cloth, and scraped the paneer into a glass bowl which I put into the fridge.

This paneer is crumblier than store-bought paneer, so it won't cut nicely into cubes. To fry it up, I rolled it into firm balls and was Very careful when flipping them in the pan. But, you can also crumble it into a nice scramble, like the tofu scramble I made a while ago. And more paneer recipes using it will be coming soon!

Summer Time

    

     There is a bag of strawberries in my freezer. And every time I pull out the freezer drawer, it stares at me as if to ask: "What am I still doing in here while you are in the kitchen? Why the *bleep* (tis a foulmouthed strawberry bag) haven't you used me yet???" For the past few days I have stared back at it sadly. I have made lame excuses. "I am sorry strawberries, I just got back from work." or "I am sorry strawberries, it is too hot to move." or worst of all: "I am sorry strawberries, but I just don't feel like cooking." Since when did I turn into this person??? Today, the strawberries will not be ashamed of me.

     So, what did I do to make them happy and smiling again? (Sometimes, metaphors just keep going and its hard to know when to kill them....Forgive me Internet.) Well, I turned them into cake! Strawberry Cake. How delicious does that sound? And this was not any strawberry cake. It was not strawberries pureed into a cake or homemade strawberry jam (someday, I will tell you this story) to put into a cake, it was a cake dimpled with Huge Strawberry Halves. Yum.

     This cake was baked last night. Because I was in a foul mood, and the idea of a strawberry cake and making the strawberries happy was just too much goodness for me to deny. Also, I feel awful about my slow blogging pace. Must. Buck. Up. Anyway, last night I decided to make this cake. This morning, my mom had a meeting at home, where she was serving tea - and cake. If I go home from work to find out that my entire strawberry cake (not counting the giant piece I ate with my mom and brother shortly after it came out of the oven of course) is gone, I will be a not so happy blogger.

     But, how could I blame anyone who wanted to eat this entire cake. First of all, I didn't just put strawberries in it. I also put raspberries and blueberries (we had a frozen berry medley in the freezer). And I used brown sugar instead of all granulated sugar.

     It turned out so well. I told you I was in a foul mood, didn't I? I was letting there be lumps in my batter (only small lumps...) and I was making my little brother take all the pictures (isn't he great!!! Yay GS!), but this cake made me happy. Warm out of the oven, it tasted like summer. Like cobblers and crumbles and all those lovely desserts, like fruit and a touch of sweetness. It was just a cake, but it was a homey, not rich but comfortable, berry-ful cake. And best of all, it was so easy to make I could make another one TODAY. But of course I wouldn't...I think.

Strawberry Summer Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

6 tbsp Butter (or Smart Balance or margarine, i.e. what I used)
1 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1 cup Brown Sugar
2 tbsp Granulated Sugar
1 Large Eggs
1/2 cup Milk
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 cup Strawberries (fresh or frozen)
1 cup Mixed Frozen Berries

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F and butter a 9'' deep dish pie pan (or a regular 10'' pie pan if you have that). First, make sure your berries are defrosted if you are using frozen berries. Then, cut the strawberries in half lengthwise (as shown above). Next, in a small bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and brown sugar until it is pale and fluffy (it will take a while). Then, mix in the egg, milk, and vanilla until just combined. Add the bowl of dry ingredients slowly, mixing until the batter is smooth. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Arrange the cut strawberries in the batter, cut side down, in a one-layer pattern. Fill in the gaps with the other berries, cut them if they are too big. Sprinkle the two tablespoons of granulated sugar over the berries. Place the pan in the oven at 350 degrees and bake for ten minutes, then reduce the heat to 325 and bake the cake for another 50-60 minutes. It should be golden brown and a toothpick stuck in the center should come out clean. Once it is baked, let it cool on a wire rack for five minutes, then cut it into wedges and serve!

Catching Up Part IV: Paris!

AB at work

     The last catch up! The last real (pasta sauces just don't seem to count as real to me) recipe to tell from France! What was it? Maybe it's a little surprising. It's neither so French nor so refined sounding as clafoutis. It is cupcakes.

 

     Why was I making cupcakes in France? Well, this time we didn't cook on my whim but someone else's. My family friend AB, with whom I stayed while undergoing fruitless visits to the US Embassy in Paris, really wanted to make cupcakes. And her grandparents from India were visiting, and they are vegetarian, so these had to be Eggless cupcakes. And they were chocolate cupcakes. Just cause. Also, I really liked the cocoa box.

 

     The cupcakes couldn't have been easier to make. Just stir everything together, pour into molds, and bake. It is always fun to bake with a fellow Disney music lover - we cooked to the soundtracks of Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and the Little Mermaid, yay! Sometimes, I do not feel twenty years old. Actually, that's most of the time, but we can save my....fourth of a life? crises for later. I would like to tell you about eggless cupcakes. They are denser than usual cupcakes, and these were less sweet. I quite liked them, as an afternoon snack with tea. If you have someone eggless to please, try them out! And I will be back again soon.

Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes
Adapted from A Site I Cannot Find (will update if find)

1 1/2 cups Flour 
1 cup Powdered Sugar
6 tsp Cocoa Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 cup Milk 
1 tsp White Vinegar
1 tsp Vanilla 
3 tsp Oil 

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, and baking soda. Stir in the milk, white vinegar, vanilla, and oil, making sure everything is well combined. Line the cupcake molds, and pour about two tablespoons of batter into each mold. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick stuck into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Allow the cupcakes to cool out of the mold on a wire rack for about ten minutes. You can frost them with chocolate frosting if you like, but they are also good on their own.

Catching Up Part III: Baking in Normandy

Where the skies look like this....

     OK, so I'm obviously easing back into this blogging thing rather slowly. I skipped yesterday, bad me bad me. But hey! I also started my summer job. That counts for something, doesn't it? I'm doing research at a hospital. It's amazing how important getting a badge with your photo on it and carrying big stacks of paper around can make you feel. But enough of that, you are here for the food. Right?

The beams in the kitchen looked like gingerbread :)

     So, surprising though it may seem, I did cook in France! And no, it didn't just consist of pasta and pasta salad and epic cheese plates. I made clafoutis! You may ask one of two questions: what is clafoutis? or why would you be making that in France? Well, it is a French dish, for one thing. Clafoutis (or clafouti as it is sometimes spelled) is traditionally cherries baked in a custard-like batter. It comes out rather like a more cake-y flan. It is a lovely light dessert, and one that is ridiculously easy to make.

    
     As to why I made clafoutis, there is a very simple reason for that. CV has trees in his backyard in the farmhouse in Normandy, some of those trees are cherry trees, and one evening we felt the urge to go up into those trees and pick lots and lots of cherries. The first cherry picking stage involved some people going up into one tree and throwing down cherries, the second involved everyone being up in the tree and trying to reach the cherries, and the third involved very tall ladders. In case you cannot tell, we accumulated quite a mountainful of cherries, even discounting all the ones we ate fresh off the branches. Also discounting the cows who huddled around our tree and ladder and looked at us most mournfully, probably wondering what kinds of silly humans had decided to play at being birds.

The farmhouse - unfortunately I took no pictures of trees

     So, we re-entered the house, and I was struck by an urge to bake. The two CVs (did I tell you the fifth person is our party also had the initials CV? It is most frustrating from my standpoint, but luckily I can just lump the two of them together. Yay for my two CVs!) got to cutting the cherries in half and de-pitting them. I kind of sort of looked at this clafoutis recipe in an old cookbook in the farmhouse, and then went my own merry way. What resulted was the kind of dessert I kept taking too many helpings of, light and not too sweet and full of the lovely flavor of cherries. It may not be a traditional clafoutis, but I am still daydreaming about it at work...

Improvised Clafoutis

For the Cherries: 

1 1/2 cup Cherries, Cut in half and De-pitted
1/4 cup Rum
2 tbsp Water
3 tbsp or more Sugar

Add the cherries, rum, water, and sugar to a medium-sized saucepan at medium-heat. Stir everything together well, and allow the mixture to cook until the cherries are softened and the alcohol and water have mostly evaporated (you don't have to evaporate off all the liquid, you can use it to make a sauce! like me). When the mixture is not smelling so strongly of rum anymore, you are probably close to done. You should taste test it, if the cherries were not sweet and the mixture tastes bitter, add a tablespoon or two more of sugar. Once the cherries are soft, remove the mixture from the heat.

For the Clafoutis:

1 1/2 cup Prepared Cherries
2 Eggs, Separated
1 cup Milk
1/4 tsp Salt 
1/2 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Flour 

Butter an 8'' round glass baking dish and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spread most of the hot cherries on the bottom of the dish, and allow them to cool. Leave a couple of the cherries and any remaining liquid in the saucepan for sauce-making later. In one bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Then, whisk in the flour and salt until everything is combined. In a separate bowl, whisk (not by hand hopefully, because that is a pain) the egg whites until they have peaks. Fold them into the other mixture slowly until both are combined. Then, pour the liquid mixture carefully over the cherries, so that all the fruit is covered. Place the dish in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the top is golden and a knife comes out clean.

For the Sauce (Optional)

Remaining liquid from the cherries 
2-3 Softened Cherries
2 tbsp Blueberry Jam 

Place the saucepan with the little remaining water and rum mixture and a couple of cherries back on medium heat. Squish the cherries against the side of the saucepan and mix them into the liquid. Then, add the jam. Mix everything together thoroughly, and reduce the heat. Allow the mixture to simmer on low heat until it has thickened and turned into a lovely sauce to top your piece of clafoutis with.