So say we all.

…Just in case: There are some very vague spoilers to the end of Battlestar Galactica within this post, so if you still haven’t seen it and want to, I must painfully turn you away, dear reader.

So it has been a busy few weeks, between a lovely and all-to-rare super-long weekend visit from my betrothed last weekend and the painful end of Battlestar Galactica this weekend, but that’s not the honest-to-goodness reason I haven’t posted in awhile…I think to have a blog that is regularly updated I need to get over a bit of my perfectionism.  So I’m going to work on that, promise.

- keeping me company on a grey Sunday -

The end of BSG was one of the reasons I was in desperate need of some comfort food this weekend, and was wise enough to anticipate such a necessity by making my favorite (and festive) Irish Soda Bread.  It\’s not that the end of the story was particularly sad or tragic, but the end of the show has been hanging over me since I watched it.  As I have an over-active sympathetic muscle and, especially in the case of such an engrossing show, I find it very hard to detach myself from it once the final credits roll.  It proves for me that what makes a form of art, entertainment, and social/cultural examination (for BSG is all three) so important is how much it makes you think, and how long it stays with you.  So that’s the kind of thing I’ve been thinking about a lot the last few days.  Also, I recommend that everyone go look up the idea of the “mitochondrial Eve.”  It’s a completely fascinating  and mind-flexing theory.  I steadfastly refuse to in anyway qualify this discussion with the self-deprecating “I’m a huge nerd, by the way.”  I AM, but that would be doing an injustice to BSG and its stories.  You don’t have to be a nerd to like it, you just have to be smart.

I got this recipe for Soda Bread from a newspaper in the NJ town where Betrothed (who is now even farther north than NJ) lived for two years.  Speaking of him, I sent him the link to a blog that I am recently addicted to, Offbeat Bride, and he wrote back with an e-mail titled “now THIS is a blog,” perhaps in response to the one I just sent him, but more likely in reference to my own little cooking blog. What blog did he refer me to, you ask? thisiswhyyou’refat.com Shudder.

We are planning to start planning our wedding in the next few months, so I’ll definitely be making a lot more comfort food once that starts up.

Irish Soda Bread

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9-inch round cake pan (I used a glass pie plate, but would recommend a metal cake pan if you have one).  In a large mixing bowl, combine 4 C flour, 1/2 cup sugar, (I use much less, and it is fine with no sugar…I just spread lots of jam and honey on it when it\’s done) 2 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp baking soda, 3/4 tsp salt, and 2 cups raisins (a combination of regular and golden, or just regular).  In a smaller bowl, blend together 2 eggs, 1.25 C of buttermilk, and 1 C sour cream.  Add the wet mixture to the dry and stir together, then knead with a large wooden spoon 10 to 15 times.  It will be very sticky.

Plop it into the prepared pan and shape as best you can.  Dust with a little bit of flour and rinse a knife in water and slash an X in the top.  Bake for 50-65 minutes, until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Cool in the pan and cut into wedges or slices.  Particularly good toasted and enjoyed with hot coffee or tea for days to come.

Some tricks:  I don\’t usually keep buttermilk on hand, even though I should.  So instead of the buttermilk I used about a 3-3-3 combination of milk, yogurt, and sour cream to make up the 2.25 cups necessary.  Buttermilk would taste the best, but the yogurt does the trick.  I\’m still having this for breakfast with my beloved grapefruit this week.

Sunday magic

Despite the absurd heat this weekend and the tragic loss of an entire hour of sleep, daylight savings combined with my efforts to learn how to take half-decent pictures allowed me to notice things I had never noticed before.  The hour-shift in the color and intensity of light was enough to get me to see how the light looked on everything in my apartment, and particularly how it looked on the shiny coats of my sleeping and playing cats.

- sleeping handsome -

I had a whole day to practice photographing food (the blueberry muffins I made for breakfast, mostly) and to see what camera settings work best. At work with our fabulous digital cameras, I have got the photographing of 150-year-old documents down to a science, but with my personal camera and subjects more enigmatic than paper and ink it takes a bit more forethought.

- muffins cooling -

Pete, of Pete Bakes!, offers some insight on photographing food, including that the flash is too harsh on food. He says that he often rushes home to start baking before it gets dark so he can get pictures with natural light, which I am keeping in mind. Daylight savings will definitely make that easier for both of us.

- tea and muffin -

- reflective dishes -

- library books -

Blueberry Muffins

Yes, these are made with some sort of biscuit mix.  My mom always made her own mix when we were little, and I need to get that recipe from her.  The Bisquick brand, while always great, can be pricey, and it might be cheaper (and more fun!) to make my own.

I have been engaged in an epic battle with my sole muffin tin, and finally decided that on a Sunday morning I wanted muffins and shouldn’t have to deal with the crap I get from it, so I just used little baking cups.  Fail.  Unless peeled very carefully after allowing to cool almost completely (and half the delight in muffins is having them hot), most of the muffin stuck to the paper.  Greasing a baking cup just seems like overkill, but maybe that’s what it’ll take.  Any ideas?

Despite the above problems, these turned out deliciously, and the key ingredient, straight from my mom’s kitchen, is adding a squeeze of lemon juice, the zest of said lemon, and a cinnamon sugar sprinkle on top.  This recipe comes from the internet, and probably originated with whoever came up with Bisquick.

- pre mixing -

2 cups biscuit mix

1/3 cup sugar (I use less)

2/3 cup milk

2 TBS vegetable oil

1 egg

3/4 cup frozen blueberries (I use more)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, and grease the muffin tin (really, really, really well apparently).  Beat the oil, milk, and egg together in a measuring cup, then add to the dry ingredients.  Add a squeeze of lemon and some zest.  Fold in the blueberries.  The batter will be a bit lumpy, and that is okay, because you don’t want to over-mix.  Fill tins 1/2 to 2/3ds full, and sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top.  Bake for 13-18 minutes until golden-beautiful, and cool slightly in pan before removing them to a rack.

- light on fur -

Midnight breakfast

In college (a lot of posts, as well as a lot of my sentences, start that way…) various programs or groups occasionally hosted midnight breakfast events, which usually consisted of regular dining hall food served at midnight.  My freshman year, the inaugural year of “Fall Festival,” the entire festival was collectively ignored by the student body except for the midnight breakfast, which could not have been more festive.  This was due in large part of course to the inevitable cravings for pancakes, bacon, and more bacon brought on by alcohol, but nevertheless the midnight breakfasts always had a unique atmosphere, as if somehow staying up until midnight was special again, the way it was when you were 9 and it was New Year’s Eve.  It was always a combination of the drunk and hyper, tearing back onto campus to take advantage of free sausage and french toast, and the study-worn masses, who had left behind their bags and computers to keep watch over their library carrell.

Now that I have been out of college for almost a year I have been able to look back on it with a bit more longing and nostalgia than I was capable of a month after graduation.  And it was that kind of mood I was in when I made myself my own midnight breakfast last night, after an incredibly lazy Friday evening during which I had consumed two episodes of The West Wing, but not dinner.  My meal consisted of a smoothie, french toast made from an old loaf of my homemade rich egg bread (akin to challah, without the braid), and a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Frozen fruit smoothies

I buy frozen fruit from Trader Joe’s almost by the ton, and throw in some amount of each kind depending on my mood.  The basic sense is, 2 parts each “base” fruit, like mango chunks and strawberries, and 1 part each berries, including raspberries, blueberries, or some of one of TJ’s mixed bags.  I detest the way bananas march into smoothies, rape and pillage, and colonize all of the other flavors, so I always leave them out.  You’ll probably use way more juice or water than you think you’ll need, depending on the dexterity of your blender.

French toast

(For a “real” recipe, I would suggest the one in How to Cook Everything)

Crack an egg into a wide bowl, and add a few glugs of milk, a sprinkle of spices (I like cinnamon and nutmeg), a pinch of salt, and a teaspoon or two of sugar if you like.  Beat with a fork until well mixed, while heating up a frying pan or griddle until a droplet of water dances across the surface.

Grease the pan with some butter (it adds flavor, whereas all oil does is keep the toast from sticking), and soak both sides of two slices of bread in the egg mixture until the mixture in the bowl is all gone.  Place them in the hot pan and monitor them, turning when they have that gorgeous golden-brown, bubbly characteristic.  When done on the other side, turn them onto a plate.

This is where some people like maple syrup or cinnamon sugar.  My favorite, though, and what I used last night, was a smear of strawberry jam and a sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar, which melts into the jam and disappears by the time you sit down.

Limiting reagents

Because I’ve only recently become a fan of sandwiches, and now really only when they are freshly made, I don’t take them for lunches to work.  Instead I start dinner almost every night with lunch the next day at the front of my mind.  Whenever I make something that just won’t work for lunch the next day, or is so delicious that I eat it all that night, I usually end up being forced to take yogurt and granola or a hard-boiled egg.  This recipe, Plumped Ginger-Caramel Shrimp, struck me as looking like it would be a particularly delicious and satisfying when 12:30 rolled around the next day, and indeed it was.

To bring the story around to the uncharacteristically chemical title of this post, I happened to have all of the ingredients in my refrigerator, freezer, and spice rack.  I hate taking short trips, especially on week nights when I am usually in my pajamas 5 minutes after walking in the front door, and so if it is between making a special visit to the store or making something else, I choose the latter.  However, this has also led me to what I hope will become a section of each post, which is “How I improvised.”  Unless it is some sort of delicate cake or pastry, I have become increasingly okay with substituting, mixing, or deciding if it is okay to leave things out.  In other words, I always try my hardest to find ways around what otherwise might be the limiting reagents.  Not enough buttermilk to make the whole recipe?  Go online and figure out how use use vinegar and water or plain yogurt in place of the buttermilk you’re short. Google searches are particularly useful for seeing what other people recommend for substitutions.  As I think learning how to substitute and being brave enough to go “off-recipe” is integral to fun and success in the kitchen, I will always include the details, including the success or failure, of my alterations below the recipes.

Plumped Ginger-Caramel Shrimp

From The Splendid Kitchen’s How to Eat Supper by Lynne Rosetto-Kasper and Sally Swift

1. In a medium bowl, whisk 1/2 cup kosher or sea salt, 1/3 cup sugar, and 1/3 cup chile powder (that last one is not a typo, you really do need that much chile powder!) with 2 quarts warm water.  Drop in 1.5 pounds of frozen shrimp, and let them soak in the brine at room temp for about 20 minutes.  When time is up, drain and pat the shrimp dry.

2. Dice up 4 cloves of garlic with 1  4-inch piece of fresh peeled ginger root.

3. Heat 4 TBS canola oil (or other mild oil) in a saute pan over med-high heat.  Stir in the garlic and ginger, with some salt and pepper to taste.  Cook for one minute, stirring, and then add 4 tsp sugar.  Keep stirring and swishing the mixture around the pan, careful not to let the garlic get any darker than a lovely gold, probably another 1-3 minutes.  (The authors caution: There is a fine line between caramelization and cremation)

4. Drop in the drained shrimp immediately and stir again for another 1-2 minutes as the shrimp start to plump and turn a nice pink.

5. Serve alone or over a dish of hot brown rice.  Also makes a delicious lunch heated up in the office microwave the next day.

How I improvised

The recipe doesn’t specify, but I believe the intention was to start with raw frozen shrimp, and mine was already cooked.  Aside from not getting to watch them turn from grey to pink when I added them to the pan, I think they still turned out fine. Raw shrimp probably would have taken to the brine even better, but I think my way was perfectly tasty.

Also, even though I halved the recipe I still started the brine in a bowl that was too small, so I ended up using only about 2/3s the requisite amount of water.

“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.” – Fellini

I am working on my first post with images, a recipe, and some thoughts, but first I just had to get rid of the WordPress default first post and put up my own.  So first things first: I should introduce my cookbooks.  I’ve had the Better Homes and Gardens book for years.  It was originally my brother’s when he was in college, and it came back home with him after he graduated and went off to the Peace Corps, so I swiped it and use it often.  My mom gave me Mark Bittman’s famous How to Cook Everything for Christmas this year, and I open it almost every day, and read it just for fun and information.  I also love Lynne Kasper and Sally Swift’s How to Eat Supper, which is another not-just-a-cookbook cookbook (I got my title quote for this post from their book).  If you’re like me and you like to just read recipes and cookbooks, I really recommend it.  I will be mentioning all three of these books often in upcoming posts, I know.

Like most cooks these days the internet is a vital tool, not just for finding recipes but also for advice on certain techniques, good substitutions, etc.  However, reading recipes online certainly doesn’t give me the same cozy feeling that I get when I come home from work, make a snack and some tea, and sit down to watch the Daily Show from the night before and crack open a cookbook to decide what I’m going to make for dinner.