Thalia Learns to Cook: The Wonders of Improvisation

Recipes and examples of dishes I can now make! Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

Before I knew how to cook, I thought if you bought ingredients that you liked at the grocery store, it didn’t matter whether you had a set meal in mind or a combination you wanted to try. All you had to do is look into your refrigerator when you got home, and the meal would come to you. The ingredients you bought would somehow, in your mind, magically combine and you could create something delicious and perfect for dinner.

This, of course, is before I learned that usually meals consist of parts- protein, grain, vegetables, etc. So, I would end up with meals like a hot dog, no bun, baked beans and creamed corn. Notice how nothing in that meal is fresh.

As I learned how to cook, I swung in the totally opposite direction. Recipes only! Make a list! Go to the store and buy ONLY what is on that list! If you don’t have something from the recipe, you can’t make the recipe. You have to go out and buy it before you can cook.

(or, alternatively, you try to finish the recipe, but without making any changes based on the missing ingredient. Usually turns out badly).

It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to look at my refrigerator and at least be able to tell whether or not I have a full set of ingredients for a recipe. And then either cook it or not. Last night was one of those wonderful occasions that I actually thought about putting together a meal without a recipe and it worked! It started with looking around the kitchen and realizing that we didn’t have a central part to a dinner dish. Instead, we had a lot of vegetables. So, my lovely husband suggested salmon.

Now, it being midsummer (hooray! I am in denial summer will ever end), we have a bunch of ripe tomatoes in the house. Also, I had a craving for guacamole, so we have avocados. And a red onion. Put those together with some corn, which is also in season? And you’ve got a delicious salsa! Avocado, red onion, corn, tomato. Sounds delicious on a piece of seared salmon. So that’s what we did.

Some hints:

You want your cuts for the salsa to be as even as possible. That way, you always have a similar amount of each ingredient on your spoon.

Try to even your proportions. A whole ear of corn will be a bit much for just one tomato, so you might want one small and one large tomato.

Usually I like my avocados to be really ripe, almost over ripe. This makes for delicious guacamole. For the salsa, however, you want the avocado to be a bit more firm. This allows it to not “melt” into the other ingredients.

Cook the salmon. It may look cooked on the outside. It’s not. Test the inside. It’s still raw. Cook it all the way through.

Recipe: Salmon with summer salsa.

Ingredients: 1 lb salmon, deboned and cut into two fillets (the seafood counter should do this for you)

1 Lemon

Onion/ Garlic (optional)

1 Avocado, ripe but not overripe

1 Large tomato or 2 small tomatoes

1 small red onion

1 ear corn

Salt

Pepper

Olive Oil

1. Preheat your pan with a bit of olive oil. Medium heat works best.

2. Chop up and add some white onion and garlic, if you want. This is for flavoring, you won’t actually eat it.

3. Salt and pepper your salmon filets, and place them skin side down in the pan.

4. Cut up your lemon. Half should be wedges, which get squeezed over the filets in the pan. The other half, cut into as thin slices as you can get them. Lay them over the filets.

5. While the salmon cooks, make your salsa. I start with the red onion. Chop into small pieces.

6. Chop up the tomato.

7. De-kernal the corn. I actually found a small bread knife works really well here. Just hold the cob vertical and saw down.

8. Cut up the avocado.

9. Mix onion, corn, tomato and avocado together in small bowl. Salt lightly.

10. By now, your salmon might be done. I say might because we sat down to raw salmon last night. So, you might want to cook it more. And check before you eat it.

11. Eat the salmon with the salsa on top and a nice glass of white wine. Delicious!

Ellen Cooks A Vegetable

As much as I hate to admit it, summer is winding down. Soon the students will be haunting campus again, the leaves will be falling, and halloween will be upon us. So, to stave this off as long as possible I went to the farmer's market this weekend. I bought VEGETABLES.

To be fair, the vegetables I bought were either (a) meant to be slathered in butter (corn) or (b) not actually vegetable at all, but rather fruits (tomatoes and nectarines). So my reputation for unhealthy eating was not actually threatened too much by this rash act.

En route to the farmers market, at the farmer's market, and on my way home from the farmer's market, I ran into approximately everyone I have ever met. Their advice was universal -- get corn and grill it.

This would be great if I had any idea how to actually use my grill (someone else invariably grills for me since I should not be trusted around fire) and if I hadn't lent my grill to my neighbors.

After the prospect of grilled corn I couldn't quite stomach the idea of microwaving or boiling it, so I looked for an alternative online. I ran across a recipe for broiling corn in the oven. One of the reviews said:

"This is great. You can season it any way you want after you roast it. I am having it tonight. THIS IS WONDERFUL FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN ONLY COOK MEALS THAT ARE SUPER SIMPLE BECAUSE OF DISABILITIES AND STILL WANT HOME COOKED MEALS."

I was sold. While I don't actually have a disability, my understanding of what to do with vegetables may qualify me.

And you know what? It was delicious! SO, without further delay, here is a great recipe for corn on the cob, only slightly adapted from the original.

Broiled Corn on the Cob

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place the corn, husk and all, directly on the oven rack.

About 15 minutes in, rotate the corn so the front corn is in the back and vice versa. Also flip it around so what was on the top is now on the bottom.

Bake for another 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven, shuck the corn.

I like to use a pastry brush to brush butter on the corn. This is easy -- melt the butter, then paint that butter on with the brush. Sprinkle with a little sea salt.

Delicious!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

While on the subject of birthdays, this weekend I celebrated birthdays with my friend Katie. Katie and I were born exactly 2 weeks apart, and for the past several years have celebrated our birthdays together in some truly bizarre ways. For example, when we turned 28 we decided to have a ‘classy night out’, so Katie, our friends Jackie, Brandon, Frank and Kristin (otherwise known as Dennis) got all dressed up for dinner at a fancy restaurant to be followed by Shakespeare in the Park. It was going to be great*.

*(it has since come to my attention that this entire thing was actually for Jackie's birthday, which is a month earlier... but since one should never let facts get in the way of a good story, I will just say "Happy Birthday, Jackie!" and carry on).

Well. We got to the fancy restaurant and, surprise surprise, the prices were beyond the budgets of most of us cash strapped grad students. So we ordered the cheese plate. The cheese was one piece of gross cheese. We ordered the salad. It was literally 3 pieces of lettuce, two croutons and a little sprinkling of parmesan cheese. We spent $30 a piece for bad cheese, a tiny salad, and bitter disappointment. Determined to make the evening a success, we made our way to the local grocery store to get some snacks for Shakespeare in the park—sunchips, little debbies and wine.

We had great seats – we could see the whole stage, we ate our snacks, things looked like they were getting better! However, when the play started, we discovered that, although we had a great view, we couldn’t hear a thing. When you can’t hear, “The Tempest” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (just a lot of people sort of flailing around… yes, I know it’s supposed to represent a shipwreck, but without sound it’s just weird). So, one at a time, so as not to create a scene, we snuck out of Shakespeare in the park so we could go see a movie instead. Our classy night out was taking a swift downward turn. It spiraled down further when we stopped at Wendy’s en route to the movie. Sigh.

Over our deluxe cheeseburgers, we chatted about which movie to see. Having lived under a rock for most of my 20s, I trusted my friends to be more informed in current pop culture and to therefore pick a good movie. I trusted them implicitly not to lead me astray. They told me that they wanted to see “Bruno”, a film starring Sacha Baron-Cohen. Now, the only Baron-Cohen I know is Simon Baron-Cohen, renowned autism researcher. I thought it was a little weird that they wanted to watch an educational film, but it seemed fitting that it would go with our ‘classy night out’ theme so away we went.

Jerks.

Needless to say, that was a very memorable birthday! And I’m hoping that this birthday, the year Katie & I turn 30, will be memorable too, but for better, less traumatic reasons. Maybe it will be memorable for the cake that I made!

This cake, a chocolate peanut butter cake, is amazing. My friend Suzanne has made it for my birthday two years running. Last year when she made it, another friend ate so much of it that he went on a vision quest and met his spirit animal. A fox, if you’re interested.

The cake is supposed to be a 3 layer cake, but since it had to travel from New Haven, CT to Baltimore, MD (where Katie just started a postdoc) by train, I thought a better solution would be to… yes, big surprise, bake it in jars!

So, happy birthday Katie! I hope this year is better than the year of the classy night out! 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

(adapted only very very slightly from Smitten Kitchen's recipe)

Ingredients (makes 12 half pint jars):

Cake: 
1 c flour
1 ¼ c sugar
1/3 c cocoa powder
1 T baking soda
½ t salt
½ c vegetable oil
½ c sour cream
3/4 c water
1 ½ T white vinegar
½ t vanilla extract
1 egg  

Peanut Butter Frosting: 
8 oz cream cheese
1 stick unsalted butter (softened)
5 c confectioner’s sugar
2/3 c smooth peanut butter

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Glaze 
4 oz semisweet chocolate
1 ½ T smooth peanut butter
1 T light corn syrup
¼ c half-and-half or cream  

Instructions: 

Preheat then oven to 350 degrees then butter (or use cake release) the sides of the jars.

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt into a large bowl, whiking to combine well.

Add the oil and sour cream and whisk to blend.

Gradually beat in the water, be careful because it wants to be splashy.

Blend in the vinegar and vanilla. It’ll get funny and bubbly, but that’s ok, it’s just the baking soda and vinegar having a party.

Whisk in the egg and beat until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and be sure it’s well mixed.

Divide among the jars, filling about a third to half way.

Bake for 30-35 minutes (less if you fill it only 1/3) or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean.

Cool on wire rack for about 20 minutes.

Then, run a knife around the edge of the jars to lossen up the cakes. Dump them out on the wire rack, and wash your jars up while the cakes cool.

To make the peanut butter ganache beat the cream cheese and butter with a mixer until light and fluffy.

Add the confectioner’s sugar, one cup at a time, mixing after each addition and scraping down the bowl frequently.

Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.

Add the peanut butter and beat until thoroughly blended.

Depending on how much your cakes have risen, cut them into 3 or 4 approximately equal sizes. If they fill most of the jar, cut them into 4 and reserve the 4th top layer to make cake balls with at the end! Use a serrated knife to cut them, it’ll be way easier and less crumbly (though, as you’ll see from the pictures below, still pretty crumbly).

Place one layer in the bottom of the jar.

Using a pastry bag pipe some peanut butter frosting into the jar.

Then place the next layer on top, alternating cake and frosting until you’ve got a layer of peanut butter frosting on the top.

Smooth down the peanut butter frosting on top so it's flat.

Repeat this with all your jars.

Now make the glaze – melt the butter, peanut butter and corn syrup in a double boiler over simmering water.

Remove from the heat and add the half and half or cream.

Spoon over the top of the jars then spread with an offset spatula to make it smooth and pretty on top.

Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve, at least half an hour.

Remove from the fridge a little bit before you plan to serve it.

Enjoy!

Cheesecake Bar!!

As Thalia mentioned in her last post, I recently had a birthday! I turned THIRTY. Approximately 1 in every 3 birthday wishes I received included a comment along the lines of: you crazy old dessert lady, what kind of wild confection are you cooking up for this one?

So I knew it had to be special.

To add to the pressure, just a few days before my scheduled birthday party, my friends threw me a surprise party! A dessert themed surprise party! How awesome is that?? All the standard birthday desserts were present and accounted for. Strawberry layer cake? Check! (It was delicious, by the way! Well done, Thalia!). Chocolate peanut butter layer cake? (which seems to be my New Haven traditional birthday cake, thanks Suzanne!). Check! And all the cookies and cakes and mousses and delicious things that my heart could desire. After the initial terror of 20 people jumping out of an apparently empty kitchen and screaming at me had passed, I was in heaven.

So when it came to my non-surprise, scheduled birthday party, I knew I had to come up with something out of the ordinary. Something amazing… Are you ready for this?

CHEESECAKE BAR! 

Picture it -- mini-cheesecakes accompanied by myriad toppings (chocolate sauce, peanut butter sauce, caramel sauce, strawberry sauce, reeses cups, toffee chips, cashews, pecans and last but not least, almond slivers) for your mixing and matching pleasure.

Swoon.

It was delicious! And, to be honest, it is still delicious as I’m still working my way through the remaining few cheesecakes. But I’m 30. I’ll eat as many cheesecakes as I want.

Cheesecake Bar:

Cheesecakes (makes about 2 dozen 4-oz jars; adapted from the Cook's Illustrated Recipe): 
1 T melted unsalted butter
3 (and maybe more) T graham cracker crumbs
2 lbs cream cheese (that’s 4 8-oz blocks)
1 ¼ c granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1 t lemon zest
2 t vanilla
¼ c heavy cream
¼ c sour cream  

Peanut Butter Sauce: 
1 c peanut butter chips
1/3 c milk
¼ c heavy cream
¼ t vanilla extract  

Chocolate Sauce: 
2 c semisweet chocolate chips
1 c heavy cream
1/3 c sugar
1/3 c corn syrup
1 ½ t vanilla
1 T Grand Marnier  

Caramel Sauce: 
½ stick butter
1 c packed brown sugar
½ c heavy cream

Strawberry Sauce: 
2 pints fresh strawberries
½ c sugar
1 c water
1 t lemon zest
2 T kirsch

Instructions:
Cheesecake: 

Preheat the oven to 350 and bring a kettle of water to a boil (for the water bath).

Using a pastry brush, paint the insides of 2-dozen 4-oz jars (or ramekins, or whatever you’re using) with butter. Then coat the jars with graham cracker crumbs (toss a bunch in there and shake them around and pour the remainders into the next jar).

Beat cream cheese until smooth.

Gradually add sugar and beat on medium until sugar dissolves (about 3 minutes).

Add eggs, one at a time, scraping the bowl down between each addition to make sure that the cream cheese gets well incorporated. Add the zest and vanilla and beat until just combined. Add in cream and sour cream, stirring until smooth.

Pour the batter into the jars, until it’s about 2/3 of the way to the top. If you fill it up too much you won’t be able to get all the yummy toppings in!

Place the jars into a 9X13 pan (you’ll need one for each dozen) and pour enough boiling water in to come about half way up the sides of the jars.

Bake until the perimeter is set but center is jiggly. It takes about 45 minutes or so.

Turn off the heat and leave the oven door open (prop it with a wooden spoon) for at least an hour.

Remove jars from the water bath and cool to room temperature on a wire rack.

Once they reach room temperature cover and refrigerate (at least 4 hours).

Peanut Butter Sauce: 

Melt the peanut butter chips with the milk and cream in a medium saucepan over low heat. Stir constantly until mixture is smooth.

Stir in the vanilla.

Pour into a jar.

Chocolate Sauce: 

Place the chocolate chips in a jar and set aside.

Combine the cream, sugar and corn syrup in a saucepan and bring to a boil over low heat. Stirring constantly.

Remove from heat and pour over chocolate chips. Let sit for a few seconds while you put the lid on the jar.

Very carefully (with oven mitts perhaps, or in my case, put your dad to work), shake the jar to mix the chocolate sauce together until it's smooth.  

Caramel Sauce:

Melt butter in a small saucepan. Stir in the brown sugar and cream and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat to low and boil, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Cool slightly.  

Strawberry Sauce: 

Hull the berries then combine them with the sugar, water and zest in a saucepan.

Cook until the berries are soft and the liquid is thick (about 10 minutes).

Stir in the kirsch and cook for another minute.

My dad, an excellent sous-chef!

Remove from the heat and using a potato masher smoosh the strawberries until they are a consistency that you like.

Serve your cheesecake jars with the sauces and whatever else you’d like to include. I served mine with chocolate sauce, peanut butter sauce, caramel sauce, strawberry sauce, reeses cups, toffee chips, cashews, pecans and almond slivers. Needless to say, it was a wild success!

Thalia Learns to Cook: Ellen's Strawberry Cake!

Recipes and examples of dishes I can now make! Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

I recently had the opportunity to attempt my very first cake. And happily, it was for Ellen’s birthday! Therefore, I decided what better cake to try, what better occasion, than to make the famous* “Cake the started it all!”

*your definition of famous may vary.

Below is my annotated version of Ellen’s cake recipe from this very blog! That’s right, I followed the recipe from this blog to moderately positive effects, and you can too!

Ok, ingredients. I know from my previous non-dessert training that getting all the ingredients ahead of time is an important step before attempting any dish. Luckily, I have a full pantry, and an overflowing refrigerator….

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix
1 3-oz box strawberry jello
1 10-12 oz pkg of frozen strawberries (or 2 pints of fresh strawberries)
½ c water
½ c oil
4 eggs
1 box (4 cups) powdered sugar (+ up to about a cup or so more,
depending on how thick you want the icing)
1 stick melted butter

Wait a minute! I don’t have any of these ingredients! Well, I have some eggs and oil (I am assuming canola oil, since that what it says on the box and olive oil might taste a bit strange?) I also don’t have enough butter, since we use a lot of EVOO. OK, off the store, back in a bit.

Preheat your oven to 350.

This I can do.

If you’re making this recipe with fresh strawberries, the recipe will be a little bit different than if you’re making it with frozen berries. If you’re using frozen berries, let them thaw over a strainer placed over a measuring cup.

Thaw until you get about 1 c of juice.

Hmmm…. I decide to go with frozen strawberries so as to more easily control portion size. However, I don’t have a properly sized sieve that will go over a measuring cup. I therefore go for this set up.

Seems to be working. I’ll just leave it alone for a while.

If you’re using fresh strawberries, hull about half a pint of them, then liquefy them in a blender. You want to have about a cup here too, so add strawberries as necessary until you get to a cup.

OK, here’s where I run into my first problem. After 1 hour of waiting for the strawberries to melt into juice, there is no juice. And I have a party to get to!

So, I make an executive decision: I shall squish the strawberries so as to attempt to get out some juice. I use a potato masher. Seems a good deal.

Get some juice, pour it from bowl into measuring cup and…. no dice.

Ok, rethinking my plan. If Ellen says it’s ok to puree fresh strawberries, then perhaps it’s also ok to puree frozen strawberries? Either way, gotta get moving! So, I puree some of the frozen strawberries and I get a cup of frozen strawberry juice/ puree and away we go!

Now, combine cake mix, strawberry jello, strawberry juice / puree, water, oil, and eggs. Mix thoroughly.

Oh! It’s so pretty! And pink! And it smells like childhood! Excellent! And now I run into another problem. I don’t own a “real” mixer. I dream of a Kitchen-Aid mixer. I register for them, I enter competitions to win them. To be honest, I could just go out and buy myself one, but what’s the fun in that? So, I don’t own one and therefore I improvise using this rinky dink thing. It throws cake mix all over the kitchen and me, but otherwise seems to be doing its job.

Prepare 3 – 8” round pans (or you can use a 9X13, or, if you’re going to a picnic like me, you could go with jars!) by spraying with cake release, or buttering/flouring them.

Hmm… several problems here.

1) I don’t own 3 – 8 inch pans. I own 2- 9inch pans. That I got when I got married 3 years ago and have not yet used. So, I dust them off, take off the wrapping, wash them and here we go! I also think I can pour any left over cake mix into a loaf pan (which I also own) and eat it on the sly.

2) I don’t own any cake release! It wasn’t in the list of ingredients. So I decide to do something that I think I remember either my mother doing or seeing on a tv show. It comes from the depths of my unconscious combined with Ellen’s instruction to butter and flour the pans. I rub some butter on them, then I pour some flour on them. Then I tap the pans around to get the excess flour out of them. This seems to provide a thin layer of flour. So, I say let’s go for it.

Bake for 20 – 30 minutes (depending on your pan size) or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean (or with a few crumbs).

Eeek! I don’t own any toothpicks! Ok, I think a fork will work.

Here’s another issue. I have NO IDEA how full to make the pans. If the recipe is meant to go into three pans and I only own two and perhaps a bit on the side, I reason that I should not fill the pans up all the way. And good thing, too. I fill them up half way, and as I turn the light on in the oven, I notice that the cakes have begun to rise up. At an alarming rate. At least if they spill over, it will make a funny blog post. But happily they do not spill over and I continue on my way. The blog post suffers accordingly.

After 20 minutes I pull out the rack with the cakes and they are distinctly wobbly. So I go with another 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, I stick in a fork and it comes out pink and covered in half baked cake. After another 3 minutes, the same thing happens. 2 minutes after that I get impatient again and pull the cakes out to start the cooling process. I take a shower to avoid futzing with the cakes for at least 15 minutes.

If you’re doing a layer cake, or baking your cakes in jars, cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes, then slide a knife around the edge of the cake, place a cooling rack on top of the cake, and invert. Then take a second cooling rack and flip it again so the top of the cake is
facing upward.

Yeah, I don’t own 2 cooling racks. Actually I don’t own 1 cooling rack. So instead I pop the cake out onto my hand to then put on a plate.

This does not go so well. So I pop the cake onto one plate and then flip back onto another plate and then set about making the icing.

I cut my little jar cakes in half to simulate a layer cake, feel free to do whatever you want! Let your cake cool to room temperature, and while it’s doing so, you can go ahead and make the frosting. To do this, mix the powdered sugar melted butter and strawberries, adding more powdered sugar until you get an icing of your desired consistency.

I have no clue what my desired consistency of icing is. Making icing like the extremely thick and sweet sweet nector of grocery store yellow cake of my childhood seems unlikely. So, I just use the whole package of powdered sugar (that’s the same thing as confectioner’s sugar, right?) and the butter and some more strawberries. Again, I do not own a mixer so I make do with the same rinky dink hand mixer as before, only this time I manage to get powdered sugar all over myself and the floor.

In the end, I have a huge amount of bright pink frosting.

Ice the cake! Note, this icing is a little bit on the runny side, so you’ll want to thicken it up a lot or consider cutting back on the butter if you’re making a layer cake.

Oops! I should have cut back on the butter! Oh well. I glop the frosting onto layer 1, call over my husband to flip layer 2 on top (I’m scared of cake disaster and he’s better and both spatial intelligence and physics) and glop frosting over layer 2! (not the most appetizing sound in the world.) I then realize I have a full cup of frosting left over, and if I put any more onto this cake, it will simply continue to run down the sides. So, I pour it into a cup and that’s that. People can add more frosting if they so desire.

Final issue: transportation. We have to drive 45 minutes to get to this party. We do not own a fancy cake transportation system, this being the first cake I’ve ever made and all. And, it’s too late to transfer the cake to another surface anyway. It’s glued to the place with frosting. So I take the bottom of my salad spinner (don’t worry, there was no kale residue), and I place it over top. Voila! Cake! It was tasty and an overall positive experience.

Could this be the beginning of a new foray in to Thalia Learns to Cook: Desserts? Stay tuned!