On behalf of Ben's arteries: I'm on a hamburger strike!

Lately Ben has been realllllllly into hamburgers.

Not that he hasn't always been a fan, but the last few months have been especially hamburger filled!

First he read an article about the best $5 burgers in NYC and dragged me all around to try them all out. I think I made it to 3/5 places--one of which was in Queens!

Yes, we traveled around 45 minutes to try an under $5 hamburger! It was tasty, but that's a long way to go for a sandwich.

After finishing off the $5 list, he started finding other lists of the "best" hamburgers in New York.
So far not a one has trumped his favorite (Zaitzeff).

To be perfectly honest, most of them taste the same to me. I did notice that the bun was too thick at one restaurant, and that I liked the sweet potato french fries more at another..but otherwise?
Eh. A hamburger is just still a hamburger to me!

After traipsing all over the city and paying other people to make him hamburgers that never lived up to his favorite, I decided it might be fun to have make-your-own gourmet burger night!

So a few weeks ago, we made these little beauties:

(Ingredients include: chopped onion, parsely, garlic power, and mustard seeds. The mustard seeds were KEY!)

The burgers were a little too round and the buns could have been better, but overall it was a pretty successful experiment! I would show you pictures of the finished product, but the only semi-decent photo I could get occurred after Ben had already taken a big bite. Not sure anyone wants to see partially eaten hamburger!

We watched Hubert Keller's video a few times for cooking tips and then went to town searing and then devouring our creations.

I think I'll upgrade our bun choices next time and spend a little more time learning the art of a flat hamburger, but perhaps the strike will only extend to restaurant made food!

Cooking club: fried green tomatoes

Despite being a big fan of the movie, I've never tried to make fried green tomatoes.

Thank goodness for Wednesday night cooking club!


I don't know if I would have done this on my own, but with some adventurous food buddies by my side, it was pretty darn easy. Mostly because I got to: slice tomatoes, stir polenta, and then eat. Pretty good deal!

Ended up with fried green tomatoes, cheesy polenta, green beans, and delicious little fried green tomatoes.

We started out with these:

And ended up with these:

I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the finished plate, because it was pretty cute.
But it all tasted great, and that's all that matters!

Mini grapefruit & olive oil cupcakes with candied pistachios

A few months ago I made a olive oil and blood orange cake for Ben's birthday. 

It was super duper delicious and I've been meaning to make it again.

Unfortunately the blood orange growing season does not correspond with my wants and desires..and blood oranges are loooong gone in NYC!

So when a friend asked for some type of tasty citrus cake for her birthday, I decided to adapt the blood orange cake into some sort of grapefruit cupcake. 

The original recipe (here) turned into this:

For the cake
2 medium (red) grapefruits
½ cup whole milk
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 large eggs
3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon sea salt

For the topping (optional)
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup raw pistachios

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease muffin tin with olive oil, or set out clean silicone cupcake holders (which is what I used).

Once all the preheating and greasing is done, grate the 2 grapefruits to get zest. Put aside in a little cup or bowl. Then supreme the grapefruit over a large bowl. I let the actual pieces fall into the bowl and reserved most of the juice for further squeezing into a measuring cup.  It was a little interesting (read: HARD) to supreme the grapefruits, but not impossible despite my relative inexperience. Once the fruit segments are in the bowl, measure the juice (you should have about 1/4 cup) and then add around a 1/2 cup of whole milk. Add the olive oil, eggs, and sugar to the juice/milk mixture and stir well to combine. 

In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients, and then mix in the wet ingredients, zest and grapefruit segments. Stir until batter is smooth.

Fill the muffin tin or baking cups around 1/2-3/4 full and pop them in the oven for 16-18 minutes. I know that my oven cooks a little unevenly and dries food out quickly, so you might have to tweak cooking times. 

While the cupcakes are cooling, make the topping:

Put the sugar in a saucepan set over medium heat. Cook until the sugar is dissolved and has turned into a dark syrup. Make sure it doesn't burn or get too hot!

While  you're creating your syrup, you can throw the pistachios into the microwave for about 45 seconds to get them a little toasty. Once they're toasted, toss them into the sugar syrup and mix them around.

Working really quickly, spoon a few pistachios and the now caramel-like sugar onto the top of each grapefruit cupcake. It will harden into a brittle like substance almost at once. 

Once all of the cupcakes are covered, pop them into tupperware containers. If you let the cupcakes sit out for a bit (like overnight) the sugar will soften back into a syrup and will sink into the cupcakes keeping them nice and moist. 

I wish I had better pictures..but here is what they looked like:

Better late than never..? Indian Feast with some Brooklyn pals!

Yikes, you'd think something major was going on in my life or something--like presenting my final essay and getting my masters--what with my lack of blogging.

Oh, wait..that is happening...THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW!

I'll back back after I present with some post-graduate degree thoughts.
But for now, a cooking post!

The informal cooking club that I tried to start up last fall has slowly morphed into an informal dinner party group.

This past week it turned into an Indian-themed Shabbat dinner.
I'll have to check in with J (the host) of this particular shindig, because I should really link to the site that had all the recipes.

Since I can't remember it offhand, I'll just share some pictures.

As I (hope) you can see..it was delicious!

A late birthday post: Ben's Birthday Cake!

Ben's birthday was already quite a few weeks ago, and I'm just now getting around to posting about the celebration. Yikes!

Anyway, despite taking a rather low-key approach I wanted to share a few quick photos.

First up, the cake: Olive Oil and Blood Orange w/ Pistachio Brittle Topping

I adapted a recipe from raspberryeggplant  and was (mostly) pleased with the result.
I made mine in this shallow dish; Ben made it for me and it seemed fitting, and Roopa's recipe said to put it in a loaf pan but I wanted mine to be more dessert-like.

It's a pretty terrible picture, but I think it tasted great.

I also made a little bit of the batter into cupcakes. That way I could try out the cake and topping before I handed it over to Ben! It would have been pretty sad if I gave him a cake I hadn't tried and it tasted awful.






You can (kind of) see in picture of the cupcake how everything turned out this rather neat shade of green:

I think it was a success, despite the fact that the topping was really really hard. I didn't get the sense from the  original recipe that it was supposed to be a brittle, but that's how mine turned up..so I tweaked the name and decided to pretend it was on purpose.
I think that Ben had to shatter it with a knife before cutting slices @ his office party, but (he said) that it tasted delicious..so that's all that matters (right?!).

Thanksgiving Menu Overview

Overall I was pretty pleased with the Thanksgiving Menu.

I think that next year I will add a soup and remove the generic salad (since no one touched a single bite!).

Otherwise, I think it was pretty successful.

Our dinner included:

Appetizers:

Butternut squash and roasted onion phyllo tartlets

Dinner:

Turkey

Cranberry Challah Stuffing

Cranberry & Apple Chutney

Cranberry Sauce

Apple Butter

Green Beans with roasted shallots & fennel

Mustard & Cumin Roasted Potatoes

Sweet Potato Casserole

Green salad with walnuts and cranberries

Cranberry Rolls

Butternut squash ravioli w/ sage ‘butter’ sauce

Teriyaki Salmon

Dessert:

Pareve Pumpkin Pie

Mexican Apple Pie

If it sounds like a lot of food..well that’s because it was!

I also apparently went on a huge cranberry kick! Gotta love those antioxidants!

We had a ton of leftovers, which I turned into 2 pot pies.

I used the same pie crust recipe that I had used for the pumpkin pie, and it tastes great with either savory or sweet fillings.

Pictures and a few recipes to come!

Thanksgiving: Menu Highlights to Come!

Wow, what an action packed few days!
After several weeks of planning and a marathon of cooking, B and I successfully hosted our first Thanksgiving for both of our families in our NYC apartment.

Despite the sweltering temperature (oven+no heat control+ 9 people in an apartment=hot), I think it went really well!

Thanks Mom and Dad for coming in a day early to help! And thanks to B's parents for the lovely gift baskets!! Since someone (ahem, B) ate all of the cookies, crackers and cheese bites out of the first one I'm considering a plan to hide the items from the second one so that I can try something.

Since I'm pretty excited that everyone survived the evening and seemed to enjoy the food, I'm going to post some pictures and recipes from the meal (in the days to come).

This was one of the first times I did not go home to Harrisburg for Thankgiving, and although I missed seeing a few old friends and family members, it was really exciting starting a new tradition. Although I'm still in recovery mode (so tired!), I think that I'll be excited to this again next year.

Cooking Club Month 2: Pasta

Last month we made mozzarella cheese..and this month it was pasta!

Since I had made mozzarella a few times before, I hosted/taught last month.
This month Jacob took over and hosted everyone at his apt.
We made pasta with two kinds of wheat flour (semolina and durum).

It was actually pretty easy, although I'm going to need more practice at the rolling part!

We used a ratio of 1 c. flour to 1 egg.
You crack the egg right into the center of a little flour mountain, and mix with a fork in the center.

I was really bad at keeping the egg from running out of the middle area, but it seemed to work out anyway.


Then you keep incorporating the flour from your now rather flattened mountain, and start kneading.

Then you roll it out really thin..and voila! Pasta!



Rolling out until it was nearly transparent was probably the most difficult part.

I guess that's why they have nice little pasta machines. You put the dough through and it presses it thin and flat for you.

Although mine wasn't as thin as it could have been, it was kind of fun getting to roll the pasta out by hand. Really rather satisfying.




We made pumpkin ravioli out of the durum, and fettuccine out of the semolina.

I forgot to take pictures of the ravioli, but it was very tasty.



To make the fettuccine, you roll up the entire piece of rolled out dough kind of an a diagonal.

Imagine making a napkin roll.

Then you slice the now-rolled dough and unwrap the pieces.


You end up with lovely strands of pasta. And fresh pasta cooks so quickly!
<--We went from this











<--to this in just a few minutes.

Throw on some homemade white wine cream sauce, and you have pasta perfection on a plate!

So excited to do this again now that I know how!!

Mozzarella party!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finally have some pictures ready of the homemade mozzarella!

Last night a few friends joined for a little cheese making party at the apartment.
3 hours, 2 gallons of whole milk and a LOT of bread/cheese/fruit snacking later...tada, we had homemade mozzarella cheese!

Turns out that TJ's whole milk is probably ultra pasteurized (despite the label). The cheaper milk from Key Foods produced much shinier prettier looking cheese.

The process is really pretty easy.
Heat a lot of whole milk, stir in some citric acid. Add more heat & rennet. Seperate the curd from the whey and microwave the curds for a bit.

When it reaches the right temp, throw on some gloves and knead and then pull.

Even though the directions say to pull it like taffy, we found that if you pulled the mozzarella apart too quickly or too much the texture got a little funny. Either way, it worked out pretty well.
See how pretty it looks all stretched out? (look---right over there--->)


After a few misfires (the mozzarella was too lumpy looking) we hit on the right strategy.
Apparently bread making is an asset, since our resident baker- Jacob- won the prize for prettiest looking mozzarella!

Here is a nice shot of all of the mozzarella from batch 2. Try and guess which piece was made by Jacob:

Oh..and the aftermath on the right:

Cheese making try 1: a good start!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I (finally) made my first batch of home-made mozzarella cheese this weekend! The texture is a little off, but it tastes pretty darn good.

Since taste is way more important than texture, I think it's a success story..but I will be trying again this Wednesday with a few friends!

I have decided that the texture issue could be because:
1. The TJ milk is actually ultra-pasteurized and not just pasteurized like it says on the label.
and/or
2. When I tried to make a small batch, I messed up the ratios. It was really also really difficult trying to crush a rennet tablet into 8ths!

I'm hopeful that the big batch on Wed. will be 100% successful!
Also, pictures to come!

Monday night dinner deliciousness (I hope!)

Tonight's menu:

1. Mustard and herb encrusted salmon
2. Watermelon, feta, and tomato salad
3. Veggies slices

I'm going to start posting more of my dinner menus! I try to cook 4-5 nights a week and am always looking for new recipes.

Tonight I'm trying a salmon recipe from tastykitchen and the watermelon & feta dish from smittenkitchen.

Tasty kitchen in the cooking brainchild of Ree from Pioneer Woman &
Deb writes smittenkitchen here in NYC.

I want to be friends with both of them.

Anyway, they both post great recipes (and awesome) pictures!

So here's my try.
Hope it turns out ok!

Perhaps I'll follow up with reactions from B post-meal.

Top Chef needs to come back right away..like 5, 4, 3, 2..now!

Top Chef Masters is just not cutting it for me (pun semi-intended)!

It's fun enough, but I can't really root for anyone because they're only around for 1 episode.

I know we're supposed to like them because they're famous, but I like learning about the contestants on the regular version over the course of the season.

Anyway, the real reason I'm ranting about a random cooking show is that the absence of my favorite has led me to watch....Chopped.

Yeesh.

It's really bad.

Ted Allen is kind of terrible as the host.

And most of the contestants are dimwits.

The current episode features an EXECUTIVE CHEF who just poured curry powder over lamb in a saute pan and called it creative. Oh, and authentic.

Sorry executive chef cookoo, but curry powder is neither.

Must have new episodes of Top Chef before I hurt the television..

Brussels Sprouts

I made one of my favorite recipes last night and ate it all for lunch today! Yum! Here is the recipe and a picture (Ben made the bowl):

1-1 lb bag of brussels sprouts
2-chicken apple sausages
2-pieces bacon (turkey works too)
2 capfuls maple syrup
1/4 cup gently crushed walnuts
1 apple

Fry bacon in pan until crisp. While it's cooking chop the bottoms off of the brussels sprouts (throw this part out..or compost!) and chop them all into small shreds. Take the bacon out of the pan and lay on a paper towel. You can clean the pan, or use the bacon grease to cook the shredded b sprouts. Cook them on LOW for 10-12 minutes. Do not let the shredded b sprouts burn or they will taste funny. While the b sprouts are cooking on low, microwave the chicken sausage for 2 minutes or grill until warm. Cut into slices and add to pan, along with the apple (which should already be cut into small pieces). Let all ingredients soften for another 5-10 minutes on low, pour syrup and nuts in and stir. Salt to taste and serve!

You can also make this recipe without the bacon. Use olive oil instead of bacon grease and follow the recipe.