Healthy, Meet Delicious

I really enjoyed this new monthly column by Mark Bittman in the New York Times Dining section: Healthy, Meet Delicious. Bittman’s philosophy of eating vegan before 6pm and having what he likes for dinner seems like an easy way to eat more healthfully and make sure you get your vegetables in. I have been trying something similar, although I allow myself yogurt and occasionally eggs. But I like this method because I don’t feel deprived and because it is an easy lifestyle change to adopt.

I tried Bittman’s recipe for chopped salad last week and I liked it a lot. If you shred a lot of cabbage and carrots at one time, they will keep for a while undressed and can then easily be incorporated into chopped salad, coleslaw, other salads, stir-fries and so on. I have found that the easiest way to prompt myself to eat more vegetables is to have them prepped and ready for when I get hungry, so I don’t default to an easier and less healthy option at lunchtime.

The smoothie recipe also looks good, and is very similar to one I make often, especially during the summer months.

Review of The Drunken Botanist

The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World’s Great Drinks by Amy Stewart

Around the world, there is not a tree, shrub or wildflower that hasn’t been brewed or bottled, according to The Drunken Botanist, a fascinating look at the relationships between plants and alcohol. Amy Stewart explores history, horticulture, trivia, tips for growing your own and, of course, recipes.

Humankind’s relationship with alcohol is a long one. If it grows, we’ve tried to ferment, distill or brew it. There are so many fun facts in this book, found on every page. How to drink absinthe, a particularly literary liqueur. The role bugs play in making booze. Why beer bottles are brown. How to make alcohol from bananas, sweet potatoes and even parsnips. I’m an avid wine drinker, and now I want to try aromatized wines; before this book, I didn’t even know what those were, but they sure sound delicious.

The Drunken Botanist is a pleasure to leaf through, preferably with a drink close at hand. It reminds me of an old-fashioned reference manual, with its charming black-and-white sketches and cocktail recipe “cards.” This book should appeal to all kinds of hobbyists: nature lovers, gardeners, brewers, cooks, mixologists and anyone who enjoys a tipple from time to time.

Note: I received a free advance review copy of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

In Praise of Comfort Foods

Macaroni and cheese is an American comfort food (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The New York Times dining section this week had an article on comfort foods: Comfort Without Color – In Praise of Pale Food – NYTimes.com. We all have our beloved comfort foods, those foods that typically remind us of childhood, and are usually white, fattening and delicious. Macaroni and cheese is one of my favorites; the article also gives recipes for rice pudding and potpie.

I’m thinking I might have to make a batch of mac and cheese tonight, just to kick winter’s butt out the door. We’ve had an unusually cold week for the last week of March, and I am so ready for spring.

What are your favorite comfort foods?

New Cookbook: 101 Classic Cookbooks

101 Classic Cookbooks: 501 Classic Recipes (2012) is a beautiful compendium of recipes from 101 great cookbooks that span time and encompass many types of cooking, cuisines and ways of eating. I was pleased to see many of my favorite cookbook writers included, such as Mark Bittman, Alice Waters, Patricia Wells and Marcella Hazan. The book opens with a summary of each selected cookbook and scans of interior pages, showcasing the cookbook’s unique style. Following are 501 recipes selected from the cookbooks to illustrate what makes each one special. If you like to cook broadly and try new cookbooks, you can’t go wrong with a compendium like this.

Related articles

• The Only Cookbooks You Need (simplycooking.wordpress.com)

Creating Menus

I used to be quite obsessed with copying and adapting recipes, organizing them and amassing a collection. But I have to admit that I have lost interest in that aspect of cooking, which may help explain why this blog has been so lamentably neglected as of late. It has become clear to me that I really no longer need to expend my labor in copying or collecting recipes. The age of the “just in time” recipe is here. Via my relatively small cookbook collection, I have access to over 20,000 recipes (according to my library on Eat Your Blogs), and once I go online, that number expands exponentially into infinitude. If I want a recipe for something, anything, chances are I can find it within seconds. There does not seem to be much point in writing down recipes anymore.

Lately, I have become much more interested in combining recipes into menus — menus that are both interesting to eat and easy to execute. Rather than recipes, it is menus that I have been playing around with, collecting and organizing. Neither my cookbooks nor the online world seem to provide more than the most basic guidance on how to create a successful menu. Yet most recipes don’t alone make a full meal. Each meal requires a new menu.

I am starting to come up with some rules for what makes a good menu. The first rule is that the menu must encompass no more than four separate dishes. Four seems to be the greatest number of dishes I can make without frustration in one cooking session. Three dishes is an ideal menu, in one of these combinations: a starter, an entree and a side; a starter, an entree and a dessert; or an entree, a side and a dessert. For a lighter meal, I can definitely get away with a menu of only two different items.

Another rule is balance. Of course, different kinds of foods, tastes and textures should balance one another. But to save the sanity of the cook, it is also necessary to balance complexity of dishes. If I am making one elaborate dish, the rest of the menu should be composed of relatively simple recipes. A simple entree, such as roast chicken, calls for a more elaborate side, though, in order to keep the meal from becoming boring.

I will try to post some of my more successful menus here, with links to the recipes, of course.

The Only Cookbooks You Need

Cover via Amazon

This week, as I was developing my weekly menu, I got to thinking about the cookbooks I have versus the cookbooks I use. Like many home cooks, I have acquired more cookbooks than I can ever possibly use on a regular basis. I love to browse through cookbooks, especially those with beautiful photography, even if I don’t make very many recipes from them. I have noticed that I used to buy a lot more cookbooks than I do now, because I used to experiment a lot more. Now, I’ve settled on the kinds of dishes that I like to cook at home and that my family like to eat, which keeps me returning to the same cookbooks again and again.

If I had to ruthlessly pare down my cookbook library, I think I could easily make do with just eight cookbooks and spend a lifetime happily cooking from them. These are the four basic cookbooks I consider essential:

• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
• The Joy of Cooking
• The Foster’s Market Cookbook

The Waters book is essentially a home-cooking course for beginning cooks, and I return to its classic, simple recipes again and again. The other two contain pretty much every recipe I’d ever want to make, and they offer lots of variations so I don’t get bored. However, these all-purpose cookbooks tend to skimp on categories that I consider essential: breakfast, easy entertaining and cookies. Luckily, the Foster’s Market cookbook does a terrific job filling in those gaps (especially cookies).

Every now and then, I like to cook something more elaborate, from one of the four basic food groups: Italian, French, Mexican and Southern. I could buy hundreds of cookbooks in each of these categories, but I really only need one that’s definitive and comprehensive for each style of cooking I want to do. Over the years, I’ve settled on these four:

• Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
  
• Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells
• Authentic Mexican by Rick Bayless
• Sara Foster’s Southern Cookbook

Of course, your favorite regions or types of dishes will be different than mine, so I would suggest researching the cookbook offerings and locating that one definitive cookbook in each category. It’s so much easier cooking out of just a few books and getting to know them very well than it is trying to find that one recipe you want to make from among hundreds of cookbooks.

A Quick Soup for Lunch or Anytime

I have been trying to eat more soup lately, at least for one meal a day. When I’m feeling a little under the weather and rundown, which seems to be the norm this winter, nothing hits the spot like a bowl of soup. Soup is also filling and an easy way to sneak in lots of veggies.

But it can seem like a chore to make a pot of soup, especially in the middle of a busy day. With just a little planning, though, I can turn leftover cooked meat, vegetables, and pasta or rice into a quick soup anytime.

The most important part of the soup is its base, the stock. A rich, satisfying, full-bodied soup requires a homemade stock. Making stock ahead of time is easy to do. Just let a big pot simmer away while doing other things around the house or, better yet, break out the slow cooker. Here is my method for making stock.

I usually make chicken stock on a Sunday afternoon. After cooling it in the refrigerator, I freeze it in two-cup containers. In the evening, I pop a container of frozen stock into the fridge to defrost overnight, and I’m all ready to make a bowl of soup for lunch the next day. (Defrost more containers if cooking for more than one person.)

When it comes time to make lunch, I compose the soup out of anything I find in the fridge that is either already cooked or will cook quickly. Of course, I make sure that the flavors are well-matched, too. I usually stick to five or fewer ingredients for a simple, nourishing soup. Here are some ideas for what to add:

• any cooked meat, shredded or sliced small
• diced bacon, crisped in the soup pot before adding the stock
• leftover cooked vegetables
• fresh greens, such as spinach or bok choy
• canned or fresh tomatoes, diced
• canned or cooked beans, rinsed
• boiled or roasted potatoes
• cooked pasta or rice

Heat 2 cups of stock per person in a large pot over medium. Add the ingredients and let cook at a low simmer for 10-15 minutes to heat through. Finish the soup with a swirl of olive oil, a pat of butter or a sprinkling of grated cheese, plus salt and pepper to taste. Serve with bread or crackers.

Pan-Fried Potatoes

I’m just realizing, since this is the second potato post in a row, we do eat a lot of potatoes around here. Well, why not? Potatoes are tasty, they go with everything, and they lend themselves to an endless variety of cooking methods. If I have to choose between potatoes and bread — and usually I do — I’ll pick potatoes any day.

I made pan-fried potatoes last night to go with a simple cheese omelet. These “home fries” are one of my favorite potato side dishes, because pan-frying is a quick and easy method that is equally appropriate for breakfast or dinner. If you have leftover boiled potatoes, this is a great way to repurpose them.

I usually parboil the potatoes before frying. This ensures that they cook all the way through and that the insides are creamy. I plan on one medium Yukon Gold potato per person. Here is the method:

1. Peel the potatoes and cut into cubes of about the same size.
2. Put the potatoes in a large pot and cover with cold water. Add a generous pinch of salt. Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are just tender but not falling apart–until they can just be pierced with a fork. Drain. (If you want to save the potatoes for later cooking, refrigerate them in cold water in a covered dish.)
3. Cover the bottom of a cast-iron skillet with a film of oil. Heat the skillet over medium-high. Add the potatoes in a single layer, pressing down with the back of a spatula. Season with salt.
4. Cook until the potatoes are well-browned on the bottom, about 3 minutes. Flip the potatoes in sections and cook the other side until browned. Continue flipping and cooking until they are as browned as you like.

My husband likes these with ketchup, but I think they taste fine all by themselves.

Potato Cake with Fried Eggs

I have gotten out of the habit of posting here lately, mostly because my cooking has not inspired any post ideas. Either I’ve been making tried-and-true recipes that I’ve practically memorized and that I’ve already posted on the blog, or I’ve been trying out new recipes from cookbooks, which I’m not likely to share until I’ve cooked them enough times to make them my own.

I’m going to try to get back in the habit of posting simple dishes as I make them, especially if they are easy enough that they don’t require a formal recipe. This potato cake is one of those dishes. This is more of a technique than an actual recipe, and once you learn it, you can fancy it up all kinds of ways. I topped it with a fried egg for a breakfast-for-dinner dish. A simple green salad would make a good accompaniment.

I used 1 medium Yukon Gold potato per person. Peel the potatoes and shred them using the shredding disk of a food processor. Rinse the potatoes to remove excess starch, then wrap them in a dishcloth and squeeze well to get rid of the excess moisture. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium with a couple of pats of butter in it. For 2 potatoes, a 10-inch skillet is a good size. Once the butter has melted, add the potatoes and smooth them out to fill the skillet. Cover the skillet and cook for about 5 minutes. Remove the skillet and let cook another 5 minutes or so, until the potatoes are browned on the bottom.

Slide the potatoes out onto a plate and add another couple of pats of butter to the skillet to melt. Place another plate upside down on top of the first one with the potatoes, and then invert the plates. Slide the potatoes, uncooked side down, back into the pan, and cook another 5 minutes or until the bottom has browned. Let the potatoes cool off the heat for a minute or two, and then slice into wedges to serve.

Springpad: A Web-based Recipe Box

I enjoy testing out web-based tools to see if they can make my cooking life easier. One recent discovery that I have found very useful is Eat Your Books. There is a small annual fee to join, but it’s worth it for what you get: an index of the recipes in most major cookbooks, categorized by type of dish, ingredients, cuisine and other factors. You can bookmark dishes to make, put together a printable shopping list, and rate and review recipes from your cookbooks.

While Eat Your Books has been a helpful tool for menu planning, I also needed a place where I can store recipes and access them quickly — a virtual recipe box. Eat Your Books enables subscribers to enter and save personal recipes, but I find the interface a bit too clunky for that purpose, particularly on my tablet.

A solution has been Springpad, which is free note-taking software. It has customized formats for different kinds of notes, including a recipe format. You can enter your own recipes into a notebook called Recipe Box and then tag them to make them easy to find. Even better, you can use a bookmarklet to “spring” recipes when you find them on different websites, and Springpad will add them to your virtual recipe box properly formatted as recipes, complete with photos. No typing required! Springpad provides a nice app that works well on my Android tablet, so it’s easy to access my recipes while cooking. This is definitely an improvement over my old method of copying all my recipes and printing them out to put in a three-ring binder.

Note: I am not affiliated with either Eat Your Books or Springpad. These are just tools that I love to use, and I want to recommend to you.