suzy's new digs

not that i don't love blogger. but a friend turned me on to wordpress, and ... well, the improvements have to be seen to be believed.

curious about how my thanksgiving turned out? all details at suzycantcook.wordpress.com!

suzy starts to get nervous

it's true. i have already begun to feel nervous about this afternoon. the sun has barely risen, H has been dropped at work, i probably don't need to start cooking for a while, but i am nervous.

it's the first time i've cooked for thanksgiving! AAAHHHH!!!!

suzy and the dish worth eating

i digressed yesterday, i know. i was supposed to tell you about the fabled dish worth eating, that came from Nava Atlas' Vegetarian 5 Ingredient Gourmet.

i should tell you right from the start that there was a glitch. only one!, but still... and despite that, it still turned out yummy! yummy even as leftovers!

and here, with no more ado, it is:

Warm Potato Salad with Goat Cheese
(isn't it pretty?)

2 to 2 1/2 lbs tiny new potatoes or 6 medium red-skinned potatoes, scrubbed
1/2 c vinaigrette, preferably balsamic (this is where the glitch happened)
4 to 6 oz mixed baby greens
4 oz crumbled goat cheese, such as Montrachet

-bake or microwave potatoes until done but still firm (i boiled them for about 12 min)
-cut potatoes into large dice
-combine the potatoes with the vinaigrette in a mixing bowl and stir gently (we're getting closer to the glitch). let stand for about 10 minutes.
-divide the greens among 4 salad plates or shallow bowls. drain off any excess vinaigrette from the potatoes in a small container and drizzle it over the greens.
-divide the potatoes among the salad plates, placing them atop the greens.
-top each serving with goat cheese and serve.

now, as usual, this is not exactly what happened. i got up to the second part, happily poured my half cup of red wine vinegar over the potatoes, and started talking to H about what i was doing. it was only a few minutes later that i realized that, yes, i had poured VINEGAR over the potatoes, NOT vinaigrette.

... damn. so i did not let them stand 10 minutes, it was probably more like 5, and then i drained off the vinegar to use on the salad. my heart in my throat, i ate a potato.

it was definitely vinegary, but actually, we like vinegar! and because i didn't let it sit too long, it wasn't overwhelming. intense yes, but not overwhelming.

the next bit wasn't so much a glitch as a revision. i was only serving 2. so i did what it said, then combined the goat cheese with the potatoes in a container and put that in the fridge, keeping the rest of the greens separate. my reasoning was that the greens would get soggy if everything was together, and then be impossible to separate, and there's nothing i hate more than soggy greens.

this turned out to be great in the end, because the next morning H didn't feel like making breakfast, and while i was surveying the fridge for potential i thought, hmmm, those potatoes with the goat cheese from last night almost look like home-fries...

and voila! some olive oil in a pan and some intense scraping later (some of the goat cheese stuck to the pan, but the scrapings turned out to be DELICIOUS eaten from the end of the spatula) we had vinegar and goat cheese home-fries that were a fabulous, albeit intense, breakfast.

so! that is the story of how my faith was restored in this cookbook. next time, though, i will get/make myself some vinaigrette...

suzy makes the pizza of all pizzas

a good pizza is a thing of beauty.

turns out, not that hard to make either, even if you only have a convection oven/microwave.

the trick? as far as i'm concerned, a good store-bought crust. essential, when you have a convection oven/microwave.

for those of you privileged enough to have a real oven, let me explain. in my pseudo-oven, frozen pizzas do not cook properly. in my former incarnation as the anti-cook, that was pizza (delivery is too expensive and too chancy). you go out, you buy a di giorno's or an amy's (if you're feeling expensive and not too hungry) or a tony's (if you're feeling cheap), and you throw it in the oven for ten or twelve or fifteen minutes and then you eat it.

not so, with the convection oven/microwave. a frozen pizza, no matter what the crust thickness or the brand name is, invariably comes out overcooked on the top and soggy on the bottom. why? you got me. something to do with the way the heat circulates is my guess.

so what's a gal to do? when there's no good delivery to be had outside of new york city, but you can't buy frozen?

WELL! i got a boboli (surprisingly good, i haven't had one in many many years) and got

1 small can black olives
1 green pepper
1 bell pepper
1 jar Roasted Garlic Ragu Spaghetti Sauce
1 package shredded Parmesan Cheese
1 package shredded Mozzerella Cheese

and cooked one of a standby in our apartment, Boca Bratwursts (you could also use their Italian Sausage). i layered however much of each of the above however i wanted them to go (i finished with the sausage and started with sauce, but it's fun to mix it up in between!), put it in the oven/microwave, hit Bake, and crossed my fingers.

and voila! the miracle of pizza you see above. just in case you've forgotten how glorious it was, here's another shot.

you're shaking your head, i know it. you're saying, that doesn't look all that exciting. well let me tell you -- we liked the taste so much that it didn't last long enough for me to get a picture of the full pie. and H and i were both independently asked, when we whipped out our lunches yesterday at our respective places of work, "where" we had gone to get the pizza. imagine the shock when told it came from home!

it's always nice to be appreciated.

suzy makes risotto on a tuesday, part 2

one of these days, someone is going to come along and say, "hey suzy, you know all those recipes that just didn't quite work out? the ones you refer to as 'edible but not that yummy'? yeah, well it's because you didn't follow the directions," and then walk away.

but until that happens, i can't seem to resist the urge to adapt. what does this have to do with baked risotto? well, i'll tell you.

the recipe (down below, by the way, maybe you all will have better luck with it) calls for four sessions of 15 minute baking, interspersed with stirring. at the third stirring, you're supposed to add more water and then pop it back into the oven for the last 15. well ...

let me interject at this point that i was dutifully following directions, letter for letter, up to this point. but like any cook, i cannot resist taste-testing at various points throughout the recipe. so i taste the risotto after i've added the water. and it seems to me, that the rice is now what the book refers to as "creamy". or at least, i couldn't imagine that the texture needs to be any softer than what it was at that point.

so i forego the final 15 minutes and add my vegetables. into a bowl, hey presto!, it's risotto.

except ... it's like the spaghetti carbonara. something tells me that this just isn't quite right. either that, or i apparently don't like risotto.

the rice is certainly "creamy", it's just that everything else around it is ... well, gloopy is really the word that comes to mind. sticky, gummy ... when i eat a spoonful of it, it reminds me of oatmeal, which can't be right.

now, i can't imagine that leaving it in the oven for another 15 minutes would have done anything other than make it mushy. but who knows.

but there is good news! i do not blame the cookbook! why not? because i have finally produced a dish worth eating out of it!

what dish, you ask? that's for me to post when i'm not late to work, and for you to read when you're bored at work.

in the meantime, if you want to try this out despite my, errm, glowing recommendation, here it is:

Baked Risotto, courtesy of Nava Atlas

1 1/2 c Arborio rice
2 15-oz cans vegetable stock
2 garlic cloves, very finely minced
about 1 1/2 c fresh vegetable of your choice (i used mushrooms and green and yellow peppers)
grated fresh Parmesan cheese for topping

-preheat the oven to 375
-combine the rice with the stock, 1 c water, and the garlic in a 2 qt casserole.
-cover and bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes
-at the third stirring, stir in 1 c water
-when done, the rice should have a tender and creamy texture
-stir in the vegetables, and let the risotto stand for 5 minutes before serving. pass around the parmesan cheese for topping.

suzy makes risotto on a tuesday, part 1

tuesday nights are the exception to the rule, just like thursday mornings are the exception to the rule. to elaborate: tuesday nights are the exception to the rule that i do not cook on weeknights, just like thursday mornings are the exception to the rule that monday morning is the worst morning of the week.

for some reason, thursday has always been worse for me than monday. and, strangely enough, at one of my last jobs, the customer service ratings for our location were always lowest on surveys filled out on a thursday. another doctoral dissertation in the wings.

ANYWAY, i am making risotto! sort of.

that epic of convenience, The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet, has a recipe for Baked Risotto. baked, you say? baked, i reply. it is apparently the cheater's way to make risotto, involving significantly less stirring, fiddling with burner temperatures, and prostrations to the rice gods to ensure creamy, not crunchy, rice. for which i am in nava's debt.

at least, i might be. i won't know how it's turned out for another ... thirty-four minutes.

will it be tasty? will it fall into that "edible but not yummy" category that my attempts at recipes from this cookbook so often fall into? will it be an out-and-out disaster? will i share the recipe?

only part 2 can tell.

suzy meets nigel

thank god for toast, by nigel slater. as much as i love ruth and calvin, it all makes me feel just a teensy bit inadequate. i'm still not sure what moules mariniere are, even though i could just look it up and they have to have been mentioned at least four times in each foodie book i've read thus far. and when i attempted spaghetti carbonara, i wasn't terribly impressed. H (new shorthand for husband) wolfed it all down, but i was left feeling that i probably had done something wrong; what i made certainly can't be the dish that puts calvin trillin on the warpath round thanksgiving.

toast, on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air. nigel reminds us that food isn't only good because it tastes good. food can be good because of the memories we have of it, or the absurd tastes we develop (he rhapsodizes about candies that always taste vaguely stale, no matter how fresh) for no good reason, or simple because we decide it is good.

it's nice to think that, if there is an almighty food critic out there watching my efforts, the glee with which we eat my attempts at cookery may make up for the pseudo-successes and outright failures. perhaps good intentions count too -- if so, then i'm way ahead in the game.

plus, the frankness of this book is unbelievable. very few people can manage the tell-all style without becoming sordid. i'm not sure slater doesn't dip into it a bit, but he does it with a matter-of-fact style that bypasses voyeurism and sleaze and takes you into the realm of childhood memory, something rarely stained with any awareness of impropriety. that got terribly wordy, but what i mean is: this book is great.

suzy plans for thanksgiving (or rather, lets bon appetit plan for her)

so someone over at epicurious has really woken up. i mentioned before that they now have great how-to videos -- VIDEOS!!! -- for things as simple as chopping an onion and as terribly advanced to me as poaching an egg. i didn't even know what poaching was until i watched that one.

maybe they got tired of only being read by people who can afford the ingredients in their recipes? whatever the impetus was, they have now introduced something even possibly more amazing than the how-to videos.

drumroll please...

the Foolproof Thanksgiving Menu Planner!

wow. tons of recipes (don't be fooled by just the featured ones, there are lots more) that range from how to feed 12 and cook everything a day ahead to how to feed six and spend WAY too much on gourmet mushrooms.

this, at least, will help me get through this thanksgiving. it's the first time i haven't been with family, extended or otherwise, pretty much ever. i guess that's what happens when you move to a state none of your family lives in. however we will be collecting all of our friends in a similar situation and creating an impromptu sans-family family for the holiday.

oh, and guess who volunteered to cook?

i guess we'll see how foolproof that menu planner is...

suzy covets a foreman

a george foreman, that is.

not one of those jeans-and-leather-belt wearing construction managers. never did fully appreciate the village people, to tell you the truth.

a george foreman, on the other hand! even the older models are pretty in the way that iMacs are pretty, no matter how impractical white is for a kitchen appliance that will routinely spit out grease and fat. and the older models have the additional attraction of being very very cheap, since mr. foreman himself is now pushing a new line that, i swear, is called something like the "next grilleration". wow. marketing.

why the sudden coveting for a large hunk of metal that will sear meat and meat-like products?

partially it is the abundance of giant portobello mushrooms at the grocery stores, just begging to be turned into portobello steaks marinated in... well, something. probably not lawry's, and definitely not in a crockpot. possibly red wine vinegar? or some combination of herbs and broth? or some other amazing marinade liquid i have yet to discover?

the other part is my husband. after he was done with his second and a half helping of crock o' havana, and in a meat-induced bliss (did i mention we don't eat meat very often? partly because i was a vegetarian for 13 years, and partly because it's expensive, and also partly because i don't know how to cook it) was envisioning tuna and salmon (and probably in his head pork or beef, but he knows better than to mention those in front of me), and i for the life of me could not imagine putting either of those in a crockpot.

after slyly putting the idea in my head (well, ok, the portobello's started it, but he's only encouraging it now isn't he?) he said the magic words, "and then i could make dinner!"

oh, the beauty of those words. it's not that i mind -- cooking has become my new stress relief. but it's really only possible for me on the weekends; my weekday hours just don't allow me to feel good about coming home to chopping, sauteeing, and the like.

sneaky and underhanded he is, but he also knows me very very well.

so we shall see. budget, fear me, for i will now attempt to eek $40 out of where formerly there was only $2.13!

suzy's first cheesecake

because i only had five recipes planned for this weekend's cooking session

-green bean casserole (yep, he asked for a repeat),
-crab cakes (as per previously discussed obsession),
-mushroom soup (see above),
-spaghetti carbonara (which i haven't made yet, but which you will certainly hear about), and
-browned mashed potatoes (see above)

i decided that it was time to try my hand at a dessert. ever since receiving my copy of Garlic and Sapphires, i've been dying to try her recipe for cheesecake:

New York Cheesecake

1 1/2 c graham cracker crumbs (about 6 oz)
1 c sugar
1/2 c melted unsalted butter
1 1/2 lbs cream cheese at room temperature
4 eggs
3 tsp vanilla
Grated zest of one lemon
2 c sour cream

-preheat oven to 350
-mix graham crackers with 1/4 c sugar and the melted butter and press into bottom and sides of a 9-inch ungreased springform pan. chill while preparing filling
-beat cream cheese, 1/2 c sugar, eggs, 2 tsp vanilla and lemon zest until smooth
-pour into chilled crust and bake 50 min to an hour, or until the cheese is set and starting to turn golden in spots
-remove from oven (leave oven on) and cool for about 15 min on wire rack
-stir together sour cream, remaining 1/4 c sugar, remaining tsp vanill and spread over cooled cake. return to oven for 12 min until glossy and set
-cool completely, cover, and chill at least 8 hours

now, for starters and as usual, i didn't end up following this line for line. i don't have a springform pan, of course, nor can i afford one. so i bought a 9" graham cracker "ready-crust" from the supermarket, and skipped the whole crust making part.

apparently, a 9" ready-crust is not nearly as deep as a 9" springform pan, because i had twice too much filling. god only knows what i am going to do with the extra -- probably attempt to bake it in a loaf-pan and claim it is custard. that's what i normally do with extra pie-filling anyway...

so that was the first glitch.

glitch number two came with the topping. so my pie was already to the top of the crust. no room for sour cream topping at all. so i have those ingredients still hanging around. maybe i will put them on top of the "custard"?

glitch number three wasn't so much a glitch as impatience on my part. i now entirely understand that last instruction -- "cool, cover, and chill for at least 8 hours". warm cheesecake is... well, weird. there's no other way to describe it. i got impatient and took a tiny slice, and it was the strangest tasting thing with the most bizarre texture i have ever eaten.

actually that was glitch number four. glitch number three was (as you can see above) life intervening and calling me away from my oven when there was still 30 min left on the timer. now, i have an oven that automatically turns itself off after bake time, but that doesn't mean it's not still hot in there. so when i returned from my unexpected 40 minute diversion, i found that, well, it had got past that whole "turning golden in spots" part.

ah well. i had a teensy tiny sliver this morning, and it tasted fabulous! it's not too sweet, which is my usual criticism of cheesecake, and the texture now that it's cold is, well, cheese-cakey.

and that, my friends, is the story of suzy's first cheesecake.

suzy and the paella

wikipedia has this to say about paella:

Paella is usually garnished with vegetables and meat or seafood. The three main ingredients are rice, saffron, and olive oil.

and also this:

Paella is generally cooked in a paella pot, which is a large, shallow, flat pan. First the meat, and then the vegetables are stir fried in olive oil and the rice is added so as to be suffused in the oil. Boiling stock is then added to the paella pan, and reduced by boiling. Once the rice is nearly done, the paella is removed from the heat and left to absorb the remaining water. The paella is ready to be served after having cooled for several minutes.

all of which lead me to believe that betty crocker knows nothing about paella, since artichoke and kidney bean paella has pretty much nothing to do with anything mentioned above.

maybe someone wanted to write a recipe involving artichokes, kidney beans, and rice, and they got a little creative with the name. maybe it originally started out as a paella recipe, and through successive editing got turned into a "rice with stuff" recipe. but as far as i can tell, it fails entirely to have anything to do with paella.

it's not that the recipe is hard. in fact, it's pretty easy. the only adventure i had was that i don't have any turmeric, and didn't feel like buying any, so i ended up using celery salt to give it some kick (also, they tell you to use two drops of hot sauce. i used two tablespoons, and it's still not that hot, so i don't know what kind of hot sauce betty crocker uses but i sure ain't buying it).

but when all is said and done, and it gets transferred from the pan to the tupperware, it's just rice with stuff. rice with tasty stuff, but still.

i guess it just goes to show that betty crocker is good for the basics, but she don't know paella from a panful of rice.

suzy is ruth reichl's new best friend

the title of an email in my inbox this afternoon:

Ruth Reichl invites you to preview the new newsletter from the editors of Gourmet!

some might argue that this in no way indicates that i am her new best friend, but that's fine. they probably didn't get the email, they're just jealous.

but i feel that, for you all, i should share. you too can become her new best friend! go to this link and give them your email address. ah, the joys of gourmet newsletters... bursting with recipes too complicated for me to make, full of ingredients too obscure for me to afford, and reviewing dishes i will probably never taste in this life.

got to love vicarious living!

suzy invents an omelet

the mysteries of the omelet have always eluded me. luckily, the one area of cooking my husband excels at is breakfast. i have never met (or eaten with) anyone with more aptitude for inventing tasty breakfasts than him. so normally, it doesn't matter; he makes me breakfast, i make everything else. it's a fine arrangement, especially since early in the morning, i'm not capable of much.

however, now that his work schedule has changed, there are certain days i'm left to fend for myself. i tried forlornly wandering around the kitchen, glaring at things, but that just left me hungry and eye-sore. and there is only so much you can do with toast before getting heartily sick of it, no matter what is spread on top.

but wait! epicurious -- which i normally find a little too pretentious and the recipes too full of expensive and frightening ingredients -- has apparently wised up to the fact that their readers are not all ruth reichl and mimi sheraton. along with the redesign of their page (which came hand in hand with redesigns of bettycrocker.com and allrecipes.com; is there some sort of cooking webpage schedule? or maybe a secret network of informers? or some all-powerful web designer, who dictates these things?) they have posted how-to videos, apparently entirely for my benefit.

and so, last week in my despair, i thought, "well suzy, you watched that how-to video on making an omelet. maybe you should try it out!"

only this thought came right on the heels of a weekend vacation, leading to a week in which i had done no shopping and we had very little food in the house. so i ransacked the fridge and pantry and came up with ... parmesan and nutmeg.

parmesan and nutmeg?

yep, parmesan and nutmeg.

i figured, hey, if it turns out to be inedible, i can always make toast. bread is something we always have on hand (though, i should mention that my husband has an unfortunate taste for white breads; at least he's happy with potato bread. i, on the other hand, much prefer rye and wheat).

so there went nothing, but voila! not only was it edible, but i have made it consistently since and enjoyed it every single time. there's something about the combination of parmesan and nutmeg that is so decadent -- rich, oily, and so satisfying during the cold.

so! watch the video "how to make an omelet", throw some eggs in a pan, top with grated parmesan and ground nutmeg, and enjoy!