home cooking – Page 6 – My Urban Pantry

I’m not crafty and I don’t bake

September 16, 20121 Comment

one of my pinterest boards is titled, ‘I wish I was crafty’ and it is filled with projects I like and in reality, that I wish I had both time and funds to pursue. I walk through the aisles of Jo-Ann or Michaels with Z and say things like, ‘that’d be fun to do’ and he realistically (or aggravatingingly) says, ‘ do you really?’ or ‘when would you do that?’ In reality I am usually in those places pick up items for our children’s programs at work. Most of my craftiness is spent on meal planning and creative cookery. This summer I began pickling and jamming and I recently did pick up the most charming hand carved stamp to use in labelling my jars. Looking forward to that day it actually comes out of my craft suitcase[ref]yellow hardsided suitcase that was my maternal grandmothers and is filled with the ephemera of packaging like ribbons, tissue paper, wooden fruit boxes, cellophane bags and bakers twine[/ref]. One of the first will be called ‘love me some spicy jalapenos’ as named by my husbands boss for my home pickled jalapenos. I also purchased a can of bronze spray paint yesterday in order to channel my inner Banksy[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy[/ref] -or to try my hand at changing the look of a Ugandan basket picked up from my shop at work.

The baking? Well, I have made it my mantra to say I don’t bake, but in reality, I don’t bake often. I can do it but never just love the results and don’t really want to eat the whole of whatever it is and am not usually proud enough of said thing to bring it in to work. I have noticed that lots of my pins tend toward baked goods and a couple weeks ago I went ahead and made apple toffee blondies. Ridiculously full of butter, brown sugar, diced apple and toffee bits, Z promptly renamed them ‘bogey bars‘ for the little soft apple chunks inside – it didn’t seem to stop him from eating them. They were super sweet and I only used half the frosting that the recipe made which was still more than enough for us. I also took a good chunk of the pan in to the office. It was the right thing to do.

spaghetti con zucchine di villa maria

August 23, 20122 Comments

Hey, it’s me again, brian, not kathy. Its been over 2 years since my first (and only) post to the blog. Well… I’m back! Now some of you may be thinking, “What happened to Kathy?” She’s still around, and I’m sure we will continue to hear from her (It is her blog and all), but work has been chaos and I’m going to take over some of the cooking[ref]One night a week, although I consider any night we go out my night too.[/ref], which I guess means some of the blogging too. So, without further ado, onto the food.

A while back[ref]May 31, 2010[/ref] Food Network began a new TV channel entitled Cooking Channel. This “hipper” alternative food station premiered with new chefs and shows we in the US had never heard of: Chuck Hughes, Roger Mooking and Food Jammers. This wasn’t the prim and proper food of Ina Garten, or the butter laden dishes of Paula Deen. It was more exotic, grittier and possibly more authentic, and it was here that we first encountered the italian cooking of David Rocco.Again, this wasn’t the prissy, baby talk italian food of Giada. It was simple, rustic and friendly. When we saw his bolognese sauce for the first time, we decided we needed to make it right away, and we did[ref]Our recipe for bolognese.[/ref], to delighted food coma bliss. We have since purchased one of his cookbooks, Made in Italy, and it was from this that I decided to make dinner.

Spaghetti con Zucchine di Villa Maria, or for those of you like me who don’t speak italian, Villa Maria’s Spaghetti and Zucchini. The recipe seemed easy, the picture looked delicious and the ingredients called for flavors I’ve never had in a pasta dish as well as the lack of the classic[ref]what we think of as classic: parmesan, red chilies, tomato sauce, basil[/ref] flavors. It called for zucchini, fresh mint, capers and red wine vinegar. Not your usual pasta dish, but I’m up for trying anything[ref]almost[/ref].

My first problem occurred with frying the zucchini, our stove is a glasstop and can’t maintain a constant temperature. It gets scaldingly hot, then shuts off and cools down so low the oil isn’t hot enough to fry, then repeats, ad infinitum. You can use cast iron, or very heavy pots to help maintain a temperature, but you shouldn’t use cast iron on a glasstop. Its annoying. We either end up with burnt uncooked zucchini or limp cooked zucchini, the second being the case for tonight.

The second issue ensued when I was done frying the zucchini. The recipe said to remove the zucchini, turn the pan to low and add the capers and mint. Wait a minute… What do I do with all the oil used to fry the zucchini? Do I just add everything to the oil, or drain off the excess, or dump it and use some new (unburnt) oil. What a conundrum. I opted for the second, dumping the excess oil and leaving enough for tossing the mint and capers in. We will never know if this was the right call, or if I was supposed to end up with noodles swimming in oil.

Thirty minutes later and the dish was finished. It looked pretty good.Not exactly like the picture in the book, but they never do. “How was it?” you ask. Well, it was different. Not bad different, but not the normal american flavor profile for pasta. When you ate all the ingredients together it tasted pretty good, the capers added that nice salty touch. But if any of the ingredients were missing from a forkful, it was a little bland. Kathy commented that she thought it was similar to buttered noodles, but I had to heartily disagree. It was missing any hint of butter and parmesan, and had the added flavor of fresh mint. It definitely wasn’t buttered noodles. In the end we both ate our plate full of noodles, conveniently decided there wouldn’t be any leftovers for work lunch the next day and that we probably wouldn’t make the dish again in the future.

cheat’s pizza

August 20, 2012Leave a comment

Jamie Oliver is one of my favorite chefs and his most recent show on BBC America is called Meals in Minutes. I pulled one recipe and kind of brutalized it but it tasted fairly nice anyhow. If you’d like to see how he wrote it click on the link. The dough was a little (or lot) thicker than I’d usually like and some other experiments were made with it involving sugar and cinnamon that were unduly discarded. All in all though, pretty fun and a nice Monday night supper.

belated

August 11, 2012Leave a comment

these cookbooks found their way into my cases on my big four-oh. So far I am pleased with the results and a little frightened. More on that as it happens.

chicken, bacon & mushroom pot pie

July 2, 2012Leave a comment

not very summery now that I think about it. I was on a kick for easy meals that didn’t have rice last week. The week before I had somehow managed to meal plan myself into three nights of rice. Curry with basmati, Red beans and rice with Andouille and if I remember right, some kind of steak with yellow rice. Funny because like two years ago I wouldn’t touch the stuff if it wasn’t fried. But, I’m worn out of it and turned to the book shelves for inspiration. I picked up Nigella Express to get some quick meals out and ran across this recipe for chicken, bacon and mushroom pie. It was very fallish with a crusty puff pastry top. It only took about 30 minutes. The recipe is here. Quite buttery and rich with marsala and bacon. We liked it and it was almost embarrassing to reheat the puffy heights at work the next day for lunch. I likely won’t make again until fall when the weather cools and we are in for an evening.