Kara Cooks: 2008 October

Entries from October 18th, 2008

Chili

Saturday, October 18, 2008

One of my favorite autumn things is chili. In the summer it’s too hot to make or eat chili. Who wants to sit down with a bowl of steaming hot food when it’s 90 degrees out? Not me, that’s for sure. But at the first hint of that crisp fall air, I have to make chili. It’s the quintessential Sunday afternoon football meal in our house – chili, cheese, and a loaf of crusty sourdough bread.

For years I flailed around with various recipes and then … and then I got married. And my mother-in-law delivered into my hands the king of chili recipes. It’s easily the best chili I’ve ever tasted. Don’t take my word for it, though. It’s fall. There’s football. Make a big batch and then you can tell me I’m right!

Here’s my mise en place. I left out two crucial ingredients in this tableaux – the garlic and the vinegar. I’ll remember next time.

Put the hamburger and turkey into a large pot and begin browning it. (I have to say that there is no way to photograph browning hamburger meat and make it look appetizing. Sorry!)

While the meat is browning, chop your onion (I like mine somewhat chunky) and your garlic. (That flowered cup in the garlic photo? It’s from my mother’s original china set when she got married to my dad in 1965. It’s the only piece left and I’ve always used it to hold my garlic.)

Once the meat is browned, kind of push it off to the side of the pan and add the onion and garlic and let it sizzle away. You want the onion to become translucent before you continue on.

In the meanwhile, get your water ready and open your can of tomato paste (this is a double batch of chili, so 2 cans of paste for me). A little trick here – the easiest way to dispense tomato paste from a can is to open both ends and then use the lid to push the paste right through the can.

Add the water and all the spices and flavorings. I love adding the chili powder at the very end and watching that gorgeous deep red color appear.

Put your peppers, bay leaf, and allspice in a big spice ball. We have one that we use just for chili, soups, and stews. It makes it so easy to retrieve the spices later and no one ever has to bite into that bay leaf again. Drop that spice ball right into the chili. See how it has the nifty little chain that allows you to attach it to the side of the pot? Easy removal later.

Simmer the chili for at least 2 hours, and remove the spice ball. Then simmer for however much longer you want. The longer you simmer, the more tender the meat will be, and the better the flavor. I like to start my chili after lunch and let it simmer all afternoon.

About 30 minutes before you’re ready to serve the chili, rinse the beans well . Then add them to the pot.

This recipe has been doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled and works great. When you double it or more, the beans don’t double exactly. Instead add 1 can of beans per pound of meat … plus one can of beans for the pot.

This is also great the next day (or the day after) and can be frozen (w/out the beans) and reheated for yummy quick dinners or lunches.

I don’t remember the calorie counts for this one, but I seem to recall it’s around 180 cals per bowl (1.5 cup serving). It’s extremely filling, too, so a single bowl goes a long way. This is our favorite Sunday meal during football season – and then makes a great lunch the next day.

Grilled Pizza

Sunday, October 12, 2008

We eat a lot of homemade pizza here. I love pizza, but it’s the most diet-unfriendly food in the world when ordered from a delivery place. Besides being overpriced and not very good, to boot. And try to order pizza for 2 people who have completely different ideas of what makes good topping. Just has success written all over it, doesn’t it? So we solve that problem by making our own.

It’s a multiple day process, the way I do it, so don’t expect to come home from work and just pop one of these babies in the oven.

Start with the crust. It’s a simple recipe: Whole grain flour, olive oil, salt, sugar, yeast, and water.
Mix all the ingredients together with a mixer. My beloved Kitchen-Aid stand mixer got lost in a move, and I haven’t replaced it yet. So I start with my regular mixer. The dough will be thick and sticky. That’s ok.

Turn it out onto a workable surface and start kneading. I like to do this by hand anyway – I can feel the dough better. Add in flour a little at a time. You could add anywhere from 1/2 cup to a full cup, just depending.

Knead and knead and knead until you get something that looks like this. It’s elastic and firm, but not dry. And your arms will feel like you just left the gym. It’s a workout if you do it right.

Form a tight ball with the dough, rub it all over with olive oil, and place it in a large container. Cover the container and put it in the fridge overnight. Yes, I did say overnight.

The next day take the dough out of the fridge and flatten it out. You can make one large pizza out of it, but we cut it into 4, to make individual pizzas. Flatten each piece and then roll them into balls. Set them aside to proof for about 30-45 minutes.

While the dough is warming up and proofing, I prep my toppings. Clockwise from the top: Thinly sliced red onion, spinach and sliced tomato, shredded fresh basil, chopped artichoke hearts.

Once your 30 minutes is up, roll out the dough into a flat disk. Yes, I roll mine out directly on my granite countertops – yet another reason I love the granite. And for a rolling pin – don’t mess around with fancy handled pins. Just get yourself one of these – a simple piece of hardwood maple in the form of a French pin. Once you’ve got the dough rolled out, you can pick it up with your hands and shape it, stretch it, and so forth. Have fun with it. We do.

Move the dough to a cutting board or other easy to transport flat surface. Make sure you sprinkle the surface with cornmeal – it’ll make getting the dough off the board much much much easier.

Brush the dough with a little olive oil.

Add your pizza sauce (recipe to come later):

Add your toppings. Doesn’t that look yummy??

Add your cheese.

My husband prefers a more traditional style pizza. I have convinced him that turkey pepperoni is at least a little healthier than the alternative!

Cheese for his as well.

Now here’s the really fun part: GRILL your pizza. Over indirect heat, and turn it once so that the crust is evenly cooked. Start with 10 minutes for these individual pizzas (and only open the grill once during that time to turn the pizza) and then check to make sure the cheese is melted and everything looks done.

Voila! Yummy pizza.

Oh, and when you have extra left over – fillings, and dough – make a calzone for lunch the next day:

And there you have it. Grilled Pizza. The best.

The crust recipe is based off of Alton Brown’s recipe from Good Eats. The toppings are all up to you.

Whole Grain Pizza Crust

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

3/4 cup warm water

3 cups whole grain flour

1 teaspoon yeast

Place the sugar, salt, olive oil, water, 2 cup of flour, and yeast into a bowl. If you have a stand mixer, you can use the paddle to mix and then switch to a dough hook. Otherwise use your regular mixer.

Mix on low until the dough just comes together and forms a ball. At this point either switch out the paddle for the dough hook or turn the dough onto floured surface and begin to knead it. You’ll either knead it in the mixer for about 15 mins on medium, or knead by hand until the dough is elastic and firm, but not dry.

Roll the pizza dough into a smooth ball on the countertop. Place into a stainless steel or glass bowl. Coast the ball of dough with olive oil, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 18 to 24 hours.

Split the pizza dough into 2, 3 or even 4 equal parts using a knife or a dough scraper. Flatten into a disk onto the counter top and then fold the sections of dough into balls. Let them rest at least 30 mins.

Roll the dough out on a firm, cool surface. Once you’ve achieved a nice thin dough, you can pick it up and stretch it, twirl it, etc.

Put the crust on a surface lightly dusted with cornmeal and top it with whatever you desire.

Either bake in a 450 oven (preferrably on a heated pizza stone) for 15 mins or until done.

Or cook on a grill over indirect heat for 10-15 minutes or until done.

Pumpkin Muffins

Monday, October 6, 2008

Have I mentioned that I love fall foods? I think I might have. Pumpkin is one of my very favorite fall flavors. I love a spicy pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, roasted pumpkin, grilled pumpkin (yes, we grill even in the fall and winter), pumpkin in all it’s forms.

So when I came across this recipe for pumpkin muffins, I was instantly hooked. Of course I couldn’t make it as written because, well, who doesn’t tinker with recipes? Ok, ok, not most people. But I do. So I did. And the results, if I do say so myself, were pretty darned good.

See, I can be taught. Here’s my mise en place for this recipe. All the ingredients, set out and ready to go. The white capped jar on the far left is my cinnamon jar. I buy cinnamon in bulk from Penzey’s (actually I buy all my spices there) and go through a jar this size about once every 6 months. Yeah, I use a lot of cinnamon.

First you mix together all the wet ingredients in a bowl until smooth.

In the world of cooking, I’ve learned that sugar and spices often count as “wet” ingredients. I love cinnamon, as I mentioned before, so I didn’t skimp here – a heaping tsp goes in.

A quick grate of fresh nutmeg, too. It doens’t take much when it’s freshly grated.

Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.

Fold the dry into the wet. Do this by hand and don’t over mix.

Spoon into muffin cups. I love my square, silicone cups. They’re cute and different and cleaning up is a breeze. Also I don’t need any additional oil to grease the cups with. If you’re using a standard muffin pan, I’d recommend using paper liners for these muffins – they’re moist and sticky.

The finished product was pretty yummy.

I had enough batter for 16 muffins. Since I only have 12 muffin cups, I wound up refrigerating the remaining batter and baking the last 4 in my toaster oven the next morning, which worked brilliantly. This would be a great recipe to whip up and bake only the number of muffins that you wanted/needed for that morning or afternoon or evening snack. I would suspect that the batter would keep for several days in the fridge or you could freeze it. Maybe. I’ll have to try that.

These are incredibly moist, dense muffins. I ate one hot out of the oven and practically swooned from the pumpkiny goodness. The next morning I broke one open and spread it with cream cheese for a morning treat with my coffee. Equally swooney.

I would like to experiment with making these a little more healthy. They are pretty sweet, so I think I could cut back the sugar by 1/2 or even 1/3 of a cup. I’d also like to try a mixture of wheat flour and possibly adding some other shredded veggies or even some pureed cooked spinach (don’t make a face, it works and you’ll never taste it). I think I could also add some kind of dried fruit or nuts – maybe cranberries or walnuts or even pecans would be good. Something to think about for next time.

I also think they’d be pretty good topped with a mixture of natural sugar and cinnamon before baking. It would give the top a nice crunchy finish and would work well if the sugar in the recipe was cut back.

Spicy Pumpkin Muffins

Wet Ingredients:

1 15oz can solid pack pumpkin
2 large eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground cloves
grating of fresh nutmeg

Dry Ingredients:

1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

preheat oven to 350deg F

Whisk together all the wet ingredients in a medium bowl until smooth.

Whisk together all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl until well combined.

Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients, mixing gently by hand. Do not overmix. It’s ok if the batter is lumpy. It will all bake out in the end, I promise.

Divide batter among muffin cups and bake until puffed and golden brown and wooden pick or skewer inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, 35-40 minutes.

Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer muffins from pan to rack and cool completely before packaging and storing.

Makes 16 muffins.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Saturday, October 4, 2008

I love autumn. It’s my favorite season of the year. Cooler temperatures, bright gorgeous autumn leaves, crisp bright orange mums in my garden, and … the food. Oh the varieties of wonderful, warm, yummy comfort food that you can make in the fall now that it’s not too hot to cook.

Soups, stews, and chili are some of my favorite fall meals – they’re always quick, easy, filling, and you can make oodles and store it for later.

Roasted Butternut Squash soup is a particular favorite around my house. As a standalone soup, it’s incredibly good and filling, but it’s also a great starting point for all kinds of other yumminess – both cold and hot.

It’s also been a huge part of my weightloss journey. I often take this soup with me for lunch since it’s so filling and yet has very few calories. Not to mention that one serving of soup is at least 2 servings of veggies for the day.

Start with a medium butternut squash. Peel it with a vegetable peeler (I should have gotten more photos of the image prep part of the process – forgive a first time recipe blogger. I’ll know better next time.) and cut it into even cubes.

Put all your cubes of squash into a zipper bag and add about 2 T of olive oil. This is a much easier and faster way to distribute the oil than just drizzling. I keep my gallon sized bag in the fridge and pull it out whenever I have a recipe that calls for coating anything in olive oil.

Spread the pieces out on a baking sheet, salt and pepper well, and then bake in a 400 deg oven for about 45 mins to an hour. This is how you get the lovely, deep roasted taste to the soup.

In the meanwhile prepare a pot with 1/2 chicken stock, 1/2 water. I used about 2 cups of each for this recipe, but how much you use will depend on how big a squash (or how many of them) you’re cooking. Bring the liquid to a simmer and add the roasted squash. The liquid should just cover the squash.

After about 30 mins of simmering, use a potato masher to mash the squash and blend with the liquid. Taste here and see if you need more salt or pepper. I use homemade stock and so it’s not as salty as a store bought variety, but the salt from the roasting process was sufficient. You can always add more at serving.

At this point your soup is ready. You can eat it just like this, or you can use the rich goodness of it as a base to add cream, yogurt, and other spices and flavorings. This soup is lovely when sweetened with a bit of honey and cinnamon and served chilled. Or thickened with a cup of cream and spiced up with a bit of smoked paprika. Or, as I said, you can eat it just as it is – maybe with a dollop of sour cream in the middle for additional yumminess.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

1 medium butternut squash
olive oil
salt
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups water

Peel, seed, and dice your squash in even pieces. Drizzle with olive oil and be generous with the salt. Roast these pieces in a 400 oven for 45 mins to 1 hour. You want the pieces tender and just beginning to brown.

Bring chicken stock and water to a simmer in a medium sauce pan and add roasted squash. Cook at a simmer for 30 mins. Mash squash and blend with a potato masher.

This recipe will make 8-ish regular sized bowls of soup, or 4, if you live in my house

So this is my first foray into cooking and blogging at the same time. I hope you enjoyed it and get to enjoy the recipe. As with everything, it’s a learning experience, I guess. I’m not thrilled with the quality of the images (although the soup came out great!), and I realized as I was writing that I should have taken more photos of the various prep steps, as well as set out and photographed my mise en place.

I also discovered it’s incredibly hard to concentrate on being a good photographer and a good cook – it’s easy to either forget to photograph something or to get so caught up in making the photo look good that you forget to turn, stir, or move something.

I’m not quitting though. I’m finding I like this process and I’m pushing myself to learn more about my cooking (which I often do by touch and taste) and about my photography. So onward to the next recipe. Whatever it might be!

about kara

resources