The dog kept me honest

My last dinner before Dr. Food came home was healthy and simple. The dog kept me on the straight and narrow by shooting me dirty looks.



So, I chopped up some scallion, lemongrass, bell pepper, and mushrooms. I browned up some ground pork and added the vegetables. When done, I ate them in lettuce. Yum, how ordinary.



Next morning I was up to old tricks. I had to have one more egg.



Put it on an english muffin that I had melted cheese on and I was good to go.



What did I make for Dr. Food's coming home dinner? Some chicken and potatoes. I figured simple was best. Then again, I couldn't stand the dog judging me anymore.

The end of guilty cooking OR My dog is a snitch.

So, I was trying to come up with what savory thing I would be making for my last night alone. I found a perfect Bacon, lettuce, EGG and cheddar sandwhich from Thomas Keller. I thought of a dozen other things that would be just as tasty. One more egg on the list! I am drinking coffee and minding my own business when my dog comes sauntering in with this sign around her neck... there goes the plan. I guess it will be a healthier option for tonight (good thing too because even the treadmill won't help me out if I keep going at this rate).

In the meantime I did have some good stuff. Tuesday night my neighbor invited me over for homemade chicken noodle soup. It was requested that I make a bread. I did. I made Monkey bread and this recipe from was a winner!



A really simple recipe that yielded great results




So what to do for dinner on Wen. night? I have been drooling over a recipe that I got from my new friend (shut up it IS a friend if you know of each other on the internet!). It is Kimchee Fried Rice and I got it from Short and Bald Eat New York and it is one of my new favorite Guilty Cooking recipes. I think that Dr Food might like this one (if I leave off the egg).



Ingredients (2 Servings): Kimchi 1 cup. Pork 1/2 cup or more according to your taste (you can also use beef or ham instead of pork), 2 Tbl cooking oil, 1 TBL sesame oil, 1/2 TBL sugar, 1/2 TBL sesame seeds.

1. Chop up your kimchi and pork. Save the spicy liquid from the kimchi for later.
2. Add cooking oil (2 spoons) and sesame oil (1 spoon). Once it’s hot, add kimchi, pork, sugar (1/2 spoon) and sesame seeds. Stir fry on a medium heat for 5 minutes.
3. Add the spicy kimchi liquid you saved, and the rice, and cook for a further 3-5 minutes.
4. It’s all done! Add a fried egg, tomato, cucumber or anything you’d like to put top, or on the side for extra flavor, color and texture.

I LOVE it I LOVE it!!!!

Ok, I have to go deal with the back stabbing pooch. I guess I will be having lettuce wraps for dinner. Argh.

Guilty eating: Day 2

So day 2 turned out to be not as fun as day 1. First day that Dr. Food goes away isn't so bad and it is fun to be cooking anything I want and not worrying about what he will find tasty. Day 2 gets to be self indulgent and not quite as fun. So, I was not quite as inspired to be cooking. I did find the time to try out the tasty Millionaire Shortbread that I found on FoodBuzz. London Foodie in New York had posted these. At first they looked good but I wasn't quite sure they would be for me. When they were done I was really surprised at how much I loved them. I know that my neighbors loved them too because I saw them eat them and smile right in front of me.



This brings me to dinner. Um, ok, let me just say that my mom used to make this for us when I was a kid. You might find it a bit disgusting but I love it. It is a stuffed potato mixed with tuna.

(if I haven't already lost you on this one)

Bake a potato. Scoop out the inside. Mix butter into the potato that you just scooped out. Mix with tuna and whatever else you want. Dump a bunch of cheese on top and return to oven for about 10 minutes. Yum or Argh depending on how you look at it.

So that bring us to the end of day 2. Oh yeah there was the phone call from India where I talk so fast to get everything out to tell him because I have been talking to myself all day. There are no periods to my sentences in these calls.

Guilty cooking day 1

So Dr Yarn is out of town again. He is in India. While he is chowing down on exotic Indian food I am eating "stuff". This is stuff that he wouldn't eat if here were at home but that I find pure comfort food. It almost always consists of something with a fried egg on top.

I started off with roasting stuff.





Moved on to the fried egg (ok, so I don't have the PERFECT fried egg for the PERFECT photo op but it was just my dinner that I was really going to eat...don't get me started).



Voila! Comfort on a plate.




Spanish Sweet Potato with Chorizo, Peppers, and Fried Egg
From the book Pure Simple Cooking by Diana Henry
Serves 2


Ingredients

2 sweet potatoes
1 red onion, halved and cut into half-moon-shaped slices
1 green bell pepper, seeded and sliced into wide strips
1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced into wide strips
~ Olive oil
1½ tsp. pimentón (smoked Spanish paprika)
¼ tsp. ground cumin
~ Salt and pepper
8 oz. chorizo, cut into thick rounds
4 oz. bacon or pancetta, cut into meaty chunks
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Cut the sweet potatoes into chunks — you don’t have to peel them — and put in a small roasting pan with the onion and bell peppers. Add 2 Tbsp. olive oil and the pimentón, cumin, salt, and pepper. Stir the vegetables until they’re coated in oil and spices. Roast for about 30 minutes, or until all the vegetables are tender and slightly charred.
Heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a frying pan and cook the chorizo and bacon until colored. Turn the heat down, add the garlic, and cook for another minute. Add all this to the cooked vegetables. Stir in the chopped herbs.
Heat a little more oil in the same frying pan and fry the eggs. Serve the sweet-potato mixture topped with the fried eggs.

Sort of a weird day but there were carrots

I sat outside this morning drinking my coffee and looking around me. I saw with joy that it was sunny and beautiful and with dread that the leaves were all off the trees (for the most part) and on my lawn. I looked over to my vegetable garden and realized that it was over. As I walked over to check it out I saw that I forgot to pull up the carrots. I did so and to my surprise they looked great. This got me thinking of what to do with them. Soup. I made a ginger carrot soup.



I would love to tell you that it was wonderful but truth of the matter was it tasted like baby food. Argh. I hated it.



So, I won't be giving you a recipe but I will leave you with this. It is how I felt realizing that the vegetables were going going gone.



Oh, I did get some brussel sprouts out of the garden too. Pretty pathetic but I am thankful for the handful. Ok, I am going to go have a drink...

Wanted to be nice

Dr Food was leaving for India today so last night I decided to make him his comfort food. Don't get me wrong, his favorite food is Indian food but I knew that he was going to eat a weeks worth so I thought that making his comfort food was a good idea. He is from Texas and I knew that his Granny used to make him chicken and dumplings. So, that is what I set out to do. Coming from a totally different background, this isn't something that is familiar to me.

I started off by boiling a chicken to make a rich broth. In with the chicken and 3 quarts water I put in carrots, onions, leeks, parsnips, celery garlic, and bay leaves. I also had salt in there. I let it simmer for 2 hours.



This made around 6 cups of stock. I let cool and then skimmed. I then boned the chicken when it cooled off.




Next use 1 TBL oil and 1 TBL butter and add a couple chopped carrots, celery, garlic and bay leaves and sauted until soft. Stir in the flour to make a roux. Continue to stir and cook for 2 minutes. Slowly pour in 6 C of the chicken stock, 1 C at a time, stirring well after each addition. Add some frozen peas.

Let sauce thicken for about 15 minutes.

While sauce is thickening I made the dumplings. I used a Tyler Florence recipe for the dumplings and also to see how he thickens the sauce.

Dumplings:

2C all purpose flour
1 TBL baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 C buttermilk

Sift the dry ingredients together (oops, *I* didn't sift) in a large bowl. In a small bowl, using a whisk, lightly beat the eggs and buttermilk together; pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently fold. Mix until the dough comes together. It is a soft dough.

Meanwhile fold the shredded chicken into the sauce and bring up to a simmer. Drop heaping tablespoonfuls of the dumpling batter into the hot mixture. Let the dumplings poach for 10 to 15 minutes until they are firm and puffy. Remove the bay leaves and season to taste.

Damn, I just realized that the directions I am giving you sound like my grandmothers recipe directions. Lucky you I didn't say "use a handful".

Anniversary Dinner!

It was our anniversary yesterday and I wanted to make a dinner for Dr Food. We were suppose to go to Clink for dinner but I just didn't have it in me to drive into the city. The restaurant looks cool. It is in the old prison in Boston and they have done amazing things to it to make it into a swank hotel. The restaurant is suppose to be cool.

So instead, I made Dr Foods favorites. I started off with "Inside Out Carrot Cake"



Inside Out Carrot Cake

1 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup coarsely grated carrots (2 medium)
1 scant cup walnuts (3 ounces), chopped
1/2 cup raisins (2 1/2 ounces)
8 ounces cream cheese
1/4 cup honey

Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 375°F. Butter 2 baking sheets.

Whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

Beat together butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla in a bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Mix in carrots, nuts, and raisins at low speed, then add flour mixture and beat until just combined.

Drop 1 1/2 tablespoons batter per cookie 2 inches apart on baking sheets and bake, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until cookies are lightly browned and springy to the touch, 12 to 16 minutes total. Cool cookies on sheets on racks 1 minute, then transfer cookies to racks to cool completely.

While cookies are baking, blend cream cheese and honey in a food processor until smooth.

Sandwich flat sides of cookies together with a generous tablespoon of cream cheese filling in between.

I then tried to think of what he loves that we never eat on a regular basis. Oxtails! I made oxtails. I found the recipe in the "Blue Ginger" cookbook. I have to say that this dish was awesome.



This dish was not hard to make at all. Takes some time but it was well worth it.



I wanted something simple to go with it so I found a recipe for lemon scented rice to go with it. It also came out of the same cookbook. The Oxtails were suppose to be served with Preserved Lemon Polenta but I don't like polenta so I made the rice instead.





The dinner was a huge success.



Savory Braised Oxtail

Ingredients
12 oxtails
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup ancho chile powder
1/4 cup salt
1/8 cup black pepper
2 chopped onions
2 chopped fennel
1/2 stalk chopped celery
1 large chopped carrot
10 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon minced ginger
4 stalks lemon grass, white part only, pounded and minced
2 cups red wine
8-ounce can of Roma tomatoes, drained
1/2 cup dark soy sauce
1/2 bunch fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
Water to cover oxtails
Directions
Mix flour, chile, salt and pepper and coat oxtails well. In a hot stock pot, coat bottom with oil and sear oxtails until all sides are browned. Pull out oxtails and wipe out stock pot. Saute onions, fennel, celery, carrots, garlic, ginger and lemon grass. Deglaze with wine and reduce. Add tomatoes, soy, thyme and bay. Add water to completely cover meat. Check for seasoning: the broth should taste well seasoned. Bring to boil then simmer on low heat for 3 hours. The meat should fall off of the bone. Remove oxtails and reduce sauce by 20 percent. Using a hand blender, puree sauce. Check for seasoning.

Lemon Basmati Rice

4 Scallion stalks; white part
Save green parts for another
1 tb Canola oil
2 c Basmati rice; washed until
Water is clear
2 lg Ginger slices
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
1 ts Salt
1 pn White peppercorn
2 1/2 c Chicken stock

In a saucepan, saute scallions and zest in oil. Add rice and ginger and saute for 3 minutes. Add zest, juice, salt, pepper and chicken stock, cover and bring to boil. Turn down and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Pull off of heat and let stand for another 25 minutes with cover still on.