Recipes for some of the things I write about
New olive oil, just pressed. It has a dense colour at first; later, it clarifies by decantation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The winners of Theros Olive Oil are:
Congratulations!
Please e mail your contact information to: SpoonFeast@gmail.com.
Include your shipping address and your phone so Theros can contact you to ship your bottle of amazing Greek Olive Oil!
Congratulations!
You are going to love this oil.
Thanks for participating.
New olive oil, just pressed. It has a dense colour at first; later, it clarifies by decantation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
To win one here’s what you have to do:
6 winners will be chosen based upon meeting all 4 criteria above.
You have until Midnight tonight (EST USA) to enter. Winners will be announced on Sunday, June 17.
Dear Tyler,
There are many kinds of rice to choose and methods of how to cook; this post is about how to boil rice. This is the most simple and least complicated method.
You just need to pay attention while it is cooking.
Let’s talk about the forms of rice that are out there. I am not going to go into all the varieties, this is just to tell you how to boil basic rice.
You don’t always have to cook rice.
You already know about the pre-cooked rice packets you can buy either shelf stable or frozen in vacuum sealed packets. These area great to have on hand when you don’t feel like cooking.
Trader Joe’s frozen Brown Rice is so nice and easy! Nuke and eat.
But you pay a price for that convenience. These products are ‘expensive’ in the relative terms of how much rice actually cost.
Rice on its own is cheap. It is a meal staple in many parts of the world for good reason.
I love the taste of rice, white, basmati, brown, mahogany, black or red. I love the texture, the way it carries sauces and serves as a flavor base for lots of dishes.
You were brought up on Basmati Rice. White and brown. When you go to the store to buy rice, don’t cheap out and buy the cheapest rice out there.
Choose Basmati or Texmati rice. Basmati rice comes from India and Texmati is the same variety grown in Texas. Honestly, the cost difference isn’t much between cheap rice and a quality rice and the taste is much more pronounced. Tastes more like rice should.
Rice has become so polished and processed that most of what passes for rice these days has very little flavor or nutrients. This kind of rice provides little nutritional value beyond carbs.
Avoid instant rice at all costs. It has horrible flavor, it tastes processed.
Avoid ‘converted or par boiled ‘ rice as well.
We get enough nutrients from our diets to have to worry about the delivery of Thiamine. If we were starving, it would be another issue.
Basmati and Texmati rice is flavorful and nutritious and goes great with lots of dishes. It is not sticky rice so it will have that fall-apart quality desired in fluffy rice.
2 parts water to 1 part rice
So if you use your shoe as a measure, measure two shoes of liquid and one shoe of rice. The point being what ever you measure with, use 2:1. If you use your shoe, sanitize it first.
Whatever measure you are using, make it 2:1
Measure the liquid (so you know how much rice you need), put into a pot with a tight-fitting lid.
Bring water to a boil. It’s boiling when the bubbles break the surface.
Add salt after water boils
Add salt and then rice
Return to a boil.
Then add rice; return to a boil
Stir the rice after adding it to the water to ensure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot. Put a lid on it and let it simmer.
Put a lid on it. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. If you use a glass lid, you can see what is happening while it cooks.
When it looks like this, it is probably done.
Try not to life the lid until you are SURE the rice is done. Time 15-20 minutes before peeking.
Take a large kitchen spoon and see if all liquid has been absorbed. If it has, the rice is done.
Brown and darker rice will need to cook for at least 1 hour with monitoring of the liquid to doneness; adding more liquid if necessary.
Keep your eye on it until you know how your stove works. (Does it run hot or really low on the lowest settings? Adjust your cooking accordingly. All stoves behave differently. Learn how the one you have works by observation while you cook and adjust accordingly. )
Do not lift the lid once it returns to a boil.
Cover and reduce the heat. Let it go until the liquid is gone.
If you do lift the lid to check, your rice will become gummy and yucky. It’s like the curse of gummy rice. Don’t lift the lid to peek unless absolutely necessary.
Learn your stove and adjust cooking times. Start noticing how it is doing at 15 minutes cooking.
How?
This is where glass lids are really handy. You can peek without lifting the lid.
The surface of done rice will look like this:
When it looks like this, it is probably done.
Try not to life the lid until you are SURE the rice is done.
Tilt the pot to the side, use a spoon to check that the liquid has been absorbed.
If it burns on the bottom, scoop from the surface. The surface rice may not taste burnt. If it does, oh well, it is cheap. Try again tomorrow.
Figure out why it may have burned:
Burner runs hot, forgot the timer, watching TV or playing games
Remember kitchen rules! Make them habits for safety’s sake.
Most of the time when I have burned things it is because I left the room and was distracted. Please trust kitchen rules.
Once the rice is cooked, fluff it with a fork and serve. There are so many things to serve over rice.
Comfort food! Sometimes I love just a bowl of rice with soy sauce just like this. In fact I ate this one. 😉
Sometimes when my tummy is upset, nothing makes it feel better more than a bowl of rice with a small bit of soy sauce.
Enhance the rice by adding vegetables, meat, herbs and spices to the cooking liquid to flavor the rice.
My favorite is to add dried onion or vegetable soup mix or fresh thyme, garlic and shallots. Don’t be afraid to season the water the rice is cooked in. The rice will take on whatever flavor is added.
I like to finish the rice with a tablespoon of fresh butter. It really does something to the flavor that I adore.
As soon as you are done cooking rice and have removed the contents of the pot to another dish, fill the rice pot with COLD water. Let it sit for 20 minutes or so. Add a squirt of detergent if you want. It makes clean-up easier.
All the rice goop will release and rinse away and final clean-up is much easier.
Steam some broccoli and serve it over some rice.
Left over rice must be cooled and stored in the refrigerator. You can easily reheat rice in the microwave. Add a small spoon of water, cover and nuke for 30 seconds, stir and do it again. The rice should absorb the water, so don’t use too much, just a hint.
Next is how to make Tonkatsu using the standard breading procedure. (Yeah, I know you love it!)
~Can you get Tonkatsu Sauce? Check your grocery where they sell soy sauce products. It is made by Kikkoman.
Love,
Mom
Starting tomorrow
The unit cook preparing the salad (Photo credit: Government Press Office)
Spoon Feast is beginning a series of posts on the subject of “How to Cook”.
As my son was moving into his first apartment, he asked me for a cookbook, “Couldn’t you just write one for me?”
He also wanted to share the recipes and methods with his other friends who are also in the same boat of being in their first apartments with kitchens and not knowing quite where to start or what to do.
The first posts will be about outfitting your kitchen and selecting the necessary items to get started.
A cook sautes onions and peppers. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Then, at the beginning of each week, there will be some basic cooking skill posts and at the end of the week there will be a full menu meal that uses all the simple skills learned during the week in the meal.
The skills will be presented in a way that you will learn to cook without being recipe dependent.
Please check out the posts and let me know if there is something you would like to learn.
Step-by-step photos and an occasional video will illustrate techniques and ingredients.
You will quickly learn a good solid basic cooking foundation from which you can grow and expand with confidence.
Please join in!
Strawberries enhance the tartness of rhubarb. Classically they go together like hand in glove. But they don’t have to.
I like strawberries and I like rhubarb, both separate and together.
The local grocery had a sampling table set up promoting hemp seeds for their nutritional value. I picked up a bag intending to use them in a multi-grain bread, but used them instead of nuts in the oatmeal crisp.
So you are really getting three desserts today; you can eat each separate and then together.
Let’s talk briefly about the hemp seeds.
Gillian McKeith’s organic shelled hemp seeds in a small bowl with teaspoon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
These seeds are not the variety of hemp used to “get high” anymore than you can “get high” from pistachios.
They are delicious, have great nutritional value and I thought it may push the envelope a bit to use them.
You can toast them but the texture is fine so it would be best to use them in something rather than a snack food.
If you desire, substitute finely ground pistachios or almonds instead of hemp seeds.
This entire dish consists of three recipes. Each quite simple.
The beauty is you can eat the strawberry “cheesecake” without the rhubarb compote and the compote without the cheesecake.
The cheesecake in this case is not baked, does not contain as much fat as traditional cheesecake; hence the quotation marks.
Make this with cream, or half and half (even the fat-free kind), Greek yogurt, cream cheese (can also be low-fat) and low-fat sour cream if desired.
Depending upon your choices of regular, low or non fat versions, you can have a pretty nifty dessert.
Strawberry Rhubarb Oatmeal Hemp Seed Crisp
1 cup of whole strawberries, stemmed and washed
1/2 cup heavy cream or 1/2 and 1/2
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/4 cup sour cream (optional)
1 8 – ounce package Cream Cheese
1/4 cup confectioners (10x) sugar
4 gelatin leaves or 2 teaspoons powdered gelatin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Puree the strawberries until smooth. Set aside.
Warm the cream cheese slightly in a microwave or wrap in a warm towel for 10 minutes to soften. The cream cheese whips better when soft.
Place the cream cheese in the mixer along with the sugar. Whip until smooth, add the strawberry puree.
If using gelatin leaves, soften the gelatin leaves in cold water for 10 minutes. When soft, squeeze out excess moisture. Add to warm liquid to melt, in this case the warm cream.
If using powdered gelatin, measure out the cold cream into a heat proof bowl. (Stainless bowls work great) Sprinkle the powdered gelatin over the surface of the cream. Allow the gelatin to “bloom” for 10-15 minutes. Place the bowl over a pot of boiling water (double boiler) to warm the cream and melt the gelatin.
Careful in both cases, gelatin burns and scorches easily. Be careful and pay attention.
Heat cream and bloomed gelatin until warm and melted in a double boiler.
( A stainless bowl over pot of boiling water works nicely)
Add yogurt, be careful not to scorch, stir until warm and gelatin is totally melted.
Add the softened gelatin to warm cream and yogurt.
Stir until gelatin is dissolved.
Add the gelatin mixture to the whipped cream cheese and strawberries.
Add the vanilla extract.
Pour the mixture into desired containers: pretty stemmed glasses, ramekins, small bowls, fancy tea cups or a large dish.
I used stemmed “Marie Antoinette” champagne classes for this.
Refrigerate 2-3 hours or overnight for the gelatin to set.
(Or Oatmeal Pistachio/Almond Crisp)
Wash and dry rhubarb
3 stalks of fresh rhubarb, washed and sliced into pieces finger width wide. Be consistent.
1/2 cup sugar or 1/3 cup honey or agave syrup
2 tablespoons instant tapioca
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Slice the rhubarb
Allow rhubarb, sugar and tapioca to sit 15-30 minutes
( this is called “to macerate” in cooking terminology)
Spray baking dish with pan spray or
butter the dish
Fill the baking dish with macerated rhubarb
Wash and slice the rhubarb. In a large bowl, combine the rhubarb, sugar and tapioca and vanilla.
Allow the mixture to rest for 15 – 30 minutes.
Meanwhile make the crisp part.
(Or Oatmeal Pistachio/Almond Crisp)
Combine oats, brown sugar, butter and ground nuts or seeds with a pastry cutter
Combine until the mixture looks like this; spread over top of the rhubarb; bake
Bake until golden and bubbly
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup whole butter, soft not melted!
1/4 cup hemp seeds or finely ground almond or pistachio nuts
1 teaspoon salt
Combine the oats, sugar and seeds and salt, cut in the butter until the mixture is like coarse cornmeal.
Place the macerated rhubarb mixture into a baking dish, top with the oatmeal hemp seed streusel mixture. Bake for 1 hour in an over set at 350°F or until the mixture bubbles.
Be sure to place a pan under the dish to catch all of the drippings for easy clean up.
To serve, top each chilled strawberry cream cheese dish with a generous dollop of warm rhubarb compote. Make sure you get some of the crisp part for the top. Add sliced or fresh diced strawberries if you like.
Garnish with mint leaf and serve with a smile!
Rhubarb Hemp Seed Crisp on top of Strawberry “Cheesecake”
This weekend turn the grill on and have some tasty treats. Aside from the typical dogs and burgers, I am going to suggest a grilled vegetable salad perfect for a weekend.
Slice all the vegetables; keep them separate in zip lock bags.
Add enough vinaigrette of your choice (my suggested recipe follows) to coat each slice evenly. They do not have to swim in the marinade.
Each vegetable has different cooking times so we want to place each kind of veg on the grill at the same time. This will help prevent you going bonkers while grilling if they were all mixed up.
Grill the vegetables, like items together.
Grill about 5 minutes or until each slice has a nice grill mark.
Remove from the grill and place into a large bowl. If the veg needs to be sliced after grilling, set those aside so you can cut them before combining the vegetables.
Portobello, red peppers and eggplant and asparagus will need to be cut into bite sized pieces after grilling.
Saute tomatoes; they are too small to grill
Cherry tomatoes are too small to grill so give them a quick saute in a hot saute pan with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Blister them and they are good to go.
Toss all the grilled vegetables in a large bowl. Add additional dressing if necessary.
Garnish with fresh basil leaves.
This salad can be served either warm or cold or room temperature.
Just don’t let it sit out longer than 4 hours.
Mix all ingredients except oils. Slowly add oils while whisking to emulsify.
The dressing will separate and will need a whisk or two before serving.
If you blend the oil in with a food processor or blender, the dressing will be more stable and will not separate.
*Garlic is optional. Dried minced garlic is alright to use as long as you give it time to re-hydrate
Uh huh, you heard that, Grilled watermelon.
Get your grill hot, really hot.
Slice watermelon about finger width or thicker slices.
Ingredients for Grilled Watermelon
Drizzle the melon with a high quality Greek olive oil such as Theros unfiltered extra virgin.
Sprinkle Herbs de Provence. Fleur de Sel (or kosher or sea salt) and grind some fresh black pepper over the oiled slices.
Place the watermelon on the hot grill for 3-4 minutes. Once grill marks appear, flip and grill the other side.
5 minutes is all it takes once you have a really hot grill. You want the melon to have some chars on it.
The flavor and texture totally changes and is a refreshing, wonderful treat!
Try it.
Smack your lips and say “Hallelujah!”
Your friends and neighbors will think you crazy at first, but they will soon be grilling their own watermelon and smacking their lips too.
Do you think Grilled Watermelon will be as popular as deep-fried turkey?
{Try it before you answer!}
Grilled Watermelon
My dear friend Barbara at My Italian Smorgasbord, surprised me with this lovely award:
Thank you So much!
I have been in a quandary as to what to post for this award. I have taken far too long to celebrate the honor. For that, I apologize.
Just as I figured out what to make, we went out-of-town to visit friends for a weekend get away.
Lucky them, they got to eat the vast amount of Chocolate Pate I made for this post.
Barbara at My Italian Smorgasbord has a lovely blog full of warm delightful recipes. I encourage all of you to go read her blog and make one of her recipes. You will be back for more!
The “rules” of the game is to share a sweet recipe, tell 7 things where sweet has influenced your life and then pass it along to 3 other fellow bloggers.
I thought long and hard about what to make for this award. Barbara’s Swedish buns were amazing.
What could I make that would be deserving of this award?
Not being much of a cake baker, I looked at other desserts I was known for at my restaurant. It was a toss-up between Chilled Key Lime Souffle and Chocolate Pate with Raspberry Coulis.
Chocolate won. I’ll make the souffle another time.
Melt until smooth
In a double boiler, add the chocolate. If the chocolate is in bar form, break it up into bits for easier melting.
Bring the cream to a boil, add to chocolate. Stir to melt smooth.
Add the raspberry coulis, vanilla, salt, and butter. Stir to incorporate and ensure everything has melted smooth.
Line your chosen molds with cellophane wrap. Give the wrap a light spray with a pan release spray. This allows the chocolate to be removed from the pan easily once it has chilled.
Line the molds with cellophane wrap
Pour the lined molds with chocolate to the top. Fold the cellophane wrap edges over the chocolate and chill at least 12 hours.
Fill and cover with cellophane. Chill
The chocolate pate will become firm but not hard. Remove from the mold, unwrap, and slice to serve.
You can serve it with Creme Anglaise (Vanilla Sauce) and Raspberry Coulis accented with fresh berries and mint (or basil!) for garnish.
Creme anglaise made from milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla (in beans) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
raspberry coulis (Photo credit: thepinkpeppercorn)
Use fresh or frozen berries
- 1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup of granulated sugar or simple syrup
Place 1 cup of raspberries into a blender or food processor.
Add the sugar or syrup and blend until liquified – 1-2 minutes.
Adjust the sugar content to your taste. You may want more, others less.
Using a fine wire mesh strainer, strain the mixture through, rubbing the seeds with the back of a spoon to extract as much pulp as possible.
The bright pink seedless result is coulis. You can use almost any fruit to make a coulis.
Coulis is simply pureed fruit or vegetables, strained so it is smooth and full flavored.
Plated Pate
Spoon a small amount of Creme Anglaise onto a plate; spoon Raspberry Coulis beside the Anglaise. If desired, draw a toothpick, skewer or knife tip through the anglaise and coulis to create a swirled design.
Add fresh berries and a mint leaf to the plate and serve.
Please excuse the quality of the photos; I didn’t have the lighting equipment with me.
1) Dulche de Leche – the first time I ever tasted it in Little Havana in Miami, I knew it would be in my life forever. It is one of the reasons I love Miami.
2) Fireball Jawbreakers – As a kid these were my ‘go to’ candy. My molars suffered and have had required dental treatment. My advice is to stay away from jawbreakers and dentist chairs. They go hand in hand.
3) As I love Miami, I love France for their Fleur de sel caramel. ’nuff said. I learned to make them which is a dangerous skill. It means I can have them available ALL the time. oops 😉
4) Short breads are another weakness, especially freshly made ones, with lemon glaze, and a cup of tea. This makes me a very happy girl!
5) Anything with puff pastry or pie dough. I like making them both, making things with them, eating things made with them. There is never a scrap thrown away.
6) Ice cream and sorbet especially home-made ones. Fun thing to do with gatherings of people. I love having just a small “amuse bouche” between hot courses of a meal.
7) This isn’t a like, but really a dislike: cake. I hate cake; making them, frosting them, the way they look, smell, even the sound of the word. Cake, ew. If I had to use a word, ‘gateau’ would work much nicer that ‘cake’.
The last cake I made I punched it down to the ground. Then kicked it. Cake murder. I vowed then never to make another cake. So far, I haven’t had to. YAY!
(Hum, will they take the award away now? The award name has ‘cake’ in it!)
This young lady’s blog is full of fun and delicious creations. She shares what works and what doesn’t with a great sense of humor. Check her out!
Mandy at The Complete Cookbook
Mandy presents interesting foods and beautiful photography. Her new cookbook is also available, ask her about it. Her posts are delightful.
Everything Frugal does is mouth-watering. From his breads, to his desserts and he also estimates how much the dish cost to put on your table. Drop in and see what is on his table today.
Thank you again Barbara, I am flattered.
We had a wonderful weekend in the North Carolina mountains visiting friends. This post is to provide a quick link to the bread show we did on Charlotte Cooks not too long ago.
In my mind, the show was a comedy of errors with too hot lights, dough rising way too fast in response to the too hot lights. . . Sometimes, you just have to laugh!
If you want to make m “No-Knead Sourdough Bread“, here is the visual.
Spero, this one’s for you!
Looking for a quick and easy meal the other night, I came up with this meal that was cooked all in my grill pan.
Chicken was marinated in Mojo Criollo, a Latin marinade of sour orange, herbs and spices.
There were a couple of leeks which I split in two and placed them cut side down to grill.
When the chicken was done, it was pushed to the side of the pan and I added fresh trimmed asparagus and grilled that until it was done too. Asparagus only takes a few minutes.
Sweet potatoes baked in the oven, a salad made by ‘shaving’ radishes, cucumbers, yellow pepper, and fennel, drizzled with rice vinegar and olive oil, salt and fresh pepper rounded out the meal.
Voila! Dinner is ready.
During this wonderful season of abundant fruits and vegetables, make sure you add more to your diet. The vitamins, minerals and fiber contribute to a healthy diet and contribute to manageable weight maintenance.
Indulge and explore white the season is right!
Spoon Feast 