Chicken cooked in a pot

So there clearly wasn't much to photograph and there's even less to look at here, but hey! I cooked my first-ever whole chicken. I poached it whole in a pot containing a fair amount of water, star anise, scallions, ginger slices, and salt. It made a tasty (though salty--I don't think the recipe intended for the broth to be used, but it felt like such a waste) broth that I was able to use in the oxtail soup I was going to make later, which was totally awesome--no waste, and no having to buy broth either!

I served this chicken simply, with soy sauce, chili sauce, chopped garlic and chopped ginger as garnishes. Poaching the chicken was a more forgiving way of cooking than roasting and the chicken stayed very moist. The chicken came courtesy of my meat CSA share, which makes me feel better than I otherwise would about eating meat.

Butternut squash ravioli

I like to think I'm a decent cook, but some things I've never done particularly well, maybe because I've tried those things once or twice, they've gone badly, and I get scared away from trying them again and thus have no chance to improve. For example, bread (or anything with yeast) and pasta. This, my second-ever foray into homemade pasta (the first was some rather dense and heavy gnocchi, over a year ago, sadly before I decided to photograph a lot of what I cook), had mixed results. This all came about when I was browsing through "How to Cook Everything" one Saturday, trying to figure out what to cook that weekend, as well as trying to find ideas for what to do with the first butternut squash of the season I had impulsively bought at the store. I definitely wanted to make butternut squash soup, which I've made several times before, but I also had more unaccounted-for butternut squash, and I wanted a new challenge. I thus decided I wanted to make my own pasta, given that the first time I'd tried it hadn't turned out so well. This time I would make raviolis and I would use the extra butternut squash for filling. I guess these are actually more like free-form agnolottis than ravioli, but I digress.

Emboldened by Mark Bittman's description of homemade pasta and especially by his note about how the recipe is fairly easy (wrong!) and forgiving for beginners (wrong again!), I proceeded to make egg pasta. I made a well of flour on my counter, put my eggs in the middle, and started mixing. Eventually I had my dough together, which I gave some time to rest. When it came time to knead it and roll out, the dough was looking pretty great--smooth and elastic and pleasingly yellow, unlike dried pasta.

That happy elasticity came back to taunt me when it came time to roll out the dough. I would roll the dough out to a thin sheet, but as soon as I lifted the rolling pin away, the dough would start springing back to the center, getting thicker. There seemed to be no way to do this and time was of the essence, so I simply tried to roll faster and faster and cut circles out one at a time, filling the pasta with a dollop of simple roasted butternut squash, roasted garlic, egg and parmesan filling and then closing the circle in on itself to seal it. The second I cut out the circles, though, they would start springing back and so would get thicker. The surface area I thought I had on the cut out circle would get smaller, meaning that unless I put a tiny amount of the filling in the center, the filling would start oozing out the sides of the pasta circle. Eventually I got tired of them leaking (and I figured this would not go well when I went to boil them) and just put even smaller amounts of filling inside.

The more raviolis I finished and put on a cookie sheet, the more I noticed that they looked a lot like smaller versions of the squash and pork dumplings my family always makes around the holidays (Yum!!) It's the same basic priniciple, although the dough for the dumplings contains no eggs. (Let me rephrase that prior statement to say that my raviolis looked like smaller versions of the squash and pork dumplings I create when my family makes them over the holidays--while my parents use their nimble fingers to make nifty and neat little packages for the filling, I use whatever means I can to get the dumplings closed. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done. Not like you can eat the prettiness of the packaging, am I right?!)

Not knowing what would go best with this pasta, I made two types of sauces. First was a super easy tomato sauce--super easy because it was one I'd made in the summer from peak of season heirloom tomatoes and stashed in my freezer for an occasion such as this, and all I had to do was heat it up. I only wish I'd made more sauce. The second was a simple olive oil and mixed herb -- sage, chives, and parsley-- pasta sauce. Both tasted great with the pasta. Although the herb sauce was a bit overwhelming for the delicate flavor of the butternut squash, this should be easily remedied by using a lower proportion of strong herbs/sauce to the amount of pasta. The sage was particularly assertive in this sauce. The tomato sauce was delicious with the pasta. The tomato flavor was in perfect balance with the butternut squash as it provided a nice bit of acidity but not an aggressive flavor like a thick jarred pasta sauce might bring.

So, there was a bit of frustration, but it was still very satisfying to be able to sit down and eat pasta I'd created from scratch. I certainly will be trying this again sometime--hopefully before another year passes!

Oxtail and cabbage soup

One of the reasons fall is my favorite season is the soups you can make thanks to the change in weather. I'm not terribly interested in making a hearty, warming soup for a sunny, 80-degree day, but on a gloomy, 40-degree day, a bowl of slowly-cooked oxtail soup is something to look forward to after a long day at work or on a quiet Sunday evening. Oxtails are one of those fairly cheaper, tougher meats that call for longer cooking in a lot of liquid. Once the meat gets to its tenderest stage, it is amazingly soft and flavorful--and messy, but really satisfying, to get off the bones. The broth picks up flavor from the oxtail in addition to the vegetables and tomatoes in the soup.

Lemongrass tofu

This lemongrass tofu dish is an unfortunate example of a dish that looked (and photographed) much better than it tasted, although all the blame lies at my own feet given my various wanderings from the original recipe. It certainly has all the makings of what should have been a tasty dish--lemongrass, galangal, tofu, coconut milk, jalapeno, and cilantro.

I'd never cooked with galangal before, and with lemongrass only once before, and I've eaten dishes containing these things but not enough of them to know what exactly each one tastes like, so they're a bit foreign as ingredients to me. Some snippets of commentary I've read about galangal have likened it to ginger (though another book I referenced indicated that there is no substitute for galangal and that using ginger instead is totally lame), so for the tofu dish I sliced the galangal as if I were using ginger. Galangal does look like a cousin of ginger, only with a more woodeny texture, if that makes sense, so that helped strengthen my resolve to pretend it was ginger.

While it was cooking, the dish looked very white--white tofu, white coconut milk--and I decided to toss in a hint of sriracha for color. Since it was a vegetarian recipe and so didn't contain fish sauce, and I love fish sauce and I know from past experience that thai green curry is delicious with both coconut milk and fish sauce, I decided to throw in some fish sauce. With the sriracha and the jalapenos--I left the seeds in for more spice, since jalapenos are usually pretty mild (sidebar: have you ever noticed that jalapenos are maddeningly inconsistent in their level of spiciness from pepper to pepper?)--the dish was tasting quite a bit spicier than I had intended. With every taste, it seemed to get hotter and hotter. I then decided to add some extra sugar because I thought it could use a touch more sweetness than the sweetness of the amount of sugar called for in the recipe, and I thought it might help tame the spice. When I tasted it after adding the bit of extra sugar, I couldn't tell the difference...so I added in a little bit more.

For some reason, the final product was slightly bitter. Did I use too much galangal? Lemongrass? I'm really not sure. In addition, it was too spicy (and if I'm saying that, it's probably a "yikes" type situation), too cilantro-y, and strangely sweet. So I think the lessons here are clear: unlike bacon, sriracha and fish sauce do NOT make everything better, there obviously can be too much of a good thing, and extreme caution must be taken when adding sugar to a savory dish. Sigh.

Vietnamese spring rolls

You can get tasty spring rolls similar to these (also often, perhaps more authentically, called summer or salad rolls) at any Vietnamese restaurant, but these are actually my favorite. Standard rolls contain shrimp and/or pork, and in those, the pork and shrimp provide much of the flavor of the roll until the dipping sauce comes into play. Although my fondness for shrimp knows no bounds, the recipe I use to make these spring rolls calls for no meat or shrimp, and the absence means that the herbs -- scallions, cilantro, mint, and thai basil--get top billing. The flavor combination of the green onions and herbs, some bean thread noodles mixed with a little rice vinegar, and peanuts, lettuce and carrots for texture and crunch, eaten with a slightly sweet and spicy peanut dipping sauce is simply incredible. Naturally, using super fresh herbs is a must.

I have been wondering if the Vietnamese restaurants who deal with these herbs in bulk quantities have secret ways to deal with all of these delicious fresh ingredients. As someone who cooks/preps rather slowly, I find the process of making these rolls to be, although it's worth it, pretty labor intensive--washing and drying the herbs, picking them off the stems, and dealing with the rice paper sheets is quite an undertaking. I can't even imagine making these in larger quantities. I appreciate ordering spring rolls in restaurants all the more now and it's always worth it to me to buy them, although I've yet to find spring rolls like these, where the emphasis is on the herbs more than on a protein.

A great way to get the same flavors with a lot less work is to create what I like to call "deconstructed" spring rolls--just eliminate the rice paper wrapper, mix a little bit of extra rice vinegar in with some soaked noodles, shred the lettuce, and mix everything in a bowl with some of the peanut dipping sauce drizzled on top.

Quinoa tabbouleh

I recently decided that it was high time I expanded my quinoa-cooking horizons.

I like tabbouleh and the idea of tabbouleh, but have probably actually eaten it only a few times in my life and I never really thought to make it before. But oh, the crazy places life takes us! One day I found myself with a bunch of parsley I'd impulsively bought at the farmer's market (sigh, a whole week earlier--I always feel guilty when I can't use everything I've bought before it goes bad or loses its farmer's market freshness) and the only thing that came to mind for using a lot of parsley at once was tabbouleh. After a quick consultation with my trusty How To Cook Everything (I didn't want to go back to the store), I learned that Mark Bittman was totally on board with using quinoa as a substitute for the grain in this recipe. For some reason I thought tabbouleh was made with cous cous. I guess that's how long ago I last ate it. But of course, the traditional grain is bulgur.

I finally succeeded in making a fluffy batch of quinoa and found that it's terrifically delicious as a tabbouleh. Quinoa....is there nothing you can't do? Quinoa really takes well to a bit of lemon juice, and the texture of the salad is delightful. I'm not sure if mint is traditional too, but mint is lovely with the parsley and the lemon.

Novelty-shaped eggs

These eggs come courtesy of a trip to Japantown in San Francisco, where a trip to the grocery store yielded silicone egg /pancake molds. Next time: Regular eggs, novelty shaped pancakes. These things are amazing!

Shrimp in Sriracha sauce

I originally happened to come across this vaguely ethnic-but-not-really recipe on Epicurious once when I was looking for a good recipe for coconut rice to make along with Hoisin sauce ribs. Coconut rice is pretty versatile, it seems--though as you might have guessed, it's just as delicious eaten on its own, straight out of the pot, standing over the stove. This shrimp recipe is amazingly simple--even simpler than the gai pad kaprow--easy, and of course, full of flavor. Shrimp gets doused in the tasty fruity heat of Sriracha and then cooked in a sauce with some broth and coconut milk, which serves to tone down the spice from the Sriracha.

The original recipe calls for Broccolini as the green vegetable portion of this dish. Broccolini has a slight bitter taste, kind of like broccoli rabe but quite a bit milder, and is also a little sweet. It's quite a good counterpart to the sweetness of the coconut milk in the sauce. But I've also found that Broccolini can be a little bit more expensive than I'd like (along with the cost of shrimp, this isn't necessarily the most budget-minded home cooking one can d0), and sometimes, I just feel silly saying "Broccolini" and shopping for Broccolini. It's just a bit fussy and pleased with itself. So one day I decided to try it with Chinese broccoli, which is not only humbler (read: cheaper) but is also a fine accompaniment to the shrimp. Chinese broccoli stems are sweet and milder in flavor than "regular" broccoli, yet nicely crispy. The stems hold their own against the shrimp. The leaves are also milder than regular broccoli, and have what I can only describe as a more concentrated "green" flavor. Slightly more bitter, which again goes great with the coconut milk.

Shrimp in Sriracha sauce is almost too much deliciousness in itself, but get a bite of shrimp, sauce, and broccoli and add to that a healthy forkful of coconut rice and you have something pretty amazing.

Gai Pad Kaprow

The magic ingredient in this dish, otherwise known as thai basil chicken, is one that you'll find in a lot of other Thai (and Vietnamese) dishes--fish sauce. Pungent and brown and and foreign and scary to me just a few years ago, it's now a staple in my kitchen.

I've had a number of Thai restaurants' versions of basil chicken, but never really thought to try making my own until I came across the recipe for this dish when it was featured as a cheap meal on Serious Eats. I'm glad I did--the dish is amazing. Fresh and crunchy green beans and tender ground chicken (which is, in another bonus, pretty cheap), with plenty of shallots and garlic, lime juice and fish sauce, and the second magic ingredient--thai basil.

The recipe actually calls for holy basil, but I've been using thai basil. I guess holy basil is more authentic, but thai basil is more immediate. Thai basil is fragrant from the second you buy it and has the most amazing smell, but holy basil has to be cooked for the flavors to be released, or so I read. I did make this dish with holy basil once but I think I didn't use enough, so I felt like something was missing. I do want to become more familiar with the uses of holy basil. I'll try it again soon, if I can resist buying the thai basil when I'm smelling it at the store.

The first time I made this dish, I wondered what "one bunch" of basil meant, which is what the recipe calls for. A bit vague, I thought. But that's the beauty of it--I never know how I'm really supposed to measure herbs when they're quantified in a recipe. With this recipe, you can add huge handfuls of basil and it doesn't get overwhelming, just more delicious.