Author Archives: athaidek

Aug4

BeetsMe goes Bananas for Pie

Posted on August 4, 2013 by athaidek

Perfect Saturday afternoon bake-out. Sometimes I think cloudy skies are a call to bakers everywhere, saying, “YES! It is okay for you to stay inside and spend the time getting that pie crust right!” Well, in our case it was a vanilla wafer crust, so I mean, didn’t totally take that much to get it right. Which of course means we spent less time trying to perfect and messed up a few of the steps :). Head over to JoytheBaker’s cookbook for this Banana Coconut Cream Pie recipe.

At 5 pm this made a good pre-dinner dessert and was the perfect welcome home present for my Grandma who recently returned from a trip to see my cousins. After a fun dinner catching up on our family and her travels, I felt comfortable taking her home knowing she had a cup of decaf and a slice of pie to decompress. Tomorrow morning, I can’t wait to have another slice for breakfast!!

Watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and baking pie with Cessie? What more could I ask for. THANKFUL ❤ CAS.

Mixing the ingredients for the crust. We made the mistake of adding ALL the coconut to the nilla wafers and sugar, wooops. So to fix it, we sifted the coconut to get out the sugar and nilla wafers. Then we crushed up some more wafers to add. Everything turned out ok wheww. See above for the crust pressed into the pan…saw this tip on a blog I think…take the bottom of a glass and use to smooth out a crumb-based pie crust!

This is the weird egg-yolk sugar, cornstarch, salt mix that goes into the custard. Another tip I can’t believe I never tried was separating egg yolks and whites using your hands instead of the shell. WORKS LIKE MAGIC I don’t know why I’ve been using the shell for so long, but it’s seriously foolproof.

Mixing the custard is by far the hardest part. Tempering eggs always makes me nervous (when you add some of the hot cream in the eggs to make sure they don’t curdle when you add into the pan) but it really went okay. This is why it is definitely better to have two people, at least, when you’re working on time-constrained recipes. The only thing that really stinks about this part is the smell of warm milk, no thank you.

Ta-da! Custard cooled in the fridge for a few hours. Folded in bananas and some more of the salvaged toasted coconut.

Home-made cool HHHWHIP

Some more sprinkled coconut on top. PS I used a mix of unsweetened and sweetened coconut and it turned out well.

Pie!

Aug1

Cornmeal-crusted Sweet Potato Fries with Summer Herb Aioli

Posted on August 1, 2013 by athaidek

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I love how aioli is the fancy end-all be-all name for mayonnaise+lemon juice +you-name-it. Oooo my Mom and I went to lunch a few months ago at this girly lunch place where they serve their french fries with Kalamata olive aioli. Life will certainly never be the same. I really feel a connection to someone who serves me a common menu item like french fries or toast or something and a dip that I could have SWORN I came up with. Like the time I had oatmeal pancakes with blueberry applesauce and SERIOUSLY thought the chef must have pecked through my mental legal pad of sauce ideas. Back to that kalamata aioli. Ah, salt.

These fries come from the wonderful Sarah Britton’s MyNewRoots blog and can be found here! I love her pictures and I really wish I could travel to cool places!!!! Every time I make sweet potato fries, I’m with all of you in the struggle to get to the appropriate crispyness level. I’m actually not opposed to the softer ones especially if they’ve got a good spice blend on the sweeter side, but when serving others, I feel like I should reach the definition of “fries.”

So Sarah’s recommendation to douse them in cornmeal was brilliant. These came out with a crusty layer (these CRUSTY CRUSTS I GOT, see Glozell for explanation) and really need very little seasoning. I followed her instructions closely, finding it very helpful to soak the cut strips in water. I have heard of that trick for potatoes before but never really saw it in action. Let me tell ya, after taking those potatoes out after 10 ish minutes and seeing the silt in the bottom of the bowl, I’m following the rules again next time.

Toss these guys in cornmeal, olive oil (we dont have any other ones although I heard coconut is good!), salt and pepp, and some garlic powder

There was supposed to be a yogurt sauce, but I only had mayo. So I went with it. To make the aioli, I chopped up some chives, basil, green onions, squeezed half a lemon, a clove of garlic, and some black pepper with the mayo. It was DELISH.

Oooo I thought I’d share this just for kicks. Made some dijon/balsamic roasted brussel sprouts too 🙂

Jul31

Phoebe’s Indian Hot dogs with Mango Relish and Curry Mayo

Posted on July 31, 2013 by athaidek

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Another one of those things I just HAD to try despite how much I try to stay away from hot dogs. Not exactly one of those foods you want to eat regularly, but the toppings for this dish I would DEFINITELY make again. Mango relish and curry mayo? Yes please.

She uses some nitrate-free ones which I would have used if we didn’t already have some other ones. This meal was a quick prep dish that was the perfect meal for two with leftovers for someone coming later. Serve with really any sides you want or it could even be an appetizer if you made little mini dogs with this relish and the mayo as more of a dipping sauce.

After a rough day, I could prep the ingredients in advance while on the phone with one of my friends. The only time when he realized I was multitasking was when I started the food processor and it sounded like I was on a construction site 🙂

I followed Phoebe’s recipe found here and finally found those top-cut hot dog buns my Dad is always asking for.

Highlights: Prep the relish in advance and use a mini food processor if you’ve got one. My mom wanted a bit more spice but I think it has a strong bite to it. This relish could later be used for a sandwich, atop any Indian dish or on some crostini. Or even as a topping for baked chicken or something.

The convenient thing about being on the phone with Brian at this time was his familiarity with ingredients common to Asian dishes. Thus, I found out how you’re supposed to cut up a mango. AFTER having already cut it up. So that’s how this mess happened. I ended up like scraping the side of the (invisible) mango pit. Seriously, where in the world is the mango pit? It looks exactly like the fleshy part so you kind of have to stab at it. Clearly this was my first experience with the mango. So, chop it up.

Chop up a jalapeno and scrape out the seeds.

A few steps later… adding the pureed garlic, shallots, cilantro, jalapeno, etc into the chopped mango (see it happened somehow, no pit involved!)

MMMM mango relish

Jul29

Poblano Salsa

Posted on July 29, 2013 by athaidek

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I’m not really entirely sure why this turned out to look like a rainbow, but hey what can ya do! I had a leftover poblano pepper and really wanted to make some salsa; however, didnt really have any tomatoes. Woops! Here’s what I did in a pinch:

Turned the toaster oven on broil and charred this baby. A few things to remember here, when you hear loud fireworks coming from your kitchen…fear not, it’s just the outside of the poblano pepper charring. Another thing I learned is that broiling them in the toaster oven for like 20 minutes is WAY easier than trying to char them on the gas stovetop. While I love chatting with my mom whilst cooking, it was so much less enjoyable contorting my hands as a makeshift spit to turn the poblano constantly.

Next, I peeled off the charred part, scraped out the seeds and cut the top off, adding the chopped pepper to my food processor. To it I added my salsa additions: cumin, cilantro, lime juice, TONS of garlic, half a chopped Chipotle pepper, a few dashes of adobo sauce from the Chipotle can, some extra virgin olive oil, two cherry tomatoes (rando but all I had) some red onion and pureed it all up with some salt n pepp.

After mixing, it was still a little too smooth bc the poblano is such a mild pepper. To it I added some chopped red onion to give the salsa a little crunch bc that’s how I like it, but that’s the beauty of salsa, it can be adjusted easily to your tastes! Per usual, this kind of dip tasted better after having some time to fuse flavors in the fridge for a few hours.

Jul12

Plenty’s Sweet Corn Polenta with Eggplant Tomato Sauce

Posted on July 12, 2013 by athaidek

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Having one of those moments where I’m still fawning over last night’s dinner. Per usual, Cessie and I sat around, sipping on white wine (how young 20s girls night can we get?!) and listening to country music while cooking in my kitchen and dreaming of our “future” lives. But I’m already there!! Planning girls weekends, laughing over funny voices and odd comments by summer campers, and talking about the adventures on which to embark in our new-found post grad years, these are my favorite summer nights.

Inspired by the Plenty cookbook her family gave me for graduation, it was appropo for us to test a recipe for once for my “recipe guy,” or rather, her mom. We decided that since this recipe is all fresh and veggies, it was “healthy.” Well, once you forget the butter, feta cheese, and FRIED eggplant, it is, right? It’s so beautiful too!!

The first good thing about cooking with Cessie is she’s always thinking ahead and has a knack for thinking intuitively in the kitchen. Sometimes I forget the details when they actually ARE necessary. The second thing is that when we are together, our personalities fuse to spit out alternate personalities, weird voices, and unclear jokes that trigger the cycle over again into new alternate personalities, thus spinning everyone else into confusion. Mixing this with food can only make everyone happy 🙂

If you haven’t bought Plenty, here’s the summary: Exquisite vegetarian recipes by a famed London writer, sometimes odd ingredients or those that you just wouldn’t buy a whole bottle of, fresh, very DETAILED recipes which is great, and amazing pics. This was the second recipe I’ve tried, and so far I love it!

This recipe involves making homemade polenta out of sweet corn pureed in the food processor, cooking an eggplant sauce with tomatoes, white wine, salt, sugar, and oregano (we substituted fresh basil which we agree was better!) While a bit time consuming, it’s fairly simple to make. The only thing we forgot was to add cooking liquid from the corn back into it once pureed to make the sauce creamier. But it still turned out great! Enjoy, mes amies.

On to NYC this weekend!! Where should I eat??? I’ve already got Momofuku Milk Bar on the list…