SereneCooking

Yesterday I made six quiches (using the basic recipe for the one of mine on the rec.food.cooking signature page, but three kinds: caramelized onion and goat cheese; green chili and cheddar; and pesto/mozzarella/parmesan). We tested one of the goat cheese ones (YUM!). The rest were for a party, though two of them were way overdone.

Then I made a big pot of mushroom barley soup (also for the party). For six quarts or so of soup, I used 5.5 POUNDS of mushrooms. The stuff was amazing. I have to duplicate it at home -- three onions, six cloves of garlic, a stick of butter, the mushrooms, (cook all those down first, then add) three ribs of celery, three carrots in coins, salt, pepper, a cup of barley, enough water to fill the pot. Bring to a boil, simmer for an hour.

And I got heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, along with some green and purple fresh basil, for a caprese salad to go with it.

Today, I made spicy cioppino for someotherguy, who has a cold. Used a whole head of garlic, a bunch of black pepper, and a bunch of sriracha -- he said it cleared his sinuses before he even started eating it. It was delicious. Later, we had a nice dinner of mashed potatoes, chickpea gravy, and broccoli.

And just now, I made potato patties out of some of the leftover mashed potatoes, cheese, and a couple eggs.

I am SO happy that I've gotten well enough to spend the weekend cooking. Besides my broken foot, it was utterly happymaking to do this. It was a good weekend, foodwise.

When I lived with Cute-poet-chick, we went through something like a dozen eggs a year. Not that we disliked them; it just didn't come up all that often. I was vegetarian for a lot of that time, and I've never really craved eggs, and she wasn't into them, either.

My current partners really like eggs, though, so we have them around a lot. They're cheap protein for the diabetic, and they're easy and versatile when we don't feel like cooking.

Lately, on rec.food.cooking, there's been a pickled-eggs thread. One poster posted a picture of the eggs she pickles with beets -- totally pink! -- and it made me want to make some of my own.

What I made



Pickled eggs and beets

Into a half-gallon jar I put the following, in this order:

1 dozen eggs, hard-boiled and peeled
1 red onion, quartered and sliced thinly
Boiled syrup of 1/2 cup sugar, 2 cups vinegar, about a tablespoon of salt, and maybe a half teaspoon each of mustard seed, black peppercorns, and whole coriander
2 large beets, boiled, peeled, quartered, and sliced
enough additional vinegar (maybe 1/2 cup?) to cover it all

Next Monday, we'll taste it all and let you know how it turned out.



Cost per serving

someotherguy eats two eggs per serving, so that's what I'll estimate this at. One dozen eggs = six servings.

Eggs: $2.19
Onion: $.31
Beets: $1.79
Sugar/vinegar/spices: Maybe 50 cents total

Cost per serving: 80 cents

I make most of our food from scratch. This usually does not include pie crusts. Pie crusts are easy, don't get me wrong, but sometimes they're on sale 4 for a dollar at the store, and I succumb to their store-bought siren call. This is one of those occasions.

What I made



Onion-goat-cheese Pie

3-4 onions, sliced
2 tbsp butter
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
pie crust, store-bought or homemade, for single-crust pie
3 oz goat cheese (I used roasted-garlic flavored cheese, but any cheese will do)
3/4 cup milk
4 eggs
2 tbsp cornmeal

Preheat oven to 425F. Sautee onions in butter/salt/pepper until soft but not brown. Add to pie crust. Blend remaining ingredients together and pour over onions in pie crust. Place on a baking sheet and bake 30-45 minutes, until center is firm and top is golden brown. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Cost per serving

4 generous servings; $1.01 per serving

(Total cost is as follows; I just added it up and divided by 4)

25 cents for the crust
$2.39 for the goat cheese
40 cents for the eggs
78 cents for the onions
11 cents for the butter (we pay $7 for 4 pounds at Costco)
11 cents for the milk ($2.29 a gallon on sale)
negligible cost for spices and cornmeal

How we liked it:

someotherguy: "I liked it. It was lovely."
serene: I would cook the onions longer next time. They don't have quite the richness of taste without any caramelization, but they were good nonetheless, and the pie was very very pretty.

In German class in the ninth grade, we had a German-foods potluck. The teacher, Mrs. Knapp (at least I think that was her name), handed out recipes and assigned us each a dish to cook and bring in. I got German potato salad. I had never HAD German potato salad. It was an epiphany! Such a perfect blend of flavors, and I wish I still had that recipe today.

These days, I call any vinegar-based (as opposed to mayo-based) potato salad "German potato salad", even when most people wouldn't really think of it as German potato salad, so keep that in mind if you make this recipe. It's very good, very easy, and VERY cheap, but it's not authentic in any way.

What I made:



German-ish Potato Salad

Dressing ingredients:

1 tsp dried minced onion
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp celery seed
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 tsp mustard powder

2 pounds russet potatoes, boiled, cooled, peeled, and cubed
1 roasted red pepper (I used one from a jar), diced

Place potatoes in a medium bowl. Place dressing ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir for a few seconds, then pour dressing over potatoes and mix well. Add peppers and mix. Chill until cold and serve.

Cost per serving:

4 servings. 20 cents a pound for the potatoes, 17 cents for the pepper (I bought a jar of 6 for 99 cents), and some tiny amount of money for the spices. Total per serving: 15 cents or so.

How we liked it:

someotherguy: "I liked it a lot. I'm not a super-huge fan of German-style potato salad, but it was pretty good."
serene: I would have preferred fresh onions and celery, but I didn't HAVE fresh onions and celery. This was really good for a pantry salad.

I really should have taken pictures, because that was really pretty cobbler.

Months ago, I was reading back issues of Cook's Illustrated, and the article on peach cobbler (in the July '04 issue) really made both me and someotherguy want to try that version.

He says it was worth waiting months for. It was certainly much better than the version I found on foodnetwork.com.

It wasn't overly sweet (which I think is good). Also, it was dead easy, and I didn't even use a food processor (I don't have one). I used my metal whisk to cut the butter into the biscuit dough, and it all worked really well.

If you don't have access to the recipe and want it, let me know, and I'll get around to emailing it to you soon.

Lately, while I've been doing the Mom Food (oops, I should post the split-pea soup!), I've been thinking about all the stuff I cooked when I was a young, newly vegetarian hippychick. I made lots of grain/nut/bean loaves, lots of homemade veggie burgers, LOTS of grain salads, etc. I also ate a lot of ramen, because young, newly vegetarian hippychicks tend to be kinda broke.

Anyway, perhaps the first thing I ever cooked from a vegetarian cookbook was mushroom stroganoff, and I managed to recreate it tonight. In the day, I made it with dairy sour cream, but these days, I like the tofu sour cream from Susan V. enough to use that.

( Recipe below, but I didn't take pics )

Making a batch of whole-wheat/honey/sunflower-seed bread (recipe below), on which we're having grilled cheese sandwiches. About to fix a big pot of homemade vegetable soup to go with it. And I found artichokes six for $1.89, so I'll probably cook those up, too. Yumma.

Whole-wheat Bread with Honey and Sunflower Seeds (bread machine)

1 1/4 cups water or milk
2-4 tablespoons honey, to taste
3 cups whole-wheat flour (I use freshly ground; if you use store-bought, you might need a little more liquid)
1/2 cup bread flour
3 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
1 heaping teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons yeast
1/4 cup sunflower seeds

Place everything except sunflower seeds into bread machine in the order the manufacturer recommends, and start dough cycle. When it's time to add things (my machine beeps 8 times), add the sunflower seeds. When the dough is ready, shape it and place it in a buttered loaf pan. Cover pan with oiled plastic wrap and let rise until just cresting the top of the pan. At that point, preheat oven to 350F. Bake 35 minutes. Turn out of pan and cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes before slicing.

I had cream sauce left over from the shit-on-a-shingle experiment, and mentioned to James that I was trying to think what to do with it. He suggested creamed peas on toast, an old childhood favorite of his. We also had a salad and some homemade veggie barley soup.



( more photos )

The soup is an onion, a tomato, 2 carrots, 2 ribs of celery, a cup or two of sliced mushrooms, garlic, bay leaf, seasoned salt, a tiny bit of red miso, homemade veggie stock, and barley that had already been pressure-cooked before adding.