zucchini bread

today i’m so excited to kick off the first baking week here at icf!

i love baking – maybe even more than cooking – but i know that it intimidates a lot of people. so i’ve picked recipes that go from very simple (tuesday) to not quite as simple (friday), but i promise they are all doable for a beginning baker and produce pretty impressive results! oh, and mama bakes, too.

the first recipe comes from paula dean through a coworker who is also a fabulous baker. (have you noticed a trend? i work in a very multi-talented – and food-oriented! – office.) she is also responsible for the creepy pumpkin in this picture…

zucchini bread

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans [optional, of course]

preheat oven to 350 degrees.

in a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar.

in a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice.

mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in. bake in 2 standard loaf pans, sprayed with nonstick spray, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean.

alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.

i know i once said that i don’t like sugar with my veggies, but this bread is definitely an exception. sooo moist!

baking week

get ready…

next week is baking week.

drunken raisin and oatmeal pancakes

when i’m home alone, i usually treat myself to my favorite thing – breakfast for dinner. sometimes that means a bowl of cereal, but this particular night i was feeling rather lush (it was a thursday, bien sur!), so breakfast for dinner meant drunken raisin and oatmeal pancakes.

start by getting your raisins drunk. put them in a bowl and cover them with grand marnier or similar. let them plump while you make the rest of the batter – or as long as you can. (you are also welcome to get drunk along with them. wouldn’t want them to feel lonely. or like alcoholics, drinking alone.)

[a note about golden raisins: if you don’t like regular raisins, give golden raisins a try before you write off raisins all together. they are more tender, less chewy and have a sweeter, more delicate flavor.]

for another recipe, i had bought a box of bisquick, so i quartered the pancake recipe to make just four pancakes. (yes, this meant splitting an egg. difficult, but doable. crack egg into bowl and beat very well, then spoon it into two more bowls, alternating, so you get roughly half an egg in both. this is not fail-safe, but generally works well enough for these purposes.)

next i added the raisins (and their grand marnier) to the batter, along with a cup of oatmeal. (doesn’t the oatmeal dry out the batter, you ask? indeed. hence the half-cup of booze.)

cooked ’em up in my cast iron pan

and enjoyed with a little maple syrup. NEVER serve maple syrup cold from the fridge. it’s the little things, right?

who says dinner alone has to be boring?

turkish restaurant week: meze

in honor of turkish restaurant week here in dc, a group of fabulous ladies and i decided to try meze (in adams morgan, for you locals). we had a turkish food aficionado with us to explain everything, but the staff at meze was fabulously helpful, as well.

when they found out that we had never been there before, they offered us a 12-dish tasting menu option made up of “meze,” or small plates. at $25 a person, how could we resist?

(as a side note, tasting menus may be one of my favorite things in life. i love not having to choose and just letting the chef compose my meal for me. plus, i love when the waiter sets each dish down in front of me and explains it. i feel like a judge on iron chef. what an adventure!)

so let me take you on my own little tasting menu trip of meze:

first course – hummus, olive oil and warm bread. hard to go wrong.

second course – salad with a basil vinaigrette

third course – these were like cold, unfried falafel. while my description may not sound appetizing, these were.

fourth course – sigara boregi, goat cheese wrapped in phyllo and fried

fifth course – dolma, rice wrapped in grape leaves. you may have had this at a greek restaurant.

sixth course – mini lamb chops with jus and maybe the best mashed potatoes i’ve ever tasted

alternative vegetarian sixth course – mixed veggie kabob

seventh course – mini lamb meat ball or kofte (so good i ate half before i remembered to take a picture!)

alternative vegetarian seventh course – mixed plate

eighth course – bruschetta with lox and a tomato topping. (sorry it’s a horrible picture!)

nineth course – fried calamari, or kalamar, with a very light, delicate breading

tenth course – chicken and beef kabobs (this time i ate the whole thing before i remembered my camera! here’s my neighbor’s plate)

eleventh course – baklavah bites

on a whole, besides loving the food, i was very pleased with the service and atmosphere of meze. as i said, the staff was impressively helpful and attentive, most notably in accommodating our vegetarian friend.

the food was delicious, and according to our turkish expert, fairly authentic. i would absolutely recommend meze to anyone, especially large groups, and suggest you consider the tasting menu!

don’t trust me? here’s what my fellow diners had to say:

“overall i really liked the place and the food.  the service was great aside from waiting for the bill for hours.  the food was really good – almost as good as [a turkish] grandmother’s cooking.  my favorite hands down was the bruschetta.  or the cigara boregi.  or the baklava.  okay, i didn’t have a favorite.  it was all really good!”

“i will definitely frequent meze. i’m really not a ‘dessert person,’ but after making my way through an incredible tasting menu, the baklava was an awesome finale!”

“i really enjoyed our dinner. the food was undoubtedly amazing, as was the service.  i loved that we were able to have a relaxing and long dinner without feeling rushed.  a truly european dining experience.”

“the tasting menu was spectacular, and even the dishes i couldn’t eat, as a vegetarian, looked wonderful.  the servers and kitchen staff were very accommodating and i was able to enjoy a delicious vegetarian option.  thanks, meze!”

“meze’s ‘taste’ menu was a great way to introduce a new type of cuisine into my life. i enjoyed trying small portions of each entree. while i may not have liked them all, because of my peculiar taste preference, i did appreciate the opportunity to be exposed to many new dishes. overall, it was a great way to spend a friday evening w/ some wonderful ladies!”

paneer (indian cheese)

paneer is essentially indian cottage cheese. with a mild flavor and feta-like texture, it’s most commonly found in saag paneer, that tasty creamed spinach dish that is a menu staple at most indian restaurants.

picture of saag paneer stolen from sunset.com

after a recent night out for indian food, i decided i wanted to take on the challenge of making saag paneer, since it may be my favorite indian dish. after a little research, i realized that the easiest first step would be to make the paneer alone, so i decided to start there.

not to mention the fact that i’m a cheesaholic AND there are many other things you can do with paneer besides saag-it. and did i mention that it’s EASY?! imagine making cheese… at home… in less than 30 minutes! (okay, not exactly true. but you only have to do actual work for less than 30 minutes.)

first, line a strainer with several layers of cheesecloth (surprisingly available at my soviet safeway. “soviet” because of how disguising and barren the place is. if they have cheesecloth, so does your grocery store).

when you’re ready to begin, bring milk to a boil in a large pot (see notes below for details if you want to try the recipe. ignore them if you just like my pretty pictures).

this was an interesting experience for me because you’re usually not supposed to bring milk to a boil, so i didn’t know what to expect. let me enlighten you. boiling milk VERY QUICKLY foams, bubbles up and explodes out of the pot. i recommend using a much larger pot than you think you’ll need and having pot holders and a trivet ready – the moment to see your milk bubbling and starting to behave badly, whisk it off the burner to the trivet!

right away, add your acid (see note) and stir gently for about 5 minutes. this causes the milk to curdle which is usually a bad thing, but not when you’re making cheese.

it looks nasty. bear with me.

after about 5 minutes, pour your curds and whey (yes, little miss muffet, that is what you just made) into the cheesecloth-line strainer and let it drain.

and drain

and drain. getting rid of the water makes hard cheese!

the various recipes i was using mentioned that at this point, the whey (the liquid running off) should be almost clear. when i checked the bowl, it was not.

so i added a little more vinegar, and sure enough, more curds came out.

they went into the strainer, too.

once it looks like the whey is all drained, you can fold up the cheesecloth and squeeze even more out. some recipes suggested tying the cheesecloth in a tight knot, but i had a little trouble with that.

at this point you can start pressing the cheese. while it’s still in the cheesecloth and still knotted, start stacking heavy things on top. i did this first in the strainer, then moved to a cutting board. now is the time to shape the cheese if you want, i didn’t.

(see it under there??!)

after the cheese has pressed for 2-3 hours, it’s ready to be unwrapped…

and enjoyed!

i snacked on it raw and added it to salads. it’s delicate milky flavor would also be delicious with some toasted nuts and a drizzle of honey. here, with chopped (seeded!) tomatoes and red pepper, drizzled with olive oil.

notes–

milk note: works best with whole milk, i’ve read, but if you’re really against that, go with 2%

milk quantity note: every recipe i found used slightly different proportions of milk to acid. i used about a litre of milk, which is a little more than half a half-gallon. i would have used the whole half gallon, but my pot wasn’t big enough!

acid note: you can use vinger, lemon juice, lime juice (apparently the most traditional) or citric acid. i used white vinegar. don’t worry, it doesn’t affect the flavor.

acid quantity note: again, every recipe suggested a different amount, but i used roughly two tablespoons if you count the second round. don’t be afraid to do the second round, as i did, if you need to.

seeding tomatoes

okay, this is going to sound really obvious and simplistic, but seeding your tomatoes before using them eliminates some common tomato side effects.

as you probably know, tomato seeds can be a little bitter. plus, they make for an odd texture in blended tomato soups.

also, if you’ve ever added tomato to a salad or salsa and it’s added a level of gooeyness and liquid that you didn’t appreciate, seeding is your answer.

begin by cutting your tomato in quarters or eighths, depending on how big it is.

then, over a bowl or the sink, stick your thumb into the slice to slide out all the seeds and their mucus. (mucus! eew!)

what you’re left with is just the dry, tasty flesh. cube, if necessary for your recipe.

a homemade week

i think i’ve told you about my bestie, the brand new mrs. b. she was the one with the incredible healthy life make-over, so i’m really proud to present her new healthy gallivanting in the kitchen!

good morning ICFers!  i’m so thrilled to have invited myself to write a guest post on my favorite food blog. i was absolutely thrilled when the ICF CEO conceived of this internet glimpse into my kitchen,  as i’ve been following her culinary adventures for almost 4 years {!!} as we are besties here in the district of columbia.  i’ve been threatening to guest post long before ICF was a condo-hold name and i’m ecstatic that i finally have something tasty to contribute to the land of ICF. As a fellow blogger, i find ICF enriching, enlightening and most of all delicious.

now that my flagrant ICF worship is complete, on with the yummies!  as a newly married career gal, i find feeding me and my husband on the week nights to be a challenge and a chore. this resulted, for the entirety of our engagement and the first month of marriage, in our eating out almost EVERY NIGHT of the working week. while we are both able to make good choices and not go hog wild on burgers and fries while we’re out, we quickly realized that our bank account could really use a reprieve from this constant abuse. plus all the fabulous gifts one is given to celebrate marriage {please see:  mixer, kitchen aid; griddler, cuisinart} were collecting dust. so, in a very enterprising move, as part of my day zero project , i’ve challenged myself to make dinner for my husband and i every single night of the week for one entire month. to prepare, i spent this past week scoping out delicious, healthy new recipes to prepare, eat and blog about. here is a sampler of what you’ll see over at wife and blog: {thank you for allowing such blatant blog plugging!!!}

day 1:  stuffed bell peppers

a huge hit. easily my husband’s new favorite dinner!

day 2:  mexican lasagna

no week is complete without some mexican in it! this recipe can really be vegged-out and light on the cheese to make it super healthy and filling! great for left overs!

day 2.5:  red velvet cake

a major icing disaster. ALWAYS consult your friendly neighborhood ICF before trying to make your own frosting!!

day 3:  homemade bbq chicken pizza

inspired by an old ICF favorite, this new twist left my husband begging for more {lucky for him there are about 78 days of left overs from this triumph!!}

day 4:  turkey burgers

getting lazy near the end, but turkey burgers a healthy, nutritious alternative to our favorite fast food guilty pleasure.

day 5:  homemade chicken alfredo

HOLY ALFREDO! this recipe made so much i might have to serve alfredo sauce for breakfast — for the next year.

and there you have it. 5 full days of delicious food plus two full weekend days full of delicious flavors. stop on over at wife and blog anytime for more of my forays into wifely kitchen-hood and to see if my new found prowess rubs off onto my husband!!

special thanks to ICF for inspiring this new homemade lifestyle and supplying one or more recipes for next week and countless support and tips!!

i can’t wait for my next dinner invitation from casa de wifeandblog!

pressure cooker – the movie

this is something my mom passed along. check out the trailer – i can’t wait until it comes to dc.

“three seniors at philadelphia’s frankford high school find an unlikely champion in the kitchen of wilma stephenson. a legend in the school system, mrs. stephenson’s hilariously blunt boot-camp method of teaching culinary arts is validated by years of scholarship success. against the backdrop of the row homes of working-class philadelphia, she has helped countless students reach the top culinary schools in the country. and under her fierce direction, the usual distractions of high school are swept aside as erica, dudley and fatoumata prepare to achieve beyond what anyone else expects from them.”

learn more.

crisp

fruit crisp is a go-to comfort dessert in my family when i was growing up. it was generally not planned, but sometimes after dinner, when it was getting close to bedtime, but mom would start looking around to see if she had the right ingredients. it doesn’t take much and since she is a first-class cook and baker, she generally did. lucky kid!

start with any kind of fruit or mix of fruit. honestly – peaches, apples, berries, plums, apricots, blueberries. sometimes i mix them with a little sugar, cinnamon and/or raisins, depending on how i feel. if the fruit is very juicy, you might add a tablespoon or so of flour to soak the juices up. (are you getting that this is a dump-and-guess late night dessert recipe?? and it’s almost impossible to screw up crisp.)

then put the fruit in a baking dish. the joy of crisp is that you can literally make one serving (or two!).

then mix the topping itself. for a full pan of crisp you’ll need: (but half it, quarter it, third it… whatever you need)

1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 stick butter (cold)
1/2 oats

mix everything together and use a pastry cutter (remember the pastry cutter?) or fork to “cut in” the cold butter until it’s about the size of peas.

put a nice layer of topping over your fruit and bake at 375 degrees until the fruit starts to bubble and the topping browns. (cooking time will totally depend on your fruit, how thick the layer is, how thick the topping is, etc…)

the result: heaven.

if you somehow contain yourself and don’t eat it all while it’s warm, it goes very well for breakfast. or so i’ve been told.

roasted garlic isreali couscous

i love the texture and bite of israeli couscous (a baked-wheat pasta product larger than regular couscous), and it makes a fabulous side dish or salad. to go with the best steaks ever, i wanted to add a little flavor to the couscous, and what better than roasted garlic? (this is really the eternal question in my kitchen and the answer is generally nothing.)

when making israeli couscous, the secret is to toast it before you add the water. put the couscous in a sauce pan over medium heat with a pour of olive oil and watch closely, stirring until it turns brown. the browner the better (“brown equals flavor!”), but don’t let it burn. then add the water (follow proportions and cooking time on the box).

for the roasted garlic, i thinly sliced several cloves of garlic (depending on your taste) and put them in a frying pan with some olive oil. the goal is to brown them a little, but don’t crisp them, because they’ll turn bitter. (here is a case where browner is, in fact, NOT better) mix with the couscous, and then i added some fresh parsley for brightness. oh and salt and pepper to taste, of course.

mmmmmmmmm. roasting garlic before adding it actually enhances the flavor, while eliminating the harsh bite of raw garlic. simple, but effective.