Algorithmic Recipies

Grilled/baked/airfried veggy / protein
+
Stir fried veggies / fruit / protein
+
Soy sauce / other savory sauces (magi, bragg's liquuid aminos, anchovy sauces like nouc mam; Worcestershire)
+
Spices/seasonings
+
Starch base of your choice (rice, pasta noodles, mashed potatoes, fries, etc.)


This'll serve you and everyone you love well.

Play with rinds and peels too--orange, banana, mango all have edible skins so clean those thoroughly, chop and cook as appropriate.

Rum and Sweet Sweet Cereal

Avocado and fresh salsa are an obvious complement worth having with a meal.



Avocado and honey are wonderful together with breakfast, I'd probably enjoy that any day.





Reese's Puffs and a splash of rum are surprisingly enjoyable too, but I'd advise doing so in moderation or for pastry purposes only.

No, I don't drink excessively, I had less than a teaspoonful of rum.  My roommate makes a lot of tinctures and uses a lot of vodka (sometimes rum too) precisely because of their high alcohol content.  Since he keeps all of it atop the fridge, I couldn't resist combining the two.

Reese's puffs fall under what I consider is a category of "dessert cereals"--you can eat part of your complete breakfast, starting with a bland granola/shredded wheat cereal, move on to some heavier fair like eggs and toast, and then finish off with something like Reese's Puffs or Count Chocula.  Voila!  A three course breakfast.  But don't be fooled by the marketing, you can have the sweet cereal at the end of any meal.

For other similar combinations: a touch of Disaronno or Bailey's and ice cream are wonderful too.  I think this affinity for a combination of sweet with grains and alcohol comes from birthday cakes by my mum which were baked with grand mariner when I was much younger.

On honegar: you're using it wrong?

Honey + Apple Cider Vinegar = Honegar

I helped my roommate make a batch of honegar some full moon or two ago.  He gave me a jar of it, and for too long I avoided using it because 1) I normally don't like things with vinegar 2) I had no idea what to do with it.

Because of premise #1, I refrained from tasting it, and thus continued to not know what I'd do with it.  One day in the recent past I finally gave it a try and got a great kick out of it.

It's really good!  Honegar actually works wonderfully on salads like a vinegairette dressing, to reiterate with what I said elsewhere after looking it up and trying it out: It goes well with spinach-based salad--better than many raspberry vinaigrette dressings. I'd re-name it to Honegrette.


However, it seems to have a terrible reputation.
Time Magazine listed it as one of the worst inventions ever:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991907,00.html
Same and these people seem to look at it more like a form of medication than they do as an enjoyable food:
http://fashionsmostwanted.blogspot.com/2010/08/benefits-of-honegar.html

I think its predicament is attributable to poor marketing.

Baking for a Chemistry Lab.

Our quantitative analysis chemistry lab has someone bring in baked goods every Monday.  This week it's my turn.

Here's what I plan to work with:

Apples
Pumpkin
Gluten-free (someone in the lab is gluten intolerant)

Simple to make for about 18 people.  I hope I'll figure it out soon.

Disaster Averted Quiche

The house has several pounds of spinach sitting in the fridge, and some good cheese.
Since we had some eggs, I started making a quiche sans the pie crust.

I put three slices of butter into a pan, then covered it with olive oil, cajun seasoning (it was a good move), four eggs, two cheeses (Kiernan--kin to cheddar--and "Cheese Food Singles"--apparently the creators of American Cheese Singles at Land-O-Lakes found it irresponsible to consider them as real cheese). I started to add some milk and tried to fluff the egg mix a bit.

I then realized I had never cooked a quiche before, and had very little idea as to how one should make a quiche.

Thank goodness for the internet!

After a brief google search and a glance at several recipes, I realized I was supposed to bake the ingredients in some kind of grain-based carbohydrate substance.

Disaster averted, I added some pinto beans into the egg mix and carried on with my pan heating.

At the same time, I created a cavity inside of a cheap baguette, did some creative things with bread slices to hold the egg mix, dumped in the goodness, and put it in a toaster-oven.

Success!

Sprinkles and the New Year

I've been staying with my Godmother for the past few weeks and noticed a lonely bottle of sprinkles sitting on a rack in the pantry. Today, the first of the New Year, was the day I finally decided to put it to use.

It is perhaps the most juvenile concoction ever to have come to my mind: peanut butter, semisweet fudge, honey, and sprinkles on wheat bread.

I was going for a nutella/peanut butter type sandwich with sprinkles.  [side note: nutella contains palm oil, which very likely contributes to rainforest deforestation and habitat loss for orangutans among other things--I'm disappointed to find that it's in KitKat bars and used in Kar's Nut mixes too]

Since the fudge said semisweet, I reasoned that honey would be a good way to sweeten the deal.

The sprinkles contributed exquisite texture and color to the experience. The sandwich was acceptable, but really I'd rank it a 2 or 3 out of five. All in good fun, here's to 2011!

Culinary research questions

I often think about combinations of food that many take for granted in every day contexts. Here are two combinations that linger at the forefront of my mind.

Cereal and milk:
Who, when, and how did someone think to combine grains with milk--especially considering that the milk comes from an entirely different species to begin with!

When you think about it, it's quite a bizarre combination, and many of us eat it first thing in the morning. I hypothesize that it started with re-hydrating grain products to make them chewable again--as we might do with oatmeal or cream of wheat by adding hot water. Perhaps later as milk became more abundant the stuff was used in place of water. My next inquiry would be directed into wondering whether milk was safer than water during that time.

Ketchup--or perhaps just tomato and eggs:
I'm more interested in correlations here, one of my friends introduced me to the Catalina style of breakfast: rub a tomato onto toast, put some egg on the toast, add salt, and eat. I enjoyed it a lot. mmm...

I later realized that this was very similar to something that I've seen done (and have myself done) for many years--adding ketchup to eggs, eating it with toast (among other sides).

Clearly, an emerging theme of flavors can be found. But why tomatoes, toast, and eggs?

Eggs (especially the yellow of yolk) and wheat toast evokes an interesting sensation of taste. Tomatoes are known to contain glutamate, are also mildly sweet, and hydrating. Juice from a tomato, or to some extent even ketchup seems to balance out the dryness of toast. [H]mmm...

Dreams do come true!

Some of the best dreams are the ones that come true, and I'd like to recommend that culinary dreams are a great place to start. All you need are the right ingredients and a taste for what you want to eat when you wake up.

One morning I dreamed I had arrived late for a culinary competition taking place somewhere at a college culinary program's cafeteria/kitchen in the mid-west (maybe one of the Dakotas--sometimes I get a feel for where I am geographically in my dreams), but found that teams were to devise a blend of two usable existing components, propose the dish to the "master chef" (rather than master chief?) for approval and make a new dish of them.

My team was looking demoralized and frustrated, but there were a lot of fresh herbs and cheeses on our table.

A scoop of tabbouleh and pesto on French bread slices came to mind, and I got it approved by the master chef (even though it was a dream, I addressed her politely as master chef) and I set off to make it.

About 10 minutes later, I woke up, went straight to the kitchen, and took each container from the fridge (thank goodness for pre-made pesto and tabobouleh!).

Here's how I made it come to reality (using available ingredients in my fridge):

Crusty multigrain bread slices ~1-3/4" (close enough to eat)
each toasted with a 1/2 slice of swiss on top
&
About a teaspoon of pesto (whatever we've got in the fridge, it's salty thus my reserved use of pesto) mixed with a heaping scoop of tabbouleh until the masses were heterogeneous in appearance

As I was making my dream come true (in seeing if the combination would actually taste good) I realized in retrospect that I probably would have lost points for presentation and taste as it would literally be a slice of bread with a scoop of pesto and a scoop of tabbouleh on top of some cheese. So I decided I'd blend the two together.

I also had some eggs drizzled with Cholula to go with it.

Pitabread Pizzas with Pistachios just sitting there...

I was hungry and wanted to make a pizza. I wound up using pita bread for the bottom.

Once again, slightly overcooked/burned but enjoyable.

Pita lightly fried w/ olive oil, wilting basil, Pistachios, Sauteed onion, garlic, and tomato, Feta cheese, Sprig o cilantro from the windowsill, 4 really thinly sliced chili pepper pieces arranged near the middle, Dried oregano, dried basil, Dubliner cheese shavings (in place of parmesan), Prego pasta sauce, semi-baked/microwaved/baked Egg Plant (lightly salted w/ sea salt), crushed black pepper, more Greci, Brie and mozzarella cheese underneath.

The feta and Dubliner was put on top at the end for a more robust rustic Michigan kind of flavor.