Omelet

Even though I've made omelets before, I actually read the recipe this time. Also, after buying some frozen spinach at the store today, I figured I could put it to use.

I used 4 eggs and some soy milk and a little salt and pepper. I popped the toast in, but then kind of forgot that the spinach was still frozen. Following the recipe, I put about 2 tbsp of butter in the pan and heated it up. Threw the eggs in and started pulling the sides in to let the liquid eggs get to the edge so they could cook. Eventually, that became pretty hard. Then I remembered about the spinach and threw a handful in the microwave for 30 seconds. Then the toast popped. Too many things happening!

Threw some cheese on there and the spinach, then folded over one side and another. Amazingly, it wasn't burnt. Slid the thing off and put some more cheese on top. Buttered the toast, threw a little salsa on and voilà.

Considering my cooking goals are so minimal as to not really be goals, this was quick, easy, relatively healthy (butter and salt), and yummy. I am now full. And I forgot to take any pictures. Next time.

Fresh Figs

I was at Trader Joe's over the weekend and bought a bunch of fresh figs. I love fresh figs, but I rarely get to eat them. When I was growing up in Florida, we had a fig tree in the front lawn, and we would just pick 'em and eat 'em whenever we could. Plus they are so pretty. The problem is that I have to eat them before they all go bad. So I was eating them just by themselves when I thought of mixing them up with some fried cubes of cheese (I used a cheese TJ's helpfully calls Frying Cheese), walnuts, and crackers. It was all things good in this world.

Halloumi - Saltiest Cheese Ever

Although my motivation for cooking has waned since I started the blog, I've had some complaints from folks that I have not been blogging about food for a while. I wanted to set the record straight. I have cooked a few things, but I just haven't been blogging.

I tried making some halloumi the other day. The recipe was fairly easy to follow, and I would say worked fairly well. It took longer than I thought in part because the recipe does not really specify how long it should take. It tasted fine, but I think that no matter what one does with halloumi, it's going to come out a bit like (what I imagine) salted pork tastes like, a bit dry, tough, and overwhelmingly salty. Maybe for vegetarians, this is just what you're looking for once in a while, but I wish maybe there was a slightly less salty, less tough version of this food.

I threw mine into some heated up frozen veggies, and it did make a decent combo.

Happy, Maureen??

Quinois with Potatoes

For the last few years, my simple, warped view of cooking gave me the idea that if I cooked some frozen veggies and threw that in with some grain and protein, I was cooking. One pretty simple recipe from Mark Bittman has disabused me of that notion. I've cooked Trader Joe's Potato Medley with Quinois before, but I always boiled the quinois into a mushy mess that was alright, but never actually good.

Bittman recommends roasting the quinios, and it makes a huge difference. It's a little bit crunchy and far more flavorful. Admittedly, I didn't follow the recipe exactly since I already had the TJ's Potato Medley bag around, I figured I might as well use it. Although this is one of the first times I've freelanced away from the recipe, it turned out pretty good. Here's the what I actually did (let me know if you want the actual recipe):

• Grease an 8 X 10 or 8 X 8 pan with olive oil.
• Put 3-4 peeled cloves of garlic along with Potato Medley into a pot with water and bring it to a boil. I added some salt, but probably didn't it any since there's probably already plenty in the bag.
• Pre-heat oven to 400.
  
• After the water's boiling, add 3/4 cup of quinois and turn the heat down a bit, but keep it rolling for 5 minutes.
  
• Drain enough so excess water is gone and pour into pan.
• Add another tablespoon or so of oil, ground pepper, salt if you want and toss.
  
• Bake for 15 minutes.
  
• Remove and scrape around the edges and toss again.
• Bake for 10 minutes.
• Add some chile powder and cheese of your choice. I used what I had around, some cheddar cheese slices I tore up and some grated parm.
  
• Bake another 5 minutes.

This turned out pretty darn good. The cheese helped of course and the crunchy, nuttiness of the quinois definitely made me appreciate the grain more than I ever have before. I don't know if the Potato Medley is a healthy choice or not, but it doesn't seem too bad.

My personal take away, is that roasted quinois is way better than boiled.

Broccoli Soup, also known as Polyjuice Potion

I somehow have accumulated some cookbooks even though I don't cook. Given my recent decision to cook once in a while with ingredients and not bags or boxes of food, I recently looked over what I had. I settled on Meatless Meals for Working People: Quick and Easy Vegetarian Recipes as my starting point. This seems pretty much perfect for me since I lack skill and usually complain about the time commitment of cooking.

Alex helped me choose Cream of Broccoli Soup as my first recipe and even went shopping with me at Giant. Maureen saved the day when she told me I didn't need to own a steamer to steam vegetables. Already the secrets of the world open up to me.

Then I get home to cook and called Maureen to ask her about whether I should chop the vegetables before steaming them. Then I actually read the ingredients: 1 pound broccoli, chopped. Ah ha. RTFM indeed.

Chopping was pretty easy. By the way, chopping broccoli is really messy.

For some reason this recipe called for using soy milk instead of normal milk. On the one hand this is fine since I don't have milk in the house. On the other hand, it's a Vegetarian cookbook, not a vegan one, so what gives?

Maureen's steaming trick worked like a charm. I even used a Pyrex glass I did not know I owned. Blending in the Oster was awesome. Cooking was pretty straightforward. I had to season with pepper, salt and tarragon twice before it tasted right.

My last question was answered by Rachel when she told me to sprinkle the cheese on as I served rather than while the soup was cooking.

I thought it would be odd because of the funny smell of hot soy milk, but it was pretty damn good.

Notes for future: I didn't use the big stalky parts and this seemed fine. I had four normal bowls and there's a small bowl left. The cheese was Cheshire Farmstead Imported English cheese. It was like cheddar, organge, crumbly, sharp and good.