Limonada Cordoba

Last night when I got home from the gym I was thirsty, very thirsty. The kind of thirst that a drinking fountain couldn't quell; the next thing I knew it was 11pm and I was at Market Street trying to refrain from buying every beverage in sight. I did come away with; one gallon of water, a two litre bottle of Diet Coke, eight oranges, eight lemons, a mint plant, and a single serving bottle of Honest Tea "Peach Oo-La-Long". The tea and some water were enough to sate my thirst enough to got to bed but this morning it was back in full force, so I began to juice.

As previously mentioned I've been making fresh juices a lot recently. I have this cheap-o Betty Crocker juicer that works horribly, it's no Philippe Starck juicer (as pictured), but if I don't plug it in I can manage to use it as a manual juicer. My most recent favorite has been grapefruit juice, almost solely because grapefruits are juicer and cheaper than oranges. However as you will have noticed last night I bought oranges and lemons, so orange juice it is, but what with the lemons? I had some sort of idea while in my thirst frenzy that I would make mint lemonade, like a sort of non-alcoholic mojito type concoction. However, like many plans, things changed. After making the orange juice and pouring it into my reusable wine bottle I bought from Kensington Whole Foods in London (and can't stop raving about how useful it has been), I turned to the lemons... How could I make this different from your baseline lemonade? This is what I've come up with; named after the blooming almond trees of Cordoba, Spain I present Limonada Cordoba.

Limonada Cordoba

7-10 lemons juiced (roll them before you attempt to juice them, it helps)

1/2 cup Splenda granular (or sugar)

5 sliced strawberries

1 tsp almond extract

3-5 cups of water (however strong or weak you like it)

ice

Juice lemons and place in sealable drink container, add sweetener and stir until dissolved. Add sliced strawberries and mash with wooden spoon into the bottom of the lemon juice. Add almond extract. The mixture should be pinkish. Then add the desired amount of water, though try and keep it strong as you'll pour it over ice later. Serve with lemon slice over ice.

Eastern Block Cooking pt. 2

I've been putting off these applications, I mean really putting them off. I'll do pretty much anything that doesn't involve writing an essay or statement of purpose for yet another law school. I've started making fresh juices, listening to new podcasts, and watching religious fanatics on YouTube all so I can avoid what I should be doing. I've found cooking is the best distraction; it presents itself as productive, which for my needs it clearly is not, and gives me an image of selflessness when I present the newly created food to my eager tasters, though I think they're on to me. Though not to worry dear friends, I promised myself that before I could write this blog entry I would have to finish my application essays to CEU, which I have completed as of yesterday. Thank you, thank you. All they need now is a quick proof read and some scanned documents and I'll have one more application down, making that 3 completed, 3 to go.

On to the cooking! So I've been promising Alin that I would try my hand at Ardei Umpluti, Romanian stuffed peppers and a few nights ago I finally did. I scoured the internet looking for recipes (in English) that looked like something we would enjoy, and I, of course, had to 'vegetarianize' them. Here's what I came up with:

Whitney's Ardei Umpluti

4 bell peppers

1/2 lb of Quorn mince (or equivelant in pork or TVP)

1 tbsp oregano

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tbsp salt

1 chopped tomato

1 diced onion

1 'handful' of rice

1 egg

1 tbsp flour

1 pint of water or vegetable stock

for tomato sauce

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup flour

2 cans of tomatoes

1 tbsp oregano

1 tbsp salt

1/2 lime

Cut off very top of bell peppers, wash, and seed; place peppers to the side.

Sautee Quorn in olive oil with salt, spices, onion, and tomato until onion is translucent. You may need to add more olive oil if the mixture gets dry. If you're using pork sautee the other ingredients alone and mix pork with onion mixture raw. Take Quorn off of heat and let cool.

Once Quorn mixture is cooled, in a bowl, mix in the egg, rice, and flour, to create a paste. If the mixture is not sticking together add water. Stuff each pepper with 1/4 of the mixture and place in a dutch oven or covered casserole dish. Pour the water or vegetable stock around the peppers and cover. Bake at 400F (200C) for an hour, until rice is cooked.

For the Sauce

In a blender puree the canned tomatoes until smooth. In a saucepan heat oil then add oregano and salt. In a separate small bowl whisk the remaining broth from the pepper with the flour, slowly add that to the oil mixutre, wisking to prevent lumps. Once fully incorporated add lime juice and the the tomato puree. Cook until thickened to your liking, you may add a bit of cornstarch if you like.

Serve the peppers with yoghurt or sour cream on top and surround with sauce.

They turned out pretty decent, a little bland for my liking, but still good. I think I would have made them spicey, but for the sake of authenticity I restrained. The sour cream and sauce really helped the flavours pop.

Alin, while he still ate them, said they were indeed good, but not exactly

like the ones he grew up with. Granted those are made with pork and bound to taste different. But I knew there was a risk at making Romanian food for a Romanian with no point of reference, but I gave it a shot.

He was excited that these would make it into the foodblog and so we took an 'action shot' of him eating the peppers. Clearly staged, eating these is a much messier event.

For dessert we had crepes with lemon and powdered sugar. I got the crepe recipe from a Romanian website, so I think it counts as eastern European.

Crepes

1 egg

1 cup milk

3/4 cup flour

1 pinch salt

1 tsp almond, lemon, or vanilla extract

1 tsp sugar substitute (optional)

for topping

1 lemon

powdered sugar

butter

Mix egg with half of flour, slowly add milk and rest of flour, whisking to prevent lumps, until the batter is thin. Add sugar substitute, salt, and extract. Heat flat non-stick pan to high, pan must be quite hot. Use a ladle to spread thin layer on bottom of the pan. Flip with spatula or using a chopstick.

Fold each crepe into a triangle and top with butter (or margarine), a sprinkling of powdered sugar, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Grocery Shopping

I love to grocery shop, I mean I really love grocery shopping. If you've ever been to Market Street on a Sunday with me, or, even better, to a Whole Foods with me, you can attest that I'll spend hours walking each isle inspecting all of the items. I rarely buy much, but I love looking for new items, sampling the breads, and ogling the shined produce; peach season is my favorite. Though grocery shopping happens everywhere the cultural differences between societies are often highlighted in the way they buy and present their groceries and even the frequency of shopping trips out.

In the US everything is clearly orchestrated. Shined oranges and genetically modified apples stay in perpetual surplus stacked neatly in pyramids awaiting our touch. As soon as one is purchased or taken from the immaculate stack an army of stock people descend restoring order. Granted there are different classes of grocery stores; I have yet to see a grocery store in the US which, even at the lowest end of the scale, was anything less than representative of abundance.

A typical orchestrated produce section in a US supermarket.

Spanish grocery stores (Super Mercados)were smaller and more authentic to the human condition; nothing was shined and everything had a true to nature smell, meat smelled like meat. The Spanish system of grocery shopping is slowly creeping from separate smaller shops of panderias and canicerias to the 'all in one' connivence of Super Mercados. Though some Spaniards still hold on to the separate shop approach, which allows for specialization and thus higher quality goods, the connivence and low pricing of the Super Mercados are surely taking over.

A fruiteria in Sevilla, Spain.

Some images of a Super Mercado in Sevilla, Spain.

British grocery shopping is somehow a middle man to Spain and the US, which seems appropriate with their geographic location. Everything is sanitized, bagged, and shined. The bagging is absolutely excessive, even produce is often wrapped in plastic. Produce selection wanes throughout the day; if you go shopping at night you're unlikely to find a surplus of any produce as it's shipped in each morning. I do praise British shops for embracing the free-range, organic, vegetarian, and reusable trends in such a large capacity; even the most rough looking men at Tesco have their lady bug patterned reusable bags in toe to carry their Carlsburg and free-range eggs home in. We as Americans often have these options but they are considered fringe and often priced out of the reach of the average American who sees the green movement as an irrelevant luxury. I still carry my Twiggy Marks & Spencer reusable bag to Market Street where the confused sackers often ask if I want a separate plastic bag for my drinks or produce.

Sainsbury's produce section, at the beginning of the day.

All of these grocery stores pale in comparison to what I consider the holy grail of food shopping; I of course am speaking of the farmer's market. I adore, in every sense of the word, farmer's markets and farm shops, and I have never seen such an abundance of the aforementioned places as I did while in Britain. While living in Oundle I experienced the outdoor market every Thursday and the large farmer's market every second Saturday of the month. I could spend hours looking over the indecently cheap fresh cheeses and eggs, and even had a personalized nickname from the farm produce man, the "Texas Tornado". I still look back to my summer days in southern England and can not help but long for those grocery Thursdays; I'd give all the shined fruit in the world for the smallest of farm shops. Here's a little sample of those times..

Thursday's outdoor market; Oundle, Peterborough, England, UK.

My farm fresh free-range eggs, 2 GBP Port Salut Cheese, local Lemon Bakewell tarts, and amazing raspberries.

Adventures in Eastern European Cooking pt.1

Eastern Europe is really making a comeback, fashionably speaking. Perhaps it's just because I'm dating a Romanian and my new landlord is Polish, but I feel like the whole former Soviet Block is so 'in' right now, do you know what I mean? Perhaps it's due to my new found knowledge of Ceauşescu and appreciation for the rapper Ombladon that I feel immersed in this harshly accented and ever so sexy culture, but not wanting to be one to deny a fascination I've run with it.

So on to the cooking! My first attempt was kind of a fluke; I was bored and went "Tastespotting" for the most difficult and time consuming recipe I could find without needing special baking equipment. Some people turn to the drink when upset or bored, I turn to the spatula. This excursion took me to a lovely Croatian Woman's Blog titled Chocolate Dust. Where I found a recipe for "Medena Pita" or Honey Cake; a cake made of honey flavored flat cookies layered with a nutty creme. It met my criteria, so off I went to baking. Of course I couldn't just follow a recipe, so I've varied it a little bit.

Medena Pita

The cookie dough:

2 eggs

100g sugar

4tbsp sugar

3 tbsp honey

450g flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together. Mix eggs with sugar, add oil, honey with flour mix. Dough will be very soft. Trace bottom of casserole dish onto wax paper and cut 4 pieces to that size. Divide into 4 equal parts; roll each piece to fit the wax paper keeping the edges from breaking apart. Bake each layer in preheated oven at 350F just for a few minutes, until the edges get golden, but biscuit is still light in color. Cool them on a rack. Be very careful removing them from the pan as they will be very very soft until fully cooled. Once finished with the four cookie sheets place to the side.

The Creme:

600 ml milk

150g powdered/confectioners sugar

1/2 cup flour

70g crushed pine nuts

30g almond meal

100g butter

2 tsp vanilla

Boil 400 ml milk and quickly remove from heat. Mix flour and 200 ml milk and carefully in a small bowl then pour it into the boiled milk stirring continuously. Return mixture to medium heat and cook until it thickens to consistency of béchamel sauce. Remove from heat and add pine nuts and almond meal. In a separate bowl mix butter, powered sugar, and vanilla together. When the milk and nut mixture has cooled mix in butter mixture and allow for it to chill in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

In a casserole dish place a cookie on the bottom, and layer 1/4 creme on top. Repeat with the rest of cookies adding the extra creme on the top of the cake. Cover and allow to chill in refrigerator. You can top it with marzipan, extra almond meal, or white chocolate.

My cake is somewhat messy because I didn't do the casserole dish measuring part, which I have now added to the instructions and would definitely do next time. Alin ate all but one piece of the cake (which was gifted to Diane).

"This is my favorite cake ever; it's not too sweet."-Alin

Tofu Migas

I am very 'kick' prone, that is, in the sense that I am prone to going on streaks of eating one food almost exclusively until I burn out. That is what I mean by 'kick' prone. I've gone on kicks of eating only cauliflower, popcorn, zucchini, pineapple, jalapeno poppers, the list goes on and on. One such kick I entertained for quite some time was the two month period where all I ate was tofu migas, a vegan version of the traditional Mexican breakfast food of eggs scrambled with peppers and corn tortillas.

Don't get me wrong, I love eggs, I'm no vegan, but I do love tofu. This is a super healthy dish that you can alter to be single serving.

Ingredients

1/2 (16 ounce) package lite firm tofu


1/2 onion (diced)

1/2 diced jalapeno pepper (you could use the whole pepper, depending on heat tolerance)


1/4 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder


1 teaspoon salt


2 tablespoons light margarine


2 tablespoons salsa (chunky, can also be substituted with a small fresh diced tomato and diced bell peppers, if you have)


3 corn tortillas
cooking spray

3tbsp nutritional yeast (optional)



Directions


Ingredient Prep: Dice pepper and onion, drain and crumble tofu, and tear corn tortillas into 9 pieces each. Set ingredients aside.


Spray a sauté pan with cooking spray and sauté onions until almost translucent.

After cooking the onions almost completely, add the salsa, (or diced tomato pepper mixture), peppers, and spices to the pan, sauté on medium heat until onions are translucent.
Add crumbled tofu, salt, and half of the margarine, sauté until all of the margarine is fully incorporated.
Add tortilla pieces and the rest of the margarine, and cook until the
tortilla pieces are softened and incorporated.

Add nutritional yeast to migas and pat down flat.

When the bottom begins to get crunchy the migas are done!

So sorry!

It's been awhile, as I'm applying for law school and the like. I promise more recipes to come!

Bourbon Oatmeal Cookiewiches

It's snowing right now, in Lubbock Texas. I know many people think, 'What, snow? Can't be', but indeed it is. Personally, I don't like the snow. I'm much more of a warm over-cast day girl myself, but to every season turn turn, or something along those lines. So since it's snowing and I don't have anything I should be doing, though honestly I haven't checked, I began to bake.

Now for the past couple of days I've been wanting to make oatmeal cookies, and gave it a go yesterday, but alas, disaster. I'm not going to go into it.

So today I gave it another shot and have come up with Bourbon Oatmeal Cookiewiches. Now I've never been a fan of oatmeal cookies and have never, as a point of fact, eaten a sandwich made with oatmeal cookies, though I've seen them. My disdain for oatmeal cookies wasn't anything personal, I'm not really a cookie person. I also don't like raisins (or Crasins for that matter) in my baked goods; on their own I'm on board. Due to these two statements it does seem like a rather odd choice that I would make Oatmeal Cookiewiches...but mine are without raisins and plus booze...so inherently superior to any previously created.

Bourbon Oatmeal Cookiewiches

1 stick of butter

1 cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp cinnamon

2 tbsp hazelnut coffee-mate (mine is sugarfree but that's of no consequence)

.3 cup of chopped walnuts (or any nut for that matter)

.5 cup bourbon

.3 cup of corn meal

1 cup of all purpose flour

3 cups of oats

1 tsp baking soda

1.5 tsp salt

.5 lb whipped white icing

Preheat oven to 400F. In a large bowl cream butter, eggs, and sugar together. Add vanilla extract, coffee mate, .25 cup bourbon, and nuts, then set aside. In separate container mix: flour, cornmeal, oats, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Slowly add the dry to the wet mixing thoroughly. The mixture should be decently thick, but everything should be well incorporated. Spoon into tablespoon dollops and flatten into round shapes. These cookies will not spread much so you need to flatten them yourself.

Bake at 400 for 10 minutes? I have no idea, just check on them and you'll know when they're done..

For the cookiewiches

Let the cookies cool completely, very important! You can eat all the warm ones you want, but for the wiches, they must not be warm or it'll melt the icing, which might be nice though aesthetically disastrous. Now pair the cookies by size and shape, which will all be slightly different.

Mix the icing with 3 tablespoons of bourbon. Then using a butter knife or frosting knife, take the smaller of the cookie pairs and put the desired amount of icing evenly on the cookie. Add the paired cookie to the top and lightly squeeze down. You get the idea.

Sorry for the picture quality, I was using the MacBook.