Bread Machine Whole Grain Bread

This is my favorite bread machine recipe. I think it's pretty healthy, too. And the best part is that William actually likes it! He'll just eat a hunk of it without butter or anything.



We can never seem to find cracked wheat around here, so I substitute 1/2 cup of oats. Recently I switched to King Arthur flour and the dough started poofing up really high and then falling when baking. Not sure if that was related to the flour or not, but that's the only change I can think of. But the texture is still ok, and it tastes good!

No soup for you! Come back one year! (Mulligatawny)

I promise I didn't try this recipe (Easy Mulligatawny) just because of the Seinfeld episode. I admit I never even knew what mulligatawny was before, so this was my first time eating it as well as cooking it. This is now one of my favorite soups and I'll definitely be making this recipe a lot more, maybe adding some extra stuff. We figured it was too strongly flavored for William so we didn't try giving him any yet, but he had mac and cheese that night so he was happy.

Individual Cheesecakes

I recently found this recipe for cheesecake for two, while searching for a smaller-portion cheesecake recipe. This is perfect for us since Adam loves cheesecake but doesn't eat much dessert-type food in general, and my recently-gallbladderless/pregnant digestive system can't handle that much cheesecake. And somehow I can manage not to burn these, which is saying a lot.

We have the smaller ramekins so I divide it into four. I made the chocolate swirl shown in the picture by taking out about a third of the batter and stirring melted chocolate chips into it, and then swirling that into the vanilla part in the ramekin.

Ravioli

Once upon a time, at a restaurant, I had some lobster ravioli in some sort of cream-tomato sauce, and it was awesome. I'm not about to spring for lobster at home, but I saw these three-cheese-spinach raviolis at Wegmans, and decided to give them a whirl; it was the sauce I'd loved best, and that I can do a fair approximation of.

There will come a day when I learn to make a cream sauce from scratch, but it is not this day. This is jarred alfredo sauce, most of a pint of baby tomatoes, and fresh sage and thyme from our little herb garden by the back porch.

I put the water on to boil, and I put the sauce in the pan, and I turned on the burners, while I set about chopping. At least, I thought I turned on the burners. In actuality, I turned on one burner to boil the water, and on the other I just started spewing gas into the kitchen. It was on low, but it was going for a good five or ten minutes while I screwed around with the washing and chopping. The water came to boiling and I chucked the ravioli into the pot, and the herbs and tomatoes into the sauce, and then I wondered why the sauce wasn't cooking. Jerry said he thought he smelled gas.

I grew up with electric stoves, so ever since cooking on gas I've had this terror of what happens if I do exactly this. When I turn it down, and it goes through the sparker stage, does it spark and ignite the whole shebang? Do we all go up in flames? Well, given that the burner two slots over was already on fire and nothing was igniting, we felt fairly safe just turning it off real fast. I don't remember even hearing the sparks start clicking. Nobody exploded. We opened some windows and let a breeze go through for a minute before turning it on again. I imagine this is not a guaranteed outcome.


Anyway, as a consequence, the raviolis were done well before the sauce was. I had wanted to let the sauce simmer for a while, until the tomatoes exploded and bled into the sauce, and the herbs leached in, but I was hungry, so I just let it bubble for a few minutes and then dumped the raviolis in. I let them cool a few minutes, put them in in some bowls, and washed up while they cooled further, then sprinkled a little grated Parmesan cheese on them and they were ready.

They were delicious. The little one agreed, but only partially. He enjoyed sticking his fork in them and saying, "Mmmm!" but he didn't actually eat many of them.

I do want to try it with explodey tomatoes; next time I'll start the sauce before the pasta water, instead of at the same time. And I'll remember to turn the flame on instead of just the gas.

Nachos Grandes

For my birthday this year, Laurel gave me a copy of Moosewood Restaurant's Simple Suppers : fresh ideas for the weeknight table. This morning, I made the Nachos Grandes.

... yes, OK, for breakfast. What? It's Saturday. Let he who never ate cold pizza for breakfast cast the first stone.

It's definitely a simple recipe. The most time-consuming part of it was chopping the tomatoes and the olives. I suppose if I were a real chef that would go faster, chopchopchopchopchop! But I am not a real chef, and I like my fingers in one piece.

The first thing to do was pour the chips out into the pan. The recipe calls for 4 cups, but I am lazy and I tend not to measure things unless it's really critical. The number of chips in the pan? Come on. Totally not critical. I poured out most of the chips from the bag: enough to cover the bottom but still leave room in the pan to pile the other stuff on top.


Then a can of refried beans. The recipe also claimed you could thin the beans with water if they were too stiff. I'm not really sure what "too stiff" means, and I'm skeptical of my ability to evenly spread a layer of refried beans over every precious chip anyway, so I just sort of spooned it out in dollops, and then gave it a sort of smear with the back of the spoon to spread it a little. Good enough.


Choppity chop, tomatoes and olives next. I didn't measure them either; I just chucked them in as I chopped them, and stopped chopping when it looked right. It's supposed to be 1 1/2 cups of tomatoes and 1/4 cup of olives.

Then you're supposed to add half a cup of your favorite salsa, and half a cup of sour cream. I did measure those. It seemed like it might be too soggy, or overwhelmingly salsa-and-sour-cream flavored, if I didn't. I smeared these on in the same manner as the beans. At this point I forgot to keep taking pictures, but it's not like I have an awesome camera anyway. Plus, it was ugly.

Then you pour on the shredded cheese. The recipe says 6 oz., but my bag was 8 oz. and my husband loves cheese. I emptied it, and then popped the whole shebang into the 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Voila:

The best part of this was offering it to our 20-month old son, who has just recently begun picking up random words off the street and sticking them in his mouth. "Want some nachos?" I asked, introducing the word for the first time ever. "Na-CHOs," he said. And then he said it again, over and over.

He actually preferred to grab some Wheat Thins and stick them in the nacho topping. He wasn't a big fan of the chips. To be honest, I think next time I might make it without the chips on the bottom, and serve the chips on the side - the chips directly under any beans or sour cream got all soggy and gross as time passed. This happens in restaurants, too, so I think it's just a failing of Nachos Grandes in general, not this particular recipe.

The recipe also called for fresh chiles (1 tbsp, optional) and minced scallions (2 tbsp.), but we don't really do spicy, and my scallions didn't last the week in the fridge. Oops. Still, it was very good.

Spinach and Ricotta Dumplings

I got Adam the Good Housekeeping Step by Step Cookbook for Christmas last year after he expressed an interest in learning how to cook. It's supposed to be one of those how-to books, and it does contain a lot of useful info, but the recipes themselves are not what I'd call beginner recipes, especially for a guy who has to be reminded to drain pasta before putting sauce on it. Anyway, he hasn't actually made any of the recipes himself yet, but I've started using it more lately.

Wednesday night I decided to try the Spinach and Ricotta Dumplings for the first time. I had high hopes that William would accept this dish. He's a pretty picky eater, but in an unusual way. He loves most green veggies but it's usually a struggle to get him to eat meats and carbohydrates. Dairy products are hit-or-miss; he will always eat plain cheese and chocolate pudding but nothing else is guaranteed. We still can't get him to drink milk. So instead of cleverly hiding veggies in meatballs, as I assume most parents have to do, we have to hide the other food groups in veggies. The more "green," the greater chance that he'll eat it. So I thought these dumplings would be perfect - green and oval (another plus) but containing a good amount of dairy. Well, as it would turn out, William didn't touch them. The recipe didn't turn out that well either.



I think the main lesson I learned from this experience is: squeeze dry spinach really well! First of all, the recipe called for either fresh spinach or frozen chopped spinach. All I had was frozen leaf spinach, but I figured what the hell, I'll just use the handheld blender on it after it's cooked. So I ended up with not-well-drained partially pulverized leaves and stringy stems that didn't get chopped.

When I mixed the dumpling batter, mine was way greener than the one in the picture. Theirs looked mostly white with some green specks, but mine looked like a big green mush (I started to suspect something was wrong at that point, but it was too late).



Then my batter was too wet to form into dumplings, so I ended up having to add a lot more flour, and even then I had to roll the dumplings in more flour to get them to hold together enough to drop into the water.



The dumplings were supposed to float to the top of the water when done, and thankfully mine did that at least. They actually managed to hold together fairly well, too. Of course they were also coated with that slimy flour-y stuff too, which ended up making the sauce thicker than it should have been after the whole thing baked.





The final product tasted pretty good, although it seemed a bit lacking in seasoning. Of course William rejected it, but according to what we've been reading, it can take a toddler up to 10 exposures to a new food before he will accept it. So we have hope.

All in all, I'd say this recipe has potential, but next time I will (1) not make it on a weeknight - it just took too long, (2) use already chopped spinach, (3) squeeze out the spinach better, (4) use maybe half the spinach, (5) add more seasoning: at least another clove of garlic, some salt in the sauce, and maybe some other seasoning (I'll have to look up what goes well with this sort of thing).

The Recipe
(adapted from Good Housekeeping Step by Step Cookbook)

Dumplings
20 ounces fresh or frozen spinach (next time I will start with half this much)
8 ounces ricotta cheese
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup flour (more or less depending on consistency of batter)
1 clove garlic (could use more)

White Sauce
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups milk
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

plus 1/4 cup more Parmesan for the top

For fresh spinach, wilt it and then chop it. For frozen spinach, thaw it. Drain and squeeze dry.

Combine all the ingredients for the dumplings, then shape into 1-inch by 2-inch ovals. (At this point, I also rolled the ovals in more flour, but that shouldn't be necessary if the batter is dry enough.)

Drop a few dumplings at a time into a large pot of boiling water, reduce heat to medium. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the dumplings float to the top (~5 minutes). Put on a paper towel to drain (but not for too long or they will start sticking to the paper towel!).

Melt butter over medium heat, then add flour, stir together, and cook for 1 minute. Gradually add milk and heat until thickened and boiling or close to boiling while stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in 1/4 cup of Parmesan.

Arrange the dumplings in a casserole dish (I found they fit perfectly in a 9x13 pan), and cover with the white sauce. Sprinkle with ~1/4 cup Parmesan. Bake 15-20 minutes at 350ºF until sauce is bubbly and cheese is slightly browned on top.

Hello world

Welcome to Lazy Cousins. We're cousins. We're pretty lazy. This is meant to be our cooking blog.