MADE: Quinoa-Stuffed Tomatoes

Well hey there, cats and kittens. It's been a while.

I could give you excuses for why I've been gone so long. It's not that I haven't been making food, because I have. It's not even because I haven't been taking pictures of my food, because I've been doing some of that, too. It's CERTAINLY not because I have been away from the internet for any amount of time. Don't be crazy.

Things I can potentially use as excuses:

• I moved from one house to another house.
• I battled a dragon.
• I accidentally found myself working two jobs this summer.
• I spent the month of July doing a meditation-based hiking tour of Mount Ranier while blindfolded.
• I got a pair of mittens stuck on my hands and couldn't type.

Okay, so I only have two excuses, and they're not terribly good ones. Sorry.
I do have a recipe success, though! Unfortunately, I don't have pictures to go with it, at the moment. However, I'm planning to re-make this tasty dish when I head to the family homestead in a few weeks, so hopefully I'll take pictures then and upload later. It'll be like they were here all along...

EDIT: PICTURES

CHOMP

So these tomatoes.

(First, a detour.) Some people reading this may know a guy who used to sit at my house table as part of something informally called "The Square." The Square was a group of three guys known for entrapping anyone foolhardy enough to sit in the fourth seat at the table (thus, Completing The Square) in thick and twisty philosophical discussion. At one point, I may have completed The Square, or I may simply have been in firing range, because I got into a conversation about human awareness, desires, and consciousness. Specifically, degrees of want. So, "I want ice cream" is a first-degree want. But "I want to NOT want ice cream, because I'm on a diet" is a second-degree want, because the want-er is aware of one level of desire, and is exercising a different level of conscious control, confounding the first-degree desire because of the perceived superior importance of the second-degree desire.

So basically, how I feel about tomatoes.

That's what I told The Square. That I have a number of second-degree desires regarding food. I want to like tomatoes. I want to enjoy watermelon. I want to reap the social benefits that go with the eating of these foods--the connotations of summer and picnics and sunshine and the camaraderie of the universal brotherhood of people-who-think-that-fresh-from-the-garden-tomatoes-are-delicious. To that end, I try out these foods--that otherwise set me gagging--once every couple of years, in the wistful hope that maybe, maybe my tastebuds will have mutated just a teensy bit, and I will finally be able to take part in the summer that is watermelon and tomatoes and red checkered picnic blankets.

After I gave this answer, The Square chatted a bit about how social pressures could be an incitement to second-degree desires, and then probably went on to talk about Plato and the mutability of market forces. I don't remember. But now I can't think about any of those second-degree want foods--tomatoes, watermelon, beer, goat cheese--without thinking about that conversation. (It always comes back to meals at the house table, doesn't it? Call me, UChicago. I'm ready for my alumna soundbite.)

This meandering preface is simply to say that I've achieved one of these second-degree wants. I've developed a taste for tomatoes.


Anyone who has known me for several years or more, now's your chance to freak out.

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And done. Freakout over. Pull yourself together. Geez. How do you think I feel? Anyway, recipe. It's full of all the summery things I could find in my fridge, plus some that I found at the farmer's market. The quinoa stuffing was intended to draw the moisture out of the tomatoes, which it did admirably. It also had the added benefit of crisping on top, much like a crust of bread crumbs would have done. The dual-natured quinoa--crispy on top, soft and tender inside--was my favorite surprise of the recipe. Apart from how delicious it was, of course.

Quinoa-Stuffed Tomatoes
(makes 2 servings)

3 medium tomatoes, halved--I used roma tomatoes, sliced lengthwise, to give me a bit of a long boat shape
1/3 cup quinoa
2/3 cup water
1 slice bacon
1 tbsp crumbled feta cheese
1/2 tsp brown sugar
Pinch nutmeg
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tbsp pesto
2 oz goat cheese
Olive oil, for drizzling

Preheat oven to 325 F.
Cut/scoop out the innards of the tomato halves. I did this simply using a knife dragged around the line between rind and pulpy, seedy flesh. Remove innards to cutting board and dice.

Empty tomatoes, waiting to be filled with delicious.

In small saucepan, heat water on medium-high to just boiling. Add quinoa and lower heat to a simmer. Toss in the diced tomato guts and juice. Keep heat on for one minute more, stirring to make sure all the quinoa is evenly cooking, and then cover, turning off heat entirely.

Chop the strip of bacon into nice 1/4 inch chunks. Once quinoa seems sufficiently bathed in steam and tomato juices (quinoa should be translucent, instead of bright white, with some stem showing), add the chopped bacon and feta. Stir, grinding and sprinkling in the sugar and spices. Set aside briefly.

Now, it's time to fill those tomatoes! Hooray! Put the tomato hulls on a baking sheet or in a shallow baking pan. Line each one with a spoonful of pesto.

Then add a heaping spoonful of the quinoa/bacon/feta/allofPaula'sfavoritethings mixture to each. It's fine if it overflows a bit--the tomatoes will probably get a bit collapse-y anyway. Then, top each tomato with a slice of goat cheese, smushed out to roughly cover the stuffing. (The coverage isn't important--don't worry.)

Drizzle the whole thing with olive oil and place in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes start to get collapse-y and the topping gets nice and brown and crispy. Then, while pondering the social forces which led me to this recipe, DEVOUR.

The tomatoes that live on my back porch.
Sometimes I eat them. Right off the vine.
You don't know me.

MADE: Chorizo Gratin

Sometimes you accidentally wind up at a speakeasy with your good friend Sambert. What's that you say? You've never wound up at a speakeasy with Sambert? Let me tell you--you're missing out, my friend. Specifically, you're missing out on this food.
While the whole "accidental speakeasy" night was pretty awesome overall, this chorizo gratin was a highlight. Such a highlight, in fact, that Sam and I couldn't help but make it for ourselves--in a more generous portion, of course. With a little help from the Seattle Cheese festival, we whipped this up and DEFINITELY DID NOT eat the whole thing.

Pictorial representation of "help from the Seattle Cheese Festival"

Chorizo Gratin*

Ingredients
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 lb chorizo sausage
2/3 cup diced onion
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 red pepper, diced
1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes
1 lb gruyere, coarsely shredded
1 loaf crusty bread, sliced and toasted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Chop chorizo into small chunks and cook until browned and delicious-smelling. Remove from pan to a medium-sized casserole dish. Put onion, salt, and sugar into the skillet with the chorizo dregs, and keep over medium heat, stirring occasionally. When the onions begin to brown and stick to the pan, add a splash of water (about a tablespoon or two) and stir vigorously. Repeat this process three or four times until onions are deep brown and sweet-smelling.

The onions, they are a'caramelizin'

Add diced peppers and tomatoes to the skillet, stirring occasionally for about five minutes, or until you get too impatient.

Dump the caramelized vegetable concoction into the casserole dish with the chorizo and stir together until evenly mixed. Cover--and I do mean COVER--the whole thing with handfuls of shredded cheese. Pop the casserole in the oven for twenty minutes, so that everything gets melty and bubbly. Serve atop your toasted crusty bread and DEVOUR.

*Yes, we are aware that this recipe doesn't actually have a starch base, which possibly negates its claim to being a gratin. That's what the speakeasy called it, however, and so that's what we're calling it. SO THERE.

MADE: Grilled Cheese Grilled Cheese

Sometimes, the internet does something so beautiful, so incandescent, that one has to stop, drop everything, and take part in the splendor.

This is one of those things.

Watch this video. Make this grilled cheese sandwich. Don't think. Don't stop to ask questions like "Why?" or "What have I done to deserve such majesty?" Just do it.

I have just made myself one of these sandwiches.
I am eating it now.
The angels are weeping rainbow tears of joy.

UPDATE: Cheese and Dating

This diagram basically explains A) how I approach "vegetarian" cooking, B) why I will never be a vegan, and C) why KPBH is great, and why I'm still dating him. He's the "vegetarian boyfriend" from the last post, and he sent me this today because he knows me too well.

The couple that covers everything in cheese together stays together? Probably because they get too fat to go anywhere else...

MADE: Spinach, Mushroom, and Bacon Quiche

"Why all the cheese?" "It's quiche night, OBVIOUSLY."

One of my New Year's Resolutions was going to be "Eat less food whose primary ingredients are butter and cream." Then I got my Christmas present from Boss Tweed--a copy of Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table, and my New Year's Resolution crumbled before the New Year had even begun. It's an AMAZING cookbook, and almost every page contains a recipe as mouthwatering as it is undaunting. And full of cream and butter.
I fully intend to cook most of the items in this cookbook--perhaps when the Boss herself comes to visit me in March! (Be prepared for a slew of posts and jealousy, because it will be a cookingstravaganza for sure!) I started, though, with a quiche, more because I wanted to make a quiche than because I wanted to use the cookbook. But I figured that my new French cookbook would be a good place to start.

Greenspan's original recipe calls for a tart crust. It turns out that one has to refrigerate a tart crust for several hours, and I certainly didn't have time for that (I'm not known for planning ahead when it comes to cooking), so I fudged it a little bit, and perhaps ruined the tart in the process? The taste and texture came out just fine, though, so I'm inclined to think that the three-hour chill period is a scam.
Also, Greenspan's original recipe called for 1/4 cup cheese. I assumed that to be a printer's error, and used an entire cup of cheese. This is probably why my "cook for myself" philosophy has not been a weight-loss solution, but rather the opposite.

Spinach, Mushroom, and Bacon Quiche


Tart Crust
1 1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, cold or frozen, cut into 1/2 tbsp chunks
1 large egg
1 tsp ice water

Quiche Filling
6 oz spinach leaves
4 slices bacon
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
8 white mushrooms, diced
Salt and pepper, to taste
3 large eggs
2/3 cup cream
1 cup shredded cheese (I used equal parts swiss, gruyere, and mozzarella)

To make tart crust:

Whisk together flour and salt. Cut in butter with a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Beat together egg and water, and drizzle over the dry mixture, tossing with a fork until evenly moistened, and then mixing together by hand. Form dough into a ball, kneading until smooth, and then pat into a flattened disk. Refrigerate this for three hours (supposedly--I only refrigerated it for one, and things turned out fine).
Once you've refrigerated the disk of dough, bring it out and roll it out. Greenspan recommends rolling it between two sheets of plastic wrap, which worked pretty well and made flipping it into the pie pan pretty simple. Roll the dough into a circle big enough to cover a 9" pie pan--about 12" in diameter--and then turn the dough into a greased pie pan. Make sure there are no cracks in the crust, because it will probably shrink, and your filling will wind up leaking out if there are cracks. Puncture the dough lightly in several places with a fork, cover with foil, and refrigerate again for another hour or so. (This is a good time to make the quiche filling.)
Heat the oven to 400 F.
Bake the crust for 20 minutes with the foil insert, then remove the foil and bake for 3 to 5 minutes more. Remove partially baked crust from oven and let cool before adding filling.

To make filling:

Spinach first--rinse spinach leaves and then toss into a skillet while still wet. Cook over medium heat until the spinach is wilted but still bright green, about five minutes. Remove from heat and put spinach onto a napkin-covered plate to soak up the excess liquid. Then, when the spinach is cool enough, transfer it to a cutting board and chop it well.
Bacon next--put the slices of bacon onto a skillet over medium-high heat and fry until crispy. Remove from pan to a paper towel-covered plate. Drain off all but one tablespoon of the bacon grease from the skillet. When bacon is cool enough, chop well.
Now all the rest--put the onion and garlic into the bacon-greased skillet and sauté for two minutes over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms and sauté for two minutes more, adding a tablespoon of water if the vegetables begin to brown.
Mix together chopped spinach, chopped bacon, onions and mushrooms, and season with salt and pepper. When partially-baked crust is cooled sufficiently, spread the filling mixture evenly throughout the bottom of the crust.

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs and the cream together. Pour over the filling so that it fills in all the cracks. Sprinkle cheese evenly over the top of the quiche.
Place quiche pan onto a baking sheet (to save your oven in case of bubbling over) and carefully put into the middle of the oven. Bake quiche for 30 to 40 minutes (still at 400 F), or until the filling has become puffy, even in the middle. Remove, let cool, and then DEVOUR.

CURRENT OBSESSION: Apple Cheddar Scones

Woah woah WOAH Woah woah. Upon looking through my old posts to spruce them up with pictures--now that I FINALLY have all the relevant bits of gadgetry necessary to create, transfer, convert, and upload photographic evidence of my foodery--I have discovered that I NEVER MANAGED TO PUT UP THE APPLE CHEDDAR SCONE RECIPE.

Major. Fail.

If you've so much as brushed past my internet presence in the past three months you've probably heard me rave about these scones. If you've been in my actual presence, it's quite possible that I've baked them for you. (Really, it's less generosity and more a realization of the overwhelming guilt that ensues when one consumes an entire batch of scones in one sitting. Not that that's ever happened...)

The amazing Smitten Kitchen introduced me to them, of course, and I made my own little tweaks. SK calls them "October on a parchment-lined baking sheet," but I've been making them since waay past October, and I've never lined my baking sheets with parchment. Both choices have turned out pretty okay for me.*

Apple Cheddar Scones (Will Haunt You Forever)
2 firm apples (I used Galas most of the time, but that's just because they were around), cored, peeled, and chopped into small chunks
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, chilled and cut into 1/2 tbsp cubes
1/2 cup sharp cheddar, shredded
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 375 F.
Core and peel the apples, then chop them into smallish chunks. The original recipe called for them to be in 1/16ths, but those chunks seemed huge, and just had to be chopped down later. (Also, the smallish chunks cook faster. Bonus when you're really hungry for some sconey goodness.) Spread apple chunks evenly on a baking sheet and bake at the center of the oven for about 15 minutes, until dry to the touch and just beginning to turn goldeny brown. Remove from oven and cool completely, leaving oven on--if you're going to make the scones right away, that is. Turn it off otherwise. Sheesh.

Baked Apple Chunks--Health food, right?

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
With a pastry blender, cut in the cubes of chilled butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Beat in cream and one egg until just combined. Mix in the shredded cheese as well.

Chop up the apple chunks a bit more until you'd feel comfortable encountering them in a scone, then mix the chunks in as well. You should have a delightful, sticky mess on your hands, just forming a ball. Toss that onto a floured surface and flatten slightly, until you've formed a circle about 1" thick and 8" in diameter. Slice the circle into six wedges--or eight, if you're feeling generous. Place dough wedges onto greased baking sheets, leaving about 2" between them for spreading.
For an egg wash (which is optional, but quite tasty), beat together the remaining egg and a pinch of salt. Spread the mixture over the top of each scone. Sprinkle each washed scone with sugar. Or, if it's Christmas Eve morning, sprinkle them with sugar and Christmas sprinkles! Bake for about 30 minutes, until the scones are nice and golden. Then DEVOUR. Also share. You might as well get as many people to understand the addiction as possible...

If you are keeping them to yourself, though, freezing several of the dough wedges is a good idea--the scones are really best when eaten immediately, and it's great to have scones ready-for-baking in the freezer on a bleary morning...

*In case you're wondering, though, ovens get really angry at you if you try to substitute wax paper for parchment. It wasn't for this recipe--don't worry--but every mention of parchment paper in cooking makes me flash back to that experience. Eeesch, the smell...

MADE: Guinness Shepherd's Pie

I currently live in a city that is rainy and grey for most of the winter months. When I come home from a day that never got sunny, I just can't bear the thought of anything less than a blanket-like dinner in which to wrap myself (figuratively--don't worry) and forget the grim exterior conditions.

For inspiration, I figured I'd turn towards cuisine of similarly-climated locales, and shepherd's pie seemed like a no-brainer. If it's good enough to fortify soggy peasants in Ireland, then it can help me soldier on through the Seattle winter. Tossing in a portion of my leftover bottle of Guinness seemed like a logical addition, for similar reasons. (It turned out to be not only logical, but DELICIOUS as well--but I'm putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps several carts before several horses.)

Guinness Shepherd's Pie

Brown Sauce Filling
4 tbsp butter, divided
1/2 small onion, diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp brown sugar
10 (or so) white mushrooms, chopped coarsely
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup Guinness
1 cup water
Salt and pepper, to taste

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter into a skillet. On medium heat, caramelize the onions--stir in the salt and sugar to bring out the natural sugar of the onions themselves. Stir the onions occasionally, and if they begin to stick to the pan, add about 1/4 cup water and stir vigorously for about 30 seconds. This is called "deglazing," and it's one of my favorite science-cooking processes. (Second only to bechamel, which we'll get to in a minute...) Continue the stir/simmer/deglaze process for about 15 or 20 minutes, until the onions start to become darker brown and smell delicious. Then add the chopped mushrooms and stir, simmering until the mushrooms become a little softer, but not mushy.
Meanwhile, (probably while the onions are caramelizing, actually, since you'll be bored anyway) melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a medium saucepan. Once the butter is just beginning to sizzle, add 1/4 cup flour and whisk or stir rapidly, until thoroughly mixed. Then, quickly add the Guinness and 1 cup water, small bits at a time in alternation, stirring after each addition. (The Guinness will get all bubbly, so you don't want to add in too much at once.) Then, add the onion and mushroom mix to the sauce (which should at this point be delighting your nostrils with the decadent smell of beer and butter) and stir, adding in salt and pepper to taste.
This filling can also be made to include other vegetables (peas and carrots are common), as well as meat. If I'd had it, I probably would have thrown in ground beef or chunks of sausage at the mushroom phase. No such provisions were in my freezer at the time, unfortunately, but I'm sure they'd be delicious for you!

Potato Topping
5 or 6 large potatoes, washed and chopped into large chunks
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp cream
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp nutmeg
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup grated cheese (I used mozzarella and cheddar.)

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Boil potatoes in saucepan of water for about 15 minutes, or until tender. You should be able to poke a fork into a potato chunk and have it split in two. Drain almost all the water from the potatoes, but feel free to keep a little bit. Mash those spuds up with the butter and cream, adding in the garlic, nutmeg, salt, and pepper until the potatoes have reached (almost) optimum deliciousness.
Grease the bottom of a medium casserole dish. Layer in the Guinness-mushroom mixture, then spoon the potatoes on top in heaps, patting down to form a solid layer over the top. Sprinkle cheese over the whole thing, and toss into the oven for about 30 minutes, or until you're too hungry to wait anymore.
DEVOUR, while drinking the leftover Guinness.

MADE: Almost Too Decadent Mac 'n' Cheese

Just before the holidays, I realized that I needed to clean out my fridge before leaving for break. While most things were manageable enough--eating yogurt for breakfast for a week straight was fine, as was consuming several pepper jam sandwiches per day--one food item presented a particular challenge: my cheese hoard.

Mac 'n' cheese was calling--practically screaming--to me.  I mustered my forces--half a block of swiss, a third of a block of mozzarella, and a fourth of a block of cheddar, plus some random bleu cheese from some quiche or salad experiment gone by--and stirred this up.

Ingredients:

1/2 package bacon (about 6 slices)
1/2 medium onion (or perhaps a little less, depending on your taste for onion), diced
4 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
3 cups milk
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
Pinch sage
Pinch rosemary
1.5 lbs cheese, grated or pulled into chunks (I used cheddar, mozzarella, swiss, and a little bit of some random leftover crumbly bleu)
3/4 lb pasta (I used a mix of leftover farfalle and medium shells), cooked and drained
2 slices thick bread, toasted and diced into 1/4 inch cubes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cook bacon in large skillet until crispy, then drain on paper towel-covered plate. Once cool, crumble and chop bacon into 1/4 inch chunks. Drain all but 2 tbsp of the bacon grease from skillet, then saute onion over medium heat until tender (about five minutes). Remove onions from heat and toss together with crumbled bacon. Set aside.

In a small saucepan, heat the milk until just boiling. Meanwhile, melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, add flour, stirring constantly and lowering heat to medium low. Cook flour and butter mixture five minutes more, stirring frequently, until it turns a golden color. Add heated milk 1 cup at a time, stirring after each addition until thoroughly mixed. Continue to heat and stir until mixture thickens--about 10 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and spices to taste, then add all but 1/3 cup of the cheese. Stir all together.

Pour cooked pasta into medium casserole dish. Pour the cheesy sauce mixture and the onion/bacon mixture over the pasta, then stir to coat. Top the casserole with a mixture of the bread crumbs and remaining cheese. Put it in the oven to bake for 30 minutes (or however long you can stand to keep from eating it) and then remove to DEVOUR.

Recommendation: Share with housemates to A) avoid butter consumption guilt and B) engender housemate happiness!

Further note: The bechemel sauce (that's the butter, flour, heated milk portion of this recipe) is one of my favorite pieces of cooking alchemy. Making a good bechemel involves watching food undergo a series of state changes that can't fail to remind the cook about the science behind cooking. Wheeee!

TEASER: Chocolate Mint Cupcakes and Too-Much-Cheese and Mac

As the quarter draws to a close and my procrastination cooking grows to epic proportions, I've got two amazing recipes in the hopper. Cupcakes and mac 'n' cheese, folks! Get excited!
(I know I am!)