Category Archives: recipes

PK’s Yeast Infection…

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… fortunately it’s of the sourdough variety – as in Matt’s sourdough starter.  Sure, PK’s been in possession of the starter for a while and indeed has become quite the waffle master, but until this past week, PK had yet to make a loaf of bread. That changed this past weekend when PK attempted his first loaf. Now he’s got the bread bug, and  bad. For the first loaf, perhaps he bit off a bit more than he could chew, attempting a full wheat loaf which came out super dense owing to the fact that he used too much wheat flour (I think two cups). Here’s a picture.

PK's very first loaf: dense wheat (with a shape only a mother could love)

PK says he got through about half of this loaf before he realized he just couldn’t eat something more dense than several of the heavy metals on the periodic table combined.  But not to be deterred, he quickly got back on his horse and baked another loaf which according to all accounts -namely PK’s – he nailed.  Here’s his spin on the recipe:

1/4 c starter
1 5/8 c water
3 1/4 c flour
1/4 c wheat flour
3 tsp kosher salt
Sprinkled with cornmeal
Oven 475-480
20 mins with lid

15-20 mins without lid

Behold...PK's second (perfect - according to PK) loaf.

PK's second loaf has a nice airy quality

And as an added bonus, here’s a short vid of PK thoroughly enjoying his bread. Here’s to many more perfect loaves in the future, PK.  Welcome to the club.

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Kei and Minori’s Katsu Curry!

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And now, get ready for something completely delicious. Minori and Kei cook up a batch of Japanese comfort food: Japanese curry and tonkatsu (katsu- for short). And even if you’ve never had katsu curry (I am saddened by the culinary poverty you have experienced up until this point) you will be comforted by the rich and thick gravy  of Japanese curry and the crisp succulent bite of the deep fried pork cutlet. Alright, let’s get down to business. Click on the photo below for the full recipes and amazing cooking videos.

Kei and Minori - drunk on goodness

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Hana does it again!

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This time, Hana, delicioustings youngest contributor, shows us how to make the after school favorite known as “ants on a log”.  (Disclamour: no ants were harmed in the making of this video, but some raisins were consumed as was a stalk of celery)

For the full context of the creative impetus behind Hana’s “ants on a log” I urge to watch both videos.  I’m not going to take full credit, but let me just say that she was initially inspire by my beef stew.  I don’t want to come off as too grandiose,  but isn’t it interesting to think about how great art is often inspired by other works of great art?  Just stew on that for a while.

And now without ado, I present to you Hana:

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C’s Beet Soup (ok, borscht)

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Despite appearances, I’m not actually of Eastern European heritage. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the hearty and delicious food of the old county. Case in point: beet soup (aka borscht). The first time I remember eating borscht was all the way back in 1986 during the last years of the Cold War…

For the full account of my borscht experience and the full recipe and making of video please click the photo below.

Easy, delicious and nutritious.

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A couple fall meals from the last few days

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Since it’s been getting a little colder in the last few days as evidenced by the need to improvise new sartorial accessories:

Shef shows off the latest trend in proboscular thermal regulation

We’ve been using the oven a lot too cook, not only because we’ve been doing a lot of baking and slow roasting, but because it warms the apartment.

Last weekend Shef cooked this wonderful and simple lamb dish because she was inspired by a recipe she saw in the latest issue of Saveur Magazine. Basically it consists of a bunch of vegetables (green beans, onions, tomatoes, garlic, leeks, eggplant, peppers – basically whatever vegetables you think will roast well) tossed with olive oil salt and pepper and laid out in a casserole dish or roasting pan.  Onto the vegetables you lay lamb shoulder chops which have been seasoned with salt and pepper.  Cover this with foil and cook at 350 for an hour.  Uncover and let the lamb chops brown and roast for another 45 minutes to and hour.  The end result: so good.  The lamb juices seep down and flavor the vegetables so you have this rich, savory, mildly lamby, broth.  We ate it over couscous.

inspired by Saveur

hmm, do I eat the magazine or the real thing?

And then a couple nights ago.  I decided to make pizza using the sourdough recipe which I wrote about a few months ago.  But this time, my starter was a bit flat. So, after the first 18 hours I added commercial baker’s yeast (about half of one of those packets you can buy at the grocery store).  I put the yeast in about 1/4 – 1/3 cup of warm water to which I had added some honey in order to feed the active yeast.  After about five minutes the yeast was frothing up so I added the yeast and water and about half a cup more of bread flour to the existing dough and put it all in the mixer to incorporate. I let this dough proof for another few hours during which time it rose dramatically (thanks to the new yeast).  And this was the result:

Pizza before the baking - loaded down with toppings

Pizza toppings: homemade tomato sauce, mozarella, olives, bell pepper, leaks, beet greens, squash, Italian sausage.

after about 15 minutes in the oven... ready to eat!

The verdict: Delicious!  The dough was sour and tangy, bready and chewy. Success!

For dessert, I made a rustic pear and apple tart.  I used pears because the pears we’ve been getting from our CSA have been uniformly bad.  Well they taste okay, but they’re super hard and instead of ripening, certain parts just rot as if they’ve been bruised really badly.  So I salvage the pears that I could, added in some apples (also from our CSA and actually pretty good), cut everything up and tossed it with sugar and cinnamon and corn starch (at three teaspoons I think used a bit too much as I was flashing back to the tasty but liquidy strawberry rubarb pie which I wrote about earlier this summer).  Per PK’s suggesting I cooked the pear apple mix first in pan to cook out some of the liquid – again the corn starch more than took care of this.  And then laid the mix onto a pie crust that I’d prepared earlier (1 1/2 cup of flour + 1 stick of butter cut in+ about 3-4 tbsp of ice water  to bind), folded over the crust and popped it into the oven.

the rustic tart ready to go into the oven

Half an hour later…

Ready to eat! See? I cut into eat before I remembered to take the photo.

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