Braised broccoli

This post is a public service announcement (wait...did I actually just link to that song?) because while this recipe might not be a full dinner, it makes an awesome side dish, especially if you have to bring it over somewhere else...

This weekend I went to potluck and was in charge of bringing a side dish (aside: other than the broccoli, other items included: salad, hummus and pita, olives, watermelon, and Little Caesar's pizza. Odd.), and what makes this dish amazing is that is tasty when hot but also excellent at room temperature. So, when everyone shows up late, it still works. How many veggie dishes can you really say that of?

Broccoli.
Or maybe a tree, hard to know.
 P.S. College folks: does anyone know what ever happened to the painting of me as a piece of broccoli?

So, to start off: cook 1 teaspoon minced garlic and 1 finely chopped shallot in 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. While waiting for the shallot to get reasonably soft (4-5 minutes, medium heat) chop up about 2 pounds of broccoli florets (stem works too, but I don't like it as much) into bite sized pieces, and then add to the olive oil/garlic/shallot. Cook for a bit less than 5, and then add 1 cup of dry white wine that has had 0.5 teaspoons of salt and some arbitrary amount of ground black pepper. Let the wine heat up and start bubbling off for 2 minutes, turn the heat down to medium-low, cover, and let simmer for 6 minutes.

Uncover, turn the heat back to medium, and let most of the remaining wine bubble away. Serve. Enjoy.
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Saddest moment of the week: I apparently convinced somebody to try making the most delicious pie ever, and then did not get to have any. Le sad.

Otherwise, though, life is good.

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Tastes better than it looks.

Verdict: Implicit in the above description.

Next week: I'll actually try to have an interesting new recipe.

An ominous second week: Giotto's pizza

So, first announcement: my phone is still semi-broken, so prepare yourself for more incredibly life-like MSPaint images. Anyway, as the title suggests this dinner blog is getting off to something of an ominous start: it's only week two and I've already had to invoke the "hey, it's not a new dish but at least I won't look at the recipe" rule. But, after you read my justification in paragraph below I think you'll agree that this pizza was very much in the spirit of the dinner blog. I also think what I really need is for you all to start suggesting things for me to try cooking. Oh well.

Anyway, for this week I went with a pizza, partly because about three months ago I finally acquired a circular pizza pan... until that time I had been making a veritable legion of rectangular pizzas using a broiler pan, and in fact have continued to do so this summer. And you know what? That had to stop, and it stopped this weekend.

So, for the dough proof 2 teaspoons of yeast in just less than 1 cup of warm water. Add a splash (a heavy splash...maybe 1 T) olive oil, 2 t salt, a clove of minced garlic, and 2 T dried rosemary. Start stirring and then kneading in about 2.5 cups of flour. Let the dough rise for an hour (a good hour).

But even before making the dough, start preparing the tomato sauce. Saute 1 large chopped onion and 1 clove minced garlic in 2 T olive oil, and when the onion is translucent add 1/2 a cup of red wine and 2 T tomato paste. Add a few dashes of salt, grind in some black pepper, and sprinkle in some oregano. Stir, and let it simmer until some of the liquidity of the wine/paste mixture has bubbled away. Having forgotten to get tomatoes at the farmer's market this Saturday, I reached into my emergency stash of canned tomatoes: crush by hand the contents of one of those 28 oz can whole plum peeled tomatoes, and add the tomatoes/juice to the sauce. Set it simmering.

Okay, now's the fun part! Take the dough, punch it down, and flatten into a circle. When you got it to a rough 7" diameter or so, start throwing it!

Totally awesome flying pizza... there were definitely no collisions of the dough with the cabinets, as depicted. Also, in my apartment there are only two cabinets above and below that counter, but "two" is apparently a hard number of cabinets to draw.

Okay, now that you've had your fun, take the blobs of fallen-apart dough, recombine them, and just use a rolling pin. Le sigh. Put a little olive oil on the pizza pan, put the dough on top, and evenly coat with sauce. Shred about, say,  1/2 a cup each mozzarella and asiago (the supermarket was out of Parmesan...how is that even possible?), and sprinkle on top. Saute half of a cut up green pepper briefly, add as a topping. Preheat your nice wood-fire oven to 800 degrees (or, failing that, your gas oven to "as high as it'll go without setting off the fire alarm") and put the pizza in the oven. Bake for 12 minutes, and then remove and let cool.
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Another week of not really having much to update you all on... work is busy, but good. I have an upcoming conference in Cleveland (in October), and one of my friends was good enough to send along this tourism video (language)...which was pretty fantastic. It really helped get me excited about visiting the city for the first time. More news next week. Maybe.

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Some people can draw a perfect circle freehand... I throw a perfectly circular pizza.

Verdict:
Pizza Is Always Awesome.

Bulgarian Pepper and Cheese, a la Moosewood

So, just a heads-up before I get started: I did in fact take pictures along the way, but my phone is dying and apparently decided not to save any of the photos I took. That's okay, though: I've set about drawing some re-creations of them. Quite frankly, between my poor photographic skills and my almost other-worldly talent for drawing with computer programs I kind of don't you'll be able to tell the difference.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's talk about dinner! I picked this recipe because the last time I was home I stole (with permission?) Mom's copy of the Moosewood Cookbook, and since then I've been honestly intending to cook something out of it "sometime next week" or "as soon as I remember to get the necessary groceries." Obviously that strategy failed for many consecutive months, so this first new blog post seemed like an ideal way to get on track.

First things first: chop/semi-mince 2 medium-large onions and 3 green peppers and saute in about 2 T butter... the recipe calls for 1.5 c chopped mushrooms as well, but (a) I forgot to buy them, (b) wasn't all that sad about that fact, and (c) decided not to let (a) stop me. Anyway, remove from heat when the peppers are becoming tender but are still a bit crunchy (moral/aesthetic consideration: crunchy vegetables are always Better. Discuss.) To the sauteed veggies add the following mixture: 1.5 T soy sauce, 1.5 T cheap cooking sherry, 1 t marjoram, 0.75 t salt, and some indeterminate amount of ground black pepper. To really get the full "Dinner Blog" experience, try to break your pepper grinder during this step. This has the bonus off adding in some unknown/unknownable number of whole peppercorns; they will be a treat to discover while eating the finished dish later on.

Sweet, with that done it's time to start assembling the dish. Soak 1 c raw bulgar (I used grind #2, as it was all my supermarket carried) in some water for 15ish minutes, after which it'll be a bit less crunchy. Spread it out in an even layer in a buttered 9x13 baking pan (which I didn't have, so I substituted a maybe 8x11 glass baking dish), and then pour the veggie/sauce mix and spread out into an even layer on top of that. For layer #3 combined 12 oz cottage cheese with 1 c crumbled feta. Finally, pour 3 lightly beaten eggs on top of everything, and dust with feta. I don't know about you, but there's something I find oddly fun about making layered dinners like this. Anyway, here's the result:

Remember: this is not a photo, just a photorealistic drawing

Turn the oven up to 11 (in this case, "11" = 350 degrees) and bake for 40 minutes. Let it rest for 10 minutes after taking it out and then serve/enjoy!
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Well, this week has felt kind of ridiculous. The first few days (from the start of the long weekend, essentially) I came down with some kind of cold, and just when I was starting to feel like I was on the upswing I managed to sneeze violently enough that I missed the stair I was aiming for and turn my ankle as badly as anything that's happened to me since my soccer days. Fortunately I'm up and walking again (although I think I'll take a few more days off from running), but that meant during the second half of the week I worked from home instead of walking to work.

It turns out that I really don't like working from home, although maybe that's a reflection of the work I had to do... I'm, of course, quite excited that I can see the end of grad school off on the horizon, but getting together application materials for postdoctoral positions and fellowships turns out to be much, much less fun than doing research. Oh well, has to be done I guess (must. not. stay in grad school. forever.)
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Figure 1. Cross-sectional view of dinner

Verdict:
Pretty good, I think; probably it'll be added to the semi-regular-but-not-super-often rotation, so all in all I'll call it a success for the Dinner Blog's first attempt. The one problem, though, was that with using the smaller-than-suggested baking dish the layer of bulgar ended up being too thick (see Fig. 1) -- in the future I think I'll either use less or see what happens if I try multiple layers, bulgar-veggie-bulgar-veggie-cheese or something.

Next week:
I don't know...

The Dinner Blog begins: The rules of the game

Well, by popular request I am once again resurrecting this blog... But since I've already written as much about bread and running as I care to, I've decided to switch to a new topic. In the past I've used the writing of this blog as a prompt to get me to do things I ostensibly wanted to do anyway (the whole "I've told other people I'd write about this each week... I guess that means I have to stop procrastinating and do it" incentive), so I spent the last few weeks thinking about something I wanted to do better that would also make a convenient blog topic. This is what I came up with.

You see, the first two years out here in Illinois I'd say I did a (relatively) good job learning to be a better cook, trying new meals, etc. etc. As grad school has worn on, though, I feel like I've fallen into a rut of always making the same handful of dishes on some vaguely rotating schedule. So, it's time to step back up to the plate (ugh...worst. pun. ever.) and get back to trying new foods.

So, the rules of the game will be simple:

(1) Sometime during each week I will make myself cook one new thing, and then write about it.

(2) If the week is particularly rough and I don't have time to do a real grocery trip I'll allow myself to make an something old, but in which case I will not be permitted to look at a recipe.

That's it. For consistency I'll try to stick to writing things up on Sunday, starting a week from tomorrow (when I told some of you the first post would be Sept. 3 I thought that would be a Sunday... whoops). Here's where you all come in: I have a handful of cookbooks from which to select new dishes, but those will only last me so long. Have any particular favorites you think I should try? Send 'em along, and they'll get added to the list!

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Next week: "Bulgarian pepper and cheese delight"