Robot Kitchen

2008-02-26T22:53:00.002-05:00

This oatmeal cookie recipe is modified from a Cook's Illustrated recipe for Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk with Pecans and Dried Cherries recipe. I didn't have chocolate chunks so I used Hershey Special Dark Chocolate chips. I didn't have pecans so I used walnuts. I didn't have dried cherries so I used chopped dried ginger and currants. I also wanted my cookies to be healthier so I added hemp seeds, flax seeds, raw sunflower seeds, reduced the sugar and added black strap molasses.

A Healthier Oatmeal Cookie

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 1/4 C All-purpose flour
3/4 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt

1 1/4 C old-fashion rolled oats
1 C chopped walnuts
1 C dried currants(soaked in water and drained)
1/4 C chopped candied ginger
4 ounces dark chocolate chips
1 T. Hemp seeds(shelled)
1 T. Flax seeds(ground)
1/4 C. Sunflower seeds(shelled)

12 T. Unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 1/2 T. Blackstrap molasses
1 large egg
1 t. vanilla extract

1. Adjust over racks to upper- and lower-middle positions; preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.
In second medium bowl, stir together oats, walnuts, ginger, chocolate chips, sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, and flax seeds.

3. Beat butter and sugar together using hand or stand mixer at medium speed until no lumps remain.

Add egg and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated, about 30 seconds. Add flour gradually and mix until just combined. Add currants. Add oat/nut mixture gradually and mix until just combined.

4. Roll dough into balls about 2 inches in diameter. Place balls evenly spaced on each baking sheet.

5. Bake both baking sheets 8 minutes, then rotate them front to back and top to bottom. Continue to bake until cookies are medium brown and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft (cookies will still appear raw, wet and shiny in cracks), 8 minutes longer. Don't overbake.

6. Cool cookies on baking sheets on wire rack 5 minutes; transfer cookies to wire rack and cool to room temperature.

2008-02-18T00:58:00.003-05:00

I've been terribly neglectful of all my blogs. *sigh* Sorry. I've made lots of great food since I last blogged. Today I even made Tea Eggs, which I shall post pics of. My Tea Egg recipe is slightly modified from others I found, by my use of hot peppers, brandy, and Worcestshire sauce. I also prefer to use dry tea rather than brewed tea, bec. a) I'm lazy b) I wanted more of tea flavour to my eggs.

Recipe for Tea Eggs
6 Eggs
2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp Brandy or Sherry
1 dash of Worcestshire Sauce
1 Tbsp of black tea (I used a lovely Imperial Keemun Hao Ya)
4 small pieces of star anise
1 cinamon stick
3 dried red hot peppers
1 tsp of Chinese spice mixture
1 tsp of cracked black pepper

1) Place 6 eggs in pot. Fill pot with water just over the eggs. Turn on heat to med-high. When water comes to a boil, turn off heat and wait 10 mins.

2) Drain water and reserve. Rinse eggs in cold water to cool.

3) Slightly tap eggs all over so there are cracks in the egg, but do not peel.

4) Place eggs back in pot, add soy sauce, brandy, dry tea, dry spices and enough reserved water to cover the eggs.

5) Bring mixture to a simmer for 2 hours.

6) Place eggs with liquid in the fridge to keep overnight.

7) Remove egg shells and serve sliced or halved over rice.

2007-06-14T05:21:00.001-04:00

My friend Starry brought back a watermelon on her travels through S. Carolina. And since I have an abundance of fresh herbs and strawberries through our organic CSA(Community Supported Agriculture), I thought I would try something different.

Earlier at dinner we had a strawberry watermelon thyme compote for dessert. Dinner was simple:

-Green bean, red leaf lettuce salad w/ non pareil capers and marinated artichoke hearts dressed w/ balsamic vinegar and flax seed oil vinaigrette.
- Bulgur wheat cooked in chicken stock w/ sage and chicken andouille.

The compote starts w/ making a simple syrup mixture(1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar), 1 tbsp of lemon juice, and 2 tbsp of fresh thyme. You boil this mixture till the sugar has dissolved. Once the mixture is at room temperature, you add 1 tbsp of vanilla extract. Pour the mixture over 2 cups of strawberries(quartered) and 3 cups of watermelon(1/2 inch cubes). Let sit for at least 1/2 an hour before serving. I really enjoyed the flavour of the thyme w/ the fruit.

So... I still had quite a lot of watermelon left and I decided... why not a sorbet?

First I made simple syrup by boiling equal parts white sugar and water(1 cup and 1 cup). I added approx. a tbsp of lemon juice and 3 sprigs of rosemary. Before I added the rosemary, I rubbed the sprigs between my hands so as to release some of the nice oils. I let it simmer for a while... maybe 5 mins?

I pureed the watermelon and syrup mixture in a blender. I didn't measure the watermelon, but my end result was approximately 4 cups of watermelon puree.

I poured the mixture into a shallow plastic container, placed it in the freezer and every hour I whisked the mixture so that the ice crystals would be more evenly dispersed.

The result... I suppose I may have been too enthusiastic w/ the rosemary, however to my tastes it's really great. However, I am a lover of rosemary. It's extremely refreshing and the rosemary adds a complex flavour that watermelon(though very lovely) usually lacks.

Sorry, no pictures of the sorbet just yet. I tried taking a few, but the lights just kept melting the sorbet.

2007-03-01T05:33:00.000-05:00

Tonight we had a basic roast chicken. It was rather large (6.5 lbs) so it took longer than usual, though the skin had an excellent crispness. I'm not sure why people don't roast chicken all the time, it's so easy and people are so easily impressed. It does help that I have an adjustable V roasting rack. I did a rub of kosher salt, black pepper and herbes de provence. I generously rub inside the cavity and outside. Then I generously pour on olive oil(I'm trying to cut out lactose).

I fill the rest of the roasting pan w/ apple wedges, bread cut in cubes(yes homemade), leeks, sage, chicken stock(yes homemade) for my stuffing.

It's rather straightforward. I bake at 450 F for 30 minutes then I turn down the temperature to 375 F and bake till my meat thermometer tells me it's at 170 F. I take out the chicken to rest under a little tin foil tent(so cute) for 20 mins. The temp will rise at this point to 180 F. If not, I stick the chicken back in a bit to coax it up to 180F.

We had it with a simple green salad w/ toasted walnuts and a balsamic/dijon vinaigrette, lentils, and of course the stuffing.

I really felt like wine so we had the old standby Le Vielle Ferme Red. It's so ridiculously cheap and though I'd love to claim that I discovered it, I think Parker declared it the world's greatest value wine years ago. I think it goes well w/ chicken seeing that there is a chicken on the bottle. We end up calling it old chicken wine. I don't think I'd use it for cooking. I'd like something with more body. Anyway, the great thing about the wine is that it's a screw top. Honestly I don't think I'd really miss corks if it meant never getting a corked wine.

2007-01-21T04:23:00.000-05:00

Tonight I did a variation of coq au vin... pork au vin. I marinated pork rib chops in red wine(Fat Bastard Cabernet Sauvignon 2004), tomatoes, carrots, & green onions. I did a fairly typical coq au vin recipe and the sauce was quite good, but I think I would have preferred to cook the pork longer. I had marinated the pork for 2 days and cooking time was only an hour. My bad... but I guess I felt a little rushed with hungry people to feed. I served smashed potatoes with my spinach dip mixed in.

My spinach dip is just the typical cream cheese and frozen spinach, but I carmelize the onions instead of using onion soup mix. It adds a sweetness to the dish, but keeps it savoury.

2007-01-12T00:13:00.000-05:00

Tonight we had soup and cheesy toast. The soup was a Pumpkin Black Bean Chipotle Soup with a dollop of yogurt(Whole Foods 365 Whole Milk Plain Yogurt).

It was super quick and easy to make. I thawed some chicken stock that I keep handy in the freezer for such occasions and used canned pureed pumpkin and canned black beans.

Ingredients:
1 L Chicken Stock - homemade
1 can of pureed pumpkin (365 Brand)
2 cans of black beans (365 Brand Organic)
2 tbsp of dried morel mushrooms(rehydrated with boiling water)
1/2 large yellow onion
1 can(28oz) of fire roasted crushed tomatoes (Muir Glen Organic)
2 chipotle peppers(canned w/ adobo sauce)
1 tbsp of adobo sauce
1 tbsp of corriander seeds
2 tsp of dried thyme
1 tsp of dried basil
salt and black pepper to taste
olive oil

1) Heat stock, pumpkin, drained black beans, and tomatoes in pot over medium heat. Stirring occasionally.
2) Fry diced onions w/ olive oil in pan till translucent. Add coriander. Add re-hydrated morel mushrooms.
3) Add onion, coriander, mushroom mixture to liquids in pot.
4) Add chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, thyme, basil to pot. Stir. Let simmer for 1 hour, till soup is thicker.
5) Using an immersion blender, blend soup to attain desired thickness. You can use a regular blender, but it's messy and possibly dangerous. :-)
6) Continue to simmer for 10-20 mins.
7) Serve with dollop of yogurt.

2007-01-05T20:52:00.000-05:00

So an interesting thing I've noticed is the refinement of the bottled water industry, where they are trying to follow the success of wine. I know that spirits is currently attempting to follow wine as well. Now everyone has vodka or more traditionally scotch tastings. I guess I've seen tea try to go down this direction as well.

There definitely is something to it. I'm fairly picky about water, though I will settle for municipal tap. Pittsburgh's municipal tap is less than desirable. We stopped drinking it after we started noticing how it never made us feel better. Drinking water should make you feel hydrated, able to concentrate. I always felt just blah. So now we have a fridge w/ a built in filter. I've noticed a marked difference.

I've always preferred Volvic over Evian. Evian has this soft mouth feel that makes me feel like I'm drinking plastic. Dasani in Edmonton was always better IMHO. I've noticed that bottled mineral water in Pittsburgh is much more expensive than Canada. I can usually buy a large bottle of San Benedetto for a $1 CDN at Superstore in Toronto while I noticed at Penn Mac, it's $2.99 USD. I'm not sure why that is. So I usually just buy seltzer instead. Oh for Italian bubbles...

http://www.finewaters.com

2007-01-05T08:02:00.000-05:00

I haven't been really keeping up. Two nights ago we went to Caribou Coffee. I think I like their coffee better that Starbucks. And of course I like it infinitely more than Kiva Han. People think they are being subversive and practicing some sort of guerilla consumerism by choosing Kiva Han over Starbucks. I think they are just choosing to have bad coffee. Apologies to those non-Pittsburghers. Kiva Han is the local scourge of Oakland. At any rate, I didn't even have coffee at Caribou. I had their tea. Their tea is much better that Starbucks tea or Kiva Han. I'm not sure if I think it's better than the tea at Barnes and Noble. However the common thread amongst the tea at both places is that it's bagged loose tea, not tea bags of tea crumbs, which is more typical.

After tea and books, we went to Tesaro's for dinner. Tesaro has extremely good burgers. The key to their burgers is their onsite butchering. There was a butcher shop in Bloomfield where they got their meat, but when the butcher closed shop they couldn't find anything comparable. So they decided to build their own butchering facilities and hired one of the former employees of the butcher shop to come in part time. He's employed full time as a firefighter.

So usually you can get their rare burger rare, but that night it was overcooked. We ordered it with "country fries" which I usually interpret as potato wedges. However, at Tesaro's it's basically cubed fried potato, which can sometimes be called "country hashbrowns." It really doesn't matter though. The burger is the only important thing on that plate. We split a large chef's salad. I wouldn't recommend it. It was iceberg lettuce with large irregularly cut slabs of turkey meat and ham. They took stacks of sliced marble and mozzerella cutting them into strips. However the the slices never separated. It was one of the more puzzling things I've seen.
We weren't really disappointed by the meal. Everything tasted good, minus the weird cheese. I didn't finish the cheese.

2006-12-29T19:09:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we kegged our two winter beers. One is a porter we call Serial Porter and the other is a ESB we call Fluffer's English Sex Bot. This summer I started brewing beer with Dirty Robot Brew Works. They should be ready to drink in a few weeks.

Today I had my very first Primanti Brother s sandwich. I ordered the #2 best seller, the cheesesteak. I had some misgivings about ordering the cheesesteak because we're in Pittsburgh, not in Philly. However the Primanti Brother's cheesesteak is more like a modified cheeseburger, though still very tasty. The french fries and coleslaw come inside the sandwich. The french fries are definitely better than most and the coleslaw is really good. Coleslaw is generally bad, but this coleslaw was surprisingly good.

Of course since we were in the Strip District, we stopped by Penn Mac to buy cheese and veggies for dinner. Dinner is a veggie lasagna with ricotta, pesto, tomato sauce, roasted eggplant, roasted zuchini, roasted summer squash, portabello mushrooms, basil leaves, roasted peppers, walnuts, tofu, tempeh, provolone, mozzarella, and pecorino romano. Vegetarian meals are rare in our house, but since we have a vegetarian house guest, I thought I'd oblige. :-)

2006-12-25T22:58:00.000-05:00

Christmas Day Dinner Menu

Wine: Arrowood Grand Archer Syrah 2002 Sonoma County
Pumpkin, Carrot & Ginger Cream Soup

Morel and White Mushrooms sauteed in butter
Portabello Mushrooms sauteed in lamb drippings and red wine
Roasted Potato wedges with lemon, oregano and olive oil
Tabouli with Pomegranate Seeds
Mint, Lime & Hot Pepper Sauce
Roast Leg of Lamb with Fresh Rosemary, Herbe de Provence & Garlic

Chocolate Souffle Cake with Orange Caramel Sauce

2006-12-24T20:09:00.000-05:00

In order to establish some Christmas traditions of our own, I thought it would be nice to bring in a traditional French-Canadian Christmas and New Years favorite, Tourtière. Sometimes called pâté à la viande or meat pie, tourtières are not without controversy. There are so many different variations on this theme that it's hard to distinguish what is a poseur recipe. I even did some research going into the CBC archives. One expert says that what is basic to French-Canadian cuisine is the seasoning of meat with spices, mainly cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, all-spice.

I thought I would try a pie closer to the Saguenay type consisting of cubed meat and in a deep-dish pan. Apparently that's closely related to the French tourte. My choice was really based on what I had at hand, which was pork loin and deep-dish pie pans.

I think the last time I made a tourtière, I was in grade 7 and it was a project for French class. However the last time I made a pie was at Thanksgiving, so I thought it was do-able.

For the crust, I used a variation of the New York Times All-butter Pie Crust from November 15, 2006. My variations being, using whole-wheat pastry flour and using a 50% lard, 50% butter mixture. Yes, I used lard since I was making a savoury pork pie. Shortening works too, but I find it not quite as flavourful and the crust isn't as crispy. Nothing says crispy like rendered animal fat.

Pie Crust (enough for deep dish pie(bottom and top))

2 ½ cups whole wheat pastry flour (whole wheat to compensate for the lard and pastry flour, bec. there's less gluten and so less stickiness)
½ teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into ½ inch pieces (I used Whole Foods 365 butter which was just as fat as Plugra, but not as fat as Celles sur Belle)
10 tablespoons lard, chilled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
4 to 10 tablespoons ice water

1. Sift flour, add salt. Stir/whisk together. Add butter and lard. Using 2 butter knives cut butter and lard until mixture forms chickpea-size pieces. Add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time, and mix until mixture is just moist enough to hold together.

2. Form dough into a 2 balls, wrap with plastic and flatten each ball into a disk. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before using. I usually freeze my dough overnight and pull it out an hour before I use it.

I chilled my flour while I was measuring my butter and lard.

I also have a rolling pin that is made out of aluminum that I chill prior to rolling my pie dough. It's called The Pin. I find it works very well.

So why the cold? I was taught that cold keeps the fat solid so that when it's baked the fat melts leaving a nice "pocket" creating a crispy/flakey crust.

To roll the dough: I lightly flour the counter. I place a piece of plastic wrap on the dough and slow roll out the dough working out from the middle. Once my dough is flat enough(5-6 millimetres thick), I wrap the dough very gently around the rolling pin. Then I slowly lift it over the pie pan and unfurl the dough.

The Filling
1 tbsp Olive Oil
½ Large White Onion Finely Chopped(approx. 1 cup)
2 lbs Pork Loin - Chopped into small pieces (not an exact thing but each piece is approximately a 1 centimetre(1/4 inch) cube)
Small piece of Salt Pork finely chopped(approx. 1 tbsp)
2 Stalks of Celery with leaves Finely Chopped
2 tbsp of Parsley Fresh or dried
4 Small Russet Potatoes Finely Chopped
1 Cup Water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp Herbes de Provence(I bought mine at Whole Foods and it's a mixture of basil, sage, rosemary, savoury, thyme, lavender. I used this, because I wasn't able to find savoury on it's own)
2 Bay Leaves
½ tsp Cinnamon
½ tsp Cloves (whole, ground with mortar/pestle)
½ tsp All-spice (whole, ground with mortar/pestle)
½ tsp Nutmeg (freshly grated)

Heat pan(I used my cast-iron pan) on medium heat. Add olive oil. Add onions and salt pork. Fry till onions are translucent.

Add pork with salt, spices, bayleaves. Stirring occassionally till pork is cooked. Add potatoes, celery, parsley, and water. Cover and let simmer till potatoes are cooked. Uncover and simmer till there is very little liquid, but still moist. Remove from heat, cool.

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Put filling in pie crust. Slit the top of pie crust, making vents.

Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 F and bake for 40-50 mins being careful that crust does not burn, but browns very nicely. Cool on rack.

My crust was a little "rustic", but I didn't want it to be perfect looking. However I was very happy with the flakiness. I also prefer the chopped meat to ground meat of other tourtières I've had.

I served it with a homemade banana pepper relish that I make with hot banana peppers, honey, and mustard seeds and a variation of Nigella Lawson's Insalata di Rinforzo. Chutney would work well as well. I suppose in honour of living in Pittsburgh, we should eat it with Heinz ketchup.