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Scallops & Asparagus from the market, Flagship cheese from Beecher’s (last Sunday’s Dinner)

After Sunday morning racquetball, we wandered in the strangely warm, snowing afternoon through Pike Place Market and designed a dinner for the night.  This is one of the most relaxing and rewarding kinds of afternoons for me. 

First, a piroshky from Piroshky, Piroshky…DELICIOUS.  I had potato, onion, cheese.  Matt had beef and cheese I think.  They were both delish, but the potato is still our favorite.  It is really dangerous having this right down the street from the gym…we’ll have to start trying other walking lunches from the market one of these days.

We decided we wanted to try cooking scallops, since all we had done before was bay scallops in fried rice.  We are relatively new fans of scallops, so I did some internet searching for a basic recipe.  I found this one, which I used as inspiration. Mushrooms are not on either of our favorites lists, so we decided to go with the basic scallop method and make the rest more suitable for us.  I have made a delicious side of peas in the past, with diced onions and a bit of cream, so we planned for that, but then we saw some gorgeous, thin-stalked asparagus from a market vendor.  It had been a while since either of us had asparagus, so we went for it.  We wandered over to one of the fish vendors and picked up 4 average-sized sea scallops for just over $6 and we also got some Flagship cheese from Beecher’s Handmade Cheese on our way to the car.

This really could only end well.

Matt made a side, using the Beecher’s and some grits we had on hand, along with a little thyme.

I had a handful of shallots left from our last CSA box, so I sliced them thinly in place of onions, knowing they would be super sweet and mild cooked down. They cooked down in a bit of olive oil until they were nice and soft, but not caramelized.  I spread them along the pan and placed my washed, trimmed asparagus tips on top (I didn’t want them to be directly in the bottom of the pan). I added water to the pan just to cover the bottom and covered the pan…this kept the steam in to cook the asparagus, but because they were on top of the layer of shallots, they didn’t get overcooked.  This stayed on low heat while I cooked the scallops. 

I used the recipe linked above, using minced garlic that I had on hand and dried thyme.  They didn’t turn out quite as pretty as his, but the apartment smelled AMAZING while they basted with the butter, garlic and thyme. 

As the scallops were finishing, I added a tablespoon or so of cream to the asparagus and shallots, removing the cover and letting it cook down. 

The grits and the sauce on the vegetables worked together really nicely with their complementary creaminess. The sweet, smooth scallops and the little bite of the garlic in their sauce complemented the sides really well.  Since there was an abundance of shallots in relation to the number of asparagus in the pan, for lunch on Monday I had a side salad with the leftover grits and creamy onions on top.  Sitting in their little Pyrex bowl all day, waiting for lunch, the cream sauce and the cheese grits came together into this amazingly satisfying, creamy indulgent accompaniment to my healthy salad!

If you happen to be someone looking for ways to cook asparagus tips, you could do this the same way, leave out the shallots or onions if you want and just sauté the fresh asparagus for just a few seconds, add a bit of broth or water to steam by covering and cooking for a few minutes, then adding a splash of cream to cook down and coat them, letting them cook until they are as soft as you want them! You could also do this without the cream and just let the broth cook down.  A touch of garlic or other herbs/spices would bump up the flavor a bit if you wanted! 

When life gives you a free box of cake mix…

QFC sent us a coupon for a free box of cake mix! Apparently this is one of our frequently-purchased products? I think we have maybe bought 1 box of cake mix since Matt moved to Seattle almost 2 years ago.
Whatever their reasoning, we got a free box of Devil’s Food Reduced Sugar cake mix! This weekend I decided to finally pull it out and turn it into treats for a game night at a friend’s place. I am not a huge baker and get really frustrated when baked goods don’t turn out correctly (I can fix a stir fry or the seasoning on a roast if something is off…if a cake goes bad, I just throw up my hands), so random urges for sweets and free cake mixes are the rare causes of Mallory Baking Time.

I prefer cupcakes for non-birthday needs…the slicing and serving of a cake is a headache sometimes, and a cupcake can just pick up and go, without all the baggage of plate, fork, blah blah blah that a regular slice of cake brings along.

Cupcakes it is!

I made 12 regular-sized cupcakes in my silicone cupcake pan (have I used this before?? I can’t really remember…)

I put the rest of the batter into two mini-cupcake tins. One regular metal and one silicone. I noticed that both were by the same company even though I got them at completely different times, places, and they are clearly different materials and slightly different sizes! Interesting!

I figured I’d experiment and see exactly how the silicone bakeware affected my cupcakes. I have used the silicone stuff several times before, but more for non-cake type things (quiche, cheesecake, frozen treats, etc.).

(Also, I’d like to throw in a mini-review for Crisco Spray with Flour…this is AMAZING! My cupcakes slid right out of both the silicone and the regular pan with no paper cupcake liners!!)

Not sure if it was my unevenly heated oven or just the silicone, but the large cupcakes had a very noticeable hump on one side…these would be perfect for decorating as monsters or something for a kid’s birthday party!

 

The two trays of mini-cupcakes went in together and while the silicone tray created similarly-humped miniatures, the regular tray was gorgeous and adorably rounded! I am eager to figure out what makes the difference between the two materials. I bet Alton Brown would have some input!

Look how perfectly rounded the ones in the metal pan are!!! These two trays cooked in the oven at the exact same time!

The humped and the non-humped both tasted delicious and I covered them with a cream cheese frosting that was deliciously lemony (and mostly covered the freakish look of the silicone-baked cupcakes).

 

 

We had originally bought this can of Rainbow Chip frosting which has been my favorite since I was tiny…I love the candies inside the frosting, and will tell you in great detail how this is NOT the same as Funfetti frosting! But we had cream cheese and I wanted to put my tiny hand mixer to the test (I may have killed the $4 Goodwill mixer, but the frosting was worth it). This was my first time making cream cheese frosting (from this Cooking Light recipe), but Matt loved it!

 

I have plans to turn this into a cherry cream cheese frosting in the future, but it will have to wait until our next free cake mix!       

In cupcake-related news, one of my favorite cakey treats mixes cake and ice cream.  Warm brownie sundaes, baked alaska, cake and ice cream…I’m guessing this stems from lots of birthday parties as a kid?  I’ve also been test-driving some lactose free milk because of a hunch that I’m developing a slight lactose intolerance (mostly when I chug giant glasses of milk or have a big bowl of cereal, ice cream or other dairy deliciousness).  So how exciting when I found Turtle Mountain’s soy and coconut milk-based goodies at the blog, Heather Eats Almond Butter. Check it out for a coconut milk product giveaway and other healthy food fun!

Hey, that zucchini looks pretty healthy…let me help you with that!

I think I’ve mentioned before that one of the best parts of the CSA box we get from Full Circle Farm is the fact that we are trying vegetables that we’d never have bought in the store before.  Zucchini is one of those things that I haven’t had a ton of experience with and haven’t necessarily always enjoyed.  So when we got 6 zucchinis in our most recent box, I had to come up with something to do with them.  It was a busy couple weeks with not a lot of time to experiment, so we went with a fail-safe method…fried!

When I was in Florence, Italy for four weeks a few summers ago, we had pre-arranged lunches at this small restaurant just out of the city center.  I can’t remember the name of it, but almost every day we had smaller-than-shoestring potatoes and zucchini, lightly fried, just a little crunchy, mostly soft.  They were amazing!  This was the first time I had eaten zucchini and enjoyed it…the flavor of the zucchini itself came through and melted nicely into the light frying they had done.  I looked forward to this side whenever we had our group lunches at this place….Yum!

I had made a similar type of zucchini for Matt the last time got them from Full Circle Farm. I wanted to try something different this time.  We had planned to have soup and wanted something crunchy to go along with it, so we went with a beer-battered type of fry on the zucchini.  Next time we get this vegetable, we are definitely NOT frying it!!  We’ve also done steamed fish with zucchini and yellow squash slices and other types of dishes with zucchini, so I know we can do it!

This was a really basic recipe…flour + beer.  Coat thick “fries” of zucchini in a light dusting of flour, dip into a mix of beer and flour that has been sitting for an hour or so, fry in oil at 360 degrees.  The second batch cooked for a little longer than the first, so we had half that were a bit firmer and half that had zucchini that was super super soft.  I think I preferred the soft because of the way it contrasted with the crispy crispy coating, but if you are a huge zucchini fan, the crunch of the vegetable would probably be extremely satisfying for you.  They fried for around 5 minutes…this would vary depending on the heat of your oil and the size of your zucchini.  Keep an eye on them and watch the batter turn golden brown.  With fried things, you always want to pull them from the oil at a lighter color than you ultimately want them to be…they’ll keep cooking just a bit after you pull them out, and you don’t want them to be too dark!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I was frying up the zucchini (Which look WAY shinier than they actually were because of our camera’s flash), Matt made some Pacific Natural Food’s Buttery Sweet Corn soup with added canned corn kernels and some garlic toast to go on the side.  We had honey mustard dressing on the side for dipping!  This made a TON of zucchini fries and we didn’t get through all of them, but they’d make a fun appetizer for a big group of people because they go a long way!

Schvester interview!

Yay for boyfriends with fun sisters!  Dori interviewed me for a bloggy thing! She also interviewed Santana…I suggest you read that one…it’s very insightful into the mind of an adorable puppy.  Here are Dori’s questions to me:

• You’re trapped on the same island as me and my three foods, but you’re on the other side, where food is abundant. However, it’s boring. Luckily, you were allowed to take 3 books with you. What books would you take?

1. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife. Did you see this one coming?? I initially read this because my aunt had it and I was stuck at her house for a couple weeks…I read it in one day. It is unbelievable. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone who has read this and not loved it. The storyline plays to my romantic side and the idea of fated love versus constructed love and the consequences of believing in either is something that really appeals to me. The characters that Niffenegger creates, especially in Henry and Clare, are not particularly “good” people in the sense that fictional characters sometimes embody…they have major flaws, participate in not-so-nice activities, and are extremely rough around the edges, to say the least. And yet, you love them. The first time I read it, I was absolutely absorbed. The second time, I knew where it was going and that only made it better…I could more fully appreciate details, dialogue and confusing scenarios of Henry’s time traveling, and cried just as much towards the end of the novel. Amazing.

2. William Shakespeare, Hamlet. My absolute favorite Shakespeare (probably because my favorite high school teacher loved it). I’ve read it many times, have several copies, and memorized a sonnet or two in high school (only bits remain). If I could bring it as a set and only count it as one book, I’d also bring John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius, also recommended to me by Mrs. Miller, my AP English teacher. A prequel of sorts to Hamlet, this is Updike’s imagining of the love affair of Hamlet’s mother and uncle…I love stuff like this and I really enjoyed the combination of these two together. So we’ll just pretend that’s one book 🙂

3. Billy Collins, Picnic, Lightning. I would need a book of poetry, and I decided on this one simply because it has this poem, my favorite:

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes

(I would include the text here, but wordpress is annoying and I don’t have my computer with Live Writer on it)

• On this island, you are allowed to bring one photograph. What picture would you bring and why?

This one:

It makes me smile. A lot.

• You escaped from the island and are back in the Seattles. It is the last day of the world and you can go to any restaurant in Seattle. Where would you go and what would you order (it must be an item currently on their menu)?

Sooo tough. I think I’d have to say Red Mill‘s Double Bacon Deluxe with Cheese. There are probably a TON of places I could go and get an expensive fancy meal or something, but Red Mill is so amazing that they sometimes run out of beef because people love it so much!! When you order, you can see the grill in the back, and a stack of bacon ready to go on burgers, at least two feet tall. I’ve tried some other sandwiches there, but the burgers that come with the special Red Mill sauce are the best…Matt likes the Bleu Cheese burger (blech). I’d also need fries, onion rings, and a root beer!

(I stole this picture from their website…here is where I give them whatever credit they need to get for that to be OK)

• What is your favorite meal to cook? What is your least favorite?

After lots and lots of thought about this, I decided my most favorite to cook (right now, anyway) is Stir Fry! We do this at least every other week and I love it for a few reasons: a) I can use veggies from our CSA or others we find at the grocery store and I really enjoy the chopping and combining of vegetables. One of the most satisfying things for me is a nice pile of almost perfectly sliced or diced produce! b) It gives me a reason to order extra rice when we go out to dinner…leftover rice makes better fried rice…it has a little more starch and cold rice will have a nicer texture when it’s fried. c) I can play with the ingredients and make a completely different dish from one week to the next (one of my favorite things about cooking)– different veggies, add some peanuts (or a little peanut butter to change the sauce!), switch out the rice for noodles and make lo mein…so many possibilities. d) I get a huge amount of satisfaction from lining all my ingredients up, chopped, mixed, ready to go in the sizzling hot pan (I need a new wok!!)…and once everything is chopped the entire meal will come together in less than 15 minutes!

I’ve also been thinking lots about my least favorite meal to cook…I don’t think I have one. If I don’t like to cook something, I don’t make it. Period. If I am craving something I don’t enjoy cooking (or don’t feel like cooking right then), we make something else or go out. Cooking for me is really about enjoying the act of it. Ironically, considering my most favorite meal to cook, I do HATE cooking rice itself. I need a rice cooker…desperately. We’ve taken to using boil-in-a-bag four minute rice…I follow recipes, instructions on packages, cook books, the internet, everything I can find…my rice either overcooks, burns, turns to mush, doesn’t absorb any water and stays completely uncooked…something inevitably goes wrong and the rice is practically inedible. This is the case mostly for the times when I am just making plain, basic, straightforward rice. If it’s in a casserole or something like that, I can make it work usually. It’s horrible…it frustrates me to no end, and I just can’t figure out. So I’ve sort of given up on it for now. Once we have a kitchen with room for a rice-cooker, that is definitely on my kitchen list!

• What is your favorite ingredient? What makes it so special?

Matt and I had to have a conversation about what actually counts as an ingredient.

Matt took “ingredient” to mean something more specific: spices, seasonings, flour, etc. If this is the case, I’d say cumin. My favorite spice by far. Strong and smoky, but it blends nicely with other flavors. I use it a lot….probably way too much.

I took a very broad view and said, of course, BACON! Bacon has been getting a lot of hype lately with bacon-flavored salt, bacon lollipops, and other crazy novelties. Bacon is amazing. I don’t need to put bacon salt on everything or have it in every meal or anything like that. I do have two cookbooks, both gifts from my friend Bob, that focus on bacon (the fact that he has given me these is really indicative of the roots of our friendship). Everything Tastes Better With Bacon (if you like bacon, you should buy this cookbook simply for the photographs) and Seduced by Bacon. Amazing. I know that when I’m cooking a dish that includes bacon, I can count on that bacon to bring an amazing, rounded, satisfying flavor to the party. If I’m making bacon as a side, I know that I need to hide it from Matt. V and I used to talk about which dishes were becoming my “signatures”…ones that I could make practically in my sleep and that were my fail-safe, go-to dishes for a potluck or a last-minute dinner get together. One of the first on this list was Green Beans with Bacon, which started with a generous amount of bacon, chopped and cooked down to crispy bits, leaving some grease in which to caramelize some sweet onions. The onions met up with garlic and fresh green beans and a bit of broth to simmer until the green beans were cooked through. With a little salt and black pepper at the end and the crunchy bacon thrown back on top, this is simple and delicious. The first time I put it together, it was spur of the moment and without a recipe…I was ridiculously pleased. I’ve also made it for vegetarians, cooking the bacon separately from the onions and green beans (cooked in veggie stock of course). Bacon fans topped theirs with bacon. Given the choice, I use the bacon drippings to cook the onions because it just brings way more flavor to the overall dish, but green beans, onion and garlic have a lot going on by themselves, so it works either way.

• What is your idea of a perfect weekend afternoon when you have NOTHING that needs to get done and are free to spend it however you like?

Easy: Matt + Puppy + Couch + Chinese + Pajamas + NY Times Crossword/Netflix 🙂

______________________________________________________

The rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.” If a few people want interviews, I will randomly pick one.

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

…..
I had planned to include some food pictures from dinner last night, but those will have to wait because we’re off to the gym to get a tour (even though Matt is already a member) and switch over to a joint membership so we can play racquetball and other fun things on a regular basis together!! My hope is to get into a routine of going to the gym and wandering around Pike Place every weekend (especially once the weather actually starts to get nice for real).  Ideally, the 2nd day of the weekend would include taking Santana to the off-leash park and walking around Green Lake! Fun! I can’t wait for Spring/Summer!

Mexi-breakfast-dinner!

I mentioned in my last post that because of my last roommate, I have become spectacular at turning leftovers into something new and this morning I got up early to turn some leftover onions and peppers into the base of a crock pot full of chili (I added some ground beef, a few cans of different types of beans, a can of diced tomatoes, loads of spices, and some garlic and it has been simmering for almost 12 hours now..I can’t wait!).  So, leftovers have been on my mind….

A few weeks ago we made a roasted pork tenderloin with some cheese grits and mashed yams.  The yams and pork were a delicious lunch for me the next day, and a few days later we threw together a bunch of random ingredients to make a dinner neither of us had planned for…a huevos rancheros/huevos motuleños-type dinner with a spicy, cheesy southern twist.  Our cheese grits had solidified in the fridge, so we turned them into adorable cut-out hearts (it was the first cookie-cutter I could find!):

They got pan fried until they were gooey and gorgeously browned.  To go with them I fried up some leftover andouille sausage (from this Cajun Quiche recipe I had used for a knitting party with some co-workers), added some pinto beans and sweet corn to heat through.   I have been adding corn to things as often as possible recently…Matt and I are both in love with the little crunch of sweetness it brings to soups and other creamy things (I’m surprised there was none inside of the grits, actually).

The mix went on the side of the grits, and I topped each plate with two fried eggs with runny yolks (mostly).  Also note that the same pan was used for the grits and the sausage/corn/beans… easy cleanup!

Here’s the finished product:

Both of us were surprised by how quickly this came together and how well all of the thrown-together flavors worked together.  This was one of those nights where we just sort of stand in the kitchen peeking into the fridge and the cupboards, not really sure what to eat…lots of times we’d settle on something like blah sandwiches or something from the freezer, but for whatever reason on this particular night, creativity was our friend and we ended up with a spectacular dinner!  I have been on a kick recently where I crave breakfast burritos, huevos rancheros, and really any other mexican for breakfast.  It’s a somewhat new thing, but apparently it is transforming into a love of mexican-inspired breakfast foods for dinner!

Also, Santana tried to help:

(Also notice the mess that is our kitchen and the many hand towels on the floor…usually while we wash dishes and cook, we manage to spill anything that can be spilled, and towels get dropped to the floor to mop it up…at the end of the night we try to corral all of these towels into the hamper so our kitchen floor is not quite a death trap. If you are visiting, just beware.)