Anyway, I’ll be mostly relaxing this weekend and doing lots of cooking.  But on Saturday I’m taking a little day trip to the place pictured on the right!  It’s a brewery!  I’m gonna bring my camera so hopefully I can get some good pics.

I’m going out of town for a good chunk of time next week for work so I wanted to make some freezable dishes so Betsy doesn’t starve to death while I’m gone (I’m exaggerating of course (but not really)).  She came up with the idea to make frozen mini pizzas and I think that’s a pretty fantastic idea.

You guys can pick the toppings though!

Plus a few links!

Reverse Root Beer Float – Well this is just clever and fun.  Take a root beer float.  Flip it on it’s head with root beer ice cream and cream soda!  Love it.  (@ The Frozen Fix)

Pickled Serrano Peppers – I have a pickling problem right now.  And the problem is that I just can’t seem to around to pickling anything even though they tend to be my favorite foods.  Anyway, these look delicious. (@ Pinch My Salt)

Picnic Breakfast Burritos – These are just beautiful photos.  The kind of photos that make you hungry for breakfast burritos.  Or breakfast tacos.  Both are options here. (@ Sprouted Kitchen)

The Green Gumbo – Yet another thing that I’ve never tried my hand at!  It’s amazing how much you can cook and still have so much left to cook.  This is my kind of dish though: spicy, salty, and colorful.  Love it.  (@ No Recipes)

Fresh Three Bean Salad – For something a little lighter that would be great for a nice Labor Day picnic, check out this simple and colorful bean salad.  Healthy and delicious.  (@ Former Chef)

Have a good weekend everyone!

Photo by Bernt Rostad.

Mushroom. Packed.

I hope you like mushrooms.  I mean I hope you really like mushrooms.  If you don’t you might as well hit up some other food blog today because I think that this recipe borders on insane when it comes to the amount of mushrooms.

But if you like mushrooms.  Well.  Then you are in for a treat!

I should note that the original recipe for this dish was mushroom-packed, but not mushroom-explodingly-packed.  The thing is that when I put it on the poll last week I thought it was a vegetarian recipe.  This is largely due to my inability to read the English language.

Anyway, only after the recipe had secured victory did I realize that it was, in fact, pretty meat-packed.  So I decided to make it vegetarian.  That meant substituting about 2 pounds of ground beef with 2 pounds of mushrooms and vegetables.

Honestly, I didn’t even think it would work.  Luckily, it not only worked, but turned out to be very delicious!

If you like mushrooms that is.

Mushroom Meatloaf (The original recipe was in Sept. 2010 Bon Appétit, but I changed almost everything about it)
Serves 4-6.

The Loaf:
- 2 1/2 pounds assorted mushrooms (I used a mix of cremini and white button), chopped
- 3 large leeks, cleaned, quartered, and chopped
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 2 large eggs
- 1 Cup bread crumbs
- 2 Tablespoons heavy cream
- 1 Tablespoon soy sauce
- 1/2 Teaspoon cayenne
- 1 Teaspoon garam masala (optional)
- 1 Teaspoon salt
- 1 Teaspoon pepper

The Gravy:
- 1 1/2 pounds mushrooms, sliced thin (I used all cremini for this)
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 2 large carrots, chopped
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 Tablespoon fresh thyme
- 1 Cup dry red wine
- 6 Cups low-sodium vegetable stock
- 2 Tablespoons butter, soft
- 2 Tablespoons flour
- 1/4 Cup cream

Glaze for Loaf:
- 1/3 Cup ketchup
- 1 Teaspoon soy sauce
- 1 Teaspoon chili sauce (like sriracha.  You could up this if you want.)
- 1 Teaspoon vegetable oil
- 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
- Pinch of salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
- Loaf pan

Mushroom Heaven. I guess that I should’ve known that this recipe wasn’t vegetarian because it’s called meatloaf and not mushloaf, but for some reason I just didn’t get the memo.  Obviously, I’m not opposed to meat, I was just in the mood for a veg dish.  You could substitute some of the mushrooms in the loaf for ground beef and continue with the recipe.

As is though, you need to wash and slice a huge amount of ‘shrooms.

Just some of the many mushrooms needed.

Making the Gravy. The gravy takes longer than the loaf to make so it’s a good idea to get it started first.  Chop up all your veggies pretty evenly (the mushrooms can be sliced as pictured above) and add them all to a medium saucepan with the olive oil.

Put this over medium-high heat and cook it, stirring occasionally, until all the veggies start to cook down.

Gravy is good.

It’ll take probably 15-20 minutes (you can start making the loaf while it cooks), but eventually most of the water should be cooked out of the veggies.  Add the red wine at this point along with a pinch of salt and pepper.

It should be smelling good!

A little wine goes a long way.

Once the wine cooks down for a few minutes, add all your vegetable stock and thyme and bring the sauce to a simmer.  Turn your heat down to medium-low and let it simmer uncovered for 30 minutes or so until it reduces by about half.  You should have about 4-5 cups of gravy at the end.

Making the loaf. Since the gravy is pretty low maintenance (just stirring occasionally), you can prep the loaf while it simmers.

You start by, yep you guessed it, chopping a huge amount of mushrooms.  The recipe says to process these, but I just sliced them and then chopped them up roughly.  I figured they would cook down quite a bit, which they did.

More mushrooms!

Chop up the leeks as well and add the mushrooms and leeks to a large skillet over medium-high heat with a few Tablespoons of oil.  Stir them occasionally and cook until the mushrooms release their liquid and most of the liquid cooks out.

If it gives you an idea of how much these will cook down, this pan was completely full when I started cooking them.

All cooked down.

Once the veggies cook down completely, cool them down until they are room temperature and then mix them up with all your other loaf ingredients.  Depending on how much liquid is left from the mushrooms, you might need to add more or less bread crumbs.

The original recipe called for 1/2 Cup but I had to double it to get my loaf to stay together.

Once the mixture is moldable and sticks together, line a loaf pan with plastic wrap and shovel in all the mixture.  Really press this down to make sure the loaf is well formed.

Betsy was skeptical...

Next, line a baking sheet with parchment paper, invert the loaf pan and pull it off.  It should slide right off and then you can remove the plastic wrap revealing a perfectly formed free-standing loaf!

Victory!

Why not just bake it in the loaf pan? Well, you definitely can.   In fact, the recipe says to.  Obviously, if you want to bake it in the loaf pan, DON’T line the pan with plastic wrap before you bake it.

Ever since I tried the free-form loaf for my magnificent meatloaf, it’s just the way I always make any kind of loaf now.

Either way though, slide your loaf into a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes to set.  Since there’s no meat, it’ll cook a lot faster.  If you use meat, you’ll want to cook it for probably 75 minutes.

Back to the gravy! Your gravy should be reduced by now, but still very liquid.  We need to thicken it up a bit.  I was skeptical of the method that BA recommended for this as I’ve never done it before, but it actually worked like a charm.

Instead of making a traditional roux on a stove top, they instructed to just mix together the flour, soft butter, and cream in a small bowl until it forms a smooth paste.

Cheater's Roux...

While your gravy mixture is simmering, whisk this into the pan and continue whisking until there are no lumps.  I really didn’t think this would work, but it thickened up my sauce almost immediately and it all turned a very silky smooth consistency.

See?

Yum.

Back to the loaf! The good think about baking a loaf free-form like this is that you can slather on a glaze all over the entire thing.  If you use a pan, this isn’t nearly as effective since the pan has, well, walls.

The glaze I used for this recipe is really simple.  Just mix up all the ingredients and slather it on all over the loaf.  I like to add my glaze about 10-15 minutes before the loaf is done cooking.  Earlier than that and it’ll burn.

Once your loaf is done, let it cool for a few minutes and slice it up!

A slice of mushroom heaven.

Serving.  Obviously you serve this with gravy.  Visually, it looks better if you put the loaf on top of the gravy.

Also, if you want to get really fancy and take this up another notch (like it needs another notch), after you slice your loaf, sear it off in a skillet for a few minutes per side over high heat.

That’s how I got my pieces to be nice and crispy on the sides.  I also sprinkled on some fresh thyme which goes well with mushrooms.

Very delicious.

The Mushloaf.

This ended up being kind of a whacky recipe and definitely not a weeknight situation.  But the flavor was surprisingly awesome!

In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say that I didn’t miss the meat one bit in this meal.  The mushrooms actually give it a pretty meaty texture and deep earthy flavor that is very satisfying.

I think you could maybe even stuff a slice or two in a pita or between a few slices of bread and have a pretty decent sandwich the next day!

Beats most jarred stuff pretty easily.

Sometimes the only thing I want for dinner is a really good plate of pasta.  Maybe it’s the 1/4 Italian running through my veins but if I don’t get a big plate of pasta once a week, I get pretty cranky.

I usually don’t do anything too fancy with the pasta, but one thing that I haven’t done in a very long time is use a jarred sauce.  To me, they are always a bit  sugary and gloopy and not even that flavorful.  So I usually skip the jars and make my own sauce with canned tomatoes.

But hey.  It’s summertime so I try to use fresh tomatoes these days.  Of course the traditional way to make sauce is to buy large tomatoes, peel them, cook them down for hours, and flavor them with all kinds of spices.

I like that method just fine, but I don’t always have time for that business.  This is the way to cheat at tomato sauce by using cherry tomatoes!

Simple Cherry Tomato Pasta
Serves 4.

- 1 pound pasta (I like whole wheat spaghetti.)
- 2 pints (1 quart) ripe cherry tomatoes
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 3 or 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 onion, diced
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/4 Cup fresh basil, chopped
- Salt and pepper
- Optional spice add-ins: Red pepper flakes, dried marjoram, dried oregano, all to taste.

Starting the sauce. Even though it’s made from scratch, this is really a lazy man’s pasta sauce.

Pretty simple recipe!

Dice up the onion and garlic and then heat up the biggest wide pan you have.  I like one with high sides.  I’ve made this dish in a huge variety of pans including a dutch oven.  Whatever you have will probably work, but wider surface area the better because that ensures that the tomatoes aren’t piled on top of each other.

Add your oil to the pan and get it hot over medium high heat.  Then add the onions and garlic and get them cooking for a few minutes.

Then, and here’s the easy part, wash all your cherry tomatoes and throw them in.  Don’t worry about peeling them or coring them or any of that labor intensive stuff.  Just toss them in.

Doesn't get much easier.

They’ll sizzle and pop and smell good.  Eventually they’ll start to kind of wilt and give up.  This is when you can get aggressive and take a fork or spatula and start mushing them to bits.  This part is more fun than it is work in my opinion.

NOTE:  For those of you concerned about the skins or seeds or tiny cores in the tomatoes, it’s really nothing to be worried about.  You can barely even see them in the final product and the skins give a little texture to the dish which I find kind of nice actually.  If you’re going to peel and core the tomatoes though, by all means, use larger tomatoes.

Anyway, this is after about 10 minutes of cooking:

The transformation begins!

Turn the heat down to medium, add any extra spices you like (I like red pepper flakes) and let this simmer and reduce until it forms a pretty solid paste.  Now would be a good time to hit it with some salt and pepper also.

This is after about 25 minutes of simmering probably.  You’ll want to stir this every once in awhile, but it’s far from high maintenance.

Almost a paste.

Once you get it all reduced down, I would start cooking my pasta (your salted water should be boiling already dude).

As your pasta cooks, you want to add some flavor BACK into the tomatoes.  So add your white wine and use the liquid to scrape up any little bits that are in the pan.  Also add the huge amount of chopped basil!

Plus some basil and white wine!

Stir this all together and turn the heat down to low on the sauce.  The white wine should evaporate pretty quickly.

Hopefully, your pasta is ready now.  If it’s not and your sauce is getting dry then you might want to add a 1/4 Cup of pasta water (just scoop it out) to the sauce.  This will thin it a bit but also add some starch to the sauce which will actually help out it’s ending texture/flavor.

When your pasta is done just use some tongs to yank the pasta from the water and add it directly to the sauce.  Pasta water should be dripping from the pasta.  It’s all good.

Once you get all your pasta in the pot give it a good stir and you’re ready to go!

All mixed up!

I serve this with a good bit of grated parmesan cheese, some fresh cracked black pepper, and a side salad.

Very delicious.

Lots of parm obviously.

So, if you’ve been timing this recipe you might notice that the pasta sauce itself does need to simmer for probably 35-45 minutes.  So I’m not sure that I’d categorize this as a completely “quick” recipe, but the good news is that it requires very little chopping and very little monitoring.

The ending sauce is light yet really flavorful and has a great texture.

If you have a pasta fetish like me, this is a great summer option.

If you live in the U.S. (and haven’t been living under a rock), you probably know that we’re having a bit of an egg problem here these days.  Over the last few weeks over half a billion (WITH A B!) eggs have been recalled from stores all over the nation.

As tends to be the case when there is a food recall, the situation has been a bit confusing and so I did some research on what exactly the recall means for you and I’ll give you my thoughts on the whole deal as well.

Are Your Eggs at Risk? In terms of this recall, it’s very easy to find this out.  The FDA has a thorough database of egg products that you should not purchase or use at this time.  Check out their Shell Eggs Recall Product List and you can search by brand name or bar code or any number of other methods to find out if your eggs are recalled.

If the eggs in your fridge are on this list you should trash them or return them to the store right away.

In the long term, the question of egg safety is a much larger one and one that requires a bit more background.

Where Do My Eggs Come From? I actually think that this is an important question regarding all food that you buy since it’s becoming clearer and clearer that we can’t trust the people in charge to guarantee food safety (See spinach, beef, etc.)

But in the case of eggs, a relatively small number of farms produce a huge number of the eggs consumed.  About 600 farms produce roughly 80% of the eggs we eat (Source).  That’s kind of astounding considering we consume billions of eggs a year just in the U.S.

How do they do it you might ask?  Well, they cram millions chickens into tiny boxes and have very little regard (very little is even being nice I think ) to their health and happiness.  The main goal of these farms is to pump out as many eggs as possible every hour of every day.

Because of this, when a problem is detected (usually only after people die), then all the millions of eggs from one farm have to be recalled to deal with it.

If you want to read something really scary, check out the FDA inspection report that was released a few days ago from one of the recalled farms. Reading stuff like this makes me want to raise my own chickens.

So, in short, this is where your eggs are coming from.

A Race to the Bottom. While the exact cause of the most recent outbreak is still unknown (although I thought I saw that it had to do with feed issues I couldn’t find anything to back that up), I doubt that anyone would argue that the factory-type setting we raise these chickens in is at the root of the problem.

And, believe it or not, these factories don’t exist because there is a Cruella de Vil character out there that just loves seeing chickens suffer and people die.  These factories and conditions exist not because we allow them, but because we demand them.

We might not be demanding them specifically (“I want chickens to be in cramped, infected living conditions!”), but we do demand them in a roundabout way (“I want really cheap eggs”).

Because most American consumers choose price as the most important data point when it comes to food purchases, producers try to minimize that and we end up with whatever quality we end up with.  Of course there are supposed to be quality standards but when (not if) they are broken the company can continue to produce food for years sometimes before anyone catches on.

And so we’ve helped create a race to the bottom.  Until a large percentage of people start to realize that there are other factors besides the numbers on the price tag that should go into your food buying decisions, I doubt anything will change in this department.

Making Eggs Safe.  At the end of the day, there are only two ways to make 100% sure the eggs you eat are free from Salmonella:

1) Cook the crap out of it.
2) Pasteurize all eggs.

Neither of these answers is ideal in my opinion.  In most dishes, I’d rather just not have an egg than have an overcooked egg so option one isn’t really an option for me.

While I don’t think Option 2 will happen, it could be that the FDA requires all eggs to be pasteurized before they could be sold.  This would affect the flavor and nutrients in the egg, but it also doesn’t really solve the problem.  It would just cover it up.

If chickens are allowed to live in a reasonable setting and given healthy feed and clean conditions (like almost all small farms do), then the chances of disease in their eggs is about as close to zero as you can get.

My Strategy. I’m not easily scared, but this all does kind of make me shiver because I have this really deep, strange feeling that when something like this happens we are being given a glimpse at the tip of a crazy iceberg of a problem that has developed in this country.

In an attempt to produce really cheap food, we’re allowing for some really scary business to go down.

So, when it comes to eggs, this is the strategy I use to try to keep myself from vomiting my guts out and also hopefully support positive change:

1) If I’m at a restaurant, unless I’m really comfortable in the quality of the food at that restaurant, I’m either not ordering eggs or I’m ordering them cooked solid.  For me that means less eggs benedict and more omelets.

2) Whenever I can, I buy eggs from my local farmer’s market.  Without raising your own chickens (I really want to), it’s as close as you can get to the source.  Sure.  This means that I pay $5-$6 for a carton of eggs, but the quality is far superior and I can rest easy knowing that I’m feeding myself and my guests good, healthy food.

3) I’m going to start doing some research on the egg brands available to me at my local supermarkets.  Egg carton labels are very confusing, but if you can wade through them you can find out a lot.  I want to make informed decisions and that means making decisions based on things other than price.

This might mean that I’m paying more for my eggs, but it’s a small price to pay in my opinion.

So, did this most recent recall scare the yolk out of you?

Has it changed your buying decisions?  Leave a comment!

More reading:

- Great article on Foodconsumer.org on the recent recall.

- Eggs and Egg products at foodsafety.gov.

- The FDA Food page where they announce all this depressing stuff.

- FDA Inspection Report on Hillandale Farms

The flavors in this are perfect for summer.

This dish has maybe taken me longer to post than any single dish ever on Macheesmo.  It’s not because I kept screwing it up either.  It’s because I kept somehow losing the photos!  The photos in this post are from the third take on this dish.

While I was mildly irritated at making the same dish three times just from a posting point of view, I was perfectly happy making this dish three times from an eating point of view, because man is it good.

Mojo chicken (pronounced Mo-ho) is a Cuban dish.  You can actually mojo a bunch of stuff:  shrimp, pork, etc.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen mojo veggies though.  It’s usually meat.  I went with chicken just out of simplicity here.

Now I’m not Cuban.  I’ve never been to Cuba.  I’ve eaten mojo-something like maybe half a dozen times.  My point is that I make this my own way but it might not be traditional.  Don’t be afraid to tell me off in the comments, or set me right, if you disagree with my mojo.

Mojo Chicken
Serves 4.

- 4 skin on pieces of chicken (I usually do a mix between thighs and breasts).
- 2 Cups orange juice
- 2 limes, juiced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and grated
- 1/4 Cup cilantro, chopped
- 1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 Teaspoon cumin
- Salt and pepper

Cilantro rice:
- Basmati rice (I usually cook 2 cups at a time.  Just cook according to package.)
- 1 lime, juice
- 2-3 Tablespoons cilantro, chopped

Quick Savory black beans:
- 1 can black beans
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 red onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 Teaspoon paprika
- Salt and pepper

This looks like a lot of ingredients, but a lot of things are duplicates so don’t freak out on me here.

Marinating the Chicken. This is a citrus packed marinade which is great because the citrus helps tenderize the meat.  These are the basics:

You could go some different directions here.

If you wanted to be really thorough here you could puree the ginger, garlic, and cilantro together which would make it a much smoother marinade, but I just diced everything really finely and then whisked together all the liquid ingredients.

Flavor town!

Before you marinate the chicken, pour about 1/2 a cup of marinade and reserve it for later.  It’s awesome to pour over the finished dish.

Then just place all your chicken pieces in the marinade.  Skin on chicken is always the best in my opinion, but you can definitely use skinless if that’s your thing.

I let this sit for at least an hour, but overnight would be just fine.

The longer the better.

Making the black beans. I actually make this dish on a weeknight normally and making a batch of dried beans isn’t always practical so this is my quick way to spice up canned black beans.  Basically, just chop up the red onion and garlic.

A bit of a shortcut, but still good.

In a medium saucepan, add the olive oil over medium-high heat and then toss in your onions.  Cook the onions for a few minutes until they start to soften, then add the garlic and paprika.  Drain your black beans and then stir the beans into the onions.  Season a bit with salt and pepper and stir until the beans are warmed.

This prep takes just a few minutes but adds a ton of flavor to the canned beans.

Cilantro Rice. This is kind of an optional deal also, but I really like it.  Basically, I just cook basmati rice as directed and when it’s done I add a few Tablespoons of lime juice and a bunch of chopped cilantro.

This stuff is addictive.

Kinda like Chipotle's...

Cooking the chicken. I actually think the best way to cook this chicken would be on a grill, but if you’ve read Macheesmo for awhile you’ll know that I’m very grill-less right now.  So I used a cast iron skillet.

Regardless of how you cook it, the key is to cook it on high heat for awhile and then on lower heat for a bit to finish cooking the chicken all the way through.  You have to be a bit careful because the marinade can burn if you put it over high heat for too long.

I cooked mine on high heat for a few minutes per side and then transferred it to a 350 degree oven to finish cooking.  A few times while cooking I basted the chicken with a bit more marinade.  It took about 20 minutes in the oven to finish cooking.

A grill would work also.

To serve this awesome stuff, I laid out a bed of rice and then piled on some beans and topped it with the chicken.  Serve a little bit of the sauce on the side so you can pour it over the chicken and everything.

It’s a delicious dish.  The chicken is really tender and the citrus goes great with the smokey beans.

Very tender.

This dish has some great summer flavors actually.  All the citrus flavors are really refreshing.  And leftovers are just as good.

So get your mojo on and try this out!

A great way to start the day!

This may come as a complete surprise to you, but I do most of the cooking in our house.  I know.  Shocking right?!  But one area where Betsy has me crushed is in the daily breakfast department.

Before we started living together I used to not really eat breakfast at all.  My breakfast started with a big cup of coffee.  Of course, I was starving by lunchtime and would gorge myself on all kinds of snacks and stuff throughout the day.

Betsy on the other hand liked breakfast but she wasn’t much into heavy breakfasts.  She used to eat cereal everyday.

These days, however, we are both all about the breakfast smoothie.  This is her department entirely.  I rarely make one.  She’s been trying lots of different mixes over the last few months and she finally landed on one that I think is really solid.

We’ve been having this every morning for at least a month and I’m not sick of it at all.  It gives me lots of energy.  In fact, I get grumpy now if I don’t start my day with one.

Betsy’s Breakfast Smoothie
Makes 2 big smoothies.

- 1 Cup orange juice
- 1/2 Cup yogurt
- 1 banana
- 2 Cups assorted frozen fruit (we usually use a mix of mangos, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries)
- 1/2 Cup tofu (silken works best, but anything will work)
- 1/4 Cup milled flax seed

Necessary Equipment:
- A good blender (From Amazon.  This is the one I’ve used for over a year now every day.  Still runs like a charm.)

Making the Smoothie. Honestly, I don’t even think Betsy measures this recipe when she makes it every morning.  I tried to get close to what it looks like she uses.

I know it always starts with these things though.

Frozen fruit is key.

Frozen fruit is definitely key for a good smoothie.  It means you don’t have to add any ice at all.  We just buy the mixed berry frozen fruit packages and use those so the smoothies have a little bit of everything.  We went through a phase were we would buy the individual frozen varieties and try to perfect the mix, but it wasn’t really worth it.

On the order.  I’m honestly not really sure if the order matters when adding your ingredients to the blender.  I mean, after all, it is a blender.  It’s gonna blend whatever you put it in unless you have a really crappy one.

We usually do liquids, then soft stuff, then frozen stuff, but I’m not sure that it really makes a difference.

Order probably doesn't matter too much.

The two ingredients that we’ve most recently added to this mix is the tofu and the flax seed.  Some might say that this makes us hippies, but I say that it makes us healthy!

The tofu is packed with protein which keeps you full longer throughout the day (and trust me you can’t even taste it).  Meanwhile the flax seed is one of the best sources of fiber out there.

One note on the flax seed.  If you want to try it out, make sure you get the ground (or milled) variety and not the whole seeds.  You can’t really digest the whole seeds.

If you’re bored, here’s the full nutritional breakdown on ground flax.

That's tofu. Not feta.

If you’ve never tried adding flax to things like smoothies, I really recommend it.  And it’s not one of those hippie foods that’s crazy expensive either.  You just use a few tablespoons at a time and you can get almost a pound of it for a few bucks on Amazon.

Whole flax would be pointless I guess.

Ok.  So that’s the end of my flax rant.  And no I wasn’t paid by the Association for the Future of Flax to say those things.

Back to the smoothie.  Once you have all your stuff in the blender, just start it up!  If it’s too thick add a bit more OJ and if it’s too thin, add some more frozen fruit.  That’s all there is to it.

I really like my blender because it’s simple and it works.  It only has two speeds:  Pulse and ON.  I’ve never really understood those blenders with like 12 different speeds.

Old faithful!

Pour it into a glass and serve it immediately!  Actually, you can keep it in the fridge for 30 minutes or so without a problem, but it’s best right away in my mind.

Sometimes Betsy has one waiting for me when I get back from a morning run and that’s when I know I’m a lucky fella.

Great flavor and texture.

I’m not sure that I would attribute it entirely to these smoothies, but I’ve lost ten pounds this year which conveniently matches the amount of time we’ve been making smoothies for breakfast every day.

Get on the smoothie train people.  Seriously.

That leaves me cooking for a crowd.  Obviously I consider this a bonus because it means I don’t have to change out of my PJs.

The thing that makes this weekend more interesting (and a trend that I’m starting to notice) is that these visitors actually know about Macheesmo.  Therefore, they expect me to make really amazing food when they come over.

I’ll do my best to please of course.  Usually, when I know I’m cooking more than one meal for the same group, I try to do one surefire winner and one slightly more experimental dish.  That way they’ll get at least one good meal and one meal in the life of a food blogger (might be good or might be FAIL-city).

I’ll give you a hint about the experimental dish.  It’s a brunch dish.  And it involved curry.  You’ll see it next week, fail or no fail.

In other news, the new Bon Appétit has some really good stuff in it.  Let’s make something!

A few links!

10 Culinary Tools and Tricks – Some of these I knew, but some were new to me.  I definitely have never thought of using a PedEgg in the kitchen, but hey… why not? (@ HuffPo)

No Knead Pizza Dough – I’m a big fan of Jim Lahey’s no knead bread and I’ve heard about this pizza dough deal but haven’t gotten around to trying it.  I have a pretty solid pizza dough recipe and it would have to be as good and a lot easier for me to switch I think.  The verdict is still out. (@ TFIMB)

Canning Tomatoes - I swear the day after I have a pantry, I’m gonna start canning everything I can get my hands on.  You watch.  (@ The Bitten Word)

Pink Frosting with NO Food Coloring – This is fairly amazing.  I didn’t think it was possible to come up with something so pink without using artificial stuff.  Mark it down as the one billionth time I’ve been proven wrong. (@ Cupcake Project)

Mermaid Lotion – Of course, if I made this it would be MerMAN lotion, but either way this looks like a fun thing to make.  Maybe I’ll expand Macheesmo into the homemade products area… (@ The Hungry Mouse)

Have a good weekend everyone!

Photo by Jeremy Brooks.

This was a great summer soup!

Last week I went on a bit of a rant about canned soups (I’ve been ranting a lot lately).  After that it only seemed fair to actually make some soup.  As usual, when I posted a poll about soup last week, the one that I thought would win placed dead last and the option that I didn’t think had a chance won by a huge margin.

And so it goes…

Before the butter Nazi’s show up, I’ll admit that there’s some cream and butter in this guy, but there’s also a ton of fresh veggies and none of those odd preservatives that they put in the canned varieties.  Betsy and I have eaten this soup all week (because it makes a lot) and I’ve fallen in love with it.

Corn Chowder
Serves 8 as an appetizer.

- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 2 Serrano peppers, seeded and diced (or one jalapeno)
- 1 large carrot, diced (about 1 cup)
- 2 ribs of celery, diced
- 4 ears of corn, kernels cut off
- 2 medium potatoes
- 2 large peppers (I used one red pepper and one orange pepper)
- 5 Cups milk (I used 1%)
- 1 Cup heavy cream (get over it)
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 Teaspoon fresh thyme
- Salt and Pepper

Prepping the Soup. Most soups are really straightforward to make:  First, make a delicious base or stock and second add more delicious stuff to the already delicious base.

The first part, building the base, I think is even more important than adding stuff to it.  A watery or flavorless base will sink a soup.

To start this base out strong, we need to deal with our corn.  Find the freshest you can find!

So corny.

One trick about slicing the kernels off a corn cob is to stand the cobs in a medium bowl and slice the kernels off.  That way they fall in the bowl instead of scattering all over the counter.

So do that and save all your kernels.  Then snap each of your cobs in half and hang on to them.  There’s a surprising amount of flavor in these cobs and it would be a shame to waste it.

Don't throw these out!

Next, dice up a medium onion and melt your butter in a large saucepan over medium-high heat.  Once the butter is melted and hot, add the onions and cook until they are soft, but not browned.

It’ll take just a few minutes.  Stir it often and hit it with a pinch of salt.

Onions and butter!

While that cooks (or before if you aren’t a quick chopper), dice up your celery, carrots, and hot peppers.  Once the onions are soft add all of those things and the corn cobs to the pot.

Stir this all together for a few more minutes to get everything cooking and happy.

The base for the soup.

Once the celery and carrots start to soften a bit, it’s time to add the milk and cream.  This is really the only part you can screw up in this recipe so I’ll bold it:  Turn down the heat before you add the milk.

If you keep your heat on medium-high, then your dairy stuff is going to scald and burn.  That’s not a good recipe for soup.  So turn it down to medium-low and add all your dairy:  The milk and the cream.

Also, throw in that bay leaf!

Adding the liquid.

The Simmer. This next part is where patience pays off.  You need to bring your mixture to a simmer now, but if you do it too quickly you’ll burn the soup.  If you do it too slowly, you’ll die of hunger.

Ideally, it would take about 15 minutes to come to a simmer.  If yours isn’t simmering in 15 minutes, you can turn up the heat a bit.  Once it’s simmering, it needs to do so for 30 minutes total.  If you want a thicker final soup, uncover the soup for some amount of time.  I simmered mine for 20 minutes covered and then 10 minutes uncovered.

Stir it frequently to make sure your milk base isn’t burning on the bottom of the pan.

The Add-ins.  Obviously, we are going to add in all that corn we chopped off, but we’ll also want some potatoes and peppers.

Betsy thought these potatoes were little cubes of cheese.  Now that would be an interesting soup!

Betsy thought the potatoes was cheese.

Once your base is done simmering, fish out the cobs and the bay leaf and add in the potatoes first.  Let them cook for 5 minutes or so until they are tender.  It doesn’t take long if you dice them fairly small.

Then add the corn, and peppers, along with the fresh thyme, and a good pinch of salt and pepper.  Simmer for just a few more minutes and TASTE IT.

It might need more salt.  It might need more pepper.  Tasting it is very important.

Just a few more minutes...

Then you’re done!  Serve it up.  The base isn’t supposed to be super-thick.  It’s thinner than you might be used to seeing if you only eat canned chowder.  If you wanted a really thick base, you could simmer it uncovered for the entire 30 minutes and that would thicken it up.

I like mine a bit thinner though and I serve it with a lot of really crusty bread for dipping.

Soup's on!

This soup probably takes an hour to make, maybe a bit more, but it’s totally worth it in my opinion.  Betsy and I got three meals out of it.  Three really delicious meals out of it.

So if you have some fresh corn laying around these days (who doesn’t?), this would be a good way to put it to use!

Perfectly cooked!

I’ve almost (almost!) worked my way through all of our wedding presents.  I think we actually did a really nice job of registering for things that we will actually use in life.  Some of my pans are already a bit worn which I take as a good sign!

One of the presents that I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while now was a bamboo steamer we received.  I knew that I would use it and it would be awesome, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger.  Dumplings would be the obvious choice (I’ll make those later now that I’m warmed up), but I wanted to start with something even simpler.

Steamed fish is pretty hard to screw up because even if you overcook it, the moisture keeps it really tender.  I served this with a really delicious roasted veggie side and some good crusty bread.  It was a hit!

Steamed Salmon with Roasted Veggies
Serves 4.

- 4-6 ounces of nice salmon per person.  I bought about 1.25 pounds (20 ounces) of salmon and it was perfect for 4 servings.
- Some greens to layer in your steaming pot
- Salt and pepper

Roasted Veggies: (Adapted from Whole Living Magazine)
- 2 medium fennel bulbs, sliced
- 1 red pepper, sliced
- 1 orange pepper, sliced
- 1 can (16 ounces) chickpeas
- 1 pound seedless red grapes
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
- Bamboo steamer ($22 on my Opensky Store!)

The Steamer.  Like I said, I used a nice bamboo steamer for this dish, but it’s not necessary to have one of these to make the dish.  It’s just a heckuva lot easier if you do have one.

If you don’t though, here are two other methods you could use to steam the fish:

1) Make a Steamer – It’s a bit of work, but using instructions like these you can get creative and make a steamer that holds your fish and produces steam.  The problem with a system like this is that it isn’t terribly efficient.  The steam doesn’t really cook the fish as it rises.  But it will work.

2) Wrap it in parchment – You can also just wrap the fish in parchment paper with some salt and pepper and bake it at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or so.  The parchment will seal in any moisture from the fish, effectively steaming it.  I’ve made fish like this a few times and it’s always really good.

All of that said though, this steamer was the easiest thing to use ever.

Before we get into that though, let’s talk about the roasted veggies.

Yep. Those are grapes.

This might look like kind of a weird assortment of veggies, but trust me, the flavor combination is out of this world good.  I was obviously really skeptical about the grapes.  Will they explode?  Will they burn?  The answer is neither really, but they are tasty and go well with the other flavors.

Because we are roasting these guys, keep them in fairly large chunks.  For the fennel, cut off the green stems and cut it down the center.  Then remove the inner core and roughly slice the layers.

Everything else should be pretty standard to slice up.   Just add everything to a large bowl and toss it with the olive oil and salt and pepper!

Very interesting flavors.

Lay this out on two baking sheets and bake it at 425 degrees for about 30 minutes.  Be sure to stir it a few times as it cooks to make sure it cooks evenly.

Fishy Business.  For this recipe, I bought a nice piece of salmon and cut it down myself.  If you have a friendly fishmonger they might take care of this for you, but I consider it good practice.

To take the skin off the fish, take a sharp (preferably long and thin) knife and slowly run it down the length of the fish between the skin and the meat.  The skin should separate pretty easily.  Then you can chop your salmon into four even pieces!

Don’t forget the pin bones! Salmon almost always have a series of inter-muscular bones called pin bones.  The only reason it wouldn’t have these bones if it was processed for you already.  These bones are usually about 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches from the back side of the fillet.  If you want to provide your guests with a flawless salmon eating experience, take a pair of tweezers and pluck out all the bones.

If you’re me and feeding a some hungry people, just warn them that there will be some bones and skip this step.

Pin bones suck.

Season each piece of salmon well with salt and pepper and lay them in your steamer on a bed of greens.  Spinach works well for this or just any salad greens that you might have.

I already love my steamer!

What about the Skin? You know me… I hate wasting stuff.  Salmon skin happens to be one of the things that I hate wasting more than other things because you can make delicious salmon chips out of it!

Just slice the skin into strips and add them to a hot skillet with a bit of oil.  Cook them for a few minutes until they are really crispy and golden brown.  Then drain them on a towel.

Everyone will look at you funny until they try them.  There will be no leftovers.

For the adventurous...

Back to the veggies.  The veggies definitely take the longest to cook, so you want to start them first.  When they are done they’ll be a mix of textures and flavors that is just really wonderful.  The fennel goes well with the fish and the grapes are kind of sweet.

I’m making this mix again for sure.

The grapes were actually really good.

Cooking the Salmon.  Once you have the fish cut into appropriate pieces, it’s dumb simple to cook assuming you have a steamer.  Just stack the steamer up and set it over a pot of simmering water.  After about 10 minutes the fish should be perfectly cooked.  It might take a few minutes longer depending on the thickness of your fish.

I even served it with some of the wilted greens that it steamed on.

Crusty bread is a good side also.

I served it with some crusty bread that I toasted a bit.

This was a very healthy and simple dish to make.  I made it on a week night actually.

I liked the fish the best, but Betsy was a big fan of the roasted veggies.  I think I caught her sneaking some later in the night…

When I started Macheesmo almost two years ago, I really liked cooking but I was far from good at it.  I worried about every recipe and every technique.  I was afraid that if I bombed a dish my friends and family would disown me and my cat would pee on my pillow.

Of course, now I know that to be far from the truth and these days I even take some sort of sick pleasure in my failures because I know that I’ll learn from them.

All of this has led to me being a much better cook than I was two years ago and hopefully I’m giving all you lovely readers something to look forward to every day.  In fact, the site has kind of shifted focuses over the last year and now I’m focusing a lot more on ways to teach and inspire rather than just cook some dish I want to make.

Here’s a big fat warning for you though.  If you learn to be even a halfway decent home cook, it will completely destroy mid-range restaurants for you.

The Restaurant Ranges.  In general, I think you can put a restaurant into one of three categories and get a pretty good idea of what kind of food is going to be coming out of the kitchen.  One important thing to remember is that price isn’t the only characteristic that goes into categorizing for me although it’s a big one as I think it tells a lot about a place.

Low Range Restaurants – These are the burrito carts, empanada stands and New York hot dog vendors.  This is street food and it’s almost always delicious.  In my opinion, most low range restaurants provide a huge value and still make really awesome food.

You know why?  Because they have to!  Most of them live or die by the food they make.  They have no gimmicks to fall back on or marketing teams to deploy.  If their food is good, they will maybe succeed.  If it isn’t good they will fail.  So most likely if you hear about a place it’s going to be good.

A secondary characteristic of 99% of low range restaurants is that they produce a very small range of dishes.  They usually have just a few options and if you don’t like it, you can hit the road.  They can keep their costs low and quality surprisingly high by just minimizing the number of things they have to produce.

Upper Range Restaurants – These are your primo places.  They don’t have to be super-expensive, but they almost always have executive chefs with years of training and success under their belt.  Sure, they always have some marketing, but a good amount of the money the restaurant brings in goes right back into providing exceptional service and food.

If these places aren’t doing something fantastic then they almost always go out of business.  In fact, sometimes even the ones with excellent food still go out of business for other reasons.

One thing that most upper range places have in common with low range restaurants is a limited scope of dishes.  If you go to an upper range steakhouse, you won’t find any Indian food on the menu.

Mid Range Restaurants – Basically these are what’s left and it’s a huge number of places unfortunately.  Almost all fast food falls under this category.  Chain restaurants are definitely in this category.  Any place where the fries come free but if you add on a salad they charge you extra is almost for sure in this category.

Mid range restaurants usually employ a team of under-paid, poorly trained cooks and rely on gimmicks and marketing to sell food.  These restaurants almost always have a huge list of food options that cover a wide range of cuisines.  Ten page laminated menus are a good sign that you’re at a mid range restaurant.

For almost everything at a mid range restaurant, you could reproduce the same dish at home for half the price and twice the quality.  That can’t be said for the other two categories.

A Recent Example.  I spent the last weekend in Atlantic City with ten guys for a double bachelor party.  In short, it was mayhem, but there was one piece of the trip that I just have to write about:

We all ate at the exact same mid range sports bar every single night we were there.

I think by the last night we were all definitely sick of it, but ate there a third night in a row mainly for the novelty of saying we ate at the same crappy place three nights in a row.

It made sense to go there at least one night.  After all, they have cheap 40′s of beer (gimmick, but also hey… it’s 40 ounces of beer and we were at a bachelor party).

We all had a general idea of what we were in for at this place.  We were all on the same page about ordering some beers and some wings or a few burgers and fries and hitting the road.  Except one guy.  He apparently didn’t get the “Crappy sports bar vibe” and instead got a “This is a place of impeccable quality” vibe.

He ordered, and I kid you not, a glass of bourbon and the clams linguine.

Guess how good the clams linguine were?  Shockingly, the dish wasn’t anywhere close to this good and it cost a whopping $20.

My Point (and I have one).  My point is that if you learn even a few basics about cooking, you’ll start to see most restaurants for what they are:  Marketing used to sell really low quality food at average prices.

So take that as a warning or a blessing, but be ready for it if you start cooking at home on a regular basis.  Betsy has already proclaimed that I’ve ruined these places for her and I always just reply that she can thank me later!

The upside of all of this is that when you know some cooking basics and see a restaurant that produces amazing food, you can really start to respect the amount of time and effort that goes into it.

What are your feelings on mid range restaurants?  Do I have them categorized correctly?  What do you order when you find yourself at one?

Photo by NataschaM.