Twist on Pasta Arrabiata

One week you read that salmon's the best thing you can eat, and the next it's full of mercury, and then it's ok again. Very confusing. One of the few things that I've read nutritionists agree on, along with almonds and whole grains, is beans. Since we already don't really get enough protein (I think I've made maybe three things with meat in them), I've trying to work legumes into our diet more and more. They're also cheap and full of fiber. Good things!

Today I added a can of cannelloni beans (white kidney beans) into my usual Pasta Arrabiata. We both gave it a big thumbs up. The beans added a nice creamy texture. I just added them in with the tomatoes.

You may be wondering why I'm not posting more often as of late. The truth is, I'm not really cooking all that much with all the vegetables and fruit that taste pretty great just on their own. Yesterday I sat down with some watermelon I bought on Saturday and I think I must have eaten 3 cups before I made myself stop for fear of gastrointestinal distress. It's also just too stinking hot to cook up big productions. So, maybe in a few weeks I'll get the cooking bug again.

In other news, I made an appointment to have my eyes checked on Friday. Chris has been saying for years that I squint when I read, and yesterday I caught myself holding a letter at arm's length. This is very distressing. Needing reading glasses is, to me, a sign of age, whereas simply having bad eyesight since childhood is a genetic thing. I think I really did the eyes in with all the reading I had to do in graduate school and 8 hours on the computer every day since hasn't helped them any. As Indiana Jones says, it's not the years, it's the mileage. Sigh! Cross your fingers for me, I don't want glasses!

Beijing's pollution

I came across this website about China's pollution. I thought it was pretty balanced and informative. http://www.asiasociety.org/beijingair/#longing-for-blue-skies

Watermelon Salad

Work continues to be busy, so luckily this one was pretty easy.

1/2 c chopped red onion
3 Tbls fresh lime juice (anout 2 limes)
4 cups cubed seeded watermelon (about half a smallish watermelon)
1/4 cup pitted kalamata olives
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh mint
1/2 cup (2 ounces) feta cheese, crumbled

Combine onion and juice in a bowl and let stand for 10 minutes. Add remained ingredients, except for cheese. Cover and chill 1 hour, and sprinkle with cheese just before serving.

RESUTLS: now, I know it sounds weird, but it was really really good. I thought 1/2 cups of onions was a little too much, but I'm not really a fan of raw onions to begin with. It was sweet and savory and a little salty and really refreshing on a hot day.

By the way, I made the salad on Saturday, but this posting was stragetically delayed until Chris went away for the weekend. He HATED it, and asked if it would be ok to trash this recipe on the blog. I said ok...but I thought you all might like to bask in optimism for a few days before he had a chance to chime in. I think he didn't like the onions, either, but had a much more extreme reaction than I did.

Bethie made her own wordle with my blog a couple weeks ago. Here's her note:

You really like the word "dough", but not "doh!"

Orange Cookies

Remember those lime cookies I made a while ago? I brought them into work and Ross said that his mom makes orange cookies, which are his favorite cookies in the world. Six months later, she sent him the recipe to give to me. It seems to be from a church cookbook fundraiser, one in which everyone knows the contributers and would enjoy the little anecdotes about how Mrs. Wallace and her daughter have differing baking strategies. :) That was a nice touch. This made about twice as many cookies as a nestle toll house recipe.

2 C. sugar
1 c. Shortening
1 tsp. salt
3 eggs
2 oranges (grated rind and juice)
1 c. buttermilk
4.5 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder

Icing:
1 orange (grated rind and juice)
1 box powdered sugar
1 Tbles butter (optional)

Cream together sugar, shortening, and salt. Add egges, rind, and juice of the 2 oranges and buttermilk. Beat well. Add flour, soda, and baking powder. Blend well. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

While still warm, frost with icing made from orange rind and juice and sugar, combine until smooth before icing. (I used a knife to spread it on the cookies, working over the icing bowl).

Barbara Dorsey bakes her cookies at 350 for 10 minutes. She also adds 1 tbls butter to icing.

RESULTS: These turned out really light and fluffy. The cookies themselves don't have a lot of flavor, but the icing brings it all together. Because of the two weirdly different cooking times and temperatures, I split the difference and cooked them at 375 for 12 minutes. I think next time I'll try it on the higher temp and the longer time, to see what they would be like a little cruchier.

Sweet Corn and Squash Soup

Got lots of corn and squash? Have I got the soup for you! From Cooking Light:


This delicately flavored dish is a choice opener for a meal featuring seasonal vegetables. Chopped chives are a nice garnish if squash blossoms aren't available. Make this up to one day ahead; cover and refrigerate. Gently reheat before serving.

1 tablespoon butter
2 cups chopped onion (about 1 large)
4 cups fresh corn kernels (about 7 ears)
3 cups water
2 cups chopped yellow squash
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
6 fresh squash blossoms, thinly sliced (optional)

1. Melt butter in a Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add onion to pan; cover and cook 10 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally. Add corn and next 4 ingredients (through pepper); bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes. Cool slightly. Place half of corn mixture in a blender. Remove center piece of blender lid (to allow steam to escape); secure blender lid on blender. Place a clean towel over opening in blender lid (to avoid splatters). Blend until smooth. Strain corn mixture through a sieve into a large bowl; discard solids. Repeat procedure with remaining corn mixture. Garnish with squash blossom slices, if desired.

Yield: 6 servings (serving size: about 3/4 cup soup)

RESULTS: I used my stick blender rather than the blender blender. I had a lot of "solids", but I also didn't feel like straining them all out, I kinda like a chewy soup, so I sort of did half and half. Maybe it's because all those solids were still in there, but it was surprisingly filling. It turned out really nice; delicate is definitely the word to describe the flavor. If you want to try this soup, I would recommend checking out the reviews at My Recipes. They had some good suggestions for rounding out the flavor. I really like the goat cheese idea.

Angel Biscuits

From Cooking Light:


1 package dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons)
1/2 cup warm water (100° to 110°)
5 cups all-purpose flour (about 22 1/2 ounces)
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
2 cups low-fat buttermilk
Cooking spray
1 tablespoon butter, melted

Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 cup warm water in a small bowl, and let stand for 5 minutes.
Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and next 4 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl. Cut in shortening with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add yeast mixture and buttermilk to flour mixture; stir just until moist. Cover and chill 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 450°.
Turn the dough out onto a heavily floured surface; knead lightly 5 times. Roll dough to a 1/2-inch thickness; cut with a 2 1/2-inch biscuit cutter. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Brush the melted butter over the biscuit tops. Bake at 450° for 12 minutes or until golden.


RESULTS: Well, these didn't turn out like the picture, but they werew still good. I think I was having, in part, a similar problem as the fritters. The dough was really really moist, more like drop biscuits. It didn't really occur to me that it was too moist until I tried to "knead" the dough and got nowhere. The taste is really good, though, and I think as long as you add more flour if you need it, it's good. I put butter on it, and froze the rest for a rainy day.

Chocolate Fritters

1 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch salt
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 lemon, zested
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus 2 cups extra-virgin olive oil, for frying (my cookbook says 4 cups)
2 tablespoons sweet white wine (my cookbook says dry white wine)
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate, chopped medium fine
1/3 cup hazelnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
1/4 cup apricot jam (cookbook says 1/2 cup)
1 egg, lightly beaten
Honey, for brushing the fritters

Place the flour on a clean work surface and add the salt, sugar, lemon zest, oil, and enough wine to make a firm but tender dough. Knead for 5 minutes, then wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest 30 minutes.
In the meantime, make the filling by combining the chocolate, nuts, and jam and mix with a spoon. Set aside, covered.
(Cookbook says to flour the work surface) Roll the dough out to 1/4-inch thickness and, using a 3-inch cookie cutter, cut out as many circles as possible. Place a dab of filling on each circle of dough, moisten the edges with a bit of beaten egg, and fold each round in half, pressing them shut with finger pressure or a fork.
In a tall-sided pot, heat the oil to 350 degrees F and fry the until they are deep golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Brush each fritter with honey and serve hot or cold.

RESULTS: Suz has never seen An Affair to Remember, so I made her come over last night to watch it, and we thought we'd try a recipe that we saw in Mario's cookbook that caught both our eyes. The picture looks gorgeous, almost like perfectly brown hushpuppies with chocolate inside them. Long story short, it was disastrous, and I'm not sure why. The dough was very damp, and I don't know if that'd because of the extreme humidity we've been having or what, but it was damp and greasy. When we put the filling in, the dough teared, and all the chocolate came out when we fried them. They didn't taste moist and gooey like the picture looks like they'd taste, they were oily and crumbly and awful. The filling was extremely tasty, though. Suz thought that maybe it was just a bad recipe, because we followed it really closely. I don't have a lot of frying, much less deep frying, experience, so I wanted to do it by the book, but it was just terrible. At first we thought we didn't have enough flour in it (because of the humidly), but we added some and the dough got really tough really quickly. Also, in the book he says it'll make 18 fritters, and we were rolling the dough as thin as we could without tearing it, much thinner actually than 1/4 inch, and we got 11. We tried making some with thicker dough, and it didn't tear so much, but we couldn't have gotten 18 out of it, and besides it still didn't fry up right. Maybe my oil was too hot? But it was on 350 on the nose.... I don't know...

Anyway, I did a search for the recipe online and I found this, which is exactly the same except for the parts that I noted. Nothing, I think, that would justify the extremely different results than what we got (I do think the filling had a little too much apricot in it, but it was still nice). Anyone have any ideas? I'm stumped. More so because a lady on Amazon says she makes them for her husband all the time, and the online recipe got 5 stars from another lady. I just don't get it!

I found this neat website called wordle.net. You enter in a block of text and it arranges it so the most commonly used words are bigger than less commonly used words, and then you can mess around with the font, etc. I don't know, it's indoor fun for a super hot day. Here's one I made from an article about Phoenix finding water on Mars. (I'm kind of geeking out about that, I think it's so cool!) If you click on it, it'll take you to the site and you can see a bigger image.