Cooking for life improvement

photo credit: TIME (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1628191_1626317_1631908,00.html)

I've been meaning to break my too-long blog hiatus for the last few weeks, and haven't been quite able to do it. I've had a little writer's block, I've been busy, and I actually haven't been cooking at all as much as usual. 

I miss it, though, which has led me to think about how I feel when I have the time to cook and actually think about what I'm cooking. Not unsurprisingly, I think cooking improves your life, but I think it goes way beyond any nutritional or environmentally-based reason.

So to take a giant step back, I came up with a list of reasons, totally separate from survival, for cooking, and investing in cooking.

• Mental exercise! Like traveling, cooking allows you to think about the diversity of options that exist in the world and contemplate how they're similar and different. Think about the difference between sushi and lasagna - they're different in every way. Even without leaving the same region of cooking, I think it's fascinating the types and range of dishes one place has come up with. To be honest, the idea for this blog post came to me when I was eating a meal such as the one pictured below in Thailand, trying something new, and thought, "it's crazy to me that this is a dish I've never even THOUGHT of making."

• Adventure in your daily routine. Very related to mental exercise is a sense of adventure in every-day life. Maybe you are like me and are kind of bad at appreciating daily routines and tend to find them repetitive too quickly; cooking can help with this. Cooking can be a routine that you come back to, but you can try new things all of the time.

• Pain-staking recipes put you in the moment. I read a Mark Bittman NY Times article the other week that made me think about this. It was about kaiseki, an elaborate style of Japanese cooking brought to Japan from China by Zen Buddhist monks, a highly formalized and pain-staking style of cooking. The article includes a recipe for a sauce that takes four to five hours, plus 36 hours of soaking time, to prepare. How it tastes is probably a part of why it's worth that much time into, but I also think that there's a serious effect of feeling like your life slows down and you can be in the moment when you put that much time into one thing and really focus on the process of it. Think about how endless (hopefully in a good way) five hours of your evening would feel if you spent them all working on one sauce.

Here's to trying new things in 2012 and to more cooking! Back soon with more recipes.

Breakfast Burrito Sauce

Some successful dishes are based on reading a recipe, being inspired by an idea you wouldn't have thought of, and perhaps having a new experience. Alternatively, others are based on a random flash of a thought that illuminates a hole in your food world and makes you crave an inexplicable food experience, or even emotion, and trying to create a recipe to fill that void.

This recipe is in the later category, as a couple of weeks ago I became obsessed with the idea of making a sweet but also spicy breakfast burrito sauce. I was thinking of making a homemade breakfast burrito sauce, and all of a sudden had a very specific image come to mind of a sauce that would combine different elements from a breakfast plate (picture maple syrup mingling with the huevos racheros). I ended up starting with a smokey tomate-chipotle sauce, and adding in maple syrup, cinnamon, and fruit preserves to try achieve this savory-sweet goal.

This recipe included an ingredient that I've been curious about, but haven't used before, canned chiles chipotles en adobo. They're basically a very smokey-tasking canned chile. The flavor is definitely kind of strong, so I would use them sparingly, but I liked the flavor.

I was really happy with how this sauce turned out; this is mostly a spicy sauce, but the sweet and fruity flavors come through, making it a more complex addition than the typical sauce to whatever you put it on. Honestly, I envisioned this as a breakfast burrito sauce, but I mostly ate it with fried eggs and cheese on toast. And it was pretty amazing, especially after sitting for a few days. I think pretty much how I pictured.

Breakfast Burrito Sauce

Adapted from Rick Bayless's Essential Quick-Cooked Tomato-Chipotle Sauce

Makes about 2 cups

3 canned chiles chipotles en adobo

4-5 garlic cloves

1 1/2 lbs (4-5 medium) tomatoes 

1/2 t salt

1 T olive oil

2 T apricot preserves

1 T maple syrup

1/4 t ground cinnamon

1. On a heavy, ungreased skillet over medium heat, roast the unpeeled garlic, turning occasionally, until blackened in spots and soft, about 15 minutes. Cool, slip off the papery skins, and roughly chop. 

2. Lay the tomatoes on a baking sheet and place about 4 inches below the top of the oven with the stove set to the broiler mode. When they blister, blacken and soften on one side, about 6 minutes, turn them over and roast on the other side. Cool, then peel, collecting all the juices with the tomatoes. 

3. Scrape the tomatoes and their juices into a food processor and add the canned chiles and garlic. Pulse the food processor until the mixture is nearly a puree. 

4. Heat the oil in a medium-sized saucepan over medium-high heat. When hot enough to make a drop of the puree sizzle, add the mixture from the food processor, as well as the apricot preserves, maple syrup, and cinnamon, and stir for 5 minutes as it sears and concentrates to an earthy, thickish sauce. Lastly, add the salt. 

Keeps for at least a week in the refrigerator.

Black Bean Pumpkin Soup

It's been really cold in DC the last couple of days, and so I had a craving to make a huge pot of soup. This soup turned out really well - it's comforting and filling, and the addition of the feta adds a very crucial salty component. I also thought that this recipe was interesting because it's a recipe with pumpkin, but that doesn't have the typical spices that usually go with it, like cinnamon or nutmeg.

(By the way, I'm going to take a break from monthly theme idea that I've been doing so far this year. I have a little writer's block with idea, and also, it's fall, one the best food times of the year, so there is no shortage of recipes to try.)

And a reminder from a prior post (the most blog's most viewed/found from Google post!): the more bean recipes you like, the better, since beans are such an efficient source of energy compared to meat.  

Note: I ended up roasting pie pumpkins instead of using canned pumpkin as the recipe says. I roasted two pie pumpkins (different than carving pumpkins) by the following method: cut pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds; either leave pumpkin cut in half, or cut in smaller pieces to decrease baking time, and lay pumpkin pieces in a large baking dish along with 1/4 inch of water; bake at 350 F for 45-60 minutes, until tender (check with a fork as baking time will depend on pumpkin size). I pureed the cooked pumpkin in a food processor. 

Black Bean Pumpkin Soup
from Gourmet

Makes about 9 cups

Three 15 1/2 ounce cans black beans (about 4 1/2 cups), rinsed and drained
1 cup drained canned tomatoes, chopped
1 1/4 cups chopped onion
1/2 cup minced shallot
4 garlic cloves minced
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 T olive oil
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 16-ounce cans pumpkin puree (or about 3 cups of roasted pureed pumpkin)
3 to 4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Garnish: crumbled feta cheese

1. Coarsely puree beans and tomatoes in a food processor.
2. In a large soup kettle, saute the onion, shallot, garlic, cumin, salt, and pepper in the olive oil over moderate heat. Stir until the onion is softened and beginning to brown. Stir in bean and tomato puree. Then stir in broth and pumpkin, and simmer for about 25 minutes, until think enough to coat the back of a spoon.
3. Stir in vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Garnish with feta cheese.

Brief Blog Hiatus

I'm traveling to Minnesota tomorrow for the first of two wedding weekends in a row, but I'll be back in a couple of weeks with some new posts! The season is definitely changing here in DC - it was actually chilly walking home tonight - and I'm excited to make and write up some autumnal recipes!

Roasted Tomato - Jalapeno Salsa

July/August Theme: Homemade summer

Well, Readers, summer, and "homemade summer" here on the blog, are both coming to an end. I've tried to come up with some creative ideas for food items to make yourself over these last two months.

And while I think all of them turned out to be really interesting and are recipes that I'll continue to use, I will say this: if you decide based on this series to start making only one thing from scratch, I think it should be salsa. Because aside from all of the environmental reasons for cooking from scratch previously discussed, homemade salsa is just so much better tasting than store-bought salsa. I feel like the two should not even really be in the same category.


When I make my own salsa, I usually make a really simple tomato, onion, and cilantro salsa, but I decided to try and do something more ambitious. This recipe has pretty much the same basic ingredients, but you roast the tomatoes, garlic, and jalapenos before blending them in a food processor. This brought up a couple of new techniques for me: broiling tomatoes in the oven to roast them, and roasting unpeeled garlic along with jalapenos until they are blackened.

The result?

The roasted flavor is really good - it adds a lot of complexity to the flavor of the salsa - and I am also now questioning whether or not there is that much that smells better than garlic being roasted over a flame in its papery skin. So you don't want to miss that.




I made a double batch of this and after five days or so of eating it, mixed it with two avocados (so one avocado per recipe as below) to make a pretty amazing guacamole.

Lastly, I forgot to commemorate this at the time, but the blog was one year old as of July! The first post also happened to be a do-it-yourself recipe just like this one: homemade honey-mustard-ginger vinaigrette salad dressing.


Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa
From Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen: Capturing the Vibrant Flavor of a World-Class Cuisine 

Makes about 2 cups

1 pound (2 medium - large round or 6-8 plum) red, ripe tomatoes
2 large fresh jalapeno chiles
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
salt, about 1/2 t
1/2 small or 1/3 medium white onion, finely chopped
1/3 C loosely packed chopped cilantro
1 1/2 t apple cider vinegar
juice of 1/2 lime

1. Cut the tomatoes in half, and lay on a baking sheet and place about 4 inches below a very hot broiler. Roast until blistered and blacked on one side, about 6 minutes; with a pair of tongs, flip the tomatoes and roast on the other side, about another 6 minutes.
2. While the tomatoes are roasting, roast the chiles and unpeeled garlic directly on an ungreased griddle or heavy skillet over medium heat. Turn occasionally until both chiles and garlic are blackened in spots and soft, 5-10 minutes for the chiles, and about 15 minutes for the garlic (remove the chiles from the pan once they are done). Cool, pull the stem off the chiles, and peel the papery skins from the garlic.
3. Once tomatoes are done: cool them, then peel the skins off, collecting any juices with the tomatoes.
4. In a food processor, grind the chiles (including seeds), garlic, and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt to a course paste, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple of times. Add the tomatoes and pulse a few times until you have a course-textured puree. Transfer the salsa to a serving bowl, and stir in any reserved tomato juices.
5. Stir the finely chopped onion into the salsa, as well as the vinegar, other 1/4 teaspoon of salt, cilantro, and lime juice.

The salsa comes into its own a few hours after it's finished. Keeps in the refrigerator for at least a week.

Jerk Chicken Marinade

July/August Theme: Homemade summer

The humidity and temperature both dropped in DC today, which, while completely welcome and meant the weather was gorgeous, also served as a reminder that summer is winding down. Which is a little sad. But if you are feeling at all similarly, I think this recipe could help-- grilled and tropical-tasting jerk chicken.


I've been meaning to make this for a few weeks and finally made it last night, and it was really good. I wanted to find an interesting marinade recipe to go along with the made-from-scratch theme. To be honest, it does take a little while to cut up all of the ingredients that make it up, but I think you can really tell the difference, in addition to all of the benefits of making something form scratch rather than buying processed/packaged marinade. The flavors are really interesting-- soy sauce, with all spice and nutmeg, thyme and lime juice. I'm mostly focusing on the marinade aspect (versus the chicken cooking), since you could use this with either grilled or baked chicken.


Since I am currently grill-less, I used a grill pan to grill the chicken. I only marinaded the chicken this for an hour since that was all I had time for, but the recipe actually says that you could marinade chicken with this for up to 12 hours, which could be interesting.



And lastly, a few photos from my summer vacation- this recipe would have tasted even better sitting out in one of these places...




Jerk Chicken Marinade
From Gourmet

3 scallions, chopped
4 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
4-5 jalapeno chiles
1/4 c fresh lime juice
2 T soy sauce
3 T olive oil
1 1/2 t salt
1 T packed brown sugar
1 T loosely packed fresh thyme leaves
2 t ground allspice
2 t freshly ground black pepper
3/4 t ground nutmeg
1/2 t ground cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Marinade chicken for at least one hour, but can also be used to marinade chicken over night, up to 12 hours, before cooking.

Environmental Advantages of Cooking with Non-Processed Food

Image source: http://www.slashfood.com/2011/03/24/u-s-food-industry-to-trim-packaging-waste-by-4-billion-pounds/.

Going along with July/August's theme of homemade or do-it-yourself food items that you might otherwise purchase processed, I thought I'd look into some of the environmental and related health reasons for decreasing prepackaged and preprocessed food consumption. Processing and packaging are obviously two separate things, but often go together with food choices.

While looking up the statistics mostly confirmed things that I had assumed (processed food requires more energy to produce than fresh food, since processed food re-constitutes fresh food, which takes energy), I was surprised by the portion of energy required for this stage, and it was good to remember how many stages there are to packaging and selling of processed food. For instance, think of the energy required to retail packaged food, which is completely separate from its production.

Advantages of cooking with non-processed foods:

Less energy used. Eating non-processed or packaged food can decrease food's carbon footprint because substantial energy is required to transform fresh food to the processed food found in a grocery store.

• According to the Earth Institute, "Growing food accounts for only one fifth of [the US food system's annual energy consumption]. The other four fifths is used to move, process, package, sell, and store food after it leaves the farm....While 21 percent of overall food system energy is used in agricultural production, another 14 percent goes to food transport, 16 percent to processing, 7 percent to packaging, 4 percent to food retailing, 7 percent to restaurants and caterers, and 32 percent to refrigeration and preparation." (As a side note, this is also a reason to each local food, as eating fresh food doesn't necessarily mean that less energy was spent on food transport.)
• Often the energy in the food is less than that required to produce it: "Processing breakfast cereals requires 7,125 kilocalories per pound—easily five times as much energy as is contained in the cereal itself" (from same Earth Institute article).
  

Decrease in chemical exposure. Due to the chemicals currently used in food packaging, the packaging itself can lead to environmental and animal and human health problems.

• A 2011 study found that food packaging (i.e. cans, wrappers, and polycarbonate bottles) is a substantial source of BPA exposure, which has been found to cause endocrine disruption in animals and in some human studies.
  
• As the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy explains, in addition to promoting packing materials without BPA, BPA exposure from food packaging can be lessened by cutting consumption of prepackaged foods and cooking form fresh ingredients.
  
• The IATP also shows an image from the article of the top 10 canned foods known to leach the most BPA, which I found slightly unnerving as coconut milk, the canned item I probably buy the most of, is at the top of the list.

So try to use non-packaged or non-processed foods whenever you can! More recipes coming on this theme during August.