I have a zucchini plant the size of a Lay-Z-Boy recliner. Unsurprisingly, I have zucchini the size of my forearm, and a desperate need to find easy, creative ways of preparing zucchini.
Sunday I made a gratin out of a one-to-two pound zucchini, a medium vidalia onion, a red bell pepper, a clove of garlic, some nutmeg, and cumin.
Ingredients:
1 tremendously large zucchini
1 medium onion
1 sweet bell pepper
1 clove garlic
.25-.5c half and half
.25-.5c sour cream
a few tbsp water
2tbsp flour
1 brick white cheese (swiss, jack, whatever), shredded
.25 brick cheddar, shredded
nutmeg, cumin, or other spices to taste
1.5c panko
3tbsp butter, melted
fistfull of herbs, finely chopped
First, I sliced the onion into half-circle strips, and sauteed this for a few minutes in a little canola oil. I did this all on about a 6 on my electric stove, which is high medium-ish (so, not enough to really brown anything). Before the onion was fully translucent, I added the zucchini. I sliced it into 1/4 inch half-moons/circles. The moons come from scooping out the seeds and pulp from the lower sections; the upper section without mature seeds I just sliced into half-circles. I let this go while I sliced the red pepper into 1/4 inch strips; these went on top of the zucchini, and I covered the pan to help the veggies on top steam while the ones on the bottom sauteed. I stirred things around a few times to circulate pieces from top to bottom and back.
As the zucchini started to cook all the way through, I added one clove of chopped garlic. After a few more minutes, I put the veg mixture into a 9x13 pan, wiped out the saute pan, and put about a heaping tablespoon of butter in the pan to melt.
To this I added about a scant quarter cup of half and half, and then maybe another quarter cup of sour cream. Ideally I would have used either all half and half or all whipping cream, but I had too little half and half, and extra sour cream, so, that's what I used. I stirred these together, and then added a bit of water to loosen things up a bit---maybe another scant 1/4 cup total of water? I stirred in 2 tbsp of flour, and then grated in half a block of monterrey jack cheese. I stirred in the cheese till it melted, then added about 1/4 tsp nutmeg and 1/2 tsp cumin. I poured this over the vegetables in the baking dish, and then grated some more monterey jack and cheddar over the top.
At this point I stirred about 1.5c of panko and a few tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs into about 3tbsp melted butter. I sprinkled this mixture over the top of the gratin, and then put it in the oven for 20 minutes at about 400 degrees.
Every summer I grow some Roma tomatoes and some Yellow hybrids. I originally got the seeds from Burpee, but I've been saving my own seeds for two years now.
Anyway, around this time of the summer we're inundated with tomatoes. I often make caprese sandwiches and FLT (Facon Lettuce Tomato) sandwiches, but those don't really make a dent in the tomato flood.
C, my partner, really likes the salsa I make, so I always put together a batch or two each summer. I often vary the process, but I stick to some basic strategies.
1. I begin with toasted corn. I take a can of corn--yes, a can: it's cheap, tasty, and easy--drain it, and then toss it into a dry skillet. I toast it until the kernels start to get golden brown. Once the kernels start to make small popping sounds, I know I'm done. It's important to get the corn out of the skillet so it doesn't overcook, so I put it in the bowl, which at this point has some:
2. Finely, finely chopped onions. It really doesn't matter what kind of onion you use; I've used red, white, yellow, and vidalia. It's summer, I live in the South, so vidalia onions are cheap and available at Aldi's, so that's what I used this time. I used one onion slightly larger than the size of my clenched fist.
3. LOTS of salt. Like a heaping tablespoon. Salt is what draws the liquids out of the onion and tomatoes, and what makes that watery sauce that helps bind the salsa together. Salt is essential.
3. Finely diced tomatoes. I keep the seeds and all the insides. I know that's bad form, technically, but whatever. I like it, I don't want to waste anything, and this is not a professional kitchen.
4. Herbs. Cilantro is common, but C HATES cilantro, so I used oregano this time. We have a ton of oregano out back, so this was also a good way to use up some of that. I've also used basil before.
5. Ground Cumin. It adds some nice depth to the salsa.
I stir this all together and keep it covered in the fridge for at least two weeks. It tends to stay pretty fresh--I'm assuming this is b/c of all the acid in it. I would think the addition of some lime juice would both brighten the salsa and help preserve it. You can eat it straight, with some tortilla chips, or use it to top eggs or fish.
Now that I have a sourdough culture, I make a loaf of bread about once a week. Before this summer, I'd never made a yeast bread before--I felt that yeast was too fussy, too particular, too delicate a process, and that's just not my thing. I like forgiving recipes I can experiment with. And this sourdough culture lets me do just that. With my KitchenAid mixer to do the kneading for me, the breadmaking process is actually really, really simple. The only thing I really need to attend to is the scheduling: because it takes such a long time to rise, I just need to make sure I plan enough ahead of time to allow for that rise. And that's the hardest part.
So, I start by taking the culture out of the fridge 18-24 hours before I want to mix the dough. I pour off the hooch, feed the culture (.33c flour, .33c water), and let the yeast feed for a while.
The starter after being fed 36 hours ago and sitting on the counter.
18-24 hours later (so, in the evening if I fed the culture at breakfast, the next morning if I feed it during the afternoon--I don't keep a strict timing here) I pour off the hooch, mix together the culture, and pour about half of it into the bowl of my mixer. It's probably between 1/4 and 1/3 cup--maybe even up to 1/2c sometimes. I then feed the starter again to replace the volume I just took out.
Starter in the mixing bowl.
To the starter I add, in this order: 2c whole wheat flour (measured using dump and sweep), 1tsp-ish salt, up to 1/4c sugar (I've been using brown sugar lately, but I've also used plain white granulated sugar before), and 1-2tsp spices (usually cinnamon, or chai spice mix, or pumpkin pie spice mix, or nutmeg).
Dry ingredients. I used pumpkin pie spice mix this time.
To the dry ingredients plus starter, I add half a cup of water and a good squirt of honey from the bottle, and stir with a silicone spatula. I observe how well (or not) the batter is coming together, and then slowly add more water until all the dry ingredients are sufficiently incorporated. I never add more than another half cup at this point, for a grand total of up to a cup of water.
Now that the ingredients are all incorporated, I knead the dough for 15 minutes on low speed in my mixer. I add white all-purpose flour throughout the kneading process, basically enough to keep the dough from sticking to the sides of the bowl. The dough should stay in a coherent lump around the kneading arm; it should not stick to the sides or bottom of the bowl. I guess I can add anywhere from 1/3 to 3/4 cup of flour in the kneading process.
When kneading, the dough should form a ball and not stick to the sides of the bowl.
After 15 minutes of kneading (but I've kneaded for up to 20 minutes at times), I add in any raisins, nuts, or whatever other mix-ins I want. I then knead on low for another few minutes, just long enough to incorporate the mix-ins.
At this point, I cover the dough in a light dust of flour, just to make handling easier. I take out the kneading arm, scrape the dough out of the bowl, and form it into a ball (following the method Bridget from Cooks Illustrated/ATK uses). I put it into a sprayed loaf pan, spray the top of the dough, and cover loosely with plastic wrap.
Ready to rise.
Now it's time to hurry up and wait. Rising takes between 12 and 24 hours. If I start the rise at night, the dough is not ready to bake until 8ish or 9ish (dinnertime) the next day. If I start it in the early morning before breakfast, it is usually ready to bake after dinner. The daytime heat helps the rise along, I assume. I leave the dough to rise in the laundry room; we have the vents closed in this room (to save energy), so in the summer it's the warmest part of the house. It's probably in the mid 80-degree range during the afternoons.
(Once I intended to bake it at night, but ended up going out for dinner and drinks instead. So, I got home around 1am and the bread was really, really risen, and I was not going to stay up to bake it. So, I pounded the pan on the counter, releasing a lot of the air in the bread, and let it do a second rise overnight. The second rise thing is a standard technique; it makes the sourdough flavor more prominent, though the bread did not rise as much the second time through. So again, this recipe is really forgiving.)
I consider the bread fully risen once it is between 1/2" and 1/4" from the top of the loaf pan. At this point, I put it into a 350-ish degree oven and bake for around 30 minutes, taking it out whenever it looks done enough. One "tell" is the sides of the loaf: if they're amber and have pulled a bit away from the pan, the bread is done.
I take the loaf out of the oven, and let it cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes. I scrape around the edges of the pan with a spatula, and then invert the pan on a cooling rack. I let the bread cool a loooong time, often overnignt, and then put it in a bread bag (what sliced bread comes in from the store, saved and neatly folded in one of my kitchen drawers). It sits there on the counter for storage.
These photos are of a cinnamon brown sugar honey whole-wheat raisin loaf that I made last weekend. The raisins are from grapes we grew in our garden; I'll post about those later.
At the beginning of the summer (so, late May), I started a sourdough culture from the yeast left at the bottom of a bottle of Unibroue Grande Reserve 17. (The beer is a dark ale, very spicy and warm, with a combination of toffee and pumpkin pie spice mix smells and tastes.) I've always been hesitant about working with yeast--it seemed too temperamental and too, you know, fussy and unforgiving. But, I thought, we drink a lot of bottle-conditioned beer at my place, and there's a big colony of live yeast at the bottom of a bottle-conditioned beer. Regular beer doesn't have live yeast, but bottle-conditioned beers have another addition of yeast right before they're sealed (that's what makes them bottle-conditioned). Keeping live yeast fed seemed much easier than blooming dried yeast, or trying to colonize wild yeast. So, I started a sourdough colony from beer yeast.
This is the starter with a little hooch on top. It's been sitting in the fridge a few days.
I took the dregs of the bottle and poured them in a pyrex storage bowl, mixing in 1/3 cup all-purpose flour and 1/3 cup water. Whenever I feed the culture, I use this amount of flour and water.
I put a cover loosely on the bowl, and set it out on the counter for 24ish hours. I then poured off the "hooch" (the liquid that forms on top of the mixture--technically it's the yeast's waste), and fed the culture with flour and water. I waited 24ish hours, poured off the hooch, and fed it again. I repeated this for about seven days total.
After seven days, I tried to make a pizza dough; it really didn't rise much at all, so I continued the daily feedings for another three days.
On the tenth day, I made my first loaf of bread. Its rise was okayish, so at this point I considered the culture established enough to put in the fridge to hibernate between loafs.
Not surprisingly, the starter smells like beer.
A top view of the starter. You can see a bubble or two.
So now, 18-24 hours before I want to start making a batch of bread, I take the culture out of the fridge, and feed it flour and water. I put it on the counter for 18-24 hours, divide it (half in the mixing bowl), and feed it again to replenish what I took out. At this point, there will be a little hooch, and lots of bubbles throughout the starter (the hooch and the bubbles are signs that the yeast is alive and metabolizing). I leave it on the counter for another 18-24 hours, and then back in the fridge till next time. It will develop more hooch as it sits in the fridge (maybe about a quarter inch or so on top of the culture?). Apparently one needs to feed it about weekly to keep the yeast alive, but I've been making bread about once a week, eliminating the need to do a maintenance feed.
I'll post later about my bread-making process. It's really, really easy to make a sourdough culture from live beer yeast. And it will make bread that tastes like the beer from which you made the culture.
I'm not a chef. I'm just a cook; a home cook at that. I approach food from a "maker" perspective--I hack ingredients, recipes, all the leftovers in my fridge. I'm interested in food that tastes good, that's healthy, and affordable. I'm not into precious presentation, painstaking preparation, or any other hipster-foodie-scenesterism. I definitely have a maximum amount of fussiness; I'm not into difficulty for its own sake...the end (taste) had better justify the means.
This blog is a catalog of my projects, experiments, and everyday attempts at making something tasty and healthy out of basic, affordable ingredients.
In a way, this blog is sort of the goth vegetarian cook version of black metal vegan chef.
The title of the blog refers to a Peter Murphy song.
