This is the bento I packed with the olive oil poached salmon leftovers. The salmon stood up to re-heating well. Not as good as freshly made, but also not dried out and gross.

Then we had a foray into Indian with this yellow dal:

The dal recipe is from Smitten Kitchen. I made it pretty much as written, except I used a bit more tomato and didn’t bother to fish out the tomato skins. It was delicious.

I improvised the chicken. First, I made a rub from ground cumin, ground coriander, cayenne, garlic powder, salt and pepper and rubbed it all over boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Covered, and put it in the fridge for about an hour while I did the prep for the dal. When I was ready to cook the chicken, I coated the thighs with olive oil and then broiled them on a wire rack set in a sheet pan for about 10 minutes, until crispy and slightly charred in spots.

They tasted great together. The crispy crust on the chicken made a nice counterpoint to the mushiness of the dal. Next time I might go with bone-in, skin-on thighs, maybe using a modified version of the lime chicken recipe.

And finally, today’s brunch:

The recipe is Herb-Baked Eggs from Annie’s Eats.

Confession time: I bought these crocks just to make this recipe. And French onion soup.

I modified the recipe slightly. Didn’t have cream, so I just upped the butter a bit. Didn’t have too many herbs, so stuck with rosemary and chives.

Overcooked them a bit—our broiler definitely runs hot—but they were still tasty. Served with toast, butter, and strawberry jam.

Now to go lay about the house.

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I have wanted to try poaching something in olive oil ever since Season 6, Episode 1 of Top Chef, when Kevin Gillespie made his Arctic Char with Salsa Verde of Turnips. The idea of poaching something in olive oil was totally new to me and it sounded delicious.

Fast-forward to this week, when the latest Fine Cooking landed in my mailbox. In it:

• brioche (I really need to start baking my own bread)
• a method for developing your own cheesecake recipes (guess what my mom and I will be doing when she comes to visit!)
• artichokes (love them, never tried cooking them)

…and poaching seafood in olive oil!

The basic method itself is very easy. The total prep time is about 90 minutes, but the active prep time is less than 10.

1. Season the seafood (more on that later) and let stand at room temperature for about an hour.
2. Place rack in center of oven and preheat to 225 degrees F.
3. Pour extra-virgin olive into a straight-sided sauté pan to the same depth as the seafood. Choose a pan that will just hold all the fish in a single layer. Heat the oil to 120 degrees F.
4. Place fish into pan with heated oil, then put the pan in the oven for 25 minutes. Small white droplets will have formed on the surface of the fish.
5. Remove fish from pan (carefully!) and place on rack to drain for a few minutes.
6. Serve.

Once you’re done poaching, you can strain the leftover oil through a coffee filter and re-use it once or twice. Keep it covered in the fridge for up to three weeks.

The sample recipes in the magazine included a couple of rubs (one for shrimp and one for halibut) and a couple of pastes (for salmon and tuna). I opted to make my own. This is a common flavor profile for salmon, but since I was playing it by ear I double-checked the combination in The Flavor Bible:

• 1 tsp. Kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• Zest of half a lemon
• 1/3 tsp. dried thyme
• 2 sprigs fresh dill, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, smashed through a garlic press

This makes enough to season 4 6-oz. salmon fillets. Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, then drizzle in just enough olive oil to make a paste. Rub the paste all over the fish.

Tasting notes:

The texture of the fish was buttery-soft and silky. Delicious. And I think I may have even overcooked the fish a bit, judging from the amount of floaty white bits on the fillets. I was supposed to pull it when there were “a few” small white droplets on the fish, but I let it go for the full 25 minutes which produced the result shown above.

Recipe notes:

I didn’t have enough extra-virgin olive oil, so I just used regular. It came out fine, but I bet it would be even tastier with extra-virgin. Next time I do this, I’m springing for the better quality fish.

I don’t have a pan the right size, so I stuck a 9-inch baking dish into the oven when I preheated it, warming the oil in a non-stick pan on the stove. When the oil reached the right temperature, I took the baking dish out of the oven, poured in the warm oil, laid in the fish fillets, and stuck the baking dish back in the oven. It worked just fine.

I served it over a bed of steamed white rice with asparagus, which I quickly sauteed in olive oil with salt and pepper and then hit with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice at the end.

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I was messing around the computer and came across a recipe for rice congee I’d bookmarked a while ago. A light bulb went on. There is plenty of rice in the house, and rice congee is an excellent tonic for when you feel out-of-sorts.

I took out the rice cooker and used the recipe for inspiration. I used one cup of rice, filled the bowl almost to the 1-cup water line for porridge, then topped it off with chicken stock. I threw in a few slices of fresh ginger and a large clove of minced garlic for good measure.

Now for something to eat with the rice. My husband was baking some chicken wings destined for buffalo sauce, so I asked him to save a few for me sans sauce—I’m a bit buffalo-ed out. Once the wings were done, I brushed them with a mixture of soy sauce and sesame oil, then stuck them back in the residual heat of the oven to help the sauce adhere without continuing to cook the chicken.

I had some napa cabbage and shiitake mushrooms I’d been meaning to use for quite a while now and figured they would go great with the flavors I’d already put in the rice congee. I sliced six or seven mushrooms and sauteed them quickly with some more ginger and garlic, added enough napa leaves to fill the pan, then covered to cook. Once the napa wilted, I seasoned with salt and pepper.

I topped it all off with some Chinese pickled cucumbers and fried gluten, then tried really hard not to gobble it all while it was still hot enough to burn my tongue.

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I don’t usually pack Western-style bento lunches—heck, I haven’t been packing lunches, bento or not, at all these days—but the leftovers from tonight’s chicken actually fit perfectly into Ms. Bento!

This is also a good example of where packing a good bento can become very, very fussy. See all those celery sticks on the right? The lid wouldn’t close, so I had to take a bunch of them out and cut them precisely to the height of the container. I also had to choose the grape tomatoes and blackberries carefully to make sure they would pack tightly without crushing!

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This is what passes for fine dining in the Gustatory Circuit these days. Also, it takes some practice to get that sauce-smear thing right.

One of the things I enjoy most about cooking is the creative problem-solving/engineering aspect of it. I have ingredients X, Y, and Z and want to eat something resembling dish D. Given what I know about flavors and cooking techniques, how can I get from X, Y, and Z to D?

I was driving home and decided I really wanted to have buffalo chicken wings for dinner.

Solution 1: Heat frozen chicken wings and toss in store-bought buffalo sauce, both things we have on hand.

This solution was dismissed outright for being boring and borderline cheating. Save it for some other night when we’re working late and too lazy to cook. I got home a bit early today and I wanted to cook.

Solution 2: Do something with the package of chicken breasts that’s been defrosting in the fridge and needs to be used up within the next few days.

Making the chicken breasts into something wing-like would be easy enough: cut into wing-sized pieces, marinate, dredge, and pan-fry.

I’ve been on a marinade kick ever since the flavor episode of Worst Cooks in America and I’ve managed to crank out some pretty good ones in the last few weeks. Out came the Pyrex bowl and in went some olive oil, some hot sesame oil, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, five crushed garlic cloves, red chili pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. It smelled and tasted terrific. In went the chicken pieces.

But what about the sauce? I did what any wandering home cook would do: look in the Joy of Cooking index.

Let’s see…chicken…chicken…more chicken…children? Oh, fun recipes for kids…back up…a-ha! Chicken, wings, buffalo. Page 80.

I’d always thought buffalo sauce was some complex concoction, but it turns out it has exactly three ingredients: butter, vinegar, and hot pepper sauce.

I did not have hot pepper sauce, and we’re down to a few drops of Tabasco. Time to improvise.

I opened the fridge and eyed a container of leftover ancho chiles in adobo sauce.

Out came the food processor. In went three chiles, some generous squirts of ketchup, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, and brown sugar. Puree. Taste. Good front of mouth kick, nice spicy finish, but nothing in between. I hoped the butter would take care of that.

I melted 3-4 tablespoons of butter on low heat, then stirred in the mixture from the food processor along with some salt, pepper, and garlic powder (because I forgot to add garlic to the food processor). It was kind of chunky, but I didn’t feel like being fussy and straining it. The butter did round out the flavor nicely and also took down some of the heat.

I quickly dredged the chicken in some seasoned corn starch, then pan-fried them in my cast iron pan and laid them out on paper towels to drain. I served the sauce on the side with some celery sticks, baby carrots, and blue cheese dressing.

Buffalo chicken equation? Solved.

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If I had to choose one food to eat for the rest of my life, it would be jiaozi, preferably the pan-fried variety that Americans know as potstickers. Good thing that’s true, since now I have about five dozen of them in my house.

We used to have marathon dumpling-making sessions when I was little. My family didn’t so much have a tidy assembly line, but a gather-’round-the-table free-for-all, children and adults lunging for the pot of filling whenever we needed it, churning out little folded dumplings that we set on washed styrofoam meat trays and froze. My family always did the two-pleat dumpling, pictured above. It’s not as pretty as the traditional rippled edge, but it’s much more efficient.

Some friends came over yesterday to celebrate Chinese New Year with our own marathon dumpling-making session. Fifteen dollars and about ten man-hours later, we had over 150 dumplings. We used the Wall Street Journal recipe as a base, tweaking the ingredients to use what we had available and using frozen wrappers instead of rolling our own.*

*I remember my mom tried to make the potsticker wrappers from scratch exactly once, when I was a kid. It ended with someone going out to the store for the frozen kind. My mom’s kitchen skills far exceed mine, and I totally suck at making dough-based things, so I’ve never tried to make the wrappers from scratch.

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I watched the steak fajitas episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay a while ago and it stirred up a huge hankering for fajitas. Of course, Houston happens to be having an actual cold spell (current temp: 30°F) so there will be no grilling outside for the time being.

And then my birthday rolled around and with it came a Hamilton Beach MealMaker Express Contact Grill courtesy of my wonderful (and hungry) hubby. This guy is much larger than our old contact grill, which struggled with two paninis at once, and has removable plates for easy cleaning. This grill also opens all the way flat so you can cook different things on each side without pressing. Fajita time!

Sadly, the recipe for Father Leo’s fusion fajitas is not up anywhere on the internet. So I improvised. I put some ground cumin, garlic powder, paprika, crushed garlic, grated ginger, brown sugar, soy sauce, lemon juice, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and olive oil into a giant baggie and threw in a 1-lb. skirt steak to marinate for an hour or so.

Meanwhile, I put two (Japanese) cups of long-grain white rice, some chicken broth, butter, and saffron into the rice cooker. Then I chopped up some peppers and onions and hubby made some guacamole to serve on the side.

I opened the grill flat and sprayed the grill with some nonstick cooking spray, preheated according to instructions, and then plopped the veggies on one side and steak on the other. I got a nice, satisfying sizzle.

The grill does not get super hot when it’s open (or maybe I didn’t preheat long enough), so everything took longer to cook than I thought it would. I also didn’t get a really good sear on the steak, but had to pull it after it hit medium rare.

It was still good.

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Notice anything?

No? Then let’s compare the above photo with this one:

And I’ll give you a hint. The difference doesn’t have anything to do with the subject of the photo.

That’s right…NEW CAMERA!

My trusty old Canon Powershot A20 went into its well-earned retirement on its 10th birthday. The new baby, as you can see, is much better at handling closeups and low light conditions. It also has a built-in image stabilizer.

The food is nothing in particular—a dinner designed for the express purpose of using up pantry ingredients. The rice pilaf is a variation on the sage rice pilaf you see in the second photo. I didn’t have shallots so I threw in half an onion and a bunch of diced baby carrots instead. I actually prefer this version to the original—the carrots add a bit of color and onions are less expensive than shallots.

The chicken is a mindless pan-fried chicken. I took boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed off the excess fat, and butterflied them a bit so they’d lay pretty flat in the pan. Then I put some cornstarch, salt, pepper, and garlic powder in a giant baggie, threw the thighs in, and shook to coat. Pan-fried them in two batches, 3-4 minutes per side, setting them aside on paper towels to drain.

I had all this wonderful fond left at the bottom of the pan, so I deglazed with a bit of chicken stock, let it reduce down a bit, then hit it with a dash of white wine vinegar, salt, and pepper when it was off the heat. Poured the sauce on the chicken, added some oil back to the pan, then quickly sautéed the broccoli while the meat rested.

Snapped a photo (just one!—I would have had to take at least 4 with the old one because camera shake was so bad in low light), then chowed down.

Happy 2010, everybody!

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Here’s the long-overdue photo of last week’s Mapo Tofu bento. It unfortunately looks like a chunky brown mess even though it tasted great. Some chopped scallions, peas, or red peppers would have added some much-needed color.

The green stuff in the corner is sautéed baby bok choy. I cut the bunches in half, then lightly sautéed them with some garlic, salt, and pepper. The meal is rounded out with some grape tomatoes and sweet pickled daikon.

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Tofu is not a meat substitute.
Tofu is not a cheese substitute.
Tofu is not an egg substitute.
Tofu is not health food.

The key to liking tofu is respecting it as an ingredient with its own identity and cooking it in ways that enhance its natural light bean-y flavor and its unique texture. Deep-fried tofu? Delicious. Raw tofu cubes on salad? Vile.

My favorite tofu dish is Mapo Tofu. Please note that Mapo Tofu:

• contains meat
• is full of fat
• is full of salt

I’ve been making a variation of Mapo Tofu for years but wanted to try a slightly different flavor profile. I came across based on this recipe from Just Bento and decided to use it as a jumping-off point for tonight’s dinner (photo of the leftovers will show up in tomorrow’s bento post).

For the sauce I used a big dollop of hot bean paste, a medium dollop of miso, a tiny dollop of Chinese chili paste, soy sauce, sesame oil, a bit of brown sugar, a dash of dried red pepper flakes, low-sodium chicken broth, and water. I seasoned the sauce to taste with garlic powder and freshly ground black pepper. I didn’t really measure anything too closely, just kept adding the ingredients in different amounts, stirring, and tasting until I got the flavor and consistency I wanted. I didn’t have quite enough sauce for the amount of meat and tofu that I had, so I wound up adding another spoonful of hot bean paste and a bit more of chicken broth after I’d added the sauce to the pan.

Other ingredients: about one quarter of an onion, diced, several cloves of garlic, minced, and one package of firm silken tofu, cut into about 1-inch cubes. And one package of ground pork.

Heat some olive oil in a pan on medium-high heat until shimmering, then add the union and cook until translucent. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant. Add the ground pork and cook until mostly brown, breaking up the large chunks and stirring so all sides get exposed to the head.

Add the sauce and the tofu, stirring to combine. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Reduce heat to low and simmer gently for a few minutes. Top with chopped scallions if you have them, and serve over steamed white rice.

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We went out for sushi last night and I ordered some tonkatsu because I really wanted something hot and fried. My husband turned the leftovers into katsudon for me and that was my lunch!

To make katsudon, you need some bonito broth, a bit of sliced onion, sake, mirin, and soy sauce. Combine everything and heat until simmering. Add the leftover katsu and pour some lightly-beaten egg on top. Cook until the egg is set.

Eat.

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More leftovers! Not that you can really see what’s in the small bowl.

The beef is something my husband makes, so I’m not totally sure what goes into it. I do know he starts with sliced bulgogi beef (fattier cuts are better), adds some grated ginger, soy sauce and…mirin? And then cooks it until the beef starts to brown.

The mushroom mixture is my creation. Slice some shiitake mushrooms fairly thinly—around an eighth of an inch. Heat some oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook until they start to brown, stirring occasionally. Add a splash of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a pinch of salt. Toss to combine, then remove from heat and serve.

Some furikake on the rice, a hard-boiled egg, grape tomatoes, and a few strawberries, and we have a nice, filling meal.

This was actually yesterday’s bento. Today’s “bento” was yakisoba-from-a-box (not the mac-and-cheese kind).

Tomorrow’s bento proves to be more promising.

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I made tonkatsu and dengaku-style roasted eggplant, both recipes from Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking, along with the same sautéed baby bok choy from my first bento.

I had the long, Chinese-style eggplants, so instead of cooking them whole like the recipe calls for, I cut them into large chunks and pan-roasted them that in an oven-safe pan, taking care to brown all the fleshy sides. Then I stuck the whole thing under the broiler for four minutes instead of putting them on the (nonexistent) grill.

I skipped pounding the pork cutlets and I dredged them in corn starch because we were out of flour. And instead of deep-frying them, I pan-fried them in about a quarter-inch of oil.

The whole meal was very tasty and the leftovers fit nicely into Ms. Bento.

The top side bowl contains some sweet pickled daikon, a hard-boiled egg, grape tomatoes, and strawberries, along with two tiny bottles of katsu sauce.

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Another bento eaten at home. From the top right, we have:

• Tuna salad. Made with canned tuna, finely diced celery, onion, and dill pickles, and Japanese mayonnaise. Seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and dried basil. This was what was left over after dinner last night. (Yes, we had tuna salad sandwiches for dinner. Inspiring, I know.)
• Green salad. Baby romaine with some pecans thrown in. I was planning to eat it right away so I just added a tiny pinch of salt and drizzled some olive oil and red wine vinegar on top. I do have some tiny bottles for dressings and sauces but didn’t feel like busting them out.
• Sides. I put some cubes of cheddar in the left of the side bowl, along with some dijon mustard in a silicone food cup for dipping. On the right, some more grape tomatoes. Qoo friend makes another appearance. He was kind of superfluous yesterday, but he was excellent for skewering the cheese cubes today.

I’d wanted to put some crackers in but we didn’t have any. So it turned into a low-carb bento.

This bento also made me realize I really ought to get some sauce cups with lids. I’m not sure how the mustard-in-silicone-cup thing would work out if I had to carry today’s lunch farther than the distance from my kitchen to my desk. I’m kind of a condiment freak and they would be more useful than the tiny sauce bottles I have.

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My first bento! Which I ate at home, since I don’t start work until next week, but…it’s a bento! The contents are:

1. Sautéed beef in ginger-soy sauce (leftovers)
2. Sautéed baby bok choy (leftovers)
3. Kim chee
4. Sweet pickled daikon
5. Grape tomatoes

And of course, steamed white rice.

I read somewhere that a bento rule of thumb is the food should have at least five colors for maximum beauty/nutritional value. I’ve got exactly five. Woo!

The little silicone food cups do not come with Ms. Bento; I picked up a bunch at a 100 yen store in Japan. The Qoo friend food pick is from my mother-in-law.* I have no idea where she found it.

Now let’s see how long it takes me to get hungry again.

—
*The first time I went to Japan, I had to stop and take a picture of a vending machine with Qoo in it because the mascot is so cute. Now my mother-in-law keeps buying me Qoo stuff.

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Vacation: Returned. Trying valiantly to NOT be living on Japanese time any more. Failing.

Stomach: Misses the copious amounts of Japanese food consumed while away, though it’s probably better for the waistline that we’re back state-side.

My husband bought me a Ms. Bento lunch container as a graduation gift, the better to bring tasty lunches when I start work next week! He also bought me this Nissan thermos, the better to bring copious amounts of coffee as well. Both fit neatly into the nice carrying bag that comes with the Ms. Bento.

The bowls look very small when you first take them out and initially I was worried that they wouldn’t pack enough for me to eat—I’m a big eater!

But according to the product description on Zojirushi, the largest Ms. Bento container holds 10.5 fluid oz of food, the side dish bowl holds 11.2 oz, and the soup bowl holds 6.8 oz, for a whopping 28.5 oz, or over 3 cups of food.

Back when I packed my lunch in ordinary tupperware, 2 cups of food was plenty, so I’m happy about the size. Japanese-style bento boxes are designed to hold approximately one calorie of food per milliliter volume, so Ms. Bento should hold over 800 calories when fully loaded—more than enough for lunch!

And now for lunch inspiration.

There is a Mr. Bento Flickr group dedicated to showing Mr. and Ms. Bento lunches. I love this one with it’s smiling steamed bun. This one is also very pretty.

I plan to do some bento practice this week to get an idea of what and how much I can realistically pack in Ms. Bento and how long it takes. Watch this space for pictures!

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In the meantime, I’ve been eating a lot of frozen gyoza and stuff like this:

From the orange stuff at the top left, going clockwise, we have: chili bamboo shoots, Chinese pickled cucumbers, and fried gluten. In the center, a fried egg lightly drizzled with soy sauce. All served over steamed white rice. Except for the rice and the egg, everything came straight out of a jar or a can.

This is basically breakfast for dinner, Chinese style, and I think it is extremely tasty. Approximate nutritional value: zero.

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Prep time: 45 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Serves: 4-6

This was nom nom nom. Look at this chicken, don’t you want to gobble it?

You could use chicken breasts here, but with the following changes: cook only until the internal temperature is 160 degrees (which might take up to 20 minutes, depending on their thickness), and do not simmer with the sauce. Instead, stir the chicken pieces in at the very end, with the garam masala. Chicken thighs can stand up to more cooking because of the higher fat content.

Other than that, there’s been virtually no cooking around here as I was writing my dissertation. And now I’m recovering from writing my dissertation. I did make a lasagna one night (mediocre), and my husband made Japanese-style hamburger last weekend (yum). Yesterday’s dinner was grilled kielbasa with sautéed broccolini over white rice. Total prep time: 10 minutes. Tonight? Probably frozen gyoza.

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Bibimbap is a traditional Korean dish. I’ve never actually had authentic bibimbap (actually, I can count the number of times I’ve eaten a Korean meal on one hand), but it’s definitely on my list now!

This was much too tasty (except for the overcooked egg) to go in the Food Gone Wrong category, but it needs a little work before it’s totally right.

This is actually the second time I’ve tried it. The first time I used the recipe for Korean-Style Beef and Rice in Cooking for Two: 2009 as a jumping-off point and kind of Chinese-ized it. The food turned out good, but my husband kind of wanted bibimbap to be, y’know, Korean. This time I pretty much followed it to the letter. The food is still good, but the recipe is actually quite a lot of work despite authors’ attempts to save you time.

For example, the insistence on doing everything in one pan. This saves time during cleanup, but significantly lengthens your cooking time especially since you have to do it three times! It really is not that much extra effort to stick a second pan in the dishwasher. The plating-as-you-go technique, again designed to save you clean up time, just means that you waste a lot of time taking warm bowls out of the oven, uncovering them, adding more food, re-covering, and putting them back in the oven. If you just cooked all the toppings at once, the rice wouldn’t have a chance to get cold to begin with!

My other issue with the recipe is the proportion of the toppings. You wind up with too many pickled vegetables and too little spinach (which wilts to maybe a cupful) and beef/mushroom stir-fry. I want to adjust the amounts a little; the pickled vegetables are very vinegary and you’re just not going to eat that many in one sitting.

And while yes, this is a magazine titled Cooking for Two, I don’t actually want to cook for two. I want to cook for at least four so we don’t have to cook for the two of us every day! Just doubling the existing recipe doesn’t quite work because of the proportion problem noted above, plus the rice won’t re-heat well.

I’ll post the recipe after I tweak it some more next week.

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As I mentioned in the first post, this blog is supposed to be from the perspective of a fairly novice home cook. If you were looking for polished recipes and beautiful photography (Me? I’m using a digicam from 1999. Yeah, that’s right, this camera is OLDER THAN A THIRD GRADER), you might want to check out Smitten Kitchen instead. I mean, I can usually execute a fairly complex recipe just fine, but sometimes things just turn out weird.

Like this:

This was supposed to be the Chicken Tikka Masala from the Sept/Oct 2007 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. Now I have made a good chicken tikka masala before; you saw it in the first post. But that recipe, from Fine Cooking October 2006, takes four hours.

This recipe is definitely much quicker (just over an hour total), but it’s also…not chicken tikka masala. Now, I admit part of that is my fault. I was missing two notoriously hard-to-substitute ingredients, tomato paste and heavy cream, and tried to make do with ketchup and yogurt. Oh, and my serrano chile was way past its prime so I used half a spoonful of Chinese hot sauce instead. Still edible, and perhaps even tasty, but the flavors were slightly off from where they should be.

A much bigger problem was the texture of the dish. Whenever I’ve had chicken tikka masala in a restaurant, the sauce has been silky smooth. This sauce was chunky, like marinara, and that’s not really my fault, though the heavy cream probably would have helped. The diced onion has to go, though.

I will say the chicken from this recipe is very, very good and much quicker than the Fine Cooking recipe. You salt and spice the chicken, refrigerate for half an hour while you do the rest of the prep, dip in a yogurt sauce and broil. After the chicken rests, cut it into chunks.

Since I have a bunch of leftover yogurt, I think I’ll try again this week, making the chicken the Cook’s Illustrated way (but with boneless, skinless thighs instead of chicken breasts) and the sauce the Fine Cooking way. I’ll keep you posted.

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© 2009 Yvonne Kao for Gustatory Circuit. All rights reserved.

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Prep time: 45 mins
Cook time: 45 mins
Serves: 4

Eggplant is my favorite vegetable and eggplant parmesan is my favorite eggplant dish. There was a little Italian take-out place down the street from where I used to live in Pittsburgh and I would indulge in their eggplant parmesan dinner regularly. A big foil dish of eggplant parmesan, garlic bread, and a side salad, all for $9 and fifteen minutes of wait time.

While $9 of fresh ingredients can make a lot more eggplant parmesan, it also takes up almost two hours of your life. Because of this:

This recipe doesn’t even make you salt and drain the eggplant first and it still takes forever! I would love to be able to get my hands on some frozen eggplant cutlets from Trader Joe’s and use them instead, but alas, no Trader Joe’s in Texas.

The recipe did turn out pretty well though, much better than my previous attempts at making eggplant parmesan.

Next time I might add some red pepper flakes or hot sauce to the tomato sauce for a little extra kick.

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© 2009 Yvonne Kao for Gustatory Circuit. All rights reserved.

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Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 20 mins
Serves: 4

The amount of cooking has been reducing over high heat here in the Gustatory Circuit. Most days I’d rather be slaving over some elaborate meal than writing a dissertation—at least you can eat the fruits of your labor when you cook!—but I need to graduate soon.

This is about as complex a dish as I have the energy to muster up right now. It’s from an America’s Test Kitchen publication, which of course are the same fine folks who do Cook’s Illustrated.

I used a combination of parsley, sage, and oregano for the pasta. Next time I’ll use rosemary instead of oregano and we can have a nice sing-along before dinner.

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© 2009 Yvonne Kao for Gustatory Circuit. All rights reserved.

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Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Serves: 4

So I went grocery shopping yesterday, all proud of myself that I’d remembered our re-usable grocery bags. I happily loaded stuff into my cart, despaired over the lack of shiitakes and garam masala, and then headed for the checkout.

Only to discover I’d forgotten my wallet. I put everything back, sniffing that maybe I didn’t want to buy a roast chicken anyways. We had frozen gyoza for dinner last night.

Today’s grocery shopping was a bit more successful, not least because I went to a different store that does carry shiitakes (but still no garam masala). Got home, whipped the stuff into the fridge/pantry, and set to work making dinner.

This is based an Emeril recipe. Now, I find his on-screen persona to be as appealing as the love child of a walrus and a woodpecker, but his food is really good. But I still took it upon myself to change up the recipe a little.

That’s the way I made it tonight. I like the tomatoes for a little extra color and nutrition. In the past I’ve also added a can of drained chunk pineapple for some sweetness.

I use the pre-made red curry paste from Thai Kitchen, mostly because it’s easy (to use and to find in a grocery store). But once I made my own curry paste from scratch using the recipe from Emeril, and oh man, does it make a difference. I’m going to have to do that again one of these days.

This meal comes to about $6 per serving. Here’s the budget breakdown:

Pantry ingredients: Garlic, oil, spices
Leftover ingredients: Basil, chicken broth

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© 2009 Yvonne Kao for Gustatory Circuit. All rights reserved.

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Prep time: 45 mins
Cook time: 1 hour
Serves: 4

Don’t ask me why I keep making comfort food in the heat of summer. I don’t know! I love this risotto so much, and it’s perfect for those days when your oregano needs a little trimming.

I don’t think removing the sausage casings is entirely necessary, but I do prefer crumbled sausage for the risotto. The easiest way to remove the casings that I’ve found is to slice each sausage in half lengthwise, then to take a knife or bench scraper and scrape it out of the casing.

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© 2009 Yvonne Kao for Gustatory Circuit. All rights reserved.

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Prep time: 1 hour
Cook time: 1 hour
Serves: 4-6

We harvested some herbs this week in the Gustatory Circuit. First, our sage plant had become completely overgrown and wanted a haircut. It grows so fast, even indoors! I took enough for three tablespoons, chopped, and it barely made a dent. I hate to see what it would do if the pot would fit on our tiny excuse for a balcony.

This is a very luxurious meal (what do you expect when the chicken recipe comes from the Comfort Food special issue of Fine Cooking?. I recommend serving it with a nice green salad to balance out the richness.

Having two hands in the kitchen would definitely help with getting the timing to come out right on these two recipes. You’ll want to start the rice pilaf after you finish browning the chicken so that they finish at about the same time.

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© 2009 Yvonne Kao for Gustatory Circuit. All rights reserved.

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