Versatile Garlic Stir Fry Sauce

Last night, I wanted to make dinner for my girlfriend and myself. Unfortunately, we didn't really have much food left in the house. I made a very simple stir-fry type dish with chicken, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, onions, and noodles. For the sauce, I wanted something that packed a punch without being too hot for my girlfriend's delicate taste buds.  The obvious solution? Garlic! The sauce ended up being pretty Thai inspired.

On What Is To Come

Sorry about the lack of activity. Thanksgiving consisted of a bunch of delicious (but not particularly innovative) food, and the leftovers lasted for a very long time. The highlight of the meal came from sweet potato biscuits that my girlfriend made (see the recipe she used). What with this massive influx of food, I really just haven't had much to post on.

At this point, I've worked my way through the leftovers. However, in the next ten days or so I'm going to be very busy studying for my end of semester exams. I'll try to bang out a couple of posts on quick and easy things, perhaps accompanied by a smattering of science here and there. After all, I've been learning about the digestive system this block. What kind of monster would I be to not take advantage of that?

Come December 17th, I'm on break for a short while. I'll be going back to my native New Jersey, where I can rely on my parents' home cooking instead of my own. At that point, though, I'll at least have some free time on my hands. Expect updates.

Improvised Stovetop Lattes

Okay, this latte is kinda ghetto. The phrase "ghetto latte" might seem like a contradiction - after all, a latte is a classy blend of espresso and steamed milk. It's the type of thing you buy from a pretentious hipster, flavored with gingerbread or peppermint mocha. This latte becomes ghetto because, to be frank, I cheat. I own neither an espresso machine nor any legitimate means of making steamed milk.

But on Saturday, I found myself jonesing for a latte. I improvised! The result tastes shockingly like something you'd buy at Starbucks and doesn't require investing in any expensive equipment. Perhaps more importantly, you can get your hands on it without being judged by any hipsters whatsoever! The only important thing to have is some means of filtration. If you have a french press, that would be ideal. If not, you could use a fine mesh strainer or (like I used) a regular drip coffee machine filter.

Well, I didn't mention peppermint mocha for no good reason.

Macaroni and Cheese with Spam

Ingredients:

   - Macaroni and Cheese
   - Spam

Instructions:

1. Cook macaroni and cheese.
2. Add Spam.
3. Avoid looking at yourself in the mirror.

Final Verdict:

Taste: 4.5/5

Ease: 5/5

Health: 0/5

Last-Minute Stir Fry

Last night, my brewing buddy Abel came over for dinner. This is all well and good, but I hadn't planned on it. The chicken I was marinading wouldn't be enough for two people. To stretch out the meat and make a fulfilling meal, I decided to toss the meat with some vegetable and seasoning and make stir fry. This was extremely last-minute; I just about exhausted my supply of fresh vegetables and I did every bit of planning as I went along. It came out pretty great, so I thought I'd share.

I told myself I wouldn't say this, but... it was... Stir-Friday (Archer, anyone?).

Pork: Now, Medium-Rare

While listening to the radio the other day, I heard a commercial from the pork industry. I don't think I've heard much advertisement from them since I was a little kid, back when "The Other White Meat" commercials were still often playing.

This new commercial really surprised me, though. It was informing me that the FDA had changed its guidelines for safely cooking pork. It used to be that pork was supposed to be heated to 160 °F. This new commercial claimed that whole pieces of pork could be served "juicy and medium-rare", after being cooked to 145 °F with a three minute rest period before eating. So what gives?

Image: savit keawtavee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Milk-Brased Spiced Pork Chops

A few posts ago, I spoke about a blog I had been introduced to called The Recipe Development Engineer. The author of the blog, Ludwig, wrote a great piece about braising meat. Long story short, braising makes pretty much any piece of meat moist and delicious (read the full article here). Last night, I came up with a braising recipe of my own. There's an Italian way of preparing a pork roast wherein it is slowly braised in milk; I played with it a bit in order to give it some zing.

Please, don't try eating the bay leaf.

On Freezer Burn

A friend recently asked me about freezer burn. It certainly isn't a standard burn from heat or acid, so what causes it? Why is it that food left in a freezer - and theoretically locked in some sort of suspended animation - nevertheless goes bad? How can it best be prevented? He also asked about how freezer burn can "tenderize" meat, which is something I've never heard of but decided to look into.

Not exactly ideal.

Autumn Vegetable Stew: Round Two

So, I remade the Autumn Vegetable Stew that I posted a recipe for recently. It came out great again. I mentioned during the first post that there were a few discrepancies between the instructions I gave and the instructions I followed. This image is of a stew using the exact recipe I posted. It's creamier than when I first made it, and every bit as delicious.

It would make a phenomenal first course if you were having company (and you could easily prepare it a few days ahead of time), but it's hearty enough that a good-size bowl makes a lovely and healthy meal.

The cheese on top might be the best part.

It Is Complete: Pioneer Pale Ale

The first batch of home brewed beer is complete! It has been dubbed "Pioneer Pale Ale." Realistically, it may not deserve that name - it's not quite like any other pale ale I've ever had. First off, it would be a bit of a stretch to declare it pale:

Pictured: five weeks of waiting.

Autumn Vegetable Stew

I have finished my block exams! To celebrate, I'm writing a post on a dish I came up with a couple of weeks ago that I ended up really loving. I mentioned earlier that squash is one of my favorite things about fall, and I thought it would be interesting to integrate it into a soup/stew. I've had acorn squash soup before, but that's more or less pureed squash that's been heated up a bit with some salt and pepper on it. Delicious, but not what I've had in mind. Unfortunately I have no image for this one. I'll definitely be making it again, and when I do I'll post a picture.

**Edit: I've made it a second time, and it was once again awesome. Here's the picture, as promised.

It's Test Time!

I've got a big exam coming up, so I may not have time to type up any updates for a few days more. I've got some good stuff coming, though: Hearty Autumn Vegetable Stew, Braised Pork Chops (cooking right this moment!), Sausage and Sweet Potato Pasta, etc. Stay tuned!

Collaboration with The Recipe Development Engineer

I want to start out by giving a big thank you to two people: A number of weeks ago, my friend Alex introduced me to Ludwig, who runs a fantastic food blog called The Recipe Development Engineer. Ludwig has a great approach to cooking, using constant incremental improvements in order to create truly phenomenal dishes. Like any good engineer, he optimizes! He has a lot more experience with cooking than I do, and it shows in recipes like his Chicken à la Provençal.

We decided that it would be great idea to collaborate and draw some inspiration from each others. He recently wrote a great piece on the science behind braising that I would heartily recommend checking out. A properly braised piece of meat can be most precisely and concisely described as succulent. I have never braised before; it's a technique that takes a long time, and I rarely decide what I'm cooking until about two hours before dinner time. That said, I'm inspired. I'll be braising some cut of meat or another within the week, and I'll post the results when I do. I'd also like to do my own quirky twists on some of Ludwig's recipes.

So thanks, Alex! Thanks, Ludwig! My apologies for not writing a post on this sooner; the past month or so has been hectic for me. I kept telling myself that I'd write this post when I modified one of Ludwig's recipes, but I've just been busier than I expected. I give my word that there will be good things to come.

Sweet Tarragon Chicken Salad

Growing up, I always hated chicken salad. Bland meat slathered in mayonnaise? No thanks. It took a while for me to be able to be near the stuff, let alone actually eat it. Last week, I developed my own little recipe for a different take on chicken salad. It makes for a simple, tasty sandwich.

It may look like normal chicken salad, but it'll surprise you.

Cinnamon Pear Pork Loin

From what I understand, the city of Houston doesn't really have much in terms of seasons. There's summer, and then there's... not-summer. I've lived in the northeast all my life, and my favorite season has always been fall. I love the turning of the leaves, I love the crisp temperature, and I love good fall food. Even though Houston may be missing out on some of the external signs of fall, I've decided that at the very least I should bring fall into my apartment. I started out with this simple pork recipe. I have a few more good ones coming over the next few days; I just haven't typed them up yet.

We have bottled!

Last night, Abel and I bottled our lovely carboy of beer. It was a bit of a process, but we ended up with forty-six regular bottles of beer and two larger bombers. I'm pretty impressed with how easy this process has been so far - we've gone from a bunch of ingredients to legitimate beer in only three days of work, totaling about six hours. Abel, hero among men that he is, has been doing a lot of the cleanup since we've been bottling in his apartment. There honestly isn't a ton of stuff to clean, though.

But anyway, bottling! Apologies for the lack of images; none of them came out right. Next time we bottle it'll be better documented.

On Antioxidants

So, you're roaming around the grocery store. You find yourself in the juice aisle, and after you pass by the standard apple and cranberry juices you start seeing crazy things - cocktails with bits of blueberry, pomegranate, and some bizarre thing called an açaí berry. Furthermore, all these bottles tout their juices' antioxidant properties! None of them, of course, explain what an antioxidant is or why you should care.

It all starts with oxygen.

Purple Party Potato Salad

So tonight, I made my bratwurst with apple-onion-pepper topping for my girlfriend and her mother. Rather than the vinegar pasta from last time, I decided to get a bit more authentic and serve the dish with a hot German potato salad. But regular ol' potato salad isn't very exciting... so I decided to try coming up with my own recipe. I unfortunately lacked the bacon that makes German potato salad so savory, but it tasted good nevertheless.

Well, uh... this probably couldn't look less appetizing. I promise, it's nicer in person.

Herb Rubbed Seared Pork Chops

At long last, my lovely girlfriend has joined me in our apartment. This means that I won't generally be cooking for one anymore. On top of that, her tastes are a bit different from mine. To celebrate the first dinner that we would have together, I wanted to make a dish that I thought she would love. Her favorite meat is pork, and she absolutely loves herbs. I came up with a nice herbal dry rub to put onto some pork chops, and it ended up being awfully good.

It's tastier than it looks.

Apologies

My apologies for the lack of posts this week. It's been quite hectic, and it will continue to be hectic for a few days more. I'll try to get something out over the weekend, but (somewhat) normal posting should resume on Monday.

On Marinading

Not all cuts of meat are created equal. Some are flavorful, some are bland. Some melt in your mouth like butter, some are tough and chewy enough to almost not be worth eating. Fortunately, most meat-based problems can be solved through ample application of a marinade. A good marinade will do three things: tenderize the meat, keep it moist, and impart flavor. Flavor is the easy part - toss ingredients into a bag, and the liquid will more or less taste like a lovely mess of those ingredients... assuming that the meat is moist and properly tenderized. So how does one construct a good marinade? 

Without marinade, I guarantee you this would be awful.

kongsky / freedigitalphotos.net

Spicy Sausage Soup

When I made my last soup, I realized that soup is an outstanding way to make an easy, delicious, healthy meal. I had some stuff laying around this week and decided to see what kind of soup I could make from it. It's simultaneously pseudo-Italian and a little bit Hispanic. Importantly, it's all around delicious. It's nice and hearty. It would be a great thing to come inside to after a cool, crisp fall day. It even has all those lovely fall colors.

Liquid autumn.

On Fermentation

Last night, Abel and I transferred all the lovely beer from our primary fermentation vessel to a secondary fermentation vessel. The primary fermentor was a straight up white plastic bucket with an airlock drilled into the lid; the secondary fermentor is a traditional carboy. Most people who make beer or wine use one of these. Our carboy is plastic instead of glass. The general consensus seems to be that plastic carboys are lighter and safer than glass, and that the difference in material doesn't really affect the taste. In honor of this momentous occasion, I wanted to talk a bit about fermentation (with an emphasis on its application to brewing).

The carboy, full of delicious beer.

In Which I Follow Recipes for Indian Food (Sometimes)

Last night, I was having company and decided that I wanted to try making Indian food. I had never made any Indian food before, and I had only ever tried a few dishes, but I wanted to cook something that was both vegetarian and delicious. Chana masala was the first thing that came to mind. I also chose to make saag, an awesome spinach dish that I tasted once before. Given my total lack of experience with Indian food, I decided to follow recipes. For the most part, at least. I wanted to give my guests the option of meat, so I did do a little inventing. I had awesome yogurt-marinated chicken from an Indian restaurant back when I lived in Hoboken, NJ, so I cobbled together a recipe based on that ideal.

No picture, unfortunately. Didn't really end up having time to take one.

On Capsaicin

In my recent post on conceptual cooking, I wrote for a little bit about spicy food. My brother gave me a bottle of crazy hot sauce to play around with for a birthday present, so in honor of that I thought it would be fun to write a bit about hot hot foods in general.

Image: cjansuebsri / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sausage and Broccoli Pasta

What follows may be one of my less inspired dishes, but it's absolutely awesome and it's really easy to make. And fret not, I put at least a little bit of a personal touch to it. I love the way the heat of the sausage works with the almost creamy texture of steamed broccoli. A bit of tang from some lemon goes a long way to round out a great flavor profile for this dish.

Broccoli and sausage make a phenomenal pairing.

Hops in the White House

Folks, this is a major home brewing update. Regardless of political affiliations, my respect for the president just increased about tenfold. Why? It seems that Obama has begun engaging in the wonderful (and somewhat historic) past time of brewing beer.

We Begin! Pale Ale #1 (Bonus: Metapizza)

The delicate and lovely process of brewing beer has begun! My good friend Abel and I are brewing beer together, and we've decided to start out with somewhat standard pale ale. He and I are both what I would consider "beer geeks." We like beer, and we love trying and exploring variants of the basic recipe, but in general we just love beer in all its forms. We recently split the price of some brewing equipment, and tonight we began the actual process of creating our own beer.

Abel and I (right and left respectively) are beered up and ready to get brewing. My new beard looks more red than I expected.

Why Garlic Is Awesome

Garlic just might be my favorite ingredient. There's nothing else that's so capable of giving a dish pop and pow - it's a strong flavor that can either complement other ingredients or stand on its own as the focus of a dish. So what is it that makes garlic so magical?

Pictured: perfection.

Tomato Asparagus Soup

It seems I'm running out of food. My apartment's pantry is getting bare, and my refrigerator is looking more desolate every time I open it. I didn't really have many fresh ingredients sitting around, so I decided to use up as man of them as I could in a single dish. And that dish was a soup!

Can't beat soup for simplicity and taste.

Amateur Mixology: Caribbean Winter

Having completed (and hopefully passed) my first real exam in medical school, I decided that a celebratory drink was in order. Tragically, I came home to find that my fridge was all out of beer. I improvised! Now I've developed a fairly tasty little cocktail to enjoy on those sad, beerless nights. No image, sadly: it's decidedly difficult to take a good picture of a beverage with a non-professional digital camera.

Conceptual Cooking

Apologies for not posting last night; I have a huge exam coming up and my time is getting precious. I couldn't abide the thought of two postless days in a row, though, so I decided to write up a quick one for today. Rather than a recipe, I want to talk about the concepts I try to keep in mind when I'm cooking. This is something that I'm probably going to revisit over and over again over the lifetime of this blog, and it is hand-down the most important thing for someone to realize if they're learning how to cook.

Tasty Bratwurst, and Pasta with Bite

My German ancestors would either be very proud of me or hang their heads in shame. The standard accompaniment to bratwurst is a good hot potato salad and some sauerkraut. Although I adore both of those things, I didn't really have all the necessary ingredients for either one. No cabbage, no bacon, not a lot of potato action... truly a shame. But I really, really wanted bratwurst. So I improvised! Sauerkraut and hot German potato salad together bring three important things to the meal: sour, sweet, and starch. I got the sour and starch from a pasta dish I came up with, and the sweetness came from a lovely topping for the sausage. All in all, it turned out to be a pretty great meal.

Click it. It'll be outrageously satisfying.

Let the Madness Begin

The time has come. My buddy Abel and I have bought our first set of beer ingredients. Nothing huge, nothing creative - just beer.

Science: Asparagus Revisited (With Bonus Urine!)

In my previous recipe, I mentioned my love of asparagus. I was talking to a friend online as I cooked, and he told me that although he loved asparagus, he hated how it made his urine smell. I've heard people mention in the past that asparagus gives their urine a distinctive sulfurous stench, but I personally have always been unaffected. So, why does asparagus make your pee smell? And why does it happen to some people and not others? The answer, it turns out, is more interesting than you might think.

Pseudo-Caribbean Chicken and Crunchy Bananas

So, I wanted to try making something with a bit of a Caribbean feel to it. Note that I don't really know anything about how to actually cook a Caribbean-ish meal, but I had a concept in my mind and had to work towards it. I went for a marinated chicken dish, and had a flash of inspiration and decided to do something interesting with bananas for a side dish. I couldn't figure out what else to do with the meal (No rice! No beans!) so I rounded it off with asparagus because, well... I just like asparagus.

The successful product of utter guesswork.

Update on Vinegar for Eggs

So I looked into exactly why it is that vinegar helps poaching eggs keep their shape.

11:30 Ramen That Doesn't Suck

So, ramen noodles would be pretty good if it weren't for the fact that, well, they kind of suck. That said, you sure as hell can't beat the price or ease of use. When it's late and I'm lazy, a souped-up (heh) ramen soup is my go-to.

Bold Beginnings

As a medical student, it isn't always terribly easy to make wonderful food for yourself. Studies are time consuming, and putting an hour a day to the side in order to have a prepare and eat a good meal isn't always the first thing on someone's mind. For me, cooking has been a way to relax and enjoy myself for years. I first started to dabble while studying abroad at Scotland's University of Dundee. I had to, really - there was no dining hall, and the UK is an expensive enough place to live without eating out every day. When I came back stateside, I tried to keep up the habit and began using cooking as a way to unwind and distract myself from my studies. That half hour or hour of cooking that for some seems so pointless is a pleasant diversion for me. That said, I'll be doing my best in the coming years to make the most of my cooking time. It's a goal of mine to make tasty and (somewhat) healthy food in as quick and easy a way as possible. As I experiment, I'll be posting pictures, recipes, and reviews for whatever it is I happen to concoct.

And speaking of concoctions, there are few things I enjoy more than a well-brewed beer. I'm a bit of a beer geek, and my infatuation with the beverage runs the gamut from doppelbocks and dubbels to pale ales and pilsners. I love trying new things, and I love trying to dissect and analyze them. Perhaps more importantly, today I received a set of homebrewing equipment I ordered online. I'll be developing and brewing beers with a good friend of mine, and I'll try to give you a glimpse into what it is we're doing and why we're doing it.

Of course, nothing I do would be complete without throwing just the least bit of science into the mix. I'll do my best to keep it under control.