Extra Schmaltz!

Another yummy recipe to check out is Maangchi's jobchae video-recipe. I link to her Blogger page on the right-hand panel, and she has a number of great recipes, but I will also insert the video here: I had no idea how easy this delicious recipe is, and it uses yam starch noodles, which are perfect for mom's gluten-free diet. These are the grayish/purplish ones that come in large packages, called "dang myun". (I made it with some other Asian noodles I had, and it still turned out fine) . Jobchae can be made with chicken rather than beef, for Jeff. Since the recipe is relatively inexpensive to make it will hard to pay restaurant prices for this dish in the future. Mmm...now I want to make some more!

This recipe has one of the greatest deliciousness:ease ratios that I know of. I learned it from our Hungarian cousin Kriszti, and I can't remember the Magyar name for the life of me, so I made this one up myself. All you need is: 1.5 lbs pork shoulder roast, cubed or sliced fresh Polish sausage 2 big jars/cans of sauerkraut Optional: 1 bay leaf white pepper nutmeg In the example photos I used the Polish sausage and home-made sauerruben (pickled turnips), because I'm an overachiever. Brown the pork/sausage in oil or fat in a heavy pot. Rinse the kraut in a colander and squeeze out (if you like it milder, rinse less. Knowing our family, you won't rinse at all). Dump the kraut on top but do not stir. Grind some white pepper and nutmeg on top and stick a bay leaf in, if desired. Trust me--even without any seasonings this is delicious. Add some water or broth so that there is moisture in the pot, but I wouldn't add more than a cup. Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer ...

Forget about the dang pancakes already! This is something you have to taste - The recipe is taken, shamelessly and without editing, from the Joy of Gardening Cookbook with frosting from Grandma Gwen's recipe box. It is so incredibly delicious and if I am doing my arithmetic right, it is about 75% zucchini. (Just don't tell anyone that claims they don't like squash in any form). ZUCCHINI CHOCOLATE CAKE 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature 2 cups sugar 3 eggs, beaten 1 TBSP vanilla (yes, TBSP!) 2 cups flour 1/3 cup cocoa 2 tsp. baking soda 2 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. salt 1/3 cup buttermilk or sour cream 3 cups coarsely grated zucchini (I left out the nuts, but you can certainly add some) Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour two 9" round pans. Melt the chocolate and oil in a small saucepan over very low heat. Cream the butter until light; add the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Beat well. Add the melted chocolate and mix we...

This week we got beets from the CSA. They're still small but already perfect for borscht! These ones have light-colored insides, so they're better for beef borscht (rather than the all-veggie cold borscht, which I prefer to be magenta). First I made beef broth from scratch. I think this step really makes the soup, but obviously it's more convenient to use canned or crystalized. I roasted oxtails and boiled them with the usual: 2 bay leaves, 4 whole cloves, 1/2 bunch parsley, carrots, celery, and onions. Meanwhile, I boiled the beets in one pot, and peeled potatoes in another pot (add a lot of salt to the potatoes). Drain each when cooked. The potatoes will be sliced into the soup at the very end. Once the beets are tender and cooled, slip their skins off (I think this step is the most fun part) and slice (or grate) into thin shreds. Pretty, huh? Next you need to prepare the other vegetables--2 carrots, one large onion, and 1/2 of a small cabbage (green or red). These will a...

This is a pretty exciting recipe because it uses power tools. I meant for this blog to be more of a collection of our favorite recipes, but it is also fun to add new ones along with photos (such as this one). This recipe was inspired by the arrival of zucchini season and by the tasty dishes I had in Jordan. I tend to steer clear of labor-intensive recipes that involve stuffing things, but I had to make an exception for the tender zukes clogging up my fridge and the crazy plan I hatched for breaking in my electric drill. I asked Alex to get me the zuke-hollowing tool that's common in the Middle East (where, alternately, you can buy vegetables pre-hollowed), but since he won't be back for ages I had to take matters into my own hands. In the end the recipe wasn't really that bad too make and I had fun doing it. I based it on two recipes I found online, one because it uses a pressure cooker (hooray!) and the other because it sounded tastier and was closer to the amounts I nee...

You may or may not know that Dan and I are splitting a CSA (community supported agriculture) share with our friend Kristine. It still seems to be 'springtime' at the farm, so we're deluged in greens of all sorts. One nice break from those, though, are the sweet little Hakurei turnips we get. Unlike the big, tough, purplish turnips you get from the store, these are small and tender. As you are probably not surprised to know, I just read the book " The Joy of Pickling " from cover to cover and now I'm completely inspired. I've made a number of recipes already, but I thought I'd sharea few photos to test out our new blog. Here are the turnips themselves, nice and clean. A few weeks ago none of them were more than 1" across. Now they're growing. This time I pickled them thusly: Wash and peel one pound baby turnips, make X-shaped cuts in each end. Soak in brine of 1.5 c. water + 2 tsp. pickling salt for one hour, drain. Add one fresh jalepeno (i...

This is so tritely named since the end product surprised me with a texture almost identical to risotto, and trite does not preclude apt. It's a pretty simple pasta dish, good fridge velcro, and can really make you look like you know what you're doing, especially if you get to explain what a velouté is to whomever is eating (bonus points for a mother sauce that isn't tomato!) Basically, make pasta, and put it in a velouté (light stock thickened with a blond roux). Less briefly put: Make pasta: al dente is always good, but it's especially important for it to have a good bite in this application; this makes it risotto-y, and its going to be cooked a little more once it's out of the pot. Because it is going to be mated to a somewhat small amount of sauce with a creamy texture, use a tube- or shape-pasta rather than a string-style. Individual pieces will get impregnated with the yummy, and string-pastas will simply slide all over and leave half the sauce on the plate. U...

Hi there family, Joe and I had been discussing making a blog like this. I think this will be a good way for us to share recipes online and will hopefully encourage us to record what we cook. We all love and appreciate good food and, let's just be honest here, kick ass in the kitchen. I wasn't envisioning this being a very public blog--mostly just for us and the occasional friend who's interested, but we can do whatever we like with it. Feel free to post photos if you have them and links to other sites of interest. Happy cooking and eating!