Category Archives: recipes

Easy, sexy chocolate mousse (pudding)

Posted on January 1, 2011 by bipolarlawyercook| 5 Comments

For those of you who don’t fol­low the Recipe Redux col­umn Amanda Hesser writes in the NYT Sun­day Mag­a­zine, here’s a dou­ble thumbs up from the BH and I for the Chocolate-Rum Mousse.

The BH made it for us for New Year’s Eve din­ner, and it is, as Hesser says, more pudding-like than a real, “proper” mousse.  That said, it’s rich, choco­latey, rummy, and com­pletely deli­cious.  The BH reports that it’s also lit­er­ally a whiz to make in the blender, pun com­pletely intended– he used choco­late chips for the choco­late, and it took less than a half hour to make, start to fin­ish.  The only “trick” ingre­di­ent is the plain, unfla­vored gelatin, since I’m the kind of nerd who has that in my pantry, but most well-stocked super­mar­kets have it these days.  And when it’s done, you’ve got an easy, sexy choco­late dessert that’s got Jello beat, what­ever you call it.

→ 5 Comments

Posted in Better Half, cooking, food, links, recipes

Minestrone with Almond Pistou

Posted on October 15, 2010 by bipolarlawyercook| 5 Comments

I have, in the past, pooh-poohed the idea of things like fancy-shmancy herb top­pings and such.  And then I dis­cov­ered gre­mo­lata and learned the errors of my ways.

I have now learned that yes– putting pesto, or, as the French say, pis­tou, or your mine­strone?  It’s a mighty fine thing.

Last night’s soup, inter­preted to use what I had in my pantry and fridge from this Melissa Clark recipe here at the NYT (quickly becom­ing my go-to gal, even more so than Bittman), was topped off by a dol­lop of almond pis­tou.  It was mighty deli­cious, even with my fid­dling about and omis­sions, the which you’ll see when you com­pare my bas­tardized ver­sion to Clark’s, which no doubt is bet­ter– but I didn’t have leeks, fresh toma­toes, or fresh beans of the kind she called for on hand, but I still wanted soup.  So I winged it, because I did have fresh basil– and really, when you’ve got fresh basil, pis­tou just must be made.

Look at that photo and see if you disagree.

And now the impor­tant part:  the recipe, such as it is.

1 32 oz. can chef’s cut toma­toes, with or with­out basil.
1 small can chick­peas
12 baby car­rots, appx. or 1 large peeled car­rot
1 large onion, chopped
1 med. zuc­chini, chopped
large hand­ful green beans
1 sprig rose­mary
large spring pars­ley
2 cups chicken broth made from Knorr bouil­lon (Yes.  I am really that lazy.  All the time.  I do not use stock, pretty much ever.)
tsp. salt
3 tbsps. extra vir­gin olive oil, because that’s all I ever keep in the house
3 gar­lic cloves, peeled and smashed with the flat of a large knife

Pis­tou:
Large bunch basil, appx. 2 cups
1/2 cup unsalted roasted almonds, skin on
freshly ground pep­per
1/4 cup parme­san, grated
salt, 1 tsp
extra vir­gin olive oil
2 gar­lic cloves, peeled
1/4 tsp. red pep­per flakes

Tie the herbs together with butcher’s twine, put them in a tea ball or cheese­cloth, or decide you don’t mind fish­ing them out or pick­ing out pieces of rose­mary from your teeth (or finely chop the herbs and add them to the sauce that way).

Saute the car­rots, onions and herbs over med-high heat in the olive oil with salt, pep­per and red pep­per flakes until soft­ened, appx. 5 mins.

Add gar­lic and other veg­eta­bles, except for toma­toes and beans, toss to coat in oil and lightly golden, appx. 10 mins. more.  Do not let the gar­lic get too brown.

Add the toma­toes, beans, chick­peas, and a can of water from the tomato can, lower the heat and set the whole thing to sim­mer 30 mins. with the lid on.  (I only added one can of water from the chick­peas and now wished I’d added just a bit more, so I’m say­ing that I should have added from the tomato can and not the chick­peas as I look back.)

When the soup is done, make the pis­tou in your food proces­sor or blender or mor­tar and pes­tle or other wham-bashy thing (I know.  Highly tech­ni­cal, here.)  Whiz the basil with the remain­ing ingre­di­ents and just enough olive oil to make a thick paste that coheres to itself but isn’t too liquid.

Put a teaspoon-sized dol­lop on top of your soup, serve with a hearty red wine like a petite sirah from Bogle or a Rioja or some­such, and enjoy the veg­etable, herb-almond-cheesy goodness.

I think if you had a lac­tose allergy or didn’t eat cheese you could well leave out the parme­san in the pis­tou, up the salt slightly, and still have the same over­all tasty effect.  I’d prob­a­bly add more oil and almonds to up the fat con­tent as well.

→ 5 Comments

Posted in Pantry cooking, cooking, flickr, food, links, photos, recipes, wine

In which fish stew is made and consumed and I actually post on the internet, too, only breaking a few laws in the process.

Posted on October 6, 2010 by bipolarlawyercook| 1 Comment

I know.  You’re shocked.  Cook­ing, here at bipolarlawyercook?

What’s up with that?

Here, let me get out the smelling salts before I start post­ing pic­tures and recount­ing the recipe and prov­ing that yeah, that “cook” thing in my han­dle isn’t there just for show.

I know.  I had to pick the poor Bet­ter Half up off the floor too.  More­over, I had to enlist the poor bas­tard in prep­ping the stew, it’d been so long since I’d been home on a week­night and had the day off and had the time to go gro­cery shop­ping (thank you, end­less round of close shifts and emo­tional exhaus­tion prior to job trans­fer, whut?)  But he was a champ, and we got it done, which was good, because today was one of those first raw fall blus­tery days where you’re (or maybe just me, but still) all– “Hmm.  SOUP.  Yeah.”

This tasty, gluten-free, low-carbish (just leave out the rice and brown sugar if you so choose) white fish stew is DELICIOUS.  And not really a chow­der despite my sojourn this past week­end in Province­town on the Cape (and more, per­haps, some­time, on how the leather dad­dies and their boys knew my col­lege best friend and I weren’t together but the les­bians all seemed to give us the “you’re a cute cou­ple” nod, which I thought was lol­rar­i­ous) stew is Thai-flavored, deli­cious, and except for a lit­tle chop­ping for prep, quick-cooking and easy to make.

It comes straight from Melissa Clark’s new book In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite , a cook­book I am very much enjoy­ing and lit­ter­ing with pos­tit notes at night in my bed.  Clark writes reg­u­larly for the NYT, and I’ve made sev­eral recipes of hers over this spring and sum­mer that were solid hits that I just haven’t got­ten around to post­ing about (includ­ing her OMG gaz­pa­cho with yogurt which you should go google right now).  (I’ve been COOKING.  I’ve just been remiss in blog­ging.  I know.  You’re shocked.)

I tweaked the recipe in one way that departs from the highly copy­right viola­tive way in which I am about to just post the fol­low­ing photo of the recipe straight from the book:  I rinsed and chopped one small­ish zuc­chini, halved it length­wise, then halved it again and cut it into thin quar­ter slices, to be added in at the last stage with the fish.

As for the rest:  the BH does not care for shell­fish, so I used 1 lb. wild-caught George’s Bank cod in place of the vari­ety rec­om­mended, since the snap­per was farmed and I just … don’t like farmed fish, no mat­ter what peo­ple may say about safety.  I served it with Jas­mine rice, wicked lazy style– Trader Joe’s sells some frozen (I shit you not) in lit­tle microwav­able bags and I zapped one to serve on the side and spoon into the bowl.  You could skip it if you’re count­ing your carbs.  Like­wise, the recipe calls for 1 tbsp. brown sugar for that authen­tic Thai-ish kind of taste.  I have a feel­ing you could add in agave nec­tar in equal pro­por­tion right before serv­ing if you were watch­ing your sugar and get about the same fla­vor, though I haven’t tried it.

So.  Recipe.  (I know.  Going to hell.  At least I will have been well fed on the way…):

Mise en place, aka all that shit you need to get started.

And then, by the magic of my being too lazy to take a pic­ture of what’s really a very fast process– seri­ously, stir the shal­lots and gar­lic until ten­der in oil, then add the liq­uid and sim­mer 10 min­utes before adding the fish and the zuc­chini and cook­ing three min­utes more– we have the fin­ished product.

Voila.  Pretty, pretty coconut fish stew with basil and lemon­grass.  And zuc­chini.  Because I’m sub­ver­sive in adding veg­gies like that.

Here’s the ver­sion with rice, in case you want to know what it looks like all fragrant-steamy with the added odor of Jas­mine rice mix­ing in with the coconut milk and the lime juice and fish stew loveliness.

Thus ends my fish tale, all of it totally true.  Espe­cially the part about my vio­lat­ing copy­right by post­ing the recipe pic­ture.  Although adding the zuc­chini arguably trans­forms this whole post into fair use.

I think.

Eh.

I think I’ll have some more soup and not worry instead.  It’s that kind of soup.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Better Half, books, cooking, flickr, food, gluten free, links, low carb, photos, recipes

Ooh! Cooking! Crostini! A trio, even!

Posted on September 11, 2010 by bipolarlawyercook| 4 Comments

Crostini trio

Upon get­ting some of my appetite back (huz­zah), I cel­e­brated with a trio of cros­tini.  Now, hav­ing learned last sum­mer  that the key to good cros­tini (bruschetta, what­ever) is none of this soggy untoasted white bread mess– no, none of that– spray those pieces of cia­b­bata or what-have-you crusty white bread with good olive oil and then pan fry them or broil them until they are toasty and crisp, damnit, crisp.  If you wanted to add salt and fresh ground black pep­per, well, I wouldn’t stop you, you set those cros­tini aside on some brown paper to dry and await top­pings of goodness.

And boy, are these top­pings good.  The recipes below go left to right as shown in the picture.

Top­ping one:  Ricotta and Peach Cros­tini with Pis­ta­chios, from the NYT.  I have, since the mak­ing of this pic­ture, tweaked the recipe.

I know.  You are SHOCKED.  But the arugula and peaches and pis­ta­chios all fell off and got messy, dang it.  So– I chopped the arugula, mixed it and the pis­ta­chios, parme­san, lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pep­per into the ricotta, and slathered that onto the bread.  Then, hav­ing tossed the peaches, cut a bit smaller than shown in this pic­ture, I put them on top of the cheese mix­ture, and served them that way. There was far less toppings-succumbing-to-gravity, and way more toppings-going-into-your-mouth.  Which is as it should be.

Top­ping two:  Kale and Pecorino Cros­tini from Bon Appetit.

Again, recipe tweak­age.  I used 1 tsp anchovy paste from a tube, and added 1/2 tsp red pep­per flakes  at the point at which the kale goes in to saute in the oil.  I also felt the kale could use a squeeze of acid, so after I took it off of the heat, I hit it with a splash, no more than a tea­spoon, of red wine vinegar.

Top­ping three: Spuma di Mor­tadella from the NYT.  (This also goes really well as a dip with raw pears, by the way.)

I didn’t use the cubed mor­tadella, just got the weight called for, sliced, at the deli.  It chopped up just fine in the food proces­sor.  Other than that, I didn’t vary the recipe.  This was absolutely incred­i­ble, a recipe I will make again and again, and so very easy, although the peach one is a very close sec­ond.  One thing I might try just to see what I think in the future is a wee bit of lemon zest (or maybe orange) in the mix the next time, since it’s meat­meat­meat­meat, super rich in its fla­vor, and the flo­ral hit of the zest might be a nice con­trast.  But this is a great appe­tizer, no doubt, and super easy to make, and way less expen­sive than any pate.  The pis­ta­chio top­ping?  Well, that’s all just classy shit.  Because that’s what we’re all about chez blc.  Classy top­pings and shit.  Just ignore the piles of dishes off in the kitchen.

As a woman far greater than me once said– bon appetit.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in flickr, food, links, recipes

Shakshuka and more of the poached egg chronicles (but Jenn, just add more feta)

Posted on May 14, 2010 by bipolarlawyercook| 4 Comments

Deb at Smit­ten Kitchen had this recipe for Shak­shuka, an Israeli Spicy Tomato Stew with Poached Eggs that I really wanted to try.  See, it looked really easy, a one pot dish that you built by lay­er­ing fla­vors, and when the stew was basi­cally done, you popped in a few eggs and poached them in the cooked liq­uid, then spooned them out into bowls, sprin­kled them over with feta and pars­ley and voila, BOOM, dinner.

See?  Doesn’t it look just yummy?

It was just that easy, and ooh, it was awe­some.  Espe­cially because I tried this new Rhode Island feta that I bought at the Ded­ham Whole Foods.  But for those of you who don’t like poached eggs, the stew base is deli­cious and spicy and yum.   I made it with 2 jalapenos, not three, and did the jalapenos, not the Ana­heim Chiles.  If you’re not a fan of poached eggs,  you could totally poach some fish or scal­lops or shrimp in the liq­uid, or just add more feta.  (Yes, Jenn, I tried it with­out the egg for break­fast this morn­ing.  It’s awe­some with­out the egg and just a lit­tle more cheese.)

I did devi­ate from Deb’s recipe in one way.  She sug­gests you serve it with pita, and I didn’t do that since I’m try­ing to get back to gluten-free eat­ing.  What I did instead is make socca.

Socca?  What’s this?  It’s chickpea-flour flat­bread, made from Bob’s Red Mill chick­pea flour I bought at my co-op.  Bob’s rocks, plain and sim­ple.  I keep the open pack­ages in the freezer in a ziploc after they’re open, since the bean flours tend to go ran­cid.  Here’s what it looked like, after it baked.

My recipe is based on the one in Fran McCullough’s Liv­ing Low Carb, page 135.  Since I mod­i­fied it a bit, I’ll post it here.

1 cup room tem­per­a­ture water
2/3 c chick­pea flour
3 tbsps extra vir­gin olive oil
1 tsp salt
5–6 grinds fresh black pep­per
Penzey’s rose­mary pow­der and/or finely chopped dried or fresh rose­mary nee­dles, at least 1/4 tsp.

Mix all ingre­di­ents in a bowl, whisk­ing until all lumps are gone.  Let sit for one hour.

Pre­heat oven to 500F.  In some­thing smaller than a sheet pan (this is why mine looks uneven and ragged, all the right pans for this recipe hap­pened to be dirty last night)– you want some­thing more like a round pizza pan or a 10–12 inch oven-proof skil­let, oil the pan with more olive oil, pour the bat­ter, then put it in to bake until set, approx. 6 minutes.

Turn on the broiler, take out the socca and spray/drizzle the top with more oil before putting it under the heat to crisp until golden brown, 3–5 min­utes.  Sprin­kle with salt and pep­per if you like (I didn’t, because I like my bat­ter pre-seasoned, I don’t think it needs any more), cut into wedges, and serve.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Pantry cooking, baking, books, cooking, flickr, food, links, low carb, recipes