Food Friday: Easy Whole Grain Flatbread

from MarkBittman.Com (we love this guy)

I skimmed this in a recent Examiner I found in the cracks of a metro seat - it made so much sense that I tore it out and put it in my pocket. It reminds me of Indian Onion Kulcha and is mindblowingly easy. Here's the recipe. My stomach likes.

Food Friday: A Little Sump-thing

I am always trying to make my own gyoza dipping sauce (nothing makes Wednesday less hump-y than a thrown-together meal of dumplings and edamame from Hana Market and a little Top Model), but I am forever fucking up the proportions and forgetting ingredients - soy sauce? Sesame oil? Ginger? Does garlic go in there? I don't know! Salvation has arrived in the form of Hisao Abe, the chef at the lauded sushi mecca Kotobuki. This dumpling sauce looks spot-on, and involves some elements I have yet to experiment with. Let the games begin!

Food Friday: Tune-up

I will never, ever, ever get tired of tonno con fagioli - the endlessly riffed-upon dish that typically combines white beans and tuna flavored with lemon, garlic, salt and pepper. As you can imagine, a dish this simple is a mere jumping-off point for many an enterprising chef, including DC Coast's Jeff Tunks. His Tuna with White Beans and Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce is a must-try! It gets high marks for simplicity and nutritional value - and deliciousness. (Duh.)

Food Friday: Orange You Glad

I am over buying stumpy, wet, too-bright orange carrots crammed artlessly into a plastic bag. It is an inappropriate and un-American thing to do, and entirely disrespecful to this nutrient-rich root! Now that I think about it, I am so mad I could crush spices in a resealable plastic bag and then simmer them with minced garlic, orange juice, coriander and sliced carrots to create a sweet, simple, earthy dish of epicly healthy proportions!

Food Friday: Mashup!

Oy! We've done a lot of cooking this week. Monday saw vegan chili from Bon Appetit paired with fluffy, cheesy dill-and-cheddar beer bread; last night, thanks to a simple template from 101 Cookbooks, I attempted miso soup for the first time - with sexy results! (And by sexy I mean light, spicy, and satisfying.) Do yourself a solid and give any of these recipes a whirl the next time you're cold, lazy, and/or hungry. Or you just want your kitchen to smell like amazingness.

Food Friday

Hi lovers. I know we have not featured Food Friday in a while. Fear not! We are still cooking and baking up a storm. I wanted to feature Angela's Uncle Robert's super-moist banana bread here today because a.) no one likes wasting food, b.) everyone likes a recipe that makes good use of bananas that have gotten a little too brown to eat, and c.) this banana bread is so fucking good you might need to write a song about it or something.

Uncle Robert's Super-Moist Banana Bread

1/3 cup butter
11/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
4 mashed ripe bananas
8 oz sour cream or plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
11/2 teaspoon baking soda
21/4 cups flour
1/2 cup chopped pecans, raisins, chocolate chips, or whatever you like munching on! (optional)


Plus:
1/4 cup extra sugar
1 teaspoon of allspice (or cinnamon!)


Cream together butter and sugar.
Add and mix in eggs, bananas, sour cream, vanilla, and cinnamon.
Then, mix in salt, baking soda, flour, & nuts.
Preheat oven to 300º.
Grease 91/2 inch bread pan with butter and sprinkle with extra sugar and allspice mixture.
Pour batter into pan evenly.
Bake at 300º for 1 hour.

C is for cookie,

and cookie is for you, darling reader!

Our friend Rachel is a whiz in the kitchen. At the most recent girl free-for-all (which included white wine and a screening of Step Up, starring the embarrassingly hot Channing Tatum - and by embarrassingly I mean that I am embarrassed for finding him so attractive), Rachel whipped up a varied assortment of baked goods - but it was these crispy, sugar-kissed, light-as-air "c cookies" that stole my heart. They are an OG confection - Rachel's mom got the recipe out of an 1970s issue of Woman's Day - and, like all good cookies, they are de-lish-us without taking themselves too seriously. (I mean, they're in the shape of the letter C! How self-referentially post-modern is that?) The recipe is below, complete with notes.

C Cookies (Hazelnut Crescents)

Makes 8 dozen

Ingredients:
1 C softened butter
1 C sugar
1 C hazelnuts, finely ground
2 C flour
¼ tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
powdered sugar

Cream butter and sugar. Add nuts, flour, salt and vanilla. Work with fingers as with pie crust. (My mom mixes first with mixer and finishes with hands. I've never read this part of the recipe until now and have only made mine by mixing with a blender.) If mix doesn't hold together, add ice water by the tablespoon.

Using a tsp of dough, shape like crescents. (This is a pain. Must roll between palms so it forms long, thin, cylinder shape.) Bake at 300 degrees for 20-25 minutes (though if you start to smell them, check, mine have been ready in as little as 15 minutes) or unti faintly brown. Cool.

Dust with sifted powdered sugar like early morning snow.

Food Friday

I know everyone is probably still recovering from Thanksgiving, but how can I not address something that contains brie? I went to the Valley Green Inn in Philadelphia last weekend with my family, and while I was not being overwhelmed by the verdant quaintery of this spot (someone get married here - stat), I was being floored by the food. Try their Brie French Toast and see what I mean.

Food Tuesday

I normally reserve my food posts for Fridays, but if you're anything like me you will be having more of a Food Coma Friday and not in the mood to try new recipes. Besides, who needs recipes when you have leftovers goulash supreme? You won't need me then. Here is something that you may need in the next few days - a silken, painfully simple (but slightly elevated!) mashed potato recipe that will impress your foodie aunt but won't scare your grandmother. (I know mashed potatoes are none too exciting, but Thanksgiving is one of those holidays where the menu is decided waaay in advance, so I'm kind of stuck.)

Food Friday

I have a bad habit of buying used cookbooks whenever I see them. I’ll get home, crack them open, and realize that there’s a reason that my newly purchased treasure was discarded in the first place – it was published in 1967 and every recipe calls for at least six tablespoons of butter, a healthy dollop of mayonnaise, and at least one type of canned vegetable. That’s why I almost got rid of House and Garden’s New Cookbook when I found it for sale (for a single George Washington) at the Mount Pleasant Library over the summer. Almost. Until I saw this:



Hello, illustrated recipe for a salad that sounds deliciously similar to an Amsterdam Falafel topping! You've made my day much brighter with your jaunty, handwritten way. PS: Thanks for being vegan without realizing it!

Food Friday

This week, in a nod to both the election and the increasingly delicious autumn weather, Food Friday brings you a "Gyngerbrede" recipe that Politics and Pot Roast author Sarah Hood Saloman attributes to George Washington's mother, Mary. I myself am a gyngerbrede (or gingerbread - whatevs) fanatic - for me, nothing conjures the winter holidays like this sweet, dense bread. And nothing conjures elections like George Washington, right? Like, literally?

Gyngerbrede

1/2 cup butter
1/2 brown sugar
1 cup molasses
3 eggs
1 and 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons ground ginger
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon mace
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon orange zest
1 cup raisins
1 cup buttermilk

Cream butter and sugar. Stir in molasses. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix well. Sift dry ingredients together and set aside. Combine the orange juice, orange zest, buttermilk and raisins and set aside.

Beat 1/2 of the flour mixture into the butter mixture, then add 1/3 of the milk mix. Repeat until all ingredients are combined. Put into greased 9" x 13" pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 50 minutes (or until straw inserted into gingerbread comes out clean). Yields 24 pieces.