Vegetarian Bean and Tempeh Chili (Best Light Recipe)

• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds
• 1 medium onion, minced
• 1 large red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and chopped fine
• 9 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 3 tablespoons)
• 3 tablespoons chili powder [Made my own as you should too.]
  
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• Salt
• 3 cups beans, drained and rinsed ["We recommend a mix of pinto, black, and red kidney beans."]
• 2 cups water
• 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 cup frozen corn kernels
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro leaves [I had tossed these after the Tortilla Soup entry. They were already more or less on their way out by then.]
  
• 1 tablespoon juice from 1 lime

Mise en place.


Brown crumbled tempeh over medium high heat.


Resulting tempeh tossed in with the bowl of beans, water, and brown sugar.


Toast cumin seeds until fragrant.


What I forgot to photograph was me sweating the onion, bell pepper, garlic, chili powder, oil, cayenne and salt together until the vegetables were softened. This smelled amazing.
Throw everything but the corn, cilantro, and lime juice in. Simmer for 25 minutes.


All my roommates said the chili smelled amazing and it was actually pretty good. Really clean compared to chilis I've made in the past. No shocker when the only fat in this dish is probably the tablespoon of oil.
Which hardly means I won't ever make a greasy beast of a chili again...

Chili Powder (HCE)

Reading How to Cook Everything (one of my earliest experiences being brainwashed by this whole food thing) instilled in me a strong distrust in store-bought spice blends. Unless a substance is truly hard to find (lavender in Herbes de Provence or sumac in Za'atar), it's always about a million times better to toast and grind your own spice blends. Especially when it comes to the usually sodium-laden store-bought Chili Powders. Yuck, and other preservatives and anti-caking agents as well.
Mark Bittman would probably have me grind whole spices every time I cooked and toss open spices after a year... But I have my limits.

• 2 tablespoons ground ancho, New Mexico, or other mild dried chile [I used Chile de Arbol since I have a big cheap bag of them. To counter this, I omitted the next ingredient.]
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste [I can always dose whatever dish I'm cooking with this.]
• 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 2 teaspoons cumin seeds
• 2 teaspoons coriander seeds
• 1 tablespoon dried Mexican oregano

Toast over medium heat until fragrant.





Grind in a spice grinder.

Ziti with Silky Cabbage, Oranges, and Chickpeas (Food Matters Cookbook)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 fresh hot chile (like serrano or Thai), minced
• 1 medium Savoy or other white cabbage (about 1 pound), cored and shredded
• 2 oranges, 1 juiced and the other peeled and cut into segments or wheels [I supremed citrus for the first time today. Supreming citrus basically means cutting the fruit's flesh entirely away from the membrane.]
• Salt and black pepper
• 8 ounces ziti, preferably whole wheat
• 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, drained
• 1/2 cup grated ricotta salata cheese [Couldn't find this at any of the three stores I visited. I just used normal ricotta. Oh well.]
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano, or 2 teaspoons dried

Mise en place. Nice bed of ice topping the partially defrosted chickpeas that I'll have to conend with.


Cooking garlic and chile over medium heat until they soften.


Add the cabbage and orange juice. Apparently the cabbage takes 1/2 hour to reach very soft.


Finished dish.
It was all right. Better it appeared over subsequent days. I wish the oranges I had were nicer and I could actually find ricotta salata.

Tortilla Soup with Lots of Garnishes (Food Matters Cookbook)

I recently read the Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman. The cookbook is supposed to complement Bittman's other book Food Matters which I assume is much like Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. All three books are about eating in a manner that is personally and environmentally health-conscious.
In this particular cookbook (unlike HCE and WBR), practically all the meat dishes contain a mere 8 ounces of the unpractical substance per 4 servings. I have no problem eating vegetarian meals, but at least this initial dish selection left me wanting for more.

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 8 ounces bone-in chicken thighs or beef chuck steak (or use brisket, shank, even sirloin; cut it into chunks)
• Salt and pepper
• 2 large onions, halved and sliced
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 small corn tortillas, roughly chopped
• 1 dried hot chile (like chipotle or milder ancho)
• 1 tablespoon fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried
• 2 limes, 1 of them juiced, the other cut into wedges
• 1 cup crumbled tortilla chips, for garnish
• 2 medium tomatoes, cored and chopped, for garnish
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions, for garnish
• 1 cup shredded cabbage, for garnish
• 1 cup chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish
• 2 avocados, skin and pits removed, sliced, for garnish [I had rather unripe specimens, but they added, at least, textural contrast?]
• 1 cup thinly sliced radishes, for garnish [As previously noted in this blog, I love radishes as a garnish or side dish to Mexican food. However, I didn't remember that the ones I had had gone bad.]
• 1/4 cup sour cream, for garnish
• 2 or more fresh hot chiles (like serrano, Fresno, or jalapeno), chopped, for garnish

Oh 8 ounces of chicken only amounts to one bone-in thigh.


Cook onions and garlic over medium heat until they soften and begin to turn golden.


Yup.


Add the tortillas, dried chile, and oregano. Apparently this was supposed to come together like a paste in 3 to 5 minutes, but I didn't achieve that.


Return chicken to pan, add 6 cups of water, bring to a boil, and cook until the meat cooks through.


In the mean time, prepare the gigantic amount of garnishes.


The dish all gussied up.
I felt the soup was a bit harsh at first but mellowed out over the next couple of days. The large amount of vegetables were nice (though Dan L didn't utilize them much). This particular recipe doesn't really make my heart sing, but perhaps I'm more likely to try a different take on the dish at some point. One with more than one chicken thigh in it most likely.

Apple Cake (MMB)

Similarly to the MMB cookies, Christina Tosi's cakes follow a basic formula and I'm stealing from the Milk Bar Project on this one: "are all about texture contrasts. Moist cakes, something gooey, and the dry crunch of the crumb - topped off with an indulgent frosting that adds a final layer of surprise."
There'll be no blog entry about my sister's cake since she's asking me to make my third Arnold Palmer Cake to serve at her bridal shower, but Joe A. presented me with making either the Chocolate Malt Layer Cake or the Apple Cake. Yes, I've been drooling about the former ever since I saw in Bon Appetit magazine months before the cookbook came out (the original East Village location was 3 blocks from where I worked as well).
However I've been spending a bit too much money trying to adequately equip myself for restaurant work (knife guards and decent paring knives though nothing awesome looking like the things L'Espalier line cooks carry around) so I didn't think I show blow some money on a blow torch. They aren't that expensive, but I'm actually broke now. Soon, soon...
So here goes for the Apple Cake:

Liquid Cheesecake
I've always been curious about the Liquid Cheesecake since reading through the MMB cookbook last fall. Is it really liquid? I asked myself even though if my memory of the book was close enough I would have known that it was an under-baked cheesecake that was just more spreadable that a normal cheesecake.

• 225 g cream cheese (8 ounces)
• 150 g sugar (3/4 cup)
• 6 g cornstarch (1 tablespoon)
• 2 g kosher salt (1/2 teaspoon)
• 25 g milk (2 tablespoons)
• 1 egg

Mise en place


A slurry of cornstarch, salt, and egg.


Sugar paddled into the cream cheese.


The slurry is paddled in and spread into a small baking pan lined with saran wrap.


Baked for 15 minutes at 300 degrees F.

Pie Crumb

• 240 g flour (1 1/2 cups)
• 18 g sugar (2 tablespoons)
• 3 g kosher salt (3/4 teaspoon)
• 115 g butter, melted (8 tablespoons [1 stick])
• 20 g water (1 1/2 tablespoons)

Mise en place.


Combine dry ingredients and wet in a stand mixer until they form clusters. Spread clusters out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a Silpat, a silicone baking pad.
I have one by Norpro and not an actual Silpat. Since it doesn't overfills even a normal baking sheet I don't use it often.


Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Apple Pie Filling

• 1 lemon
• 3oo g Granny Smith apples (2 medium)
• 14 g butter (1 tablespoon)
• 150 g light brown sugar (1/4 cup tightly packed)
• 1 g ground cinnamon (1/2 teaspoon)
• 1 g kosher salt (1/4 teaspoon)

Apples cut according to Tosi's directions. I threw them in a medium bowl filled halfway with lemon juice to prevent discoloration.


All the ingredients dumped in a pan.


Simmered until tender. Tosi says to "Be careful not to cook the apples so much that they turn into applsauce." Only a person who has no business cooking such ambitious things and walk away for so long would do such a thing. It's all so easy peasy.

Pie Crumb Frosting

• 1/2 recipe Pie Crumb
• 110 g milk (1/2 cup)
• 2 g kosher salt (1/2 teaspoon)
• 40 g butter, at room temperature (3 tablespoons)
  
• 40 g confectioners' sugar (1/4 cup)

Pie crumb and milk.


Blended.


Sugar and butter. Such small amounts of both (I guess this is my first buttercream frosting!) in comparison to say baking cookies. Well, the frosting's only for the top of the cake.


Creamed together on medium high for 2 to 3 minutes, until fluffy and pale yellow.


Pie crumb mixture dumped in.


Finished Pie Crumb Frosting.

Barely Brown Butter Cake

• 55 g butter (4 tablespoons [1/2 stick])
• 40 g brown butter (2 tablespoons)
• 250 g granulated sugar (1 1/4 cups)
• 60 g light brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 110g buttermilk (1/2 cup)
• 65 g grapeseed oil (1/3 cup)
• 2 g vanilla extract
• 185 g cake flour (1 1/2 cups)
• 4 g baking powder (1 teaspoon)
• 4 g kosher salt (1 teaspoon)
• Pam or other nonstick cooking spray (optional)

Butters and sugars.


Paddled together over medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes.


Add the egg and repeat.


Mise en place for the rest of the recipe.


"Stream the buttermilk, oil, and vanilla while the paddle swirls on low speed. Increase the speed to medium high and paddle for 5 to 6 minutes, until the mixture is practically white, twice the size of your original fluffy butter-and-sugar mixture and completely homogenous. You're basically forcing too much liquid into an already fatty mixture that doesn't want to make room for it, so if it doesn't look right after 6 minutes, keep mixing."

I threw in the towel after 12 and messing up my whole workspace, stand mixer, and Kindle. I realize now that my usual approach to buttermilk (dry buttermilk) might have broken my attempt since I was just trying to combine water into the mix rather than milk since the milk powder was in the dry ingredients. Maybe I should just start using clabbered buttermilk.


Fingers crossed.


Baked for 30 minutes at 350 degrees F.
It might've been way moister and brown buttery if I hadn't screwed up but at least I had something that was definitely serviceable as a cake.

Apple Cider Soak

• 55 g apple cider (1/4 cup)
• 5 g light brown sugar (1 teaspoon tightly packed)
• 0.25 g ground cinnamon (pinch)

I'm just whisking all these ingredients together. This didn't appear to justify a photo.

Apple Cake

• 1 recipe Barely Brown Butter Cake
• 1 recipe Apple Cider Soak
• 1 recipe Liquid Cheesecake
• 1/2 recipe Pie Crumb
• 1 recipe Apple Pie Filling
• 1/2 recipe Pie Crumb Frosting

Punching out the 3 layers with my 6-inch cake ring. I just recently bought a second one.


Bottom layer is composed of scraps pressed in. No one will ever know, but they will know if you've broken all the layers of the cake and the damn thing collapses in my first attempt at Tosi's cakes.


The layer is brushed with the apple cider cake and then 1/2 the Liquid Cheesecake is smoothed in.


Followed by a third of the Pie Crumb.


Apple Pie Filling.


Repeat once more and then top with the unbroken round of cake and the Pie Crumb Frosting.


Top with the remaining Pie Crumb. Wrap top in Saran Wrap and throw the whole thing in the freezer for at least 12 hours or 2 weeks.
Will report back with a picture and feedback in the latter amount of time.