a glut of cooking

it occurred to me that there are phrases that make recipes sound better to me (or to other people). for example, i always am attracted to recipes that include the word “icebox” in their titles: i get an image of a white refrigerator a la petit larousse in an immaculate, sunny 50s-era kitchen. perhaps i’m also attracted to the thought of opening the fridge to find it empty, save for a cake or a pie… another phrase that i don’t particularly care about, but imagine other people do, is the “double-chocolate” or “triple-chocolate” appellation, which can mean anything from a combination of chocolate and cocoa to the inclusion of milk, dark, and white chocolates. also, “margarita,” “drunken,” “tequila,” “heirloom,” and any recipe where the title is in a different language. in all reality, your “pomme frites” are going to taste the same whether they’re called pomme frites, frites, fries, chips, or deep-fried potatoes, but for many people the fact that they’re eating “pomme frites” somehow makes them better. do they understand what the literal translation is? no. but they don’t care – the only thing that matters is that it’s in another language.

anyway, tonight we’re eating leftovers from dinner yesterday: roast chicken, butternut squash-sage risotto, roasted potatoes and carrots, and green beans. keith and carrien got back yesterday, so i had intended to be in the middle of making dinner when they got back. the chicken was stuffed with an onion and half an orange, with sage-orange zest butter stuffed underneath the skin. same trussing as usual – foil around the legs and wings pinned with toothpicks. i also roasted some carrots and potatoes around the chicken. the risotto was pretty typical: render the fat from some bacon, saute the onions, add the rice and liquid. the squash pretty much melts into the rice and colors it a beautiful orange color. i used delicata squash that came with our boston organics shipment, and a bunch of roasted butternut squash my mother gave me. carrie also made some green beans (boiled, then finished in some extra bacon fat).

the risotto was quite good, and we made a lot of it – 2 1/2 cups rice, dry, which the three of us consumed a small amount of on thursday, then ate and fed to our friends on friday, and finished on saturday with our friends. note to self : a little rice goes a long way. the chicken was also quite good – the salt-sugar-pepper-paprika mixture on the skin always gives the skin this wonderful, salty-sweet crackling skin. mmm. after dinner i picked off all of the extra meat, and made soup with the carcass. it was also pretty basic : carrots and onions, divided, and the first half sauteed with thyme. i added the chicken bones and sauteed them briefly, and then added water. i boiled the chicken for a while – maybe an hour or two – and then added the other half of the vegetables, sauteed separately. i also picked out the bones and added some diced potatoes. finally, we added some pastina (too much, it turned out – i am not good at estimating these things!). probably, the most important addition was the thyme and the salt, pepper, and sugar – it’s always important to put in enough of all of the seasonings, because if you oversalt soup you can always water it down a little, whereas if you add too little it will simply be flavorless. i am also a big fan of balancing the salt with sugar. anyway, this was probably the only chicken soup i’ve ever liked beyond my mother’s chicken soup with pastina and tomatoes.

friday i had lunch with rob and rocco at bluefin, in the porter exchange. having just read an nytimes article about katsu don and tekka don, i ordered katsu don and shared an eel-sweet egg omelette roll with rob and rocco. mmm…katsu don is like the countless teriyaku rice bowls that i consumed during the summer from tokyo lunch box, except with better-seasoned rice and a wonderful combination of slightly sweet scrambled egg and fried pork. i surprised myself by eating the entire thing. however, then i didn’t eat anything until rather late in the day.

eric had some friends over to watch various new episodes of shows on the sci-fi channel, and while they did so i made chocolate zucchini cupcakes for the brunch i was going to have on saturday. they turned out pretty well; since i didn’t have any chocolate chips, i filled them with nutella and blueberry preserves. the recipe i used (from 101cookbooks) reported that you have to watch them or they’ll get overbaked. i thought this was slightly strange, as zucchini breads generally never require cautions like these, as the zucchini imparts ample moistness to the bread. however, i heeded it anyway, and probably for no reason – they were extremely moist on saturday.

for the brunch on saturday, we made baked eggs, french toast, crumpets, bacon, and carrie made a galette des rois for the epiphany. the french toast was standard, and could have been made with better bread (which then would have made it better), but it was the more economical choice. a little rum in the egg mixture went over pretty well, and i turned the leftover bread and egg mixture into a bread pudding. the recipe for the baked eggs is below, and is a modification of this recipe from epicurious, based on the ingredients i had on hand. it went over quite well, and slices very well. make sure that it’s baked in the middle. i had assumed it would be quiche-like but it seems to need a bit more time than you would think than if it had been a quiche, which is to say that it should be completely set before you take it out. the galette des rois was excellent, probably because i really love almond paste, and the interior is, for all intents and purposes, almond paste (we used the almond paste that jessica made us).

i had made some caramelized onions for the brunch, and used the leftovers in a spinach-onion quiche that’s currently in the oven (the quiche consumed most of the spinach from boston organics, and the rest i ate with some basil and a balsamic vinaigrette). it’s a pretty typical quiche, with a mixture of cheddar, asiago, and gruyere for the cheese. it’s also a deep-ish dish quiche, and we’ll see how that works out instead of the typical pie-pan or tart-pan quiche. i’m a little worried that there wasn’t enough butter in the crust, or it got overworked, or that i may have added too much water – it looked a little pale and doughy to me.

edit : hmm…i am really kind of ashamed to admit that i made this crust. it looks fine, but it’s just…tasteless. obviously overworked, and i added too much water. hmph. the filling should still be fine, though (it needs to finish setting).

baked eggs with sundried tomatoes and thyme
1/8 cup sundried tomatoes, chopped fine
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
9 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups coarsely grated extra-sharp Cheddar (6 oz)
1 cup whole-milk ricotta (8 oz)
1 cup grated asiago (2 oz)
1T fresh thyme, chopped fine

1. sift together flour, salt, and baking powder into a small bowl.

2. beat eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until doubled in volume, about 3 minutes. add butter, flour mixture, and cheeses and mix well at low speed, then stir in tomatoes and thyme. 3. pour into a buttered 9.5-inch glass pie plate and bake in middle of oven until top is golden brown and a tester comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. let stand 5 minutes before serving.

[gourmet reports that this makes 6 servings; but those seem rather large unless this is the only thing you’re having for breakfast. i would say that it’s probably closer to 8-10 servings.]

chocolate zucchini cupcakes
the original recipe for these cupcakes can be found here.

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup vegetable oil (note : i used olive oil because it was what we had, and it was fine)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk (i used the add-lemon-juice-to-milk trick and it curdled a bit, but turned out fine anyway)
2 cups grated zucchini
2 cups unbleached flour
1 cup cocoa, sifted
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda

1. pre-heat oven to 350F. lightly grease the muffin tins, or use muffin cups. if you aren’t using muffin cups, greasing the muffin tins is essential to them coming out without breaking.

2. in a medium bowl mix together the sugar, butter and oil. beat in eggs one at a time until well incorporated. stir in vanilla, buttermilk, and zucchini.
3. in a separate bowl mix together all of the dry ingredients (if you wanted to be lazy like me, you could just add all of the dry ingredients directly to the wet ingredients). add the liquid ingredients and mix until well combined. spoon batter into large muffin pans. if you want to fill your cupcakes, fill the muffin tins a third of the way, spoon about a half-teaspon to a teaspoon of preserves or nutella on to the batter, and cover with more batter until the tins are almost full.

4. bake in the center of the oven for about 35 minutes (12 minutes for mini cupcakes). when they’ve completely puffed, they’re done – you can check them with a toothpick if you like. wait for the tins to cool completely before you take the cupcakes out, or you will get increased breakage. once they’ve cooled completely cover loosely – they’ll stay moist from the zucchini.

[makes 9 large cupcakes, 20 standard cupcakes, or 70 mini cupcakes.]