Recent Cookery: Art, Failure, and Practice

I have been doing a good bit of cooking lately, so I'm trying to catch up. I've also been attempting to improve my photo-taking, so below you'll find a "gallery" of pictures in which I've attempted to capture the art of cooking.

This leads me to something I've been thinking about: cooking really is an art. By that I mean that it has to be practiced. Sometimes you just don't get it right, for example:

This looks like a pretty nice (if bland colorwise) meal of halibut poached in white wine, butter, and chives, with kolhrabi (which had a beautiful purple skin before I peeled it), and okra fritters. I followed actual recipes for the halibut and the fritters, yet found both to be disappointing.

So, it's back to the drawing board. My friend Katie, who is a restaurant manager and a mean cook, and I got together and just combined ingredients. From scratch and our imaginations, we came up with a fantastic dinner, which I've taken pictures of below.

It's always fun to start out with an appetizer, in this case Normandy Farms bread,
EVOO with salt and pepper, cheese, and a glass of red.

a lovely salad Katie prepared with arugula, mushrooms, cucumbers, yellow pepper, shredded carrots, snow peas,
and a mixture of red wine vinegar with beet and carrot salad dressings from Whole Foods salad bar

Farmer's Market basil pasta with seared scallops and a colorful zucchini, squash, and red pepper stirfry

That's a lot more like it!


Not long after, my sister and I made dinner. She has embraced kale as wholeheartedly as I have (must run in the family) and made a fantastic Chopped Kale Salad (recipe below) over red quinoa. We grilled okra and chicken and enjoyed it all with a glass of white wine.


Chopped Kale Salad, Coco Style

• 1 avocado
• 1/2 red onion, diced
  
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 yellow bell pepper, diced
  
• 1/2 lemon
• grated ginger (optional)
• 1 cucumber
• 1 bunch red kale
• sea salt to taste
  

1. In a large bowl, mash avocado with lemon juice, diced red onion, diced peppers, and sea salt to taste. Add grated ginger if desired.
2. Wash and finely chop kale and cukes. Toss in avocado dressing until coated evenly. If kale seems too crisp, add more lemon and salt to soften.

Serve chilled.

I Love Cooking Again! or, A Night of Passionate Lasagna

Since my rededication to posting more regularly, I have been cooking more out of necessity. I mean, I figure what I really need are easy, workable, healthy recipes--and if I need them, more people certainly do!

I am having so much fun!

Seriously, I'm starting to love to cook again the way I used to do in college, when it seemed I could make anything and was always inspired to cook. Of course, this was before I was worried about how many calories were in what I cooked. I just figured that if it was made from scratch it was probably good for me.

I think there's a lot more wisdom in that than I realized at the time. I went through a no-olive-oil faze that wasn't exactly torture, but now that I look back on it was completely unnecessary. I figured out pretty quickly that my body wouldn't tolerate Pam or one of those non-fat cooking sprays, so I just cooked everything in water. I even cooked omelets in water. Don't ask me how I did that; I can't even make an omelet now without it falling apart half the time despite drowning in butter.

This isn't about eating without regard to caloric intake (although I don't count calories anymore ever). It's about eating without worrying or obsessing. And now it's about cooking without worrying or obsessing. It does help to have groceries in the house. I'm still working on getting my weekly Whole Foods bill under $100, but just having some staples around makes cooking a lot easier.

If you have a basic recipe, you can tweak it in any number of ways. I never follow a recipe exactly. For example, I promised Mike, my boyfriend, that I would make him lasagna, which he's been craving recently. His grandmother was 100% Italian, so I know he's had the real thing--but I also know he doesn't like ricotta cheese. So I decided to try to make lasagna without ricotta cheese. (And then I found out he likes ricotta cheese when it's in Italian food. But I like my "ricotta" better.)

This is what I started with:

• 1/2 lb ground beef leftover from Taco Night (yay, leftovers!)
• 1 jar Muir Glen organic tomato sauce (one of the few brands that does not contain soy or canola oil)
• 1 package Mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 package Monterrey Jack cheese (also leftover from Taco Night)
• 1 egg (literally, I had one egg in the entire house)
• a little half and half
  
• fresh & dried herbs
  
• onion and garlic

All this I already had on hand. I only had to specifically buy:

• 1 pkg Bionature organic lasagna noodles
• Parmesan cheese
• really yummy bread to have with balsamic vinegar and olive oil as an appetizer

And then, based on this delicious looking from-scratch lasagna recipe I found online, I made the following (and you thought I was kidding about being a magician!):

That said, ideally you would have little more meat sauce and a lot more cheese--or you could just do two layers. With three layers, I just had to spread everything a little thinly, but it worked. Anyway, here's the basic recipe:

Almost From Scratch Lasagna
Serves 4

• 1/2 onion
• 1 Tbsp garlic
• 6 lasagna noodles
  
• 1/2 lb ground beef, already cooked
  
• 1 jar Muir Glen organic tomato sauce
  
• 2 cups Mozzarella cheese
• 2 cups Monterrey Jack cheese
• 2 cups Parmesan cheese
  
• 1 egg
  
• 1/4 cup half and half
• a little nutmeg
• lots of fresh basil and parsley
• Italian herb mix
• red pepper flakes (optional)

1. Saute onion and garlic in olive oil, then add sauce and stir. (If you are using raw meat, brown this before adding sauce
   
2. Add cooked meat, a bunch of chopped basil and parsley, and some Italian herb seasoning. Stir and simmer 10-15 minutes, depending on how much of a hurry you are in. :)
3. While meat is simmering, soak 6 lasagna noodles in water that has just boiled.
4. While noodles are soaking, grate Mozzarella and Monterrey Jack. Mix all of the Jack and 1/2 the Mozzarella with egg, half and half, and about half the Parmesan cheese. Mix thoroughly with a fork till it forms a kind of paste; if it's too clumpy add a little more half and half till it's slightly liquid, but not runny. Sprinkle with nutmeg and mix in.
5. Test noodles for tenderness, then layer two noodles in the bottom of a 9x9 glass casserole dish. Top with a coating of meat sauce, (if you like red pepper flakes, sprinkle them on now) then spread cheese mixture over top.
   
6. Repeat layering: two more noodles, meat, red pepper flakes, cheese sauce; then do another layer of noodles, meat, and red pepper flakes, and top with the rest of the Mozzarella and Parmesan.

Bake at 350 uncovered for 10-15 minutes (again, depending on how much of a hurry you are in) until cheese is melted on top. Serve immediately or cool, cover, and serve the next day when the sauce has had a chance to marinate. Let me tell you, the Monterrey Jack cheese really makes this good.


Now, there are no vegetables in this dish, and I'd like to try it again with a layer of zucchini strips added. But if you don't want veggies in your lasagna, there are plenty of other ways to get them.

Grilled Italian Zucchini & Squash

• 1/2 lb (about 2 large) each zucchini and summer squash, sliced in chunks
• 1 large white onion, quartered and then sliced in half

Marinate for one hour in:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
  
• 1 Tbsp or 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 Tbsp Italian herbs blend, or chop a bunch of fresh basil, parsley, sage, and oregano
• red pepper flakes to taste

Skewer onion, zucchini, and squash alternately and grill or broil for about 10 minutes, till tender.

If you'd rather cook on the stove, an alternative is to slice the veggies thinner and saute them in the marinade.

Balsamic Mushrooms
There is nothing like mushrooms with balsamic vinegar.

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
  
• 10-12 mushrooms, sliced
• 3-4 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 5 sprigs of thyme, stripped
• dash salt

Saute those babies! Or leave them whole, marinate for one hour, and stick on the skewers with zucchini and squash, and head for the grill.

Tomato Cucumber Salad
This is a great recipe of my mom's.

• 1 pkg cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 cup cucumber chunks
• 1 cup green pepper chunks
  
• lots of fresh basil
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• salt & pepper to taste

Mix everything in a bowl and marinate in the fridge for at least an hour, mixing occasionally.

I hope you noticed--no kale anywhere in this post!

Hedonism in Its Place

I recently found a great site: The Accidental Hedonist. (Look for my blog there soon.) This article extols the virtues of being a “foodie”—and the main one is awareness. I’m especially fond of points 5 and 6: eating fresh produce and being wary of food institutions. As for point 4—learn to cook—I’m hoping this site will help with that.

However, the author’s point of being proud of what you enjoy, in combination with taking responsibility is a valid one. Picking a few “junk” foods and enjoying them thoroughly in moderation is greatly preferable to (a) denying yourself any guilty pleasure and then overdoing it in the food equivalent of a nervous breakdown (guilty as charged) or (b) eating whatever is quickest and easiest, be it microwave meals or fast food.

Coming up: look for some surprising products that contain, in my opinion, the four most harmful “ingredients” out there: high fructose corn syrup, sodium benzoate, trans fats, and monosodium glutamate.