The Mark Bittman Challenge

I received "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman as a birthday gift this year.  The book has 2,000 recipes in it.  It's huge!  This book has everything in it to help make you a better cook including cutting techniques and how to make a basic sauce.  How to Cook Everything needs to be my bible.  We all know I'm not creative in the kitchen, heck I'm not even very coordinated in the kitchen.  It's a good day if I don't cut myself or almost set something on fire.  I don't want my blog to become a cheesy Julie and Julia type thing, but I do plan on getting to know this book intimately and posting about it often.  

Who's Mark Bittman?  He is a food writer for the NY Times and he is not a chef, but he wants to help people cook.  Here's a link to his column in the NY Times, The Minimalist and a link to his Blog on the Opinion Pages.  I would love to be only partially as knowledgeable as this man.  I figure I can start my journey by cooking as much from his book as I can.  Let's get this straight right away, I will not be cooking everything in this book.  Not only can I not afford to cook everything in it, I also don't like everything in it.  I'm not going to sacrifice for my hobby and eat anything that makes me shake and shiver.  My hope is that after cooking from this book, I will know the basics about how to make a variety of things and I will be able to make them without a recipe in the future.  I'm hoping for this, I didn't say it was actually going to happen.

To get myself into tackling such a big project I decided to browse some of his recipes online and I found one that sounded easy and appealing,  More Vegetable Less Egg Frittata.  I've never made a frittata, in fact I rarely eat eggs, but the vegetable part made me happy.  I'm always looking for meat-free recipes. 

Start by sauteing sliced onion (season it with salt and pepper), once its transparent and tender you can add whatever vegetables you want to the pan.  I chose a variety of mushrooms and asparagus for this frittata.  Saute them until they are tender.

Beat the eggs in a bowl with some Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper.  Pour the egg mixture on top of the vegetables in the pan.  Turn the heat to low and cook until the eggs are just starting to set.

I really have no idea when an egg is set, but I'm assuming it's when it's no longer liquidy.  Once it's barely set you can put it under the broiler for a few minutes to finish it off. 

Finished Product:

My thoughts:  Oh yeah baby!  Something I finally really like.  I loved that there was a ton of veggies in this and only a small amount of egg (I used 3).  I left the asparagus a little crispy because I knew the rest of the dish was going to lack crunch.  Of course something always has to go wrong and I made Jiffy Corn Muffins to go with this and managed to somehow put 1 cup of milk in the mix instead of a 1/3 cup.  Oh well.  They were still edible, they just didn't get big. This was a great recipe and I am very excited to try some of Bittman's other recipes. The Mark Bittman Challenge is on!

Next Up:  Spiced Coconut Lentil Soup (Not Mark Bittman's recipe, but we all know how much I LOVE coconut so I had to try it!)

Coconut Vegetable Curry

This post will be kind of lame. I didn’t do a lot of cooking the last 4 days. I was supposed to share with you the pork roll sandwich picture, but we had an issue with the pork roll. We bought a roll from Wegmans , but the slices Anthony cut from the roll were so tiny! Question for the Jersey people reading this, was that always the case little bitty slices, because that's not what I remember?! We went back to Wegmans yesterday and the pre-sliced is much bigger than the roll slices. What’s up with that?! I did have Anthony fry me an egg and some pork roll for breakfast yesterday. I’m okay with the pieces being smaller for breakfast, but not on a sandwich. Three of those tiny slices barely filled the Kaiser roll we had it on.

Not sure who was watching the show America’s Next Great Restaurant, but sadly Spice Coast (an Indian fast casual idea) didn’t win. I was pulling for it, because I would eat there a lot! It was between Spice Coast (Indian flavors), Brooklyn Meatball Co (meatballs), and Soul Daddy (soul food). Spice Coast would have been the only place I could eat at more often. I have nothing against meatballs or soul food (I love both a bunch!), but that’s not the type of food I can eat often. Indian is! (In case anyone is wondering Soul Daddy won! Congrats to Jamawn Woods! ) So strangely enough I made a vegetable curry last night, the night that Spice Coast lost. I love Indian spices! I’ve even added curry to my tomato sauce before. Yum!

The actual name of the recipe is Indian Coconut Curried Vegetables. Please don’t judge me when I tell you that I had Anthony chop the vegetables. I’m slow and I just wanted to get the cooking over with and Anthony is so fast at chopping vegetables! Not to mention that cooking should be a family activity right?! So the veggies were prepped: carrot and zucchini sliced, cauliflower cut, green beans snapped (is that what you call that snapped? I did the snapping!), onion, garlic, and ginger chopped. I didn’t buy a chili pepper, because I already had chili paste. I put the onion, garlic, ginger, and chili paste in my little food processor and made it into a paste basically. Put this mixture in a skillet with some oil and added the spices:  coriander, cumin, curry, and turmeric and heat it for a couple of minutes. Then I added all the vegetables and the coconut milk. It says to use 1 cup of the coconut milk, but I added a whole can and added some more of the spices in case the milk diluted it. You cover this and let it cook for 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

                                    (I just love the color of curry dishes!)

I made basmati rice and heated up some naan bread to go with the veggie curry.  Overall this meal was super simple to make! The hardest part is chopping the veggies. The result: ah not so great. It was actually quite bland. I don’t think this is due to me adding a little more coconut milk than asked for since I added more of the spices. I’m not sure what the problem with this recipe is. The only thing I can come up with is to add more salt than the ½ a teaspoon it says to add and maybe even more of the spices. Crazy to think with all those spices we still ended up with a pretty bland main dish. Anthony said it needs chicken, but I’m trying to have as many meatless meals as possible. Although I’m sure it would taste better with chicken in it! I’m actually willing to try it with chicken just to see if it will up the flavor.

Not sure what will be on the menu for this week. I didn’t plan ahead. I wanted my meals to be a surprise this week. I need some excitement in my life, so I’m living on the edge. Yes, for me not having a menu for the week is living on the edge. I’m sure some of you do this all the time, but I’m a planner!

Chicken Tikka Masala and Minestrone Soup...Not on the Same Day!

I'm positive I've mentioned my love of Indian food numerous times now. Nothing I make at home ever tastes as good as what I get here. Of course I can't always afford to eat out every time I'm craving some Indian flavors. Chicken Tikka Masala is one of the ways that I appease my craving. It's a simple dish to make and if you are not sure about Indian food this is probably one of the more tame dishes to try.

I'm getting much better when prepping my food. I've found a comfortable way to chop onions and you will need one onion chopped for this recipe. For the rest of the prep you will need to crush 1 clove of garlic, grate 2 teaspoons of ginger, and cut 1 1/4 lbs of chicken breast into 1 inch chunks. Nothing too difficult or time consuming.

Your first cooking step is to get your basmati rice started. You have to use basmati rice when making Indian food it's so much better then the normal white rice. If you don't have a cinnamon stick to add to the water, you can add some ground cinnamon like we did this night. Heat oil in a skillet and add the onion and cook for about 6 minutes. Next add the ginger, garlic, and curry paste (I also added a little Tikka Masala Paste too; not necessary I just wanted to finish the jar), cook for 3 minutes. Add the chicken, some salt, and black pepper and cook until chicken in not pink on the outside. Then add 1 can of crushed tomatoes, cover the skillet and cook for 5-6 minutes more. Once the chicken is cooked uncover the skillet and stir in 1/2 cup of half-and-half and the cilantro if you can eat it. That's it. Simple, easy, tasty and cheaper then take out!

Tasty, tasty!! We enjoy this dish a lot. I recommend it to any of you!

On to the Minestrone Soup. I'm constantly looking for ways to exclude meat from our diet. It much healthier to eat meatless a few times a week. I'm not saying you should cut out meat from your diet every day, but a couple times a week is definitely heart healthy! Soup is also something I'm a big believer in making because it's normally quite easy to make and you usually have leftovers for lunch the next day.

This soup was great. I'm really glad I found this recipe in Food Network Magazine. So as not to bore you with all the details of how to make this recipe I'll just let you know what's in it. The main ingredients are onion, garlic, celery, carrot, green beans, diced tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, kidney beans, elbow pasta, and parmesan cheese. There are a few other basic ingredients, but if you like all of the items I just listed you will like this soup. Now start cooking! This will be great leftover! Next time I make it I'm going to double the recipe and freeze what we don't eat. Super yummy and basically healthy. I love soup! Have I told you guys that yet! Delicious!

Final Product:

My next two posts will be the beer brewing process and the results of the tuna noodle casserole. Let's just say I didn't hate it.