Straight Stitches

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Frenchie-licious

Dana August 25, 2012 0 Comments

It's no secret I love French food. I don't know why. The French just seem to know how to make anything and everything amazing, including lentils. Yes, lentils. Those boring, little, dried up, pea-ish things that usually languish in your pantry. Not anymore! Take a gander at this recipe I tried for the first time this week.

French Lentils With Walnuts and Goat Cheese

Courtesy Laura Calder

1 cup/250 g du Puy lentils

1 bay leaf

1 fresh thyme sprig

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 lg red onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Splash balsamic vinegar, optional

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

2 ounces/55 g walnuts, toasted

4 ounces/100 g goat cheese, broken into pinches

Walnut oil, to taste

Put the lentils in a saucepan with the bay leaf and thyme. Pour over 1 1/3 cups/375 ml water, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until tender, 30 to 40 minutes. All the liquid should be absorbed, if not simply drain off any excess.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a sauté pan and fry the onion until soft. Add the garlic for 1 minute, then deglaze the pan with a splash of balsamic vinegar. Once the lentils are cooked, toss them with the onion mixture, season with salt and pepper and put them in a serving dish. Scatter over the nuts and pinches of cheese. Drizzle with walnut oil. Serve warm.

You all know me, I'll all about tweaking recipes to my own taste. Above, you can see the lentils right after I added them to the water. Number one, I just used French lentils (tiny and dark green) because there was no way I was going to spend time and money trying track down something that sounds as expensive and fancy-schmancy as "du Puy". Number two, fresh herbs and I do not get along. I don't know why, but, no matter how I store them, they always go brown and slimy on me before I use them. Therefore, I use dried, and there isn't anything wrong with that. I used about a 1/2 tsp of dried thyme here.

You might notice a surplus of onions and garlic here. That's because I love me some onions (caramelized, golden, and amazing, of course) and garlic. That's how I roll.

You may have also heard me say before that there's a fine line between laziness and genius. Like Johnny Cash, I walk the line. I really didn't feel like dirtying up a pan just to toast walnuts, so I made one out of tinfoil. Don't worry, I recycle. :)

Anything that starts out like this is bound to be good.

Then we just finish it off with a bit of goat cheese and walnuts.

Wow! So good! There are so many great flavors in this--the tang of the goat cheese, the nuttiness of the walnuts, the meatiness of the lentils, the sweetness of the onions, and the heat from the garlic (if you add it at just the last minute like I did)--and they're all separate, yet compliment each other all at the same time. Mmmmm, so, SO good! And it's good for you, too! Lentils are super-high in fiber and protein. In fact, they only lack two essential amino acids, which the cheese and walnuts both have in them.

Here's another reason I like this dish: It cooks the lentils perfectly! I have failed time and again with lentils, either over or under cooking them every time, but not this time! I will say I lidded my pot when I brought it back to a simmer, which the directions don't tell you to do, but my instincts did. My instincts were right.

Make this one dish meal and enjoy for lunch or dinner. Oh, and have a glass of wine with it. Because it's French!

Saturday, August 18, 2012

The $3 Espresso Maker

Dana August 18, 2012 3 Comments

Yes, folks, that's right. I got an espresso maker for $3. Not quite as good as the cheap-as-free bread maker, but still pretty good. But why did I do it? Don't I love Starbucks and my local coffee shops? Yes, I do love my local coffeeshops, but my relationship with SB has gotten a bit rocky. And by "rocky" I mean, "I can do yummy coffee drinks at home for so much cheaper". It's not you, SB, it's me. Right back to the $3 espresso maker. How did I accomplish such a thing?

Step 1: Receive a $25 Macy's birthday giftcard from your department because you work for the best department ever. :-)

Step 2: Research espresso machines online...because I'm neurotic like that. This one had the best reviews of all the decently-priced stovetop models.

Step 3: Smile pretty at the teller and hope that she gives you a 15% coupon, which she did.

Result: $3 espresso maker.

I was immediately pleased with my purchase when I opened it up and found the instruction manual.

That's the whole thing. Thank you, manual writers, for assuming that, since I've made it this far in life, I know better than to do crazy things like drink straight from the hot pot.

Next I just had to buy some coffee--which resulted in a very fun conversation with the coffee guy at Whole Foods. Build relationships with your food sellers, people--and make some java!

Per the instructions, water to the safety valve, coffee in the container on top, screw on the top assembly and heat on low to medium heat. Since using this, I haven't gone past medium-low just because I want to play it safe.

Here's the part that defies physics...in my mind anyway. The coffee laughs in gravity's face and travels up the little tube and out into the top chamber.

Then you just measure it out with the appropriate tool. :-)

Of course you must have proper accompaniments. I bought this pretty, pretty cup specifically for my at-home coffee yumminess. Also, did you know that the Special Dark syrup at Target is cheaper than the regular variety? That's why I bought three bottles. Don't judge me.

My first drink, a mocha (see below for recipe), got a delectable, free birthday scone from Panera to go with it.

Ho-ly cow, this was delicious. Way better than SB. I find that the really sweet drinks from there have a tendency to cause a really sticky mouthfeel. This does not. I did have to do some research on how many shots of espresso to use us and syrup and whatnot, so here are two recipes I developed this week. There are no instructions because you basically just combine and stir.

Medium Mocha

Two shots of espresso

Four pumps of chocolate syrup

Milk, heated, enough to fill a medium (grande) sized cup

Medium Almond Honey Latte

Two shots of espresso

Four squidges of honey

Milk, heated, enough to fill a medium (grande) sized cup

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Swimsuit model? Uh, no.

Heather August 16, 2012 1 Comments

So a long time ago (read 6 weeks ago) I made and finished my 2nd swimsuit of the season.

I am in love with how it turned out! Here's Butterick 5795!

The suit is customized for cup size, which is always nice. It's also fully lined all the way around. Great for holding everything in!

What do you guys think?

Friday, August 10, 2012

High Standards

Dana August 10, 2012 0 Comments

Y'all, I am really excited about a dish I made this week. It's one of those dishes that demands appropriately amazing counterparts, and it's an original recipe by me! What is it, though? Is it a sauce? Is it a filling? A stew? A topping? It's all of those. Check it out...

Italian As-You-Wish

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large sweet onion, chopped

1/4 cup water

1 small head of garlic (about four or five large cloves), minced

1 large red pepper, roasted, skinned, and chopped

5 vine ripe or 7 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped

1 lb ground beef, pork, chicken, or turkey, browned

Large handful of basil, 1/4 to 1/2 cup depending on your taste, minced

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper

Pour the olive oil into a medium saucepan and heat over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the chopped onions, season with salt, and cook until desired doneness (anywhere from just barely softened to soft and golden brown) depending on dish application. Once the onions are done, deglaze with the water and scrape any bits up from the bottom. Add the minced garlic and cook for a few minutes until just softened.

If your dish is something like a bruschetta where everything needs to be pretty firm, brown the meat now and add with the tomatoes and red peppers. If it's a sauce, stew, or filling, add the red peppers and tomatoes now, cover, and allow to cook down while you brown the meat. Then add the meat to the mix.

Once the tomatoes, red peppers, and meat are all in, add the basil and cheese and stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste and then use the mix as desired.

Yes, the name is a wink and a nod to this man. Ladies, do your best not to swoon.

Source

This recipe will do whatever you ask of it.

I recommend starting by chopping the onions if you plan on getting them really caramelized. Some people love the taste of a rawer, less cooked onion, but I personally love it when the onions get really soft and golden brown. It can take a good long while, though; anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes.

Yes, you can roast peppers yourself! Just pop it under your broiler (mine defaults to 500 degrees) and turn it about every seven minutes or when the skin gets nice and black.

When you pull the pepper out of the oven, pop it into a glass bowl and cover it with plastic. Let it hang out for about ten minutes while you attend to the other vegetables.

Shortcut:

You can buy roasted red pepper in a jar, but this is a lot cheaper, even if it is a bit more time and effort.

Your mince can be pretty rough for this dish. It's almost a chop really.

Shortcut:

You can buy pre-minced garlic in a jar, or you can mince it yourself in a food processor with oil. The stuff you do yourself can be kept ready to go in the fridge.

Okay, so after ten or so minutes, the pepper should have cooled enough to skin it. The skin separates from the flesh when it roasts, so you can literally just peel it away.

The seeds will also come away from the pepper very easily. I turn it inside out to make sure I get them all and then chop.

Didn't I tell you I liked a good golden brown color?

I happened to have heirloom tomatoes on hand (all of my veggies this week came from Hidden Valley Farm here in Nashville), so I used them. They are really yummy, but such a pain to seed. I tried slicing and quartering them to seed them. I don't know if either way is really better. It's awfully tedious no matter what. This is a good job for little ones. :-)

Shortcut:

You can also use tinned tomatoes for this. I use them a lot. Two cans of Italian style would work for this recipe.

Once again, how long this cooks for kind of depends on what you want. You only want to barely warm it through (left) if you're using this as a bruschetta topping or something similar. If it's going to be a sauce, you'll want to really cook it down (right).

If you choose to do this bruschetta style, make sure to have the meat (I used beef) already browned when you add the tomatoes. If you're going for a stew or a sauce, it doesn't matter as much either way.

My original plan was to use this as a pasta sauce, but it didn't exactly work out that way. People, count your blessings if you don't have to be a gluten-free house. GF pasta is not the same as the real (good) stuff. It's okay, but it just can't compare. I found that most tend to fall apart no matter what precautions you take, and this time was, tragically, no exception.

Because I was so disappointed by the quality of the pasta, I only used about a cup of sauce for the whole box of pasta, which still worked well. Sadly, it wasn't good enough for me. I saved most of the sauce because I didn't want to waste it on inferior pasta, but what to do with it now? Turn it into a filling.

Fast forward to the next evening. I spooned my leftover sauce into bowls (there was a lot left)...

...and topped it with some precooked polenta. Then I just popped it into the microwave to heat it up and voila! Delicious Italian pot pie! These are really big bowls, and I intended each one to be for dinner and lunch the next day. Mike at his entire bowl!

Now you see why I'm so excited. :-) There are so many possibilities! You can add some spinach for some extra greenness if you want. Or carrots, or zucchini. You could leave the meat out if you have vegetarians to feed and replace it with quinoa. Seriously, what's not to love?

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Coffee? Yes, please!

Heather August 07, 2012 0 Comments

Hey all again! I'm back! Two days in a row!

I know, I know. Please try to contain your shock and awe. :)

So I'm back sharing things I've updated in my kitchen. When I moved all of the copper molds to above the kitchen cabinets, I moved the vases and jars I had up on the cabinets down to the counter top. I am using one as a utensil holder and the other two jars got turned into the most used items in the house, well, at least one of them did.

Problem? Yep, you couldn't tell the jars apart, and unless you're in them every couple of hours (like me) then you'd have no idea which jar is which. Second problem - I don't like repeating myself (I blame this condition entirely on my children). So my solution was simple! Tags for my jars!

The tags were easy to make (hah!). I went to The Graphics Fairy and found some botanical prints of tea and coffee. Then worked on the tags until they were perfect in Silhouette Studio. It took some doing to get the letters to pop out of the back of the tag to act as a stopper for the images, but I got it and I loved the effect.

The only problem was the bright white cardstock I used. Never fear! Paint is here! I stamped all around the edges and then smeared the ink pad over the back of the tag, then I took metallic brown, black and gold and stippled them all over the tag. After all of that dried I glued the image inside the tag, and then topped it all off with a couple of coats of Mod Podge and called it a day. I love how these beauts look on my jars, and I love that I will never have to tell anyone again where the coffee is. :)

Heather