Green Bean Pesto...

Or "How to Get Rid of Produce"

I had some slightly sad green beans (off-season...what did I expect), some slightly sad cilantro, and a slightly sad lemon. What to do...


Ingredients:
1 quart green beans, washed and snapped
3-4 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup cilantro, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup walnuts
1/4 cup yogurt (or sour cream, or ricotta, or some other tasty dairy product)
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
dash ginger
1 lb pasta
2 bullion cubes

Put the water on for your pasta with the bullion cubes. Over medium heat, saute garlic and cilantro in olive oil with the salt and pepper. Typically I wouldn't cook the cilantro, but in this case I had to cook out the sad.


Add the green beans and cook until they have turned a darker green and are a nice al dente. I am fairly sure that overcooking would lead to a kind of icky pesto. Allow them to cool a little bit before you stick them in your food processor/blender/what have you. By this time, your water should be bubbling away; cook the pasta al dente.


Pulse the green beans and other remaining ingredients until the mixture reaches the consistency of coarse polenta/grits (depending on how Italian/Southern you are!)


Add about 1/3 of a cup of the pasta water and a dash of ginger and whirl again to combine. Stir it into the pasta and serve with a handful of parmesan or a dollop of yogurt. So very tasty!

a dorm-room classic, but better!

I learned from my mother to create menus for each week before I go shopping; it saves you money and never leaves you sitting in the car on your way home "what the crap am I going to make for dinner!?" When I'm having menu-writer's-block I turn to my very small collection of cookbooks for inspiration.

One of my favorite cookbooks EVAR is The Japanese Kitchen by Hiroko Shimbo. She's basically the Julia Child of Japanese cuisine. Out of 250 recipes, none that I have tried has been bad. I love her so. The book is full of helpful illustrations, because some of the techniques are not used by your typical American home cook. And (thankfully) there isn't a single glossy photo. Those dang glossy cookbooks seem to fall apart if you breathe on them too hard.
ANYWAY, I was flipping through the Shimbo book and found a recipe for ramen broth, which I immediately knew I had to try. I have altered it a little (my love doesn't eat pork), but the recipe is essentially the same.
For those of you who love Vietnamese food (hi, Mommy!), this broth is quite similar to the broth used for Pho.

Ingredients:

2 lb beef soup bones (found in the frozen meat section of the grocery store, conveniently in a 2 lb bag) or pork knuckle bones, cracked by the butcher
2 lb chicken thighs, with all the skin and bones and whatnot
1 small onion, quartered
1/2 head of garlic, cut across the cloves to expose all of their deliciousness
the green part of a leek (RINSE WELL)
1 oz ginger, an inch or two square (depending on how much you like ginger), sliced, with skin
10 oz chukasoba a.k.a "Japanese curly noodles" or a couple ramen packages without the powder.

Put the meat bits into a large pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a hard boil and cook for one minute.


Lots of yucky stuff will float to the top, but we'll throw that away. Drain the meat and rinse off all the aforementioned yuck.

This is the yuck.

*Aside: if you are squeamish about raw meat, this may not be the recipe for you. When I was knuckle deep in bone marrow while rinsing the beef bones when I realized something. After months of working up the guts (no pun intended) to work with meat, my squeamishness has been cured. End aside*

Return to the pot or stick in your trusty slow cooker with all the aromatics. Simmer on low (high in the slow cooker) for seven hours. You heard me. This is another recipe for people with patience (i.e. people who are not me)

These are the tasty bits

Boil up your chukasoba according to the package directions, and rinse well with cold water until they are no longer starchy and slimy. Divide into bowls, pour over as much broth as you want, and garnish with anything you want. A little scrambled egg, some meat, or cold vegetables would be great. I went for fresh cilantro with some water chestnuts. Oh, lordy, how I love water chestnuts. I found it also needed a little tamari or soy sauce for extra salt and flavor.

Barley Risotto!

I am on what my man calls a "health bender", due to an alarming doctor's appointment in which my weight was revealed as, shall we say, less than ideal. And by less than ideal, I mean that I have become a fatty. So today's recipe is a lovely HEALTHY recipe, one (surprisingly) without butter.

If you have never had barley, you're really missing out! It's so chewy and lovely, and this recipe is full of lemon zest for a nice summery flavor in icky January.

Ingredients:

2 cups pearled barley
4 cups chicken broth (please use low-sodium if you get store-bought)
1/4 cup dry sherry or a little shy of 1 cup dry white wine
juice and zest of 2 lemons
1/8 tsp each of ginger and black pepper
1 tsp each of dried parsley and chives
1 tsp sea salt
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 a large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup parmesan
walnuts for garnish
water

Step 1: Heat the oil in a large pan on medium heat. Saute the onion, garlic, and lemon zest until the onion is on its way to getting soft.

Step 2: Add in the barley and stir constantly for a few minutes. Then put your sherry in a measuring 1 cup measure. Add the lemon juice, and top off with water. If you are using wine, put the lemon juice in the measure and top off with wine. Add this to the barley and stir occasionally until the liquid is almost completely absorbed. This is the part of the process that smells the most delicious!

I wish you could smell this through the screen, because it is AMAZING

Step 3: Now, add one cup of broth, and allow to absorb before adding another cup, and so on. Then add two cups of water in the same fashion. The barley will be plump and chewy; if not, add a little more water and see how it feels.

Step 4: Remove from heat, stir in the dairy, and serve, garnished with nuts.

How to completely suck...

Put dinner in the Crock-Pot, leave town, and come back three and a half hours later so hungry that you forget to take a picture of it before you begin devouring it.
Another day this week, I suppose.

Crock-Potular success

So...

I received a Crock-Pot for Christmas (thanks Paul and Caterina!!!) and have been ITCHING to try it out. So I present to you a recipe (with a few small modifications) that I found on the Crock-Pot website.


Ingredients
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (halved, as my man doesn't like spice)
1 tablespoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 to 2 pounds beef brisket, scored with a knife on both sides
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup real maple syrup
1/4 cup Jack Daniel’s, or other whiskey
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
Juice of 1 orange (about 1/3 cup)
2 cloves garlic, smashed
4 slices orange peel, 1/2" x 1/2" (careful to avoid bitter white pith when peeling)

Step 1: Rub
Combine cayenne pepper, ginger, salt and black pepper. Rub all over brisket and place in a plastic bag inside of a bowl (to prevent drippage).


Step 2: Marinade
Mix up the rest of the ingredients except the orange peel and garlic. Add in the last two ingredients and pour into the bag. Seal up, and for the love of God, put it on the bottom shelf of the fridge. You do not want the icky meaty greasy stuff all over your fridge if it spills. Let it marinade for 2 hours or overnight. I pulled mine out about halfway through a 3-hour soak and gave it a little massage.



Step 3: Cook
Stick the whole mess in your slow cooker and cook on high for 3½-4 hours on high or 7-9 hours on low, turning once or twice. Take the briskety goodness out of the pot and let it rest for 5 minutes or so before you carve it up with some of the pan juices spooned on top.

A simple dessert

This is my half-assed attempt at Sunday night dessert. Sweet, tart, lovely blackberries were on sale at our local grocery store this week, and while I know I shouldn't indulge in off-season produce, I couldn't resist. Let's begin!

Ingredients:

Some sort of plain dessert (un-iced cake, some ice cream, anything you feel like. Vanilla or lemon flavors are a plus. I went for angel food.)

4 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp brandy
Juice from half a lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract.
1 pint blackberries or other aggregate fruit-type berries. Raspberries or whatever. If you use a sweeter berry, you may want to cut back the sugar by half.

Give your berries a gentle rinse, place in a bowl, throw in the other ingredients, gently mix, and leave to macerate for an hour or two.


Come back and squish them up with a fork. If you don't care for the pulp or seeds, run the sauce through a sieve.
Spoon liberally onto your chosen dessert, and if it's cake, I recommend a little half-and-half for extra deliciousness.

don't worry...

Photos will come later. I've just inhaled a pound of bacony macaroni and cheese and feel too much like death to edit them. On to the post!

We at Good Noms are doing our best to allay any fears you might have of homemade bread. We are obsessed with homemade bread, and when you turn out a tasty calzone in just an hour, you will be, too!
I know what you're thinking, now. Oh, God, did she say "calzone" and JUST AN HOUR!? She must be out of her damn mind.
Don't worry. Most of that hour is occupied by the fine art of sitting, and you can make the dough ahead of time if you'd like (I'll get into this later). It's really not that bad. The recipe is enormous, though, so cut it in half if you're worried about it going to waste. Let's do this thing.

Ingredients:

Dough:
4 cups of good flour
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp honey
1 1/4 cups lukewarm (approx. 110 degrees) water
1/4 cup milk
1 packet (2 1/4 tsp) yeast

Filling:
8 oz whole milk ricotta
8 oz whole milk mozzarella



Step 1: Proof yeast
Mix honey and warm water, sprinkle yeast on top, and let rest for 5 minutes.

Step 2: Make dough
Make a well in the flour, pour in the proofed mixture, and add the milk and 2 tbsp of the olive oil. Before you begin kneading, set aside a small bowl of flour to dust your hands. Knead for several minutes until pliable and elastic. Drizzle the dough with the remaining oil and place in a warm area and let rest under a towel for 30 minutes or until doubled in size. If your yeast isn't nice and fresh, it may take longer.
If you would like to save the dough for later, punch it down, ball it up, and stick it in a storage bag. Come back half an hour to 45 minutes later and punch it down again. You can leave the dough in the fridge for 2 days or so.

Step 3: Make the filling
Mix the ricotta and spices together in a medium bowl. I also added some stray Parmesan that had been in the fridge for a little too long and needed to be eaten. Set aside.

Step 4: Assemble the thing
Punch the dough down and evaluate which side has more delicious extra virgin on it. Put that side face down on the a cookie sheet. Massage it into a circle (or a rectangle if it's too big to make a circle on your cookie sheet). Slather the ricotta on half of the dough and sprinkle the mozzarella on top. You could have mixed the two together, but I prefer the contrast of separate-but-equal cheeses. This is where you could cut out some of the cheese and add in other stuff, but my man and I can't agree on toppings for pizza. He likes extra cheese and I like anything that isn't pineapple or bell peppers (please don't judge me).
Fold the dough over and pinch together. Then, for added deliciousness, sprinkle some salt and garlic powder on top.
Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, or until nice golden brown on top.

Christmas tradition (and recipes!) in a blended family

With the holidays come a spate of food traditions, among others. My family includes my four siblings, my mom, my dad and stepmom, and her ex-husband. With so many members, my family has plenty of Christmas traditions to share!

My step-siblings' father is from Denmark, and his Christmas specialty is Danish sweet potatoes...not like the orange potato things that are sometimes (incorrectly) called yams. I found a recipe on About.com to illustrate the tooth-explodingly sweet goodness of the potatoes Jens makes.

Ingredients:
12-15 small new potatoes
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
2 Tbsp. water

Directions:
Boil the potatoes in salted water until fork-tender, about 20 minutes. Remove, drain, allow to cool slightly, and peel. In a large frying pan, brown sugar over medium-low heat just until sugar begins to darken around the edges. Stir in the butter until mixture is smooth and slightly bubbling; mix in water. Add potatoes to pan, shaking pan to coat them evenly with caramelized butter. Allow potatoes to brown briefly, 5 to 10 minutes.

Seriously, though, don't load up your plate with these like you would regular potatoes. You will pass out and wake up diabetic!

Beetus

My stepmommy makes baked beans every Christmas from her mom's special recipe. It seems weird, yes, but they pair wonderfully with ham and fill the house with the smell of molasses, brown sugar, and sweet, sweet bacon. Here is a recipe from Paula Deen (Paula knows about bacon).

BACON!!!

Ingredients
6 slices bacon, diced
2 cups chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cups brown sugar
2 cans diced tomatoes with green chilies
1 cup water
4 (28-ounce) cans pork and beans, drained and rinsed

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a Dutch oven, cook bacon over medium heat until browned and crispy. Add onions and a dash of salt and pepper. Allow to cook for a few minutes. In a large bowl, mix together pinto beans, brown sugar and diced tomatoes. Add to Dutch oven and allow cooking. Add 1 cup of water and pork and beans to pot. Cook for 30 minutes.

Now lets talk about the only holiday tradition from my mom and dad that I can think of. The whipping of the cream. The whipping of the cream come with much fanfare. There is a big to-do that morning when somebody announces that they are CHILLING THE BOWL. After dinner we pull the cold bowl out of the fridge and whisk the ever-loving crap out of the cream (by hand), passing it around as our arms become too sore to whip.

Ingredients:
Heavy whipping cream

Directions:
Beat the cream like a fi-dolla ho.

Not pictured: paralyzing arm pain (photo courtesy Toni Metzger Horrace)

No, we don't sweeten the cream. It's so wonderful, and adds richness to every dessert without making it sickly sweet. It is also excellent to dollop into your coffee if (like me) you don't take sugar in your coffee. You COULD add a little confectioner's sugar, and you COULD make it with a mixer, but it tastes so much better sweetened only with the pain and suffering of your entire family.

Regular Monday Post...

Moved to Tuesday! Why? Because I am making a pumpkin cheesecake tomorrow night for our office Christmas luncheon on Wednesday! So tune back in tomorrow night, for either a glowing success or a terrible bawling failure! Wheeeee!

Sesame Noodz

Today...sesame noodles! Super quick, super easy, super tasty!
Sesame seeds are one of my favorite things in the whole wide world of cooking. The seeds themselves, sesame oil, sesame paste. They are all delicious and work well in sweet or savory applications.

THAT BEING SAID, I must warn you, sesame oil should not be used as cooking oil. This is not because it will catch fire or release poison gas or anything. It just loses its flavor, and you end up using too much to get a good sesame flavor and your food goes to the table way too greasy.

My sesame noodles have mainly Japanese flavors, which means the sauce contains sweetener. I use honey because it really imparts a nice flavor and yields a thicker sauce. You can easily use sugar or splenda or stevia or whatever other junk you have lying around the house, though. And my cooking pretty much revolves around using what I have. This sauce is rather sweet, so if you think you may want to cut back, add half the honey and taste.

A few other things you may notice are the following:

• I've used dry sherry in this recipe. You can use mirin (rice wine) if you want, but it is just too hard to find mirin that doesn't have a gazillion additives. You can also use any other dry wine, or nothing, but sherry is my favorite.

• I've used basil in place of going out looking for shiso and ground ginger instead of fresh (it was snowing in VA this weekend, and we are straight up plowless in our town).

Step 1: Ingredients

2 tbsp honey or other sweetener
1/4 tsp ground ginger or 1 tsp fresh ginger
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp dried basil
1 tsp sesame paste
1 tbsp tamari
1 tbsp roasted sesame oil
3 scallions
1/2 small head of cabbage or bok choy
1/3 to 1/2 cup of onion
2 tbsp butter
1/4 cup dry sherry
1 lb pasta

Step 2: Sauce

Whisk together honey, sesame paste, sesame oil, tamari, 1 tsp of the sherry, and the spices. Chop the scallions and add to the sauce. Set aside to marry.

Step 3: Cabbage

Roughly chop the onion and saute over medium heat in the butter. Chop the cabbage while the onion sautes.

After it cooks down, add the remaining sherry. Because you love sherry. Turn this to low and let it hang out and soften some more. Typically I cook everything al dente, but undercooked cabbage is just a bellyache waiting to happen.

Step 4: Pasta

Cook the pasta al dente in well salted water, according to the package's instructions. You can use any noodle, udon, bean threads, soba, yam noodles...but again, it was snowing, and I didn't feel like heading down to the specialty store for the good noodles.

Step 5: Finish up

Add the sauce to the noodles and stir well. The add the cabbage and serve!

Lovely holiday apple cake!

This cake is full of apples, coconut, and walnuts, and is so dense you could lob it at Santa and mug him for presents while he is unconscious and entering a brown-sugar-butter-sauce coma.
Okay, maybe that isn't a good idea. But hopefully laughter or outrage will make you forget the fact that I forgot my usual ingredient shot.
Regardless, I got this recipe after our annual bake sale at work. I don't know what book it came from, so if anybody recognizes it, do tell!

Step 1: Ingredients

Cake
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp brandy
2 cups sugar
2 3/4 plus 1/4 cups flour, divided
3 cups of apples, chopped
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup coconut
1/3 cup butter

Topping
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp brandy

Step 2: Prep

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9" tube pan. Peel and chop the apples. I used one and half ginormous Granny Smiths. Mix them with the 1/4 cup of flour, nuts, and coconut. Set aside.

Lovely!

Step 3: Beat the eggs well. Add the oil, vanilla, brandy, and sugar, again beating well.

Step 4: Sift in the remaining flour, the soda, salt, and nutmeg.

If you are a little weird about your food like we at Good Noms are, you'll probably grind your cinnamon fresh. Why do this and get the nutmeg out of a shaker bottle? Here's why:

After you grind your cinnamon in your coffee grinder, your next few cups will be extra delicious, infused with a delicate cinnamon flavor. Yum!

Step 5: Fold in apple mixture.

Step 6: Pour batter (which will more resemble dough than batter) into the pan. Bake for 70 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Set the pan on a cooling rack.

Step 7: Put the sauce ingredients into a small pan over medium high heat. Boil for 2 to 3 minutes.

Step 8: Turn the cake out onto a plate large enough to catch any sauce fallout. Jab the cake with a fork so that the sauce will soak in better. Pour or spoon sauce over the cake. I suppose you could serve it warm, but that would risk losing the sauce while it is still very runny and liquid. When it's at room temperature, it it nice and thick and won't ooze off as you serve.

Naked cake

Oh my.

Delicious!

How to make delicious pancakes...

...And make people love you.

The fiance and I have Pancake Sunday every week. It used to be Cinnamon Roll Sunday, but they are just too packaged and processed for us to buy.

NOW, before we start, let's talk spatulas! Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. This baby cost me sixteen bucks, but let me tell you why it is so great. Silicone or plastic is easier to get under your cake than metal. Metal doesn't bend or warp (as much) over repeated use/dishwashing. This one is a metal spatula with silicone on the outside! WORTH THE MONEY! If you are going to make flip-necessary food, invest in a good spatula!



Step the First: Ingredients!



1 1/2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or sour milk
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 stick of butter (we won't use all of it)
1/3 - 1/2 cup pecans (optional)

Step 2: If you don't have buttermilk, start by making yourself some sour milk. Measure out 1 1/4 cups of milk and add a tablespoon of white vinegar. Let it sit on the counter for ten minutes and get all gloopy and gross. The reason I tell you to use less milk than buttermilk is because buttermilk tends to be a lot thicker and make a thicker batter than plain milk.

Step 3: Grab a large frying pan. If we were a super fancy blog, we would tell you to pull out a saute pan. But in my house, it is a frying pan. Be sure to put it on the range at medium-high heat so it's nice and hot BEFORE you start trying to put pancakes on there. This way you'll have pancakes that are consistently cooked throughout all the batches.

Step 4: Using a whisk or fork, beat eggs until smooth.


Step 5: Add 1 cup of the milk and the vanilla and whisk that in until combined.


Step 6: Add dry ingredients and beat in. For the love of Pete, do not overbeat this. A few small lumps here and there are totally okay in pancakes.


Step 7: Take a look at your batter. It's probably too thick, so slowly whisk in the remaining milk until it looks to be the right consistency, like a slightly too-thin cake batter. You may need to add a little more than called for. The reason the batter should be so thin is to get a nice evenly cooked pancake. Not to mention that if you have kids, you can do what my mom did when my brother and I were munchkins; make freehand pancake shapes. Pumpkins, apples, and round little baby chicks were our favorites! Here's how it should look:


Step 8: Butter! Use about this much:


Step 9: Gently pour 1/3 cup of the batter into the pan. It'll make a 4" - 5" pancake. If you are using pecans (or blueberries, or grated apple, or CHOCOLATE CHIPS) sprinkle them on now.


Step 10: Watch for bubbles. When there are some nice-looking bubbles happening, and the edge is golden-brown...flip!



Step 11: Serve with a big glob of butter and whatever other toppings you like.


Step 12: Bask in the compliments of your family and friends.

Welcome to Good Noms

Hello, and Welcome to Good Noms!

For our first recipe, I'll walk you through my latest adventure in baking, an adapted version of Cakespy's Cranberry Bliss Bars.
My usual cooking style involves a lot of fooling around with substitutions, mangling recipes to my own tastes...and my fiance's pickiness. Therefore I present to you...

Good Noms' Cherry Bars!

Step 1: Gather up your ingredients.



Cake base
2 sticks (1 cup) butter, softened
1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar, firmly packed
3 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (optional)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon brandy
1/2 teaspoon salt (omit if using salted butter)
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Frosting
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
dash of salt (omit if using salted butter)

Garnish
1/3 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup dried cherries

Step 2: Preheat oven to 350º F. Lightly grease a 9" x 13" baking pan.

Step 3: Cream together the butter and sugar. It's really important to use softened butter, not melted butter, because the creamed butter and sugar add air to the batter, giving the end product a better texture.

Step 4: Add the vanilla, and the eggs, one at a time. Beat well after every addition. Now is the time to add the brandy as well, if you have it. I keep a well stocked liquor cabinet solely for cooking purposes. If you don't have any brandy, grand marnier, dark rum, or some other sweet liqueur will work just as well.

Step 5: Add in the dry ingredients. I have added some baking soda to the original recipe for a more tender, cakey bite. Because I love cake.



Step 6: Cherries and chocolate. You can use regular chocolate in place of white chocolate if you like, but inexplicably, I like white chocolate better in some recipes. DO NOT tell my mother this. White chocolate is one of several foods against which she has a vendetta.




Step 7: Bake for 30 mins, or until golden and a knife inserted in the center of the pan comes out clean (or mostly clean, depending on how many chocolate chips you run into). Cool completely before moving on to the frosting.


Frosting:

Step 1: Blend cream cheese, butter, and vanilla in a bowl slightly larger than you think you will need. The confectioner's sugar will make a bit of a mess if you let it.

Step 2: Add in the sugar a little bit at a time, until fully incorporated.

Step 3: Glob onto your cooled bars and top with cherries.



Step 4: Lick spoon.

Topping:

Step 1: In a double boiler, melt chocolate chips. If the chocolate seems to be too thick to drizzle, add a little shortening to thin it out. Don't worry, this won't change the flavor or texture of your chocolate once it's cooled.

A saucepan and Pyrex bowl make a good makeshift double boiler

Step 2: Drizzle chocolate over your bars. Cut the bars while the chocolate is still melty or it will crumble and your bars won't look as nice when cut. Cut in half lengthwise and into four wide. Cut each rectangle into two triangles.

Step 3: Enjoy!

Eat with a cup of French Roast for maximum enjoyment!