Vegetarian Moussaka

First off, before I get to the vegetarian moussaka I made last night, I want to send a quick shout-out to one of my oldest friends, Wendy Lawrence (and no, Wendy, I didn't just call you old, I meant that figuratively).  Wendy passed along a "Stylish Blogger Award" to me.  I believe the main reason she chose my blog is some sort of ironic commentary knowing that I'm hardly stylish.  However, I will happily accept the award, chiefly because I can now tell people I write an award winning blog.  To truly accept it, I'm supposed to reveal 7 things about myself and then pass along the award to 10 others.  I will do that later this week, but alas, time is short right now with the dissertation looming and I want to get to cooking.  But for anyone with kids, or anyone who knows a kid, or anyone who once was a kid, Wendy writes a really fantastic blog all about children's books and reading.  Her blog is actually worthy of being considered award winning and I highly recommend everyone check it out: http://kidlitblog.wordpress.com/

Onto the food: Last night, I made a vegetarian moussaka.  Moussaka is a dish I absolutely love, though it has been years since I've had it.  This is probably because I used to love going to the Great Greek in Los Angeles and ordering the dish and I haven't found many places since then that I thought could do it justice.  That said, this marks my first venture of trying to make it myself.  This recipe comes from the latest issue of Cooking Light.  

This moussaka has basically three components: broiled eggplant, the filling, and a bechamel sauce.  The most time consuming portion of the dish is the filling, which is typically made with some sort of ground meat, but as a meat substitute, this recipe called for bulgur (which is made from wheat).  To make the filling, first I prepared all the ingredients, which included 2 cups diced onion, 4 chopped garlic cloves (though I used 6, I always go with more because I love it so much), a half cup of bulgur, some cinnamon, allspice, and ground cloves, 2 cups of vegetable broth, and then chopped oregano:

 

To make the filling, first you saute the onions in hot olive oil for about 8 minutes, which will give them a nice color:

To this, add the garlic and cook for another minute:

Add the bulgur and cook for another 3 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent anything from burning.  Then add the spices and cook for another minute:

Add the broth and oregano, bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes until it's thickened up nicely: 

For the eggplant, slice 3 of them into 1 inch rounds and put them on a baking sheet (removing the skin first).  Brush some olive oil on them and broil on high for about 5 minutes per side (or until they're brown):

 Here they are after broiling (this is the first batch, you'll have to do this in two rounds):

Finally, for the bechamel sauce, you need 1 tablespoon of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 cup of milk, an egg, and some cheese (it called for 2 tablespoons, but again, I put in a bit more):

To make the sauce, melt the butter in a sauce pan and then whisk in the flour until it is thoroughly combined (about 2 minutes).  Slowly add the milk and bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes.  It should get thick by the end of that time.  Once it has thickened, stir in the cheese and remove from the heat.  Let it cool slightly then beat in the egg.  It should look something like this:

Now, for the big finish, layer half the eggplant in a dish then spread the filling on top of it.  Layer the rest of the eggplant on top of the filling so that you get something that looks like this:

Pour the bechamel sauce over the whole thing and pop it in the oven (350 degrees).  Here is mine going in:

After 45 minutes, the recipe suggests turning up the oven temp to 475 to brown the top of the moussaka.  At this point, I was hungry and ready for this to be done so I instead just turned the broiler back on to hurry the task along.  I think it worked just fine.  Here it is coming out of the oven:

 And here's my slice of it:

I think this moussaka turned out really well, although it didn't taste quite like others I have eaten.  I imagine this is largely due to the lack of meat in the dish.  However, I think the bulgur worked admirably as a meat substitute.  If anything, I think the dish was perhaps a little under seasoned and so if I make this again, I think I would season a bit more aggressively to kick it up a little bit more.  Still, I would definitely recommend this to anyone who's looking for a vegetarian dish to try out.  And I should know: I'm an award winning blogger.

Shrimp and grits (version 1.0)

One of the true staples of North Carolina, and the south in general, is the deceptively simple dish of shrimp and grits.  If you go to almost any respectable Southern restaurant for a Sunday brunch, I guarantee that shrimp and grits will be on the menu.  Of course, like so many great dishes, every restaurant makes their version of shrimp and grits differently and they all have their own way to make their dishes unique. 

And so, last night, I decided to enter the world of shrimp and grits and make my own spin on the classic dish.  I call it, creatively enough, Temple's Shrimp and Grits, version 1.0, which allows for me to make improvements upon the dish in the future until I have created what I consider to be the best possible version.  Because people tend to want to put their own unique spin on the dish, I decided to make a brown butter sauce for it.  For those of you who have never made a brown butter sauce, I'm sorry.  To me, it's one of the greatest and simplest sauces you can make and browning the butter creates an incredibly complex yet delicious combination of flavors.

To be honest, I didn't really have much of a plan as I started making this dish.  Instead, I sort of grabbed what I had in the fridge and went with it.  This meal really required multiple things to be cooked at the same time but for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to run through one dish at a time and then show you what it all looked like when combined.

I'll start with the brown butter sauce.  To make this, I took a stick of butter and melted it in a stainless steel pan (which I mainly use because it's easiest to see the color of the butter as it cooks).  To this, I added some thyme for a little extra flavor:

This cooks on fairly low heat for a while and I stir it often to keep it evenly heated.  Here we are after a few minutes:

After about 15 minutes or so, the butter turns a wonderful shade of brown, as you can see here.  You have to be careful at this stage because it really doesn't take much to go from browned to burnt, so once you see this color, it's best to remove it from the heat:

Once I removed it from the heat, I strained it and put it in a glass measuring cup.  I'll pour this over the final dish as you'll see:

In the big pan, I start with (what else?!) bacon.

 I fry the bacon until it's really nice and crisp, then remove it and set the bacon aside:

Into the bacon grease, I add a diced onion and a ton of garlic and saute this until it's nice and fragrant, about 5 minutes:

About midway through, I added some parsley:

 Then once the onions, garlic, and parsley were looking good, I added the shrimp:

 After just a few minutes of cooking, here is what the shrimp mixture looked like:

Finally, in my 3rd pot, I had the grits going.  The particular grits I went with were made from the whole kernel, which is why they are yellow rather than white.  I honestly don't know enough about grits to know whether there is a clear taste distinction between white and yellow grits.  I mainly went with these because they looked the best at the store and were about the only non-instant option out there:

Once the grits were about cooked, I added some shredded cheddar cheese as well as about a cup or so of chicken broth.  I have a feeling that cooking grits in things other than water will really add to the flavor of the dish in the same way cooking risotto in broth does.  I was a little nervous to start out my first attempt at the dish by cooking them entirely in a broth, but I did add it in to hopefully add some more flavor.

Here's a shot of everything going at once.  We've got the butter in the back left, the grits in the front left, and the shrimp going on the front right.

Once everything was done, it was time to bring it all together.  I put a nice helping of grits on the plate, then topped that with the shrimp mixture and the bacon.  I then drizzled the brown butter sauce on top and here you go, Temple's Shrimp and Grits version 1.0:

I have to say, these were really good.  The grits were creamy and flavorful, the shrimp were delicious, and the brown butter sauce added some interesting flavors that I think worked really well with everything else.  Of course, this is only the first version and I have many ideas for the next.  For one, I think there are a lot of other items that would go well with the shrimp mixture, such as mushrooms and green onions.  I also want to experiment more with different varieties of grits and cooking them differently.  For now, though, I think this dish is already a winner.

Happy eating!

Fettucini carbonara

Last week, I made a "pasta" carbonara that, while tasty, was a bit of a disaster because I didn't quite get the pasta right.  That's why I refer to it as a pasta carbonara -- the pasta just wasn't clearly identifiable as being fettucini, spaghetti, or anything else.

Last night, I decided to try another carbonara sauce that is even easier than the one I did last week.  To make sure my attention was squarely on the sauce, I decided to just use dry fettucini because really, it's hard to screw that up (though it's been known to happen). 

This recipe comes from Donna Hay.  I used one of her recipes last week (the butternut squash risotto) and I really love her stuff.  The only trick to following her recipes is to be able to convert units.  You see, she's Australian and although certain words she uses can be charming, it can be trickly to know exactly how much she wants of an ingredient when she's calling for 400 grams of it.  Fortunately, my cell phone has a unit converter on it so I have started to just write in the conversions in the cookbook.

The recipe for last night is extraordinarily straight forward.  First, you whisk together 4 egg yolks, a cup of cream, a half of cup of fresh parm, and a little salt and pepper:

After you've created what will be the sauce, I cooked some bacon I had cut into strips (to make the cooking go faster) with some green onions in a pan.  This only takes a few minutes to cook and will serve as the topping to the pasta:

If you're good at timing, you can have the pasta going while the bacon is cooking so that things are ready about the same time.  I actually waited for the bacon to almost be done before starting on the pasta.  The reason I waited to cook the pasta last (unlike Donna Hay, who cooked it first) is that the heat of the pasta itself is what is supposed to cook the egg in this particular carbonara sauce.  Because of that, I thought I'd cook the pasta last, drain it, and immediately toss it with the sauce.  It seemed to work well as the sauce quickly took on its proper appearance.  Once I tossed the pasta with the sauce, I plated it, put the bacon and green onions on top, and voila:

This was served with a side salad.  Unfortunately, you can't really see the sauce in this particular picture because I used a whole wheat fettucini.  You'll just have to take my word that it was delicious.

Butternut squash risotto, buffalo burgers, and other good eats

Working on the dissertation has been eating (get it? get it?) up every moment of my time recently, so I haven't gotten the chance to discuss what's been on the table the past few days.  I'll give you a quick rundown so I don't get too far behind!

Two nights ago, I made a butternut squash risotto.  Now, I have to admit, I'm a bit of a late-comer to the risotto train.  Not the eating of risotto; the making of it.  For some reason, risotto seems to hold this mythical place in cuisine -- it's seen as so demanding and difficult to make, I honestly had never tried to make it until a few months ago.  Turns out, it's not really that hard to make.  It's just time consuming and requires attention.

Until this week.  Based on a recipe by Donna Hay, I made what had to be the simplest risotto ever.  To begin, I diced a butternut squash and put that in a dish with 2 cups of the rice plus butter:

 To this, I added 40 oz. of broth:

That baked in the oven for about 40 minutes.  When it was getting close, I browned some chicken, cut it up, and then threw in some mushrooms:

 Once the risotto/squash was out of the oven, I added the chicken, mushrooms, some parsley, and a ton of cheese:

I stirred that for a few minutes and suddenly it became a wonderful little dish:

And here it is plated:

This, I have to say, was a pretty awesome recipe.  If on Top Chef, I'm afraid I would have been eliminated because the risotto was not as "runny" as traditionally made (or so they say).  To counteract that next time, I'll have some warm broth on hand to stir into the mixture so that it doesn't become too dry.  The other reason I would have gotten eliminated is that I think I needed to dice the squash a little bit smaller.  Some of the larger pieces were not completely cooked.  I think if they had been smaller, there would have been more consistency and they would all have been cooked the same.  All in all, though, a really great recipe that makes a delicious risotto -- and one you don't even have to sit there and stir!!

Last night, since the weather has been so wonderful, I decided to grill some bison and corn.  So onto the grill I threw corn, onions, and the buffalo burgers:

A little bit later, and the burgers are cooked (and now topped with cheese), the onions are nicely caramelized, the corn is looking wonderful, and the buns are toasted:

For the burger, I topped it with the onions, cheese, tomato, and lettuce.  I served it with the grilled corn, which I cut off the cob and mixed with butter.  The great thing about grilled corn, I think, is that it tastes so good, I never feel the urge to add salt and I barely add any butter (and it's yogurt butter at that!).  I also served it with a little of the leftover risotto from the night before:

I have to admit, I like buffalo more than cow.  The texture and taste are both different.  It's also supposed to be a lot healthier, though I can't really talk too much about that.

Back to work, but I wanted to let you know what's been going on the table lately.

Happy Eating!

Pizza and man's best friend

This will be short today as I'm a bit swamped with working on my dissertation.  However, I will share what I had last night as well as an amusing picture of who spends the most time of anyone in the kitchen.

Last night was pizza night... this time not going out but staying home.  The weather was nice enough that I could have done this outside, and it certainly would've been better if I had, but I was in a hurry so the oven was how I went. 

The pizza was a whole wheat (fresh) dough, topped with tomato sauce, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and a combination of various cheeses.  It was nice, though nothing particularly special:

I did snap a picture of the loyal Mr. Fritz, always willing to guard the floor in case any food happens to fall.  It really is impressive the way he is able to literally just sit there and stare at the floor in hopes that he might get something (though I suppose he pretty much always does):

Happy Eatin'.

Dinner! In a can!

We all have certain foods that we're ashamed to admit we like.  They represent the thing that we eat when nobody else is around, or they're what we turn to when we're in need of something to bring comfort.  For me, the list is pretty long of things I can't say I'm exactly proud to enjoy.  For example, let me throw out this simple phrase: Chicken in a Biskit.  For those of you who have never noticed this on the aisle next to such things as Ritz, here's what the box looks like:

There are, of course, a lot of things inherently wrong with this product.  Let's start with the obvious.  It's a chicken-flavored cracker.  And for those who are wondering, I just checked Nabisco's website and yes, coming in 10th on the list of ingredients is dehydrated cooked chicken.  So they have dehydrated a chicken (though not much of it, based on its position in the list -- there is more baking soda in there than chicken), ground it up, and mixed it into a batter.  But then, they don't call it chicken crackers, they called it chicken in a biscuit.  Only they are aware that this isn't so much a biscuit as a cracker, and so they spell biscuit biskit.  This is sort of like the cereal Froot Loops, who know that if they called it "Fruit" Loops, they'd probably be open to some sort of lawsuit, so they simply spell it phonetically.  General rule of thumb: if the name of the food is spelled phonetically rather than correctly, it's probably not good for you.

One last side note before I get to last night: I love that on the Chicken in a Biskit box, they have clear as day "0g Trans Fat" as if to imply that these are somehow healthy. Eat lots of these and you won't add any trans fats!  You'll eat a remarkable assortment of other horrible things, but no trans fat!!

So last night's meal was La Choy's Chicken Chow Mein:

Which I served over these noodles:

There's really little discussion about how to make this.  Let's see, you heat up the contents of the can.  You boil some water and put the noodles in.  And then combine.  I'm also not going to sit here and pretend that this dinner is healthy or has any redeeming qualities.  All I'm going to say is it has a uniquely wonderful taste that bears very little resemblance to a chow mein you'd get in an actual restaurant:

Hey, we all have things we like to eat that we perhaps know we shouldn't.  I'm pretty sure I'm not alone here.