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Electric Kettle
I love my electric kettle. Sure, lots of people have these but I always figured "whatever, I have a pan" and never bothered. Wrong! It is an incredibly versatile piece of kitchen gear and worth every inch of countertop it takes up.
Of course mostly I use it to make coffee or tea, but it's really great for other things and I keep finding additional uses for a quart of boiling water in a hurry. For instance, I just made rice to go with the homemade chili I cooked (more on that later). I'm terrible at making rice on the stovetop and I know I'm not alone in this. I've had rice Stuart cooked in an oven that came out well, essentially because the heat in an oven is very even. Stovetops are just too uneven to do it right so rice always seems burned on the bottom or dried out. However, if you have a the exact quantity of boiling water to cook your rice, and the rice, salt, pepper, garlic and bay leaves (i.e., what I put in rice, put whatever you prefer) are in the bottom of a shallow pan with a tightly fitting lid, well, it's ready to go, just pour the boiling water on top, put the burner on very low, lid up and go.
Last weekend, I had a guest over and we had pasta. I used the kettle to boil the water... no sitting there for a long time waiting for a pot of water to heat up and listening to it make bizarre creaky sounds, just two quick trips to 212 degrees and you're ready to go with 2 quarts of boiling water. Just let it heat up a little more to accommodate any salt you put in the water.
Whenever I make soup I'll add hot water rather than cold to the pot. This helps prevent everything from getting overcooked or cooked unevenly (it's definitely possible to burn soup, especially if your stockpot ain't so great!).
Other things I do (so far):
-Heat up other clear liquids that don't mind a quick trip to boiling temperatures and won't destroy the inside of the pot, such as juice or stock.
-Boiling water + OxiClean to clean my kitchen sink, utensils that get icky (e.g., can opener) or even the floor. The boiling water really speeds up the rate of reaction of the OxiClean and in the case of the floor the liquid evaporates very fast. Again, I've done this for years but the water boiler makes it so much easier to manage. Given that the kitchen sink is one of the dirtiest places in the house (dirtier than other large water fixtures!), that's a useful thing to do regularly.
Any other suggestions?
Food You Should Be Eating: Cabbage
Cabbage? Really?
Image by ubercultureYes. Cabbage. Really.
Cabbage isn't one of those rare ingredients. Everyone knows about it. Most of us use it. Still, most of us use it for one or two things... and that is unfortunate. Cabbage is an incredibly versatile food, and it is particularly great for the winter... when it is one of the few things in season.
Why cabbage? Really, the question is why not cabbage? Cabbage is inexpensive and nutritious. It stores incredibly well. It can also be delicious.
Don't believe me? In the last few weeks, I've used cabbage in the following ways:
- I've roasted it. Cabbage that's been roasted gets nicely crisp and caramelized. It is surprisingly good, and it is hearty enough to work as a main course.
- I've made cole slaw. Have I written a post about cole slaw? No? I need to do that. I make awesome cole slaw. The key is using mayonnaise made with olive oil (either homemade or doctored).
- I've braised it. Braised cabbage is incredibly succulent. It is slightly sweet and very tender. More often, I put cabbage in soup... and end up stewing it, which has a similar effect. This might be my favorite way to eat cabbage.
- I've added it to chicken salad and tuna salad. Cabbage adds a great crunch and flavor accent to both of these.
- The other night we made potstickers. I ground up some chicken and added a bit of soy sauce and a mix of chopped cabbage, green onion, and garlic. This was incredibly easy, by the way.
- I like to keep a bowl of vinegared cabbage and onions on hand. It's a great accent when you just need a bit of a flavor blast.
There are a ton of other things you can do with cabbage. These are just the things that I've actually done with it in the very recent past.
Do you have a favorite way to eat cabbage? ...or questions about cabbage? Leave a comment.
Quick Quasi-Moroccan
I just made this quasi-Moroccan dish:
1 cup beef stock (low sodium)
.5 cup water
1 cup quick cook couscous
.25 cup diced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
20 roasted almonds
4 dried apricots, julienned
6 sun dried tomatoes, julienned
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 bay leaf
Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil in the bottom of a sauce pan with a tightly fitting lid. Add the liquid and all other ingredients but the couscous and bring to a boil. Stir in the couscous, cover, reduce heat and allow the couscous to steam until it's fluffy.
It was easy and very good, much better than the various packaged type dishes. I don't have any harissa but that would put it over the top.
Happy Groundhog Day
One year ago today, I started Kitchenhacker. I've written over 200 posts since then, and I have learned a lot. Not everything I've learned has been about food, either. I've learned about blogging, about myself, and about some of you.
I want to thank all of you for reading... and I especially want to thank those of you who leave comments. I've always wanted this blog to be a conversation rather than merely a soapbox. In particular, I want to thank crimfan (who also gets a special thank-you for picking up my slack), Jason, ketherian, CoerciveUtopian, and all the other frequent commenters.
If you're relatively new around here, let me give you a quick introduction to some of my more popular posts:
- Kitchenhacking 101 is a guide to the basic philosophy behind this site.
- Post-Industrial Cooking explores the impact of the changes in the food industry over the last 50 years... and riffs off of some themes in Kitchenhacking 101.
- Recipes Are Made To Be Broken, Parts One, Two, and Three. So far, this is the best explanation I have written of my cooking technique. It also explains why I don't include a lot of recipes on this site.
One of the things that I hope to focus on in the coming year is revisiting and expanding upon some of the themes in these articles. While I'm happy with the direction that Kitchenhacker has taken, I want to write a bit more about theory, cultural changes, and thought processes that pertain to food and cooking.
I hope you'll be here.
Thoughts on Popcorn
I'm a big fan of popcorn. It is fast and simple to make. It is tasty. It can be eaten on its own or with a wide variety of flavorings. It's a versatile snack.
Image by Joelle Nebbe-MornodWhy has it been relegated to the realm of snackdom, though? Is there a reason we don't eat popcorn as an integral part of our meals?
I don't really know how Native Americans consumed popcorn before Europeans came to America, but I once read (on the internet! it must be true!) that early European settlers ate popcorn as a side dish. This seems reasonable, but popcorn has a remarkably low density. There is very little food in a large volume of popcorn when compared to other foods. Unless the popcorn is little more than a garnish, you'll generally need a separate bowl for it.
So maybe that's why we don't generally eat popcorns at mealtimes: lack of space. Still, I think popcorn could be used more frequently as a garnish... or even an ingredient. Caramel and chocolate are often used as binders to make popcorn balls. I don't know that I've ever seen a savory equivalent to such things, but it seems like a reasonable step to take. Perhaps in loaf form rather than a ball?
On a side note, I find it strange enough that grocery stores have huge sections devoted to popcorn. The last time I went to buy some, though, there was only one option if I wanted to buy ordinary popcorn kernels. Other than that and a small selection of Jiffy Pop
Italian Fennel
I had an old friend over last night, someone who's another NYC transplant. We played some music together (we are both amateur musicians). I cooked dinner, which included one of my favorite ingredients since moving to NYC, Italian fennel. I think it was available in the Midwest but it wasn't on my radar. With the large Italian-American influence here, Italian fennel is broadly available in supermarkets and most fruit stands, too. It is versatile as a vegetable. The traditional Italian use for it is as a palate-cleanser between courses. Just slice it up raw. I've also used it raw in a salad, with radishes, onions and mustard vinaigrette. I suspect you could sub it in wherever you would use a cabbage type vegetable easily enough, particularly if you slice thin across the wide part of the root to break up those long fibers.
However, it's pretty chewy---not quite as bad as an artichoke but pretty close---and some roasting really improves its flavor as well as softening the vegetable nicely, so I definitely recommend roasting first, which isn't very hard. Preheat oven to 350, cut the fennel into chunks, toss in olive oil, salt and pepper and roast for approximately a half hour. The outside should caramelize and the inside will still have some tooth. I often prep a fair bit in advance and then just use it up as I go. If you really want to soften it, hit it with 425 but it won't keep well.
As I write this, I'm eating a cold lunch of:
Rotini, roast fennel, sauteed crimini mushrooms, some blackened chicken breast, sun dried tomatoes, and fresh slices of parmesan, fresh garlic and a grind of salt and pepper. (Aka last night's leftovers but with sun dried tomatoes instead of marinara sauce. :)
As a Reminder of Summer Days...
A nice BBQ website:
Low-Heat Gas Cooking
Over on the kitchn today, they are talking about burner plates. These are plates of material that sit in-between a gas burner and your pot, serving to reduce the heat.
Burner plates aren't too expensive, starting at just over $10. You can see a few examples from Amazon to the right. Still, I'm wondering how a ceramic tile (costing about $1) would work. I'd rather use something even less expensive (and multipurpose) than a unitask piece of metal. Ceramic will certainly stand up to the heat of a gas burner. It is, however, an insulator rather than a conductor. It will diffuse the heat well, but it won't react to your changes in temperature quickly. Still, it might be a useful and inexpensive alternative. Maybe a ceramic tile wrapped in aluminum foil?
A Neato App for iPhone Users Wanting to Recover From All the Good Food You've Been Eating
If you like food a lot---and if you don't why are you here?---a nasty side effect often arises, aka more weight than you would like. I've been on a post-grad school loss regimen but had stalled out, for various reasons (moving disrupted my routines, I hurt my back during the move, the holidays...).
I obtained an iPhone 3GS last summer after my old Motorola Q bricked. It took me a bit to "get" apps, but Lose It! has been one of the best. (The other great one is Camera Genius, which adds some truly excellent functionality to the iPhone's sadly underutilized camera.) It's a free calorie monitor, which lets you record what you eat and also how much exercise you get every day.
I did this with a pad of paper before but the benefit of using the iPhone is that I have it with me nearly all the time. Lose It! also does the calculations for you and can be customized to send you (or anyone else) a weekly report, nag you by creating daily appointments to make sure you enter your meals, and so on. It's got a social networking component, too, so you can hook up with online friends, but I'm too much of a curmudgeon for that, I'm afraid.
The big help of Lose It! is the fact that it's really simple for what it does. It's got a decent database of foods and exercises, and doesn't require much data entry on your part. (Of course sometimes you have to guess on a given food.) Given that most of us tend to eat a lot of the same thing, the fact that the app knows what you've eaten before is very helpful because you don't have to search for a food item again.
The controls are straightforward so even someone such as myself, whose tech-IQ is no more than middlin' can master it PDQ. That's good because anything hard to use has this distressing tendency not to get used at all....
Gearing Up
One week from today, on February 2nd (Groundhog Day), Kitchenhacker will be one year old. I have a lot of plans for the new year. One of the first will be a website makeover that has been keeping me occupied. It isn't a huge thing, but I think it will be a bit easier on the eyes than what the site looks like now. Hopefully, it will be easier to navigate, too.
I could use a bit of help from all of you, though. I've been considering a new tag-line. clever cooking. creative food. - it isn't bad, but I've gotten some feedback from people who say it caused them to assume this is a recipe site. While crimfan posts some recipes, I do so rarely. If people come here looking for recipes, I think they'll be disappointed.
...and I do so hate to disappoint people.
So I turn to you, faithful readers. Do I need a new tagline? What should it be?
