Today I Learned...

...that it's not a good idea to mix up Bisquick biscuits and then leave the dough alone for half an hour because the Internet service repairman is about to leave without giving you some critical information, which you then have to use to set up the network and get the computers back on the internet. I'm not sure how applicable that will be to future cooking situations, but at least I know now that the biscuits just don't taste as good that way.

I scored a real cookbook bonanza yesterday at a fabulous used bookstore:



That includes four of the five cookbooks I've really been wanting, plus another very useful one, and none of them cost more than $3. (Some of the cookbooks there were priced well over $10, so that's a big deal.) Each one had just enough wear and tear to lower the price, but none of them is in bad condition. They're all classic cookbooks and will be very helpful. The New Basics Cookbook, for instance, lists all the vegetables, how to select them, all the possible ways to cook them, and what spices go well with them. So useful!

I made tabouleh again today, because it just sounded so good, and my parsley plant needed to be cut back. After supper I looked at the dishes that needed to be done, and I suddenly decided that I really felt like scrubbing the very nasty floor and grout areas in the back corners of the bathroom. And, for good measure, I improvised a paper-clip hook and cleared out the shower drain. I'm so happy I got that over with. The dishes can wait until tomorrow.

More Grains

 

I stocked up on grains and legumes today. From left to right: soy nuts, quinoa, adzuki beans; barley, bulgur, kasha (buckwheat groats).

Making Seitan

What a mess! (But it was a lot of fun.)

I've been reading a vegetarian cookbook lately--it's called 366 Healthful Ways to Cook Tofu and Other Meat Alternatives--and I came across something called seitan. It's a meat alternative with a decent amount of protein, and you can make it yourself pretty cheaply, and apparently it can substitute for meat so that people hardly notice. You can make things like Seitan Cutlets (like Chicken Cutlets--breaded and sauteed--but no chicken) or Seitan Bourguignon (like a beef stew). It seemed worth trying, so I set about making seitan this afternoon.

You start with wheat flour (I used 6 cups), and then you add a little less than half that amount of water, and make a ball of dough which you knead for 5 minutes. Don't flour and water make paste? That's what it felt like. It definitely wasn't like dough, so I'm not sure how you really knead it. Mostly I ended up squishing it through my fingers. I tried to scrape the last bits of dry flour out of the bottom of the bowl, but my hands were so coated with paste that I didn't have much success with that.

I would have taken a picture of the process, but if I had tried, I would have ruined the camera.

The next step was to run water over the dough, which also allowed me to get all the goop off my hands, and leave it alone (covered with water) for 15 minutes. Now it looked like this:

 

The 15-minute interlude gave me time to get out the stove and the pot . You fill the pot with water and add some seasonings. I didn't have most of what the book recommended, but I did have half an onion and half a clove of garlic, and I also added some soy sauce and a dash of powdered ginger to approximate what was recommended.

Back to the dough. You stick your hands in the water and start kneading (or squishing) the dough again. The water will turn white. When it does, you pour it down the drain, add more warm or cold water, and knead some more. Rinse and repeat until the water doesn't turn white any more. This took me about 20 minutes. As I kept doing this, the dough got stranger and stranger.

First it held together in a lump:

 

 

Then it started to look like brains:



Then it got too stringy to look like brains, and too stretchy to knead, so I had to pull it apart to knead it:



Finally I decided I was done and I drained the last bit of water. Now it's raw seitan:



Then I cut it into four pieces:



Apparently seitan should be poached right after you make it (cooked over low heat for an hour), and then you can cook it for whatever you want to use it for (or freeze it in liquid). I had the cooking liquid ready, so I turned the stove on. A few minutes later, I realized that it didn't do any good to turn the stove on when I hadn't plugged it in yet:



Finally I got the cooking water heated to almost boiling, added the raw seitan, put on the lid (not because of the recipe, but because my stove works better that way), and decided it was time for dinner. Leftovers!

After dinner I finally decided it had cooked enough, so I took it out of the pot:



Then I bagged it and left it out to cool, and later I'll put it in the freezer. Tomorrow I'll decide what I want to make with it.

I also started thinking about my poor sink. The kneading underwater process gets out the starch and bran from the dough, so a lot of starch and bran went down the drain. I really did try to wipe some of it out, but there was so much of it! I think I'll give the sink a dose of baking soda and vinegar tonight. That should clear out the drain, and besides, it's so fun to watch it bubble.

My Garden

In the interests of making more tabouleh, I decided to start a garden.

 

I've never been much of a gardener, but I do like parsley, and tabouleh requires a lot of it. Lately, the grocery store has been charging 99 cents for a small bunch of parsley (and it usually smells rotten, too). I happened to be at a nursery (the plant kind) yesterday, and suddenly it occured to me that buying a plant would be cheaper (and would taste better) than the grocery store parsley, even if I only managed to keep it alive for a few weeks.

Here's hoping that it lives...

Tabouleh

This is my favorite summer meal. I made this recipe as a copycat of the Near East boxed version, which might not be authentic, but it tastes awfully good. It's best with tomato and cucumber from the garden or from a farmers' market. Amounts of tomato and cucumber are approximate--make sure to use plenty!



1 cup bulgur wheat
3 1/2 cups water

2 1/2 T. lemon juice
3 T. olive oil
1 T. chopped fresh mint
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley, or 2 T. and 2t. dried parsley
2 small cloves garlic, minced
1/4 t. onion powder
Salt, pepper, sugar, to taste

1 large cucumber, peeled and chopped, seeds removed (or a few small cucumbers, chopped--no need to peel or remove seeds)
2 large tomatoes, chopped and drained (cut off ends, squeeze out juice and seeds, then chop)
6 oz. feta, crumbled
Toasted pine nuts, optional

Heat water to boiling. Pour over bulgur. Cover and let sit on the counter for an hour or so. Drain.

Mix lemon juice, olive oil, mint, parsley, and garlic. Add onion powder, a bit of salt and pepper, and a pinch or two of sugar. Pour over bulgur and toss well. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Add cucumber, tomato, and feta. Toss well. Refrigerate until serving (at least 1 hour). Add pine nuts, if using. Serves 4 as a main dish.

How I Cook

When I'm cooking for myself, I cook mostly vegetarian. It's cheaper and easier, and meat is slimy. I've decided to cook meat only for special occasions, but I'll eat it whenever it's served to me. I sometimes use chicken/beef broth or (rarely) bacon to help flavor an otherwise meatless dish. So I'm not a true vegetarian, but I do a lot of vegetarian cooking.

Since my fridge is so small, I usually make up a big batch of something and eat it for dinner every day until it's gone. The true test of a good recipe is whether I still like it after eating it for a week.

I don't have room in my fridge to keep vegetables unless I have plans to use them. However, I always keep carrot and celery sticks. The carrots I cut up and store in a plastic bag; the celery I cut up and stand in plastic glasses with some water at the bottom of the glass. I often eat two or three heads of celery in a week. Yum.

As for creating recipes, I usually start by reading three or four recipes online for what I want to cook. Then I take the parts I like best of each recipe, and I blend them together. After I finish cooking, if I like it, I write down the recipe so that I can make it again in the future.

I'm learning a lot about cheap meat substitutes. So far I've used dried soybeans, soynuts, and TVP (textured vegetable protein). Soon I'll try my hand at making seitan...

My Kitchen

What does The Modest Kitchen look like?



It's in a tiny basement studio apartment. This kitchen counter is my main work space, and it's right next to my bed. Occasionally bits of food will jump overboard and I'll find myself picking cookie dough off my blanket. One morning, I was making my bed and a piece of broken Ramen noodle fell onto the floor.



What appliances do I have? The microwave is key. It always stays on the counter, mainly because it has serving utensils, salt, pepper, sugar, creamer, paper towels, and miscellaneous other things stacked on top, and I don't want to move all of that. I'm learning to use the microwave for all sorts of routine cooking. Recently, that's included corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, and homemade pudding.



I have three other main appliances. My stove:



My oven:



My crockpot:



These three all occupy the same bit of counter real estate. This leads to me saying things like, "Now let's put away the stove and get out the oven." My hall storage shelves have a space that can hold the oven or the crockpot, and the stove gets stored on my bookshelf. (This means that there's no way to preheat the oven while cooking something on the stove. However, the crockpot and stove can fit on the counter together.)

Probably the biggest challenge is my fridge:



It's a dorm-sized fridge, with a tiny freezer. I have to defrost it from time to time--just another thing I've learned how to do in The Modest Kitchen. The landlord allows me to use some space in the chest freezer in the garage, but that's mainly for long-term storage. My tiny freezer doesn't do a good job at really freezing things, so I don't rely very heavily on frozen foods.

Someday I'll have a kitchen with real appliances, a full-size fridge, and a dishwasher. I can't wait to have a dishwasher! Until then, though, The Modest Kitchen suits me just fine, and I have so much fun being creative in my cooking.