Matchstick pointed out to me that it's been about nine months since my last post. And that's kind of a gestation-ish length of time, so what better time for Coquus Macer to be born anew! Dude, I'm totally serious about doing this. Seriously.
...or at any rate, I'm going to try hard! がんばりますよ!
So, over the summer, my super fantastic mom got me a nice bunch of new cookware. I've gotten to play around with most of it. One of the most exciting pieces she got for me is my very first cast-iron skillet. I named her Wynona. Wynona is fantastic, and her inaugural recipe was Southern cornbread.
This is a recipe that I've been fond of for some time now, ever since Matchstick bought me The Cornbread Gospels, by Crescent Dragonwagon. It's super-simple, fast, inexpensive, and delicious! Fresh out of the oven, the bread is soft, meaty, and coarsely textured, perfect buttered, or with jam, or as a side with chili. It does, however, go stale faster than you can say "crouton." But! This cornbread still kicks ass. Crumble a stale wedge into a glass and pour some icy-cold milk over it--I swear, you will never eat store-bought cereal again. The coarseness of the bread makes it like a delicious, slightly sweet sponge, and it just soaks up the milk. It's excellent as breakfast or as a snack, especially in the warmer months (this past week has been less than optimal, but Indian Summer will be here soon, gods willing).
Ronni's Appalachian Cornbread
¼ cup butter or bacon drippings (this is one of the few instances where I think butter is better for cornbread)
2 cups cornmeal
1 tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 egg
1½ cup buttermilk (I subbed in 1½ cup milk + ¾ tsp white vinegar)
- Throw the butter into a 10-inch skillet and pop it in the oven. Set it to preheat to 450F (a similarly wide metal baking pan will work just as well, but you should wait until the oven is heated to put it in)
- Mix all the dry ingredients together
- Beat the egg into the buttermilk
- When the oven heated, combine the wet and dry ingredients
- Swish the melted butter around the bottom of the skillet to make sure it's coated, then beat the batter a couple times to make sure it's combined. Pour it into the skillet and slam it back into the oven to bake!
- Bake 20-25 minutes, until the top's started to brown
- Serve directly from the skillet
So, I moved into North on the 7th, and it was super exciting. We have a huge pantry, and a stove that's not all full of crud (this was a super exciting story I should have posted about. I set the oven in Brown on fire last spring when I was trying to make biscuits. People had used it and made a huge mess...so huge that the heating element was kind of buried under carbonised crud...and I neglected to check the oven before I set it to preheat. When I opened it to put in the biscuits, a huge plume of smoke billowed out! I freaked out, but the RA on duty seemed not to care. I took care of it best I could, and ended up calling my dear friend Anya at, like, eleven at night to let me into her dorm so I could use the oven. When I said this was super exciting, I meat that I was sleep deprived and stressed, so you really just had to have been there :p). Also, a full sized fridge! I can have fresh veggies! Let's neglect the bit where a good portion of the fridge is filled with Busch Light. (My flatmates are jocks/bros, and have little interest in cooking. At least they're not drinking PBR!)
Anyway, the first thing I made in the kitchen was blackbean soup. I'd been trying to come up with exact measurements for a recipe that I made all last spring with Matchstick, but it really doesn't work that way...I just use relative measurements. So, a mess-o-beans became a rather nice blackbean soup.
Blackbean Soup
1 lb blackbeans, soaked or fast-soaked
1 "cheek" green cabbage (about a fifth?)
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
Butter (for a vegan version, use olive oil and add some minced celery and a bit of minced carrot)
Cumin seed (about ½ tsp)
2 guajillo chilis (remove the stems!)
Ground cumin (at least 1 tsp, closer to two)
Paprika (at least 1½ tsp)
Parsley (at least 1 Tbsp)
Cilantro (at least 1 tsp)
Ground black pepper
Salt to taste
- Dice the onion, shred the cabbage, and peel the garlic. Smash the garlic with the flat of your knife
- In the bottom of a larger pot, heat the butter. When it's melted, add the cumin seeds and saute a minute before adding the onion and garlic
- Saute the onion and garlic until the onion is translucent and beginning to caramelise
- Add the cabbage, and saute it gently until it's wilted. The secret to cooking cabbage without a bad odor is to treat it gently
- Once the cabbage is wilted, add the beans, and water to cover. Bring to a boil and add all the spices except the salt. Stir, cover, and turn down the heat to let it simmer
- Simmer about an hour (I think), stirring occasionally. After at least an hour, add the salt (the delayed salting keeps the bean skins from becoming tough and impeding the cooking process)
- Simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until the beans are tender. Top up the water as necessary
- When the beans are tender, stir the soup and mash beans against the side of the pot. With each stir, you should squish some beans
- Simmer, uncovered, until the soup is nicely thickened, adjusting the seasonings and stirring occasionally
Last night, I was in a bit of a mood, probably owing to my sore legs (I was so lazy over the summer! I'm not used to so much walking!) and the rainy weather, so I stayed in. Nothing seemed to be helping to lift my mood, but then I decided to take a leaf out of my dear friend Amalie's book, and bake something. Let me tell you, I made the most basic white bread in the book ("the book" being James Beard's Beard on Bread), but it made me feel so much better! The mixing and kneading was just so therapeutic! And the bread came out super nice, too. I have to hurry up and finish the storebought loaf I have so I can start on my new bread! It's waiting for me in the freezer, calling to my stomach~
Basic White Bread
4 cups flour
1 Tbsp yeast
1 Tbsp salt (you could probably go lighter, only 1-2 tsp. Beard is a bit heavy-handed with the salt)
2 tsp sugar
- Dissolve the sugar in about ½ cup warm water, then mix in the yeast and leave to proof
- Mix the flour and salt
- When the yeast has bloomed, add it to the flour, along with enough warm water to make a soft (but not sticky) dough, about 4 cups
- Turn out onto a floured surface and knead 3 minutes
- Drizzle a little olive oil into the bottom of a bowl. Roll the dough in it to coat it, then cover the whole kit and caboodle with a clean cloth and let it rise at least 1 hour, until its volume's doubled
- Punch down the dough, knead three minutes, then let it sit for 5 minutes
- Repeat the oiling procedure in a loaf pan, and allow the dough to rise again in the loaf pan. You might want to preheat the oven now (400F), and leave the pan near the oven vent so it gets a little more warmth
- Let the dough rise 40-75 minutes, until doubled
- Let it bake at 400F for 40-50 minutes, until the top sounds hollow when tapped, the loaf can be easily slipped from the pan, and the bottom is also crisp and sounds hollow
- Allow 2 hours for the fresh loaf to cool before slicing it
I made a stop by the Amherst farmers market today, and it was pretty neat. There were a lot of very nice (organic!) vegetables and fruits, and also a couple organic bakeries selling bread. The prices are a bit high, even for local agriculture, so I only picked up a couple things: a couple nice bell peppers, a pound of organic broccoli (I AM SO STOKED TO EAT THIS), and--I was sooooo excited when I saw them!--four green zebra tomatoes! Green zebras are lovely, lovely tomatoes, and often hard to find. They're usually sold by organic growers, or farmers growing heirloom tomatoes. They're kind of "dinosaur-egg-looking," to quote Gab of the Bent Spoon, with green flesh and yellow/golden streaks or spotting. They're a little larger than golfballs, and deliciously sweet. I already ate one...but the others are destined for cooking. Not sure in what yet :p
Speaking of vegetables, I'm going to slip in a little about dinner tonight. It was a bit of an experiment. I've heard a bit about eating beet greens like spinach, and Matt'n'Gab have mentioned how nice they are wilted with other greens, and since I happened to have a bunch of beets, I decided to "use the whole plant," as it were. I prepped a couple beets, and as they were simmering I took all the leaves, cut off the stems, and cleaned them like spinach, then cut them into wide, stubby strips. I sauteed some chopped onion and minced garlic in olive oil, then added the greens and cooked them until they were all nicely wilted and reduced (they lose less bulk than spinach). I plated the greens, replenished the oil in the pan, and made a batch of scrambled eggs to go along with the beets and greens. By the time the pan cooking was finished, the beets were done, and I dressed them with a little butter.
Here's a very "meta" shot of my lovely dinner--you can see my post in progress! And also, the copy of Joy that my mom gave me, and Chinese Regional Cooking, which my grandmother gave me. Yaye for two of my favourite cookbooks being in the shot!
The trio went really well together. The greens and beets complimented each other, and the greens went really well with the eggs. The beet greens were quite a lot like a slightly tougher spinach, although also with a darker, and slightly more bitter flavour. I would call the flavour "mature," because it's fully-rounded, and not at all frivolous. I'm a fan! Whenever I get beets, I'll be sure to keep the greens.
So, yaye cooking! Yaye for new post! Also, many apologies to Matchstick for not sending this to you to beta, but I'm eager to post after such a long silence. I promise I'll send my next post to you :)
