*Cough* *Taptaptap* Is this thing on?

Eheh...So, I've been officially delinquent. But! I'm back at school, and in the North Apartments! So I have a kitchen and am cooking almost all of my meals! That's super exciting.

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)

1. 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)
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together
3. Beat the egg into the buttermilk
4. When the oven heated, combine the wet and dry ingredients
5. 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!
6. Bake 20-25 minutes, until the top's started to brown
7. Serve directly from the skillet

The butter, especially if you make this in a baking pan, will flow over the top of the batter, and leave a lovely, salty salty crust. The first time I attempted this with Wynona, I screwed up (forgot to beat the batter before pouring!), and I was short on meal for the redo, so I made up the difference with masa harina, and it seemed to do just fine. (Apart from the bit where I forgot the salt. Ich bin so doof!) I'm going to try doing a cornbread or lightbread recipe with masa harina subbed in for part of the meal/flour at some point, which could come out pretty cool.



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

1. Dice the onion, shred the cabbage, and peel the garlic. Smash the garlic with the flat of your knife
2. 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
3. Saute the onion and garlic until the onion is translucent and beginning to caramelise
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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)
7. Simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until the beans are tender. Top up the water as necessary
8. 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
9. Simmer, uncovered, until the soup is nicely thickened, adjusting the seasonings and stirring occasionally

This soup is nice and mild, and (in my experience) easy on the stomach. It's not too hot, either. Once you've finished cooking it, you can serve it immediately (it's super good over rice or macaroni, topped with cheddar), or leave it in the fridge. I think it tastes better the day after, because the flavours have had a chance to blend. This is just a basic platform recipe, though. You can change pretty much every element, and add whatever tickles your fancy. I use cabbage because its flavour doesn't intrude on the flavour of the beans and spices, but if you're looking for a darker flavour, spinach, escarole, or beet greens might work well. (Cooking in the greens is also a sneaky way of getting veggies into every meal!)

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

1. Dissolve the sugar in about ½ cup warm water, then mix in the yeast and leave to proof
2. Mix the flour and salt
3. 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
   
4. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead 3 minutes
5. 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
6. Punch down the dough, knead three minutes, then let it sit for 5 minutes
7. 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
8. Let the dough rise 40-75 minutes, until doubled
9. 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
10. Allow 2 hours for the fresh loaf to cool before slicing it

I had a slice before I put the loaf in the freezer, and it was super delicious. I'm excited to start eating it! Sometime, I may pick up some wholewheat flour and make wholewheat loaves with this recipe.

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 :)

Review: Thai Corner

So, last Friday Matchstick and I went out to dinner, since I got my last paycheque from work in the mail. We'd been to Antonio's a few nights before, so we wanted to try something different. Arigato was a little out of our price range, and Fresh Side was bound to be crowded...where to go? I remembered that there was a little Thai place just down the alley by Antonio's, so after some short deliberation we decided to try it out.

Thai Corner is actually in the plaza off Main Street, but it's quicker to take the little (and I do mean little! It's exactly wide enough for one person) alley next to Antonio's. It's next to a little pho shop, which is also on my list of places to try, but rather farther down. Entering Thai Corner, you're greeted by brightly coloured walls, photos of Thailand, and paintings and silhouettes. The place is rather small, and probably always sounds busy. One of the things I liked about the layout of the restaurant is that you can catch a glimpse of the kitchen from the "audience," which is somehow comforting in a small eatery (and the sight of fresh rice coming out of the steamer made me do a little happy dance inside). The menu is large enough to provide variety, and do a good job of explaining exactly what is in each dish.

Matchstick and I both got varieties of curry. We were told that his was of medium heat, while mine was the hottest they served. He had gang kari with chicken, while I had gang bha with beef. The dishes were presented well, with heaping portions of fresh jasmine rice. The gang bha had the appearance of a clear broth, the vegetables in it were cooked just right--tender crisp. The beef was tender and had absorbed the flavour of the curry. While the heat of the curry did grow as I ate, it wasn't as hot as I had hoped.
The gang kari was a yellow curry, of mild spice. It had the characteristic sweetness of yellow curry (or rather, the sweetness I tend to expect), and the potatoes in it had absorbed quite a lot of flavour. The spices could, however, suffer to be toned up quite a bit. The vegetables and chicken were cooked well, and were flavourful.
The issues we had with both curries were the thinness of the curry and the portion sizes. Thai curries are, in general, quite thin, more like soups, but these were just a little thinner than I am accustomed to. The upside of this, I suppose, is that the sauce was more readily absorbed when it was poured over the rice. As for the portions, they were decent, but could definitely do with a little bulking up. They needed more everything, but most of all more meat (I guess that's my American prejudice coming through *laugh*).
The rice was perfectly cooked, and plentiful. You cannot believe how happy it made me to finally have a bowl (well, it was on a plate...) of good rice. Fragrant, sweet, neither too soft nor underdone...The DCs are absolutely incapable of cooking rice and pasta, so when I get to have the real thing it's amazing. Thai Corner definitely understands the importance of rice, and more importantly can prepare it well.

In all, although it wasn't spectacular, Thai Corner is a nice little place. It definitely deserves another visit--I haven't had their pad thai yet! While perhaps a little too tame in terms of flavour for those familiar with Thai cuisine, it's definitely a place everyone can enjoy. Yes, even poor college students; the prices are quite reasonable. Go check it out if you're in the area!

Of course, being the bottomless pits that we are, Matchstick and I were hungry a few hours later. The kitchen in the mod was...disgusting, and the sink was piled so high with EVERYONE ELSE'S DISHES that we couldn't even reach the tap for water... The obvious solution, of course, was to order Wings (prime food for college students: cheap, yummy, and ubiquitous! Just look around for "Wings over *insert town name here*")--a honey barbecue DC-10 and large fries. Yum yum! Saturday we had a big production and cleaned the kitchen. It was fantabulous, by which I mean we both wanted to kill his flatmates afterwards. We reclaimed all his implements, and all was good.

Saturday, we visited a farm stand near Hampshire, which was awesome fun in the mud (he wore his "hooker boots," since they're the only waterproof shoes he owns. Four inch heels!!). We bought a large container (I want to say quart) of little tomatoes--about golf ball size--a butternut squash, and six little sugar pumpkins. We haven't done anything with the pumpkins or squash yet (pumpkin soup is on the agenda!!!), but we did start on the tomatoes. Let me just say that they're absolutely heavenly. I need to go back before the season ends and buy myself some! Maybe even try preserving a few...I should try to find the New York Times recipe. Anyway, those little fuckers are so juicy and sweet it's hard to keep yourself from having another...and another...and another... Matchstick's been making BLTs with them. Sounds so delish!! I hope we'll be able to enjoy plenty of good produce from that farm stand before the season ends. Samhaintide is coming up fast, and the season doesn't last too much longer after that!