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by Miss K

Cooking Down the Fridge: Inauthentic Fried Rice

Recently, someone criticized an old post of mine, calling my gado gado recipe “as authentic as General Tsao chicken.” Ouch. Except that I made no claims about authenticity, and when I made it again this week, it was delicious. Someday, perhaps I will comb the web for the bestest recipe there is before embarking on a three-hour dinner-making odyssey. I’ll make tortillas from scratch before collecting freshly laid eggs from my personal chickens for breakfast. Given my current life situation, I estimate this to be a possibility in the year 2032. Until then, the Moosewood Cookbook will do just fine.

So, all this is to say that if authenticity is what you seek STOP READING THIS POST RIGHT NOW. You will be only left bitter and disappointed.

Moving on. Growing up, we did not eat casseroles. My mom was raised in a family of six children with one income, so canned mushroom soup was a pantry staple. Tuna noodle casserole, chicken a la king, chicken pot pie, the iterations of the creamy baked dishes were endless. As a result, my mom was rendered unable to eat another casserole once she began her own household. And as a result of that, I never got into the whole casserole scene. Without a cream sauce and puff pastry crust, though, what was I to do with my leftovers?

Half a block of tofu, some dried out rice and whitish looking baby carrots can stare me down from the fridge, and I can confidently stare right back thanks to one secret weapon: fried rice. At least once a week, usually on the day that a tenuous nap situation has left my nerves ragged, I fire up the cast iron skillet (that’s right, I don’t even use a wok —culinary sacrilege, I know) and get to work emptying out the fridge in search of dinner.

Here’s what usually transpires:

by Miss K

Friday Fuck-Up: Rice Puffies

First off, I would like to say that I did not actually make these. However, I did attempt to eat them, and there is no doubt that they deserve a mention on here.

My dear friend Jenn is an excellent baker. She makes cupcakes from scratch and they actually taste good. One day, though, she fell into the trap of cabinet experimentation. She is moving soon and trying to eat down the pantry, and thus came across an uneaten bag of marshmallows.

Rice Krispies seemed the logical choice. Her husband was stopping by Yes! Organic Market that afternoon and was assigned the task of picking up the cereal. Well, Yes! may be a great place to go for organic hummus made from hand-coddled chickpeas, but they are not helpful when it comes to name brand products. Instead of snap, crackle and pop, Pat enlisted the help of some Kashi puffed rice.

All I can say about the resulting atrocity was that I should have stopped as soon as I tried to cut off a piece and nearly bent the knife. It was fortunate that none of my teeth are filled, because they wouldn’t be any more. The combination of stickiness and chewiness would have been impressive if it weren’t so horrific. The worst part is, Pat could have totally warned me when I said, “Ooh, Rice Krispies!”, but I am pretty sure he kept quiet so that he would not be forced to eat any more himself.

in Desserts 3 comments

by Miss K

Pumpkin Pie in a Pumpkin

Two years ago, in my very first ES post ever, I wrote about a certain pair of two-year-olds and a stuffing-stuffed pumpkin. Last year around this time, I changed things up and made a rice-stuffed pumpkin. Now Halloween is gone, twins are almost five, Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching, and I once again heard the call of the stuffed pumpkin. But what to stuff it with this time? I considered potatoes or quinoa, but those just seemed too…tame. Then, inspiration struck. Why not stuff a pumpkin with pumpkin pie? Crazy. I knew that this had major FFU potential, so I bought two pumpkins just in case. Spoiler alert: I still have the second pumpkin, uncut, on the kitchen shelf. That’s right, folks. I baked a pumpkin pie in a pumpkin. And you can too. Here’s how:

Step one: Bake the pumpkin.

When choosing a pumpkin, go with a small-to medium-sized one. Fewer bumps are ideal, or you will have to contend with holes when you peel it.

Cut the top off the pumpkin, then scrape out all the seeds and gross stringy bits. If you want, you can save the seeds and oven-roast them. Then put the whole hollowed-out pumpkin on a cookie sheet, place in a 350-degree oven, and bake until a fork goes through the skin easily. Let cool, then peel off the skin. To make the shell more or less pie-shaped, cut around the opening about a third of the way down the pumpkin until you have what looks like a bowl. Reserve the cooked part that you removed for later.

in Desserts / Featured / Holiday / Recipe / Veggie 7 comments

by Miss K

Food Porn Champion: Close to Home

If only computers had Smell-O-Vision, this image would be complete.

(Shrimp & Grits and Gumbo from Puddin’, Eastern Market, DC)

in Photos 0 comments

by Miss K

Pumpkins, Your Reign Is Over

Here at ES, we like to do things a little differently. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but you at least have to give us points for trying. So when someone questioned the pumpkin’s dominance as the Halloween carving medium, I saw a potential avenue for exploration. And let me tell you, now that I’ve been down that road, I may never go back. Carving a pepper was faster, easier and way less mess than a pumpkin. Heck, I did most of it while waiting in the car for a friend.

Here’s what you’ll need:

in Holiday / Veggie 1 comments

by Miss K

Half-Cheating: Frozen Dumpling Soup

I love dumplings. Potstickers, ravioli, pierogies, anything of the like. When I studied in Ecuador, one of the first things our adviser warned against was eating street food. That admonition lasted exactly as long as the time it took for me to discover that a freshly made roadside cheese empanada cost 25 cents. In college, while others were eating grilled cheese, Ramen noodles (not the good kind) or worse, my roommate Renee and I were dipping strawberry pierogies in sour cream mixed with sugar. A first-generation American, Renee (aka Renata) had grown up on this particular brand of awesomeness, with her Polish mother expending her culinary energy on to-die-for breaded porkchops.

Considering my love of filled foods, I was quite excited to see a sampling of CJ Foods dumplings on my porch upon arriving home one day. A few days later, upon spying my new treasures in the freezer, my husband decided to cook up a bag. Like me, he’s not really one for reading directions, and he dumped the contents of the bag into a pot of boiling water. Please don’t try this at home. I say this not for your sake, but for the sake of the dumplings. Or if you do, don’t then boil the dumplings for 8 minutes. The whole point of these is that they are already cooked.

The result of letting my husband take the reins was quite un-dumpling-like. Imagine wontons without filling, disintegrating meatballs and, upon cooling, one giant sticky mess. Posting a picture of this madness seemed unfair considering that it was our fault, not the dumplings’. Fortunately, we had another flavor to try, so don’t worry, this near Friday-you-know-what has a happy ending.

in Recipe 8 comments

by Miss K

I am the MacGyver of Soup: DIY Bouquet Garni

I love fall, and being from Illinois, I expect it to start in September. Not October. Or mid-November. Five years in DC and I am still in a state of denial as to the duration of summer, even after having to scrap my son’s bear costume because it was too hot out last year. On Halloween. At the end of October.

Upon awaking yesterday, the sky was gray, the air was crisp and the garden was looking half-dead (thanks Irene). Three clear signs of fall, if you ask me. Dear Husband had the car and the drizzle was drizzling, so it looked like an indoor day with the baby, the perfect kind of day to make soup. I pulled out my trusty Twelve Months of Monastery Soups and thumbed through the fall section. Tomato brandy soup sounded perfect. I could finally finish off the bottle of brandy that had been languishing on top of the fridge since last November.

The recipe called for making garlic herb stock first, using a “bouquet garni,” which apparently consists of tying together different sprigs of dried spices. When the soup’s done, you remove the bouquet from the pot and leave the gray, soggy mess on the steps of an ex-boyfriend’s house. Or something.

in Rants & Raves 5 comments