A week or so ago, I made my favorite “fancy dinner” (I think it’s jwa’s too). Seared ahi tuna, shitake-miso rice and cucumber slaw (I know! I have no idea why I like cucumbers here!). And, yeah, it’s more diced than, uh, slaw-shaped, but, it’s my menu and I’m callin’ it slaw, damn it!

The planning usually starts with a trip to Wild Oats or New Season’s Market. We typically only have this dinner once a month or so because nice, sushi-grade tuna is super expensive, at anywhere from $16.99 - $18.99/lb. I get 3/4 to one full pound, because when it comes to seared tuna, we can both be gluttonous.

Tuna Marinade:
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp seasme oil
1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
Juice of half a lime
6 thin slices of peeled, fresh ginger
2 cloves of garlic, diced very fine or run through a garlic press
A dash of red pepper flakes

I usually make a double recipe of the above — pour half of the concoction in a freezer bag and use that to actually marinade the tuna (2-3 hours). The other half, I store in the fridge to use as a dipping sauce.

To sear the fish, I heat up a grill pan for a few minutes and give the pan a quick spray w/ non-stick cooking spray (just in case). Place the tuna down and don’t touch it for about 2 minutes. Turn and give the other side 2 minutes. Remove from the pan and slice.

The shitake-miso rice, will begin when I sauté the shitake mushrooms in some olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt. When they are done, I throw them in a bowl and set aside.

For the actual rice cooking, instead of water, I use chicken stock, with about 1 teaspoon or so of miso whisked in. Bring to a boil and cook basmati rice as usual. When it’s done, add the mushrooms and combine. As an aside, Imagine makes the best packaged chicken stock I have ever tried. Just so you know.

Cucumber Slaw: (So, so easy!)
1/2 an English cucumber, peeled and diced
1/2 Tsp salt
1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 Tsp sugar
A pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

Mix everything together. Taste and add more of any of the above if needed. Set aside (in the fridge) until ready to eat.

How to plan this all out with as little craziness as possible:

Not too surprisingly (I hope), I marinate the tuna first. When that’s got about an hour to go, I sauté the mushrooms and make the cucumber slaw. Then I start the rice a little bit later. As the rice absorbs all the liquid and has been doing so for about 15 minutes, I preheat the grill pan (which I think I will name “Tex”). I sear the tuna. Swear and scramble about as the tuna and rice get done at the same time.

Take a breath and have a sip of wine. Or half a glass (quickly! Everything’s done!).

Slice tuna. Make it all look pretty on the plate with a mound of rice in the center, tuna fanned out around it, slaw artfully to the side, sesame seeds and green onions strewn about on top. Reserved, extra marinade in a little bowl.

Sit down and eat!

Oh, I wanted this one to be my very favorite of them all. I pretty much (with a few exceptions) followed the recipe as written, so I will just give a link to it:

Avocado Gazpacho with Spiced Croutons

I think it had too much cucumber for me. That’s actually one of the places I deviated from the recipe — the recipe calls for 2 cucumbers, I used 1/2 of an English cucumber. Yeah, I know, I have a ways to go in my embracing of the cucumber.

In other adjusting of the recipe news, as far as the spiced croutons went, I used about a 1/4 of a loaf of bread (again, the very lovely and talented, Romano & Garlic from New Seasons) and I kind of just eyeballed the spices. I also used only about 2 tablespoons of butter. Those turned out really well.

I would make this again but with a few adjustments.

Keep the avocado (duh!), limes, chicken stock, cilantro and jalapeno (but roast and peel it first). Instead of green onions, use about a 1/4 of a sweet onion (Walla Walla or some sort), add a garlic clove and puree all of that in the blender. Add salt & pepper to taste.

Then, when serving, still add the diced avocado, but include diced tomato and perhaps a bit of diced onion. I think losing the cucumber and adding the tomato/onion will give it a bit more of a guacamole feel. Can you guess how much I like Mexican food? Yeah? Okay, good. Just checking.

Getting back to the soup, on top, instead of the croutons, I’d take a corn tortilla, use the ‘ol pizza cutter to make little strips of it and then crisp those up in a pan with olive oil — little crunchy tortilla strips. Mmmm! Add these to the top with maybe an arty dollup of sour cream or yogurt. Hmmmmm….I’m hungry now! I will try this version soon and report back. But I think my hypothesis will be correct — I will like this version better.

To recap: the original Avocado Gazpacho with Spiced Croutons recipe I am give 3 something or other’s — icons coming soon! — out of four. Not bad, but I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. I think the cucumber kind of overwhelmed everything. The first (and traditional) gazpacho recipe of last week seems to be winning!

Go Traditional Gazpacho Recipe, GO!

But — the next challenger is eyeing Traditional Gazpacho Recipe with a hungry, surly, menacing gleam in its eye. Why…it’s Cantaloupe, Honeydew, and Sweet Onion Gazpacho! Can Cantaloupe, Honeydew, and Sweet Onion Gazpacho knock Traditional Gazpacho Recipe from it’s footing? Will Traditional Gazpacho Recipe reign supreme? Or will the new Avocado Gazpacho make a comeback?!

These and many other questions will be answered here soon…on Gazpacho Challenge 2005!

Well, not really, but it was the motivation to paint it and change the appearance. There’s only so much Law & Order a person can watch in the afternoon — or so I’ve heard. Um, anyway, this is the way the kitchen looks now. Here’s what it looked like when we moved in:

That said, the very first room we tackled after buying the house was the bedroom. We ripped up the dingy off-white carpet and painted the white (equally dingy) walls a dark blue. Now it is a dark & sleepy cave. (Pictures soon).

Then, we — and when I say we, I mainly mean I — took down the horrible floral wallpaper in the dining room — but hey, different people like different things. I’m sure the old home owners would have described that as lovely floral wallpaper. And I’m just kidding, he helped. If I remember, jwa did a lot of the 2nd coat of paint on the walls. But the stripping — that was all me. And it was nasty. I’m really glad we like the wallpaper that is in parts of the living room!

After the dining room, I moved on to the stairway and upstairs hallway. I believe this was the very first unemployment project, in fact. What was pink and taupe became pale yellow and dark blue. Then, as it seemed probable that a new job wasn’t happening as soon as I thought, I started on the kitchen.

Ah, the kitchen…

First thing, I painted the cabinets a glossy white and attached new hardware. Mostly, I ordered these for all the cabinets and drawers (I think in total it was about 16). They are a lot darker in real life than in the photgraph here. But, for a couple of the drawer pulls, we splurged and ordered really nice artisan ones. We have two lizards on the cabinets under the sink and two moose on a couple of the larger drawers. A look at the price will let you know why we only have four of these pulls.

I believe when I said, “Oh! Sweetie, I found the cutest drawer pulls today. I want to get a few. Let me have your credit card”, I neglected to mention the price. Sneaky! (Pete).

One small, miniscule drawback to these wonderful metal pulls that I love so much, is that they are very dangerous, not as in “oh, ow” dangerous but as in “oh my god! I’m bleeding & I need a tourniquet!” dangerous. The lizards have claws. Sharp, pointy, metal claws. I have gashed my hand a time or two and so has jwa. He, has proclaimed that he really dislikes the lizards and that they are impractical and unsafe, but I know that you have to suffer for art.

With the cabinets done, I moved on to the walls — a bright sunny yellow. I believe it was called squash and it does have a touch of grey in the hue. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Eventually, we want to replace the gray, dingy wall tiles with bright blue cobalt ones and the gray, hard vinyl-like floor with something a bit spiffier. I’m kind of going for a sunny, bright Spanish looking kitchen. Ole!

Here are a couple more before and after shots.

The new (notice the lizards?)

vs. the old (no lizards):

Tagged with: kitchen photos

My mother makes the best chocolate chip cookies ever. She would use the recipe out of the red & white checked Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook — the one with the stove burner imprint on the backside of it because she accidentally placed it on a burner once. But I digress…and I only mention it because that is like something that I would completely do.

When I moved away and went to college she bought me one of those cookbooks. It was a different edition than hers, but it still had a whole cookie chapter and, of course, chocolate chip cookies. But whenever I followed the recipe to make them all these years — they were never as good.

Over the weekend I finally called her, asked her to pull down her book and compare the recipes with me, because something was definitely not the same. Sure, the cookies I anticipated as a little girl were probably going to be the best cookies ever, but still, these were not the same cookies. I couldn’t just be me remembering the flavor and consistency wrong. Even the dough tasted different. Uh, cookie dough which I tried, only for comparative, scientific reasons, of course. Yeah.

Anyway, I was right. Ha! The recipes were completely different. Evil, evil Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. Her cookbook is an edition from the late 60’s or early 70’s — mine is from the late 80’s. Why they changed the recipe I have no idea — but the older one (in my opinion) is better.

So, here it is — the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever.

Ingredients:

“Wet” -
1 cup shortening
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

“Dry” -
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 12 oz package chocolate chips
1/2 cup nuts (if desired)

Preheat oven to 375.

Sift together flour through baking soda. Set aside. Cream shortening for about 30 seconds. This should be done in a mixing bowl with a handheld mixer or in a stand mixer. Bottom line: you need technology for this. No matter how strong your arm may be, use an electric mixing device. Add sugar and continue to cream until it is very fluffy (this will take a few minutes). Do not skip this step — my mom swears this is the secret. Add vanilla and eggs and beat for a few seconds more.

Stir in dry, sifted ingredients. Then add the chips and nuts. This should all be done with a wooden spoon (apparently, this is another key strategy to this recipe, she says). Tempting the rage of the kitchen gods, I used a rubber spatula – this seemed to work just fine.

Drop by rounded tablespoons onto a greased cookie sheet. (Okay, so here the recipe is showing it’s age a bit – who greases cookie sheets?). I just used parchment paper on the cookie sheets and it worked just fine. I would wager that there’s enough shortening in the dough that nothing would stick even if you put the cookies right on the cookie sheets, but that’s just my hypothesis. Use the parchment if you don’t want to test your luck.

Once in the oven, check after 10 minutes. The cookies should get lightly golden, with patches of lighter color around the center. I had mine in for about 13 minutes. Once out of the oven, let the cookies sit on the hot cookie sheet for about 2 minutes, then remove. As they cool the tops should crackle a bit and get crunchy, but inside they will be all soft (and gooey when warm). Mmm!

Of course the reason I made these tonight is because jwa broke some stuff at work Friday and a bunch of people had to stay late and fix everything (including him). These are the official “I’m sorry I broke stuff” cookies — but eventhough I broke nothing, I ate some after dinner and they were tasty!

Gratuitous dough shot: Oh yeaahhh!

I’m always looking for non-cooked, lighter dinners to have when it’s hot out. Gazpacho is a promising subject, but I’m usually somewhat disappointed by what I try to make at home. There’s a place in California — Gayle’s in Capitola — that we went to once and I had the gazpacho. So, so good. Why did we only go there once? Huh? Yeah, I don’t know either. Oh yeah, we are lame.

Also the gazpacho at Lauro Kitchen here in Portland is pretty good too. But it seems I can never replicate that, “wow, this is woooonderful” quality at home when it comes to gazpacho — it continues to elude me.

Oh, I will play your game, you rogue.

And…this challenge is made all the trickier by the fact that, well, I don’t really like cucumbers all that much except under certain circumstances. Exceptional gazpacho being one of those*. So, I am now on a gazpacho quest. I’ve recently come across a couple of recipes that sound interesting and I am going to try them (hopefully, to super-tasty results). The first one up is traditional in style and is a mish-mash of a number of different recipes I’ve found for the basic tomato-cucumber-pepper concoction. This one, however, includes using stale bread in the mix — something I’ve never tried before.

Gazpacho experiment #1 goes something a little like this:

Ingredients:

A hunk of day old bread, crust removed, cut into cubes (I used Garlic & Romano Sourdough bread form New Season’s Market, because we had some and it was indeed day old. In fact, one could call it slightly stale
1 clove of garlic
3 medium tomatoes, cut into chunks
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
A bit less than 1/4 cup olive oil, preferably extra-virgin
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 cup chicken stock (or so)
1/2 an English cucumber, cut into chunks + plus some diced nicely for top of soup
1/4 of a red onion + plus some diced nicely for top of soup
1 green pepper, mostly chunked up, but reserve some to…you guessed it…dice nicely for
top of soup

Place bread in a bowl and add chicken stock to cover, letting soak for
about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, put tomatoes in blender and pulse a few times.

Squeeze the excess stock out of the bread and place the bread in the blender, along with
the garlic. Blend until smooth. The mixture will turn a light red to pink color. In the original directions I had read, it said to blend the bread and garlic together alone, but when I tried that, the blades just whirled around, doing nothing to the bread. It needed some liquid. It worked much better when I took the bread out and pulsed the tomatoes in there first. So, there you go.

Add cumin, salt, cucumber, onion, vinegar and green pepper. Blend some more. Open top and stream in olive oil. Now transfer to a container and refrigerate for a couple of hours. To serve, sprinkle the diced veggies on the top. When I did this, I also included some diced avocado because I had half of one that I needed to use.

This will make about 2 big bowls.

***

Overall, I really liked this version. I’ve usually made a chunkier gazpacho before, but I think I may prefer the smoothly blended style. I also liked including the bread in the gazpacho. Normally, I would just blend half the veggies and stir the other half in, but with the bread there (and blending all the veggies except for a few for the top), it was definitely more creamy and perhaps a bit mellower. I want to tweak the seasoning and ratios of veggies a bit next time, but overall, I was pleased. So was jwa, who asked for more. Ha! There was none. Not because I am mean & greedy, but whenever I usually make gazpacho, there are always leftovers that no one eats. Gazpacho is very sad after 3 days in the refrigerator.

Since I like the little icons so much….I will give this recipe 3.5 garlic presses (out of four)!

Next up on Gazpacho Challenge: Creamy Avocado Gazpacho w/ Spicy Croutons!

* Another exception to the “I don’t really care for cucumbers” rule is garlicky-cucumber-yogurt sauce, otherwise known as Tsatziki. Yum!