“Hard” Boiled Eggs: A How To.

Eggs. I love eggs.  I love eggs so much that I could eat them everyday if I could. But then my heart would give out to cholesterol. Fried eggs and my soft scrabbled eggs are usually my staple preps, but those sometimes can be overwhelming with oils and flavours. Sometimes I just want the taste of an egg… well salt and pepper to boot, but essentially just egg. The best way I can achieve that is through a hard boiled egg.

“A hard boiled egg? That’s so plain! Why not just poach it?”

Well I could poach it but It’s a messy and a delicate art, and that egg shape is still maintained! But,hard boiled eggs? It’s easy,just boil water and toss in the eggs. Well, not literally toss them

Now what I’m always concerned with when doing these eggs is that consistency of the egg yolk. Cook it too long you have a hard egg yolk that turns a bit green-grayish because of a chemical reaction with the sulfur and iron… or something like that. Not very pretty or appetizing. Cook the egg to short you have a soft boiled egg. What I aim for here is an equilibrium  of both. The egg white is fully cooked, and the egg yolk is cooked enough on the outside that it maintains a round shape, but you have a runny center. Ah bliss.

Ok enough chit-chat let’s get our hands dirty:

7 eggs (preferably at room temp§)

Salt*

Pot of boiling water

[Yep believe it or not that's all you need. ]

Heat a pot of water with about 2 generous pinches of salt on HIGH.

Once the water is at a nice boil, take a wide ladle and gently lay the eggs into the water, in rapid succession (so that they finish about the same time.).

Now time is important here; you’ll want the eggs in for at least 6 minutes in. While the eggs are boiling, set up an ice bath or a bowl of cold as you can get water. Now the 7th egg sort of plays ‘bakers dozen’, so take one egg out and run it over with cold water. The cold water helps shock the egg to rapidly contract making the shell easier to peel. Now,test it and see if it’s to your liking. If it’s too runny for you, turn off the heat and let it sit for 1 more minute and the yolk will solidify a bit more.

But 6 minutes should be enough.

Once you figured out your liking, take the eggs out, and shock them in the cold water until heat no longer emanates from the egg.

The egg is now cooked, with an easy to peel shell and fantastic center. I enjoy mine with some a pinch of kosher salt, black pepper and buttered toast.

~

* – [Now why salt? *WARNING: SCIENCE* When salt is dissolved in water, the salt ions get in between the water molecules keeping the molecules slightly separated.

So when the water is heated as in boiling, the individual molecules, lacking the attractive forces of adjacent molecules, get ejected more easily from the water surface to become vapour (gas). Hence less heat is required and boiling is achieved at a lower temperature.]

§ - [I noted that the eggs be at room temperature because, when a cold egg is submerged into the boiling water, it's more than likely it will crack due to the extreme temperature differential.]

 

Tomato blight, organic tips, etc.

Pay attention to those added sugars!

10 tips for buying organic.

Continuing the debate over organic, some say there -are- nutritional benefits.

Be mindful of tomato blight: isolate the sick ones immediately!

Healthier food will be available to West Virginia’s women and children using food vouchers.

 

Call out the neighbors! There’s some food to be made!

“Alright I need some chicken, some stalks of celery, carrots, salt , peppers, and a rock, Stat!”

Wait…a rock? Why yes a rock. I’m sure many of you have heard the tale of Stone Soup when you were in grade school. Well this is a fairly easy ‘soup’ to make and granted one you can share with your close friends!…or better yet, make new ones! The idea behind this recipe is a moral one. People’s actions no matter how small can accumulate and create something for the greater good. So community is central to this recipe. You may be already assuming that this isn’t exactly a food recipe, but more of an idea. But an idea that promotes fellowship with others and a sense of community . Not to mention economically sound to a college student because there will always be left overs… unless it’s fantastically good!

The legend according to Wikipedia:

According to the story, some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travelers. The travelers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making ‘stone soup’, which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager doesn’t mind parting with just a little bit to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which hasn’t reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.

So you ask: how does one make a ‘stone soup’? Well, here are the basic implements:

1 Large stock pot

Some boiling water

Rock

For aesthetic purposes, a nice round and smooth river rock would do wonderfully.

Next: getting ingredients.

Call up some friends, family, or knock on some doors. Ask them (kindly) if they would be willing to share some ingredients with you. You may plan this out ahead and tell individuals to bring something for a soup that you may already have in mind, or you just might as well wing it and play the traveler continually saying, ‘It needs some/little/more [insert ingredient name here]‘

There is no shame in buying some ingredients before hand. This can be a spur of the moment thing or an event that’s been planned out.

Now people may or may not be keen with the idea of a communal dinner, but that’s quite alright if they aren’t. You can invite them over for the fellowship if they’re down with it.

This idea does not need to be a soup. You can re-apply the theory over and over to other communal foods, like pizza, a paella, tacos/nachos/burritos/tamales, ‘samiches’ (sandwiches, I’m weird like that.), ice cream sundaes, whatever. Something that many people can contribute to and share with everyone.

**NOTE**
Please don’t eat the rock! :)

 

Snickerdoodle experiment was nothing to laugh at…

For some odd reason lately, I’ve had a strong hankering for baked goods, so this evening after dinner while Josho was studying the ages at which children understand death is permanent, I decided to lighten the mood and make some snickerdoodle cookies. (And write run-on sentences as it seems.)  I had never made them before and I didn’t feel like shopping for cream of tartar or shortening so I kind of winged it and made my own recipe.

The result was fairly good, fluffy, slightly crisp cookies with a definite snickerdoodle taste. Although, I used wheat flour in this and I think it overpowered the sugar. I would also either use just cinnamon or nutmeg, the combination was too much for these supposed-to-be-light cookies.

Overall, they where really good cookies, very tasty, but a little bold for me, so I think they left some room for improvement. It will be fun experimenting with them until I get them perfect. :)

Bold Snickerdoodle Cookies

1.5 cu white sugar

2 eggs

1.25 cu all purpose flour

1.5 cu wheat flour (although, I would leave this out if you want more traditional cookies)

2 tsp baking soda

1 cu unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla

.5 tsp salt

3 tbs white sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg (again, I would use either cinnamon OR nutmeg)

Wisk together the flours, soda and salt, set aside.

Cream the butter and the 1.5 cups of white sugar together. (The recipes I saw said to use a standing mixer for this, but I am poor and own no mixer of any kind, so I used my hands) Add in the eggs one at a time and combine into a good doughy mixture.

Add the flour mixture to the dough a little at a time until you get a smooth dough. (I, again, used my hands. The puppy things my hands are a great treat once I’m done baking.)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare your cookie sheets with wax/parchment paper.

Combine the 3 tbs white sugar and 2 tsp ground cinnamon and/or 1 tsp nutmeg in a small bowl.

Roll the dough into small balls about an inch in diameter and then roll them in your sugar mixture. Place them on your pan and then press down slightly with your fingers to flatten them out to about 2 inches in diameter.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

ENJOY!

This recipe makes about 4 dozen cookies and takes about 15 minutes to prepare and 10 minutes to bake. It’s fairly easy.

They’re really good served with milk!

~ le’ fiance’

 

Experiment: Lemonade

This was an earlier experiment from the beginning of Summer. It began when I was reminiscent of when I visited Israel about two years ago. I was there for an archeological dig with WVU’s Religious Studies department. With the squelching heat and dry climate we were always willing to go and cool off. Be it taking a dip into the Sea of Galilee or cool off with a drink or popsicle from the kibbutz grocery store. One of my favorite things was the lemonade. It wasn’t really too different, maybe just fresh grown lemons from the kibbutz orchard. But the way they served their lemonade was they added a sprig of mint to the glass, which made the lemonade a bit more refreshing because of the added menthol from the fresh mint.

So my base lemonade recipe that I used is based on a neat “Limonade” bottles you can find with sparkling lemonade that was about 750 ml. I like my lemonade to have a light sweetness to it and enough lemon so that it’s not so sour/tart so you may adjust it to your taste:

(Remember this is scaled for 750ml of water = ~3.2 cups)

7 tablespoons Lemon Juice

Zest of 1 Lemon (go ahead use the lemon juice from this as part of the 7, I can’t say I know how much juice you’ll get.)

10 level teaspoons of Sugar

Water

Flavor:
A couple sprigs of Mint or Lavender

Mix everything in bottle. Decide which flavor you would like to try. Add the plant to the bottle and chill overnight. To serve, pour through a tea strainer to catch any unwanted plant material.

I did do a lavender lemonade, which was quite nice. I always wanted to work more with lavender, so this is where I started with it. It had a nice floral taste to it, make sure not too put too much of either because it can over power the taste of the lemonade and it won’t be as great. Although if the plant material is kept long in the bottle it’ll brown a bit on the edges, but nothing to worry about. I can’t imagine the bottle still having lemonade in it by the end of the day after you try it, so the browning won’t be too much of a problem! I’ve also heard of using basil in lemonade. I’ve yet to try it, maybe you will. Let me know how it goes if you decide to try.

 

My Daily Bread – Honey Wheat

I’ve toyed, off and on over the past year, with bread recipes of various qualities. I finally settled on one that was alright, and then after extensive tweaking, made it something my own and something I can enjoy every day with breakfast. Normally, I’ll bake two loaves at a time, and have one in the freezer and one in the fridge — if I keep any of it out on the counter, it goes bad far too quickly. I’ve heard that the amount of butter (ie: fat) affects the bread’s shelf life, but I try to keep that at a bare, but fair, minimum. Occasionally, I remember to toss in some flax seeds, as well.

Honey Wheat Bread

3 cups white flour

2 cups wheat flour

1 tbsp salt

3 tbsp butter

1 pack highly active yeast (25 oz)

Honey (just eyeball the amount you think you’d want)

3 cups water

Mix flours, salt, and yeast until evenly distributed. Add butter, honey, and water and mix. The dough is going to be quite loose and sticky, but turn it out onto a floured surface and add the excess flour as you knead it over ~10 minutes. Allow to rise in an oiled bowl until doubled. Punch down and knead for a minute, then separate into 2 bread pans. Preheat oven to 375 F and allow dough to rise til it just tops the bread pans. Bake for ~30 minutes.

Allow to cool, freeze one loaf and do what you will with the other!

 

Sleepy Oatmeal

Last summer, I discovered had near-high cholesterol. It was pretty shocking given my age and exercise regime, but once I became a little more observant of what I was eating, it was no surprise at all. For the first 20 years or so of my life, I had a pretty bad diet, fueled mainly by my mom’s southern (ie: delicious) cooking and the belief that since I was young, I could eat as much junk as I wanted. As soon as the numbers came back from the lab, I realized I had to make some changes to my diet, and what better place to start than breakfast? For the record, my cardiovascular system is happy to find my cholesterol levels are much lower and it partly has oatmeal to thank.

My usual breakfast consists of oatmeal with Craisins and a sprinkling of vanilla protein powder and cinnamon. On the side, I’ll have a couple pieces of toast with peanut butter. This has been the usual order for about a year now and it’s worked out pretty wonderfully. Last night, though, I decided to change it up with something the Bitten Word suggests. I made a few alterations and mine still turned out tasty and surprisingly different from my usual, which involves pouring the oats in a bowl with water and microwaving for 1 minute. It’s no packet of instant oatmeal, but it’s still pretty unrefined.

I might also add that the extra ingredients (cinnamon, protein powder, Craisins) are what I prefer on my oatmeal. As the alt-text over the photo suggests, oatmeal truly is a blank canvas. Many people add brown sugar, maple syrup, fresh fruit, frozen fruit, or all sorts of things to their oatmeal. Experiment a little and see what works for you. Across from me this morning, Amanda enjoyed brown sugar and cinnamon on her oatmeal.

Night Before

2 cups steel-cut oats

5 1/2 cups water

~2 tbsp vegetable oil

Morning

Handful of Craisins

Cinnamon

1 scoop vanilla protein powder

Boil oats in water for ~1 minute. Cover and let stand overnight at room temperature.

Awaken! If yours are like mine, you’ll be surprised to find they’re like an oatmeal jelly. Add some more water and break it up. Bring to a boil over high heat, and then simmer, stirring a lot. This will take ~10 minutes.  Be careful of letting the “oatmeal jelly” sit for too long on high heat — the water will boil underneath the jelly, and then when you break the surface, it will erupt like an oatmeal geyser.

Top with protein powder, cinnamon, and Craisins. Add a little bit of milk if you like it that way. Enjoy with some toast or just by itself!

I may add the Craisins in when cooking the oatmeal next time. If you regularly eat instant oatmeal or steel-cut oats prepared in the microwave, I think you’ll love the texture and flavor that this recipe provides. However, I noticed that 2 cups of oatmeal prepared this way go much further than the amount I would use in the microwave (which I estimate to be about 1.5 cups). This could probably serve 3 people.

So, let go of your prejudices against tasteless oatmeal and embrace a healthy breakfast! :)

 

What Am I Eating/Drinking?

(Pardon the slight blur of the picture it was done in a bit of a rush. )

As you can plainly see the label this is in fact aloe vera juice. A clear, slightly more viscous than water, with bits of aloe pulp floating.

You could say that Asians are known for their weird beverages ( e.g. water salad, kids beer, ice cucumber soda). Granted those were all Japanese, there’s still a big market for awkward flavours that you probably wish didn’t come in liquid form. However, this is not one of them. Because it’s Korean. But that doesn’t matter.

The taste of it is interesting. But not really a foreign taste to a majority of you. The best way I can describe it is that it’s comparable to peeled green grapes but slightly watered down with the pulp having the about the same texture as the fruit if it was mashed to bits. So in essence  a “true grape” drink. But, I had several encounters with this juice several years before, but never really added it to my “playlist” if you will. My usual M.O. for refreshing beverages at an Asian market, is a can of Play-doh smelling Chinese soy milk, roasted coconut water/juice, those Japanese sodas with the glass marble in it, or oolong tea in a can. All of which I do heartily enjoy. Those several years ago, I decided to try out something new that was unique. Thus this little gem here.

To be honest I could not tell you the health benefits of drinking this is. I’m sure some one in Hollywood has bastardized (pardon the language) this drink and passed it off as a skin moisturizer if you bathe in enough of it for a premium. I really wouldn’t put it past them. Although I would like to learn how.

 

A Starved Future

Photo credit: dundee@2001

Throughout history and all of life, food has always been a contended resource. It seems the future is going to be no different. A major player in the problem isn’t lack of land, however, but lack of water.

“A number of places where the UK sources food, like southern Spain, Greece and Italy, are going to find it very difficult in the next 50 years to continue to produce the levels of food they currently do,” he said.

“That’s in part due to the predictions of the scarcity of water in those parts of Europe.”

The man being interviewed, Dr. Chris Atkinson, suggests utilizing genetically modified food to help curtail the potential disaster. Obviously, there’s a great deal of resistance to this idea, and many countries have already banned the use of GM foods. It’s frightening, messing with the genes of a living thing. It’s a lot like going into your registry on Windows and moving things around to see what the effect is. The stakes are much higher in the realm of genetics, however.

Interestingly, not once was it mentioned that politics and social structure play a part in the chain that brings food from the ground to the people.

 

Gyoza, or: What the hell is that food, Zach?

I couldn’t help myself writing the title of this post the way I did, mostly because no one ever knows what I am talking about when I mention gyoza but also because I love movies and books with goofy long alternate titles (Dr. Strangelove being one of the most exemplary representatives of this group).  Before I ramble on and lose the audience, gyoza, also known colloquially as pot stickers, is a Japanese dish that is basically a pork dumpling.  In case that isn’t clear enough, imagine an egg roll wrapper before it is fried and stuffed with pork and spices.  If you still don’t get it, I’m sorry that foreign things scare you so much, doofus (devil’s advocate voice in my head: maybe you should get better at describing things, you unevolved ape…especially the part where you try to relate a likely American audience to a Japanese dish by invoking a Chinese intermediary).

I have always enjoyed Japanese food, or at least the stuff they tell us is Japanese in restaurants here. When I was in high school my friends and I would routinely go to a local Charleston sushi bar called Fuji’s because clearly eating sushi was still a way to improve your cool points back then.  As a side note, it was always amusing when Josh came with us, since he would always scrutinize the menu carefully in order to find the least scary thing on there (it usually ended up being teriyaki chicken and plain rice).  He may or may not have expanded his eating horizons beyond dorito’s and mountain dew by now… it is hard to say for sure.  So, since I am in the unique position of being far, far too poor to eat at a proper Japanese restaurant but also being too intimidated to make my own sushi, I decided I would do the next best thing and make my next favorite Japanese dish (whose name I can easily remember, that is…).

I would tell you this recipe is based on Alton Brown’s recipe from food network.com, but that recipe is both obviously awful (ketchup and mustard…what are you thinking?) and subtly awful, so I won’t even link you to it so it can mess with your head.  Instead, look at this recipe from allrecipes.com, which isn’t really the same as mine, but at least it is similar and, most importantly, not insane.  The first time I made gyoza, while I did manage to avoid the obvious pitfalls of ketchup and mustard and other dumb ingredients, I was not able to sidestep using chicken broth to steam the dumplings, which seemed like a good idea at the time.  It is not a good idea.  So don’t let those culinary pied pipers steer you wrong, listen to me instead (I swear I am trustworthy).  Cheaters look here:

Gyoza

1 lb. ground pork

2 1/4 cups napa cabbage, shredded

3-4 green onions, diced

1 egg

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp red pepper

1/2 tsp garlic powder (or equivalent in garlic cloves if you stock up in case of vampire attack)

3 tsp worcestershire sauce

2 tsp soy sauce (Kikkoman is greatly preferred)

1 tsp wasabi

45 -50 wonton wraps

vegetable oil for frying (recession victims take note canola is cheapest)

Mix all ingredients except wonton wraps and vegetable oil in a large mixing bowl.  Portion out the resulting mixture on to individual won ton wraps, folding them over and sealing the wrap with a small application of water to the edge.  Coat the bottom of a frying pan with vegetable oil and heat up to slightly above medium heat.  Add uncooked gyoza to fill the pan and fry until the bottom edge is browned and slightly crispy.  Add about 1/3 cup of water to the pan and cover, leaving a small opening for steam to escape.  Cook until the water has completely evaporated, then remove gyoza onto a serving plate to cool.  Add a small amount of oil and allow it to return to a medium high temperature, then repeat the process for the remaining uncooked dumplings.

I know I normally try and make all the ingredients for my foods, but in some cases it is not worth it.  This time it is the won ton wrappers.  If you have a pasta press (or whatever it is called), the ingredients, and most importantly the masochism (ask Josh about making noodles) then feel free to make some wrappers for yourself.  I’ll see you back here a week of real time and ten years of regret later.

I feel I should post a warning with this particular dish, because it takes way longer than you would expect.  Mixing up all the ingredients then stuffing fifty or so individual little wrappers will probably take an hour and a half at least, and maybe much longer (especially if your friends are distracting you).  That’s to say nothing of the cook time, which isn’t as long, but trust me, halfway through packing the gyoza you will probably be about ready to quit cooking forever, so any extra effort after that feels like torture.  It takes perseverance (or in my case several hours of complaining and trying to give up in annoyance), but if you make these correctly, you’ll immediately want to go through it all again just to taste them once more.

-Zach