The Cuboards are Bare!

I was thinking so much about Paul's birthday dinner that kind of forgot I had to eat for the rest of the week too. On Tuesday I discovered I had zero fresh vegetables. I had two options: peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of the week, or I could get creative. I poked around the cupboard and found I had a can of white kidney beans and a can of tuna. I little googling came up with a recipe for White Bean Tuna Salad. I decided to use the recipe as a rough template.

But I cheated a bit and got a few more supplies. On my way home from school, I stopped at Whole foods on my way home and pick up some veggies, and a bagel: total cost $4.24. If you are careful, Whole Foods can fit on the grad school budget. And it has the nicest produce walking distance from my house.

Tuna White Bean Salad

2 tbsp finely chopped onion
19oz can white kidney beans
170g can of tuna
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
juice from 1/2 a lemon
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp dried basil
salt and pepper

handful of baby spinach

1. Place onion, and beans in a small bowl. Break up tuna coarsely with your hands and add to beans.
2. Mix lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, sugar, olive oil, and basil (I like to do this in a measuring cup) . Pour dressing over beans and tuna. I let this sit overnight to let the beans absorb some of the flavour of the dressing. Otherwise beans are a little dreadful.
3. To serve I mixed half of the salad with a handful of spinach.

Holiday Bake Off

The word on the internet is that holiday cookies are not the thing. The thing is home made pickles. Well, that's not how I roll. I love making holiday cookies. But I like it to be easy, because it's a busy time of year. Last year I was burned: I made type of cookie for gifts I had never tried before and they turned out dry, crumbly and tasteless.

This year I am baking what worked last year and was easy. I have a chocolate cookie and a butter pecan cookie from an ice-box cookie recipe. But two types of cookies is just not enough. I wanted something citrus. On Martha's website, I found Lemon-Currant Cookies. To make it a little more seasonal I used orange zest and dried cranberries. This was easy and delicious. I am freezing 1/2 the dough to see how well it freezes.



Orange-Cranberry Cookies

Follow the above recipe swapping:

1 tbsp orange zest for the lemon zest
3/4 cup dried cranberries for the currants
And add 1 tbsp vanilla with the sour cream and egg.

Happy Birthday Paul

Last Friday was a special day. To celebrate Paul's birthday I made him a special meal.

The cooking festivies started Thursday. I made a chocolate bundt cake, from the recipe in the current Cook's Illustrated Holiday Baking magazine.
The cake was fairly easy - but took a while to make - probably because I making it during the commercials in Ugly Betty. I had only two small problems when making the cake. They suggested painting on a mixture of cocoa powder and butter to grease the pan. I had no pastry brush and tried to do this with wax paper. Let's just say there's a reason they say to use a pastry brush. Also, I had to cook the cake another 15 mins. But the instructions on how to test the cake were very clear. Overall I have been really impressed with the recipes I have tried from Cook's Illustrated. The recipe is a keeper and would be good for a large party. I took the leftovers to my family.

To go with the cake I made mocha whipped cream. I modified this recipe.

Mocha Whipped Cream

1 cup whipping cream
3 oz bittersweet (or semi-sweet) chocolate, chopped finely
1 tbsp instant coffee

1. Place chocolate and instant coffee in a small heat proof bowl. (If you don't like doing dishes, use a bowl large enough to whip the cream in later.)
2. Warm cream in a sauce pan until it is close to a boil.
3. Pour cream over chocolate. Let sit 5 mins then stir until mixture is homogeneous.

I let the chocolate cream mixture cool over night and then prepared it the way I would prepare regular whipped cream by beating it and adding about two tsp of sugar.

For the non-dessert potion of the meal I made something I saw on the cooking channel - and lamely, I made the whole menu. Well, not exactly, I made boilled potatos instead of mashed because Paul like boiled potatos better. I don't get it. Additionally, the snow peas and the green beans looked yucky at the supermarket so I got brocolli instead. I steamed the brocolli and tossed it with sesame oil - it was okay, but not something I will do again.

Now, the ribs. You may notice the recipe uses "good ale". I have never purchased beer, so aquiring this "good ale" was somewhat of an adventure. However, the LCBO near my house stocks the brand recommended and besides a sligh mishap when I enquired about getting a leaver to open the bottle the ale was purchased without incident.

Next step, buy the ribs. I had a hazy idea on what beef ribs were - but I wasn't expecting this.
However, they turned out very tender. The recipe was time consuming but easy. I might reduce the sauce a little next time.

Overall, it was a fun night.