Menu for One

Tavoris C.'s Garlic Couscous with Cabbage, Broccoli, Carrot, and Peppers

From time to time I get emails from fellow Menu For Oners out there like you who tell me about how they like to experiment in the kitchen.  Keep 'em coming, and better yet, post them on the website!  I think we'd all be encouraged and inspired by your ideas.

This picture comes from Tavoris C. in Atlanta.  Eager to try something new in the kitchen, he decided to give couscous a try - a rolled semolina dish that is popular in West Africa and the Mediterranean.  Tavoris flavored the couscous with a little olive oil and roasted garlic, and topped it with cabbage, broccoli, peppers, and carrots he had pan-steamed in a little bit of butter and water.  It looks great!  Very colorful.  This would make a great weeknight dinner because both the couscous and vegetables can be prepared in under 20 minutes.

Truth is, Tavoris is not some random reader from the internet world.  I actually know him.   Did I mention I have a part-time job at a tea shop?  It's staffed by a motley crew of students, professionals, tattooed persons, non-tattoed persons, documentary-film lovers, aspiring poets, designers, and cross-country travelers.  He was our amazing barista until recently, when he decided to take on more responsibility at his day job.

Anyone who has ever worked in a small shop knows, your experience falls into one of two camps: great, or really, really miserable.  I'm happy to report that mine is the former.  Although our lives outside the tea shop are very different, one thing --well, two things really --that each of us have in common are 1) tea, obviously, and 2) talking about food.  And we like talking about food a lot. 

Thanks, Tavoris, for sending this in!  If you've got ideas, or want to share what you've been working on in the kitchen, send it in!  menuforone AT gmail DOT come.

Salmon en Papillote

 

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you can tell that I'm drawn to one pot meals.  Although there are times when I'm up for a square meal made up of a protein, a starch, a vegetable...and a sink full of dishes, by and large, I like combining ingredients into one vessel and seeing how they meld together to create something new - perhaps something even greater than just the sum of its parts.

 

This is such a dish.  I "heart" Salmon en Papillote (ok, that was lame...).  Taken from one of Alton Brown's uses  of this versatile cooking method, fish was placed on a bed of vegetables and steamed in a little pouch for one.  The end result was colorful, aromatic, tasty, and fun to eat!  The pouch can go straight from kitchen to table, and I've got to tell you: it's oddly satisfying to rip open your own dinner...sort of like digging through a Cracker Jack box for the prize.

You can see in the recipe below that the recipe is built for a 1-inch fillet of fish.  I substituted shrimp (I had some frozen in my freezer that I wanted to get rid of), but I do not recommend that you follow my lead in this instance.  Shrimp cooks too quickly, and with a fillet, the vegetables and fillet will be finished cooking at the same time.

Salmon en Papillote
from Alton Brown 

1/3 cup each of the following: fennel, leeks (whites only), and carrots
1/3 cup snow peas (no chopping here, nice!)
1 tsp salt
pinch of pepper
pinch of ground coriander
8 oz. salmon fillet (ignore the shrimp in these photos!)
1 orange cut into wedges with pith removed
1 tsp dry vermouth (I didn't have any, so I subbed in white wine and it was fine)

1.  Prep everything first - you'll thank me later (take advantage of chopping momentum).  For the carrots, I cut them into planks, and then cut those planks into thick matchsticks.  You don't need to achieve perfection here, but you do need uniformity for everything to cook in the same amount of time.  With regard to the orange, he's looking for the flesh of each orange segment to be exposed on each side.  I'm not sure the way I did it was the most effective (or the safest), so check out this example of how to supreme an orange.

 
 2.  Take a 15 x 36 inch piece of parchment paper and fold it like a book.  Draw half of a heart (with the folded side of the paper at the center of the heart) and then cut along that line with a pair of scissors.  Unfold to reveal a heart-shape...or should I say a pair of butterfly wings!  ("Papillote" is French for butterfly)

3.  In the center of one half, lay the fennel, leeks, carrots, and snow peas.  Sprinkle the salt, pepper, and ground coriander on top.  Place the salmon fillet on top of the vegetables, and the orange segments on top of the salmon.  Sprinkle the tablespoon of dry vermouth or white wine over everything.

   
 4.  Fold and seal.  The key here is to get a tight seal so that the steam produced from the juices of the fruits, vegetables, and vermouth will stay inside the pouch and cook the salmon.  Start at the top of the heart.  Take an inch-long stretch of the paper and fold it over about 1/4 inch.  Then, take the next segment of paper and fold, taking out some insurance by having that fold overlap the first fold and so forth.

5.  Place on a microwave safe plate and microwave on high for 4 minutes, or until the salmon reaches 131F.  Open carefully and enjoy!

Once you try this, I think you'll find that the recipe is easy to riff.  For example, swap in asparagus or bell peppers or chicken.  Don't have parchment paper?  At the suggestion of that Canadian chef who traveled around in an RV shaped like a toaster (does anyone remember The Surreal Gourmet?), I once tried something like this by using a brown paper bag (lunch sized), smearing it in olive oil, filling it, sealing it, and then baking it in the oven.  If you do try a new variation, let me know!

Bon appetit!

Spinach, Tomato, and White Bean Soup

Do you ever have those nights when you look through the kitchen and say to yourself, "there is NOTHING to  eat?"  I uttered those words earlier this week, seconds before I grabbed my phone to order takeout.  Then I stopped myself.  Am I not the same girl who blogged about the benefits of a well-stocked pantry?  The same girl who said maybe, just maybe, in order to make this cooking for one thing work, that I'd have to try taking the recipe-training wheels off and just try cooking without a script?

Seizing the spirit of adventure, I opened my kitchen cabinets.  I decided soup might be a good place to start.  I know I love soup, and maybe it's not everyone's favorite, but I figured that it would be easy to mess with proportions and to add a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  I grabbed everything I thought might be good in a soup and laid it on the counter.  I grouped these ingredients into categories:

BASE: water and/or chicken stock

VEGETABLES: frozen spinach, canned tomatoes, great northern beans, carrots, onions

FILLERS: barley, egg noodles, small pasta

FINISHERS: parmesan cheese rinds

Remembering that most recipes start by sweating some version of the mire poix (carrots, onions, and celery), I took what aromatics I had (about a two-handed scoopful of chopped carrots and onions) and let them cook slowly in a heavy-bottomed pot, seasoning them with salt and pepper.  When they started to get soft (and to smell really good), I added half of a can of great northern beans (drained), half of a 14oz can of chopped tomatoes (not drained), and half of a defrosted 10 oz package of frozen spinach that I had squeezed dry.  After giving everything a quick stir, I let these ingredients warm up a little bit.  

Remember when I made chicken stock?  It was at this point that I pulled out the bag of chicken stock I had frozen in the muffin tin molds, and added about four to the soup.  You could probably defrost them before adding them to the pot, but I just through them in frozen - I'm not sure it made much of a difference.  After they had melted, I added water to the pot until I liked the consistency, and voila!  Dinner was served!

[In the end, I decided not to add any fillers, such as pasta or barley...the choice is yours.  If you do add them, add them at the end, and just simmer the soup until the pasta is cooked through].

In this instance, I also added a couple of rinds of parmesan cheese I had stashed in my freezer last month.  I let them hang out in the soup from about the time I added the stock and the water until I was ready to serve.  "Waste Not Want Not" strikes again.

The verdict?  Not likely to be featured in next month's Gourmet, but it was a simple dinner that I'd make again.  But more than anything, this very small success gave me a little confidence boost to try cooking off-script again.  And if I can do it, believe me, you can do it, too.  Bon appetit!

OH.  And wondering what to do with the rest of the beans, tomatoes, and spinach?  I was, too.  So I mixed them  up, stored them in a tupperware container and stashed it in the freezer.  I can pull it out the next time I make soup, but I'm sure that I can add it to whatever I serve next with rice, pasta, or tomato sauce.  Imagination at work.

UPDATE: I've recently started listening to a wonderful public radio broadcast called The Splendid Table (www.splendidtable.org) hosted by Lynne Rossettto Kasper, who is just a wealth of information on all things food.  In a recent episode, she discussed the three methods of Basic Soup Improvisation (a summary is printed on her website).  I encourage you to take a look - it will help give you the confidence you need to cook without a script!

Chicken Stock

I think I've mentioned it before, but one of the kitchen ingredients I use the most is chicken stock.  Remember 10 years ago when all those Chicken Soup for the Soul books came out?  I never dreamed that beyond Chicken Soup for the Soul and A Second Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul there would be Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul, Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul, or A Fifth Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul (no joke).  But these publishers were onto something.  Indeed, there is something powerful about chicken soup.

I studied music in college, among other things.  One of the most difficult assignments I ever had came from my music theory professor.  He gave each student a different Chopin mazurka (polish folk dance with lots of flourishes), and each was relatively unknown.  Our job was to see beyond the flourishes and reduce the piece down to its essence in three stages, until there was only one note remaining per phrase.  The intention was that we would come to appreciate the structure of Chopin's composition as we studied it and took it apart.  

In the same way, if we take it apart a bowl of chicken soup, looking past the flourishes of egg noodles, carrots, celery - even the pieces of chicken, the soup's true healing powers lies (lays?  argh, I can never remember which!) in the chicken broth.  This is what brings us together today.

There are many out there who will tell you that if you can't use homemade stock, use shouldn't use stock at all.  I am not one of those people.  However, there is a BIG difference in quality, and once you make it for yourself, you will want to make it again and again.

Pros to making your own chicken stock: CHEAP-ola.  It's made from leftovers and scraps that might not be enough to eat on their own, a veritable illustration of the Waste Not Want Not philosophy (always a good idea, but especially so in times like these).  It makes your house smell good, and it can be used in almost everything.  Did I mention it's fool proof and requires no technique whatsoever?

Cons: it takes time - but that's ok, isn't it?  Plus, it's almost entirely inactive time on your part. So basically, there are no cons to making your own stock.

There are a million ways to make stock, and while some are better than others, I don't think there's really a wrong way.  Here's mine.

As you can see on this table, in addition to the items on the list, I have *stock bag* - a brilliant new tip I just picked up from Smitten Kitchen.  I just stash peelings and veggie stubs in a bag in the freezer and empty the whole bag into the stockpot whenever I made a new batch of chicken stock.

So here goes.  Step 1: dump all the ingredients into a large stockpot.  Cover with with cold water.  Step 2: Simmer for 3 hours.  (Modification: the directions above say bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer.  I recommend just simmering to avoid cloudy - but nevertheless delicious - stock that results when it is boiled too long).  I make stock on the stovetop, but I have been toying with the idea of making it in the oven next time where a steady temperature is easier to maintain.

It'll look ugly for awhile, but don't mess with it for three (3) hours  Then drain the stock into a large container, and spoon off the layer of fat.  Alternatively, after draining, just wait for the liquid to cool, and the fat will turn into an easy to remove solid.  (sounds delightful, I know).

Either put it to use right away, or store it for another day.  It will keep about a week in the refrigerator, or several months in the freezer.  My mother pours her stock into muffin tins and ice cube trays, then puts the frozen cubes into a large ziplock bag in the freezer.  I highly recommend this method for those of us cooking for one!  Sometimes you need less than a quart of stock, and this muffin tin method allows for you to pull out just what you need, in pre-measured amounts.  Just thaw in the refrigerator or microwave and you're ready to go.  In my mom's case, she'll pull out a cube or two when she wants to thin out a sauce or gravy, deglaze a pan, or add flavor to cooking rice or greens.

What else can you do with homemade chicken stock?  Well that, my friends, is fodder for another post.  Coming soon...

Not Just On Top of Spaghetti

I think I may be on to something (or at least I hope I am).  For Christmas, I received both Ina Garten's new cookbook, Back to Basics,and Giada De Laurentiis's New Italian Favorites.  I love reading a cookbook for the first time, and I read it cover to cover like a novel, marking anything that looks interesting.  [note: I am sure this may sound weird to some, a college friend used to do this and I imagined it was about as exciting as watching paint dry.  This is one of those happy instances where I am wrong.]

But I have learned the hard way that I have to pace myself when it comes to making these new dishes- after all, I'm making a menu for one.  Logistically, I can only make two, maybe three in a week...and that's if I take my lunch to work and eat in every night.  So I've tried to be better about planning the meals that I'll make - and it's more fun than it sounds.  Usually, the three dishes feature different flavors and textures, but in order to make the most of what I take home from the grocery store, feature some common ingredients.

And to this end, last week I came up with a plan that would not only enable me to try two new dishes, but also to have some go-to meals ready for the future.  The key to my master plan was...wait for it...

MEATBALLS.

(disappointed?  not rocket science, I know, but baby steps toward what I am going to call "spontaneity in the kitchen"). 

First of all, meatballs are really unsung heroes.  At least I wasn't singing their praises.  Everyone knows that they can be in pastas, soups, and sandwiches, but let's just take a second to marvel at that!  I mean, it practically rivals chicken in that regard.  Plus, it's a great vehicle for using up odds and ends in your refrigerator (sort of like the taco).

Giada De Laurentiis's book featured a recipe for orechiette with grape tomatoes, bocconcini, and mini chicken meatballs (where everything is about the same size - isn't her food always good looking?).  Then I also decided to make Ina Garten's recipe for Italian wedding soup - I'm crazy about soup (you may as well know that now).  Some people don't consider it a mean, but (a) it's CHEAP, (b) it's easy to adjust the recipe to serve 1 or 100, (c) it's perfect at this time of year, and (d) did I mention it's easy to make? 

I decided to double Ina's meatball recipe and use them in both recipes because hers were based on a combo of ground chicken and chicken sausage (which I though would be more flavorful than using ground chicken alone) and because her recipe called for the meatballs to be baked instead of cooked on the stove-top (read: less labor intensive).

My master plan worked!  I had enough for both recipes, plus some left over that Im keeping at the ready in the freezer for spaghetti or a quick meatball sub.  I can't find my pictures for the soup or the pasta (argh), but see here how this freezer gold was put to use!

 

   

Add some pureed tomatoes, et voila!