The Michael5000 Kitchen: Curry Bread

Provenance:

Great cooks do not hesitate to improvise, to follow their muse into new culinary terrain.  This recipe was wholly improvisational.  Indeed, it was inspired entirely by circumstance.

It so happened that Mrs.5000 decided to purchase a new bottle of curry powder, despite the fact that there was still an inch or so of spice left in the bottle that we already had.  Needless to say, I inquired after this seemingly rash stewardship of resources, but Mrs.5000 was ready with the reasonable retort that she had had our existing bottle of curry powder "probably since college."  Now naturally one does not discuss a lady's age, but to give you an idea of the time frame here it is relevant to point out that I composed many of my own college papers on a "typewriter," and that Mrs.5000 is a bit of a cradle-robber.

To further underscore her point, my dear wife had me close my eyes and sniff each of the bottles in turn.  One smelled strongly of curry spice; the other smelled like the fading memory of an Indian restaurant.

So fine, the new bottle made sense.  But what to do about the old bottle?  The suggestion that we "just toss it" was of course unacceptable, as I am not one to write property off lightly and there was no positive indication that it had become especially poisonous.  I undertook to find a good use for it.

The Recipe:

What I did was, I made a batch of my go-to bread machine recipe for "potato bread," which is basically a white bread recipe that includes about 1 part mashed potato flakes for 8 parts flour.  Then, before I pressed the button that makes the bread machine spring to life, I dumped all of the remaining olde curry powder into the baking vessel.  And then I waited three hours.

The Results:

You might be surprised how well this worked.  The spice did not interfere with a beautifully rising loaf, for one thing.  The house started to smell fairly awesome after a few hours, and when the machine chirped we found that we had a very tasty savory bread on our hands.

It was also quite yellow.  That would be the turmeric talking.

It was, like most bread, delicious while warm from the baking, but it also seemed more flavorful after cooling.  It was perhaps less versatile than most breads -- no good for peanut butter and jelly, for instance -- but I found it was pretty good with hummus and even ventured a reasonable cheese sandwich.  I even ended up sharing a piece, after several caveats, with a teenager, who described it as "different but pretty good"; I should mention, though, that this was an especially polite teenager.

If you would like to experiment with your own Curry Bread, it occurs to me that you need not put away a store of curry powder now so that it will be ready to use many years hence.  Indeed, you -- or I, for that matter -- might experiment with using smaller quantities of fresher, more potent spices in our bread recipes, and see how that works.  After all, as I said at the beginning: great cooks do not hesitate to improvise.

Michael5000 Verifies an Assertion

Theophilus tells us that in fact there are "three kinds of folium, one red, another purple, and a third blue."  How is it so versatile?  [The source of folium] is a representative of a broad class of vegetable extracts that change color depending on the acidity of the solution: red in acid, purple when neutral, blue in alkali.  Litmus, an extract of a Scandinavian lichen, is another, and so is the juice of red cabbage.

-Philip Ball, Bright Earth; Art and the Invention of Color

Red cabbage, chopped and ground with yoghurt and baking soda (left) and with vinegar (right) and left overnight.

...and on a completely unrelated note: DorkFest 2010 starts Monday!

10 Kitchen Tools You Can't Live Without

Long term readers of the L&TM5K will remember Phineas, one-time frequent commenter who even today stops by to dominate the occasional Wednesday Quiz. Among his other mad skillz, Phineas is a serious amateur chef, and has been keeping a, a -- what? a blog? a weekly newsletter? -- on fancy home cookin'. It's called Be a Better Cook - I'll Help -- Cooking Advice from a Passionate Home Cook. Much of what he writes goes a little over my head, frankly, since I am of simple peasant stock and prefer foods that can be prepared, consumed, and, if necessary, cleaned up after in less than a quarter of an hour. But it is well-written stuff, and is getting some critical acclaim out there, so I do recommend it for those of you burdened with sophisticated palates.

Recently, though, he happened to write a post about something which I just happen to have a rare expertise in. It was called "10 Kitchen Tools You Can't Live Without." Now it so happens that, many years ago, I found myself marooned on an island -- Great Britain -- for the better part of a year, and was forced to assemble the kitchen tools that would see me through this time period. So I know, from cruel experience, exactly what Kitchen Tools You Can't Live Without. Let's take a look at the list that Phineas -- who, probably to protect his privacy, is calling himself "Tom McGuffey" on this new project -- came up with, and see how well he did.

Here's his list:

1: Chef's Knife 8"
2: Cutting Board
3: Peeler
4: 10" and 12" Non-stick Saute Pans
5: 8 Quart Stock Pot
6: Largish sauce pan
7: Paring Knife
8: Strainer / Colander
9: Microplane Grater
10 Dutch Oven

Now, here's the actual list -- as I say, forged from real, cruel experience:

#1: A pot. This is very useful for heating up anything liquid, from boiling water for noodles to preparing a nice can of soup. It is also good for heating up refried beans -- now generally available in the UK, but at the time something I had to special-order by the case from a specialty shop -- or dahl, much more widely available in the UK than here.

#2: A pan. This is good for frying things, such as eggs or pancakes. If you are doing fancy cookin', you can "saute" in it.

#3: A spatula. A necessary companion for the pan.

#4: A spoon. Useful for transferring liquid, runny, or granular foods to the mouth. Also useful for stirring things cooking in the pot.

#5: A fork. Useful for transferring foods that need some kind of stabbing to the mouth.

#6: A knife. In addition to a serrated knife capable of getting through a block of cheese, I also splurged on a table knife. This latter is a rarely used appliance, but it's generally considered part of a culturally appropriate trio with the fork and knife.

#7: A bowl. Good for containing most foods made in the pot while consuming them. Not a strict necessity, as it is perfectly workable to eat out of the pot, but a nicety.

#8: A plate. Much like the bowl, for foods made in the pan. Plates are more important than bowls, as pans can be difficult to eat out of.

#9: A cup. For containing liquids, such as tea or water. This was eventually supplemented with some of the pint glasses that one can find for free in the neighborhoods around British "pubs," or bars, if one is out and about early on weekend mornings.

#10: A cheese grater.

So, we see that although Phineas didn't do a BAD job -- he realizes, for instance, that it's tough to run a kitchen without a pan, a pot, a knife, and some sort of way to grate your cheese -- he perhaps forgotten to think through the final stages of the dining process. As far as I can tell, he's going to be transferring food directly from the pot or pan to his mouth using either a chef's knife or a paring knife, which is not only inelegant, but raises significant safety concerns.

He also includes on his list one item that I can not only live without, but that I can live without knowing what it is: a "Dutch Oven." I was initially baffled by "Microplane Grater" as well, but I'm thinking that's a cheese grater, and having a cheese grater on the list shows Phineas to be a man of good sense who will be able to deliver the nachos when the chips are down. Which is especially good for him, because with nachos you don't need a fork or spoon.

Mind you, the above list cuts close to the bone. I do not recommend living without the following supplementary tools:

Extras

#11: A blender. Used to make the banana/orange juice/fruit concoctions that one has for breakfast, and the carrot/orange juice/spinach concoctions that one sometimes has for lunch.

#12: An air popper.

#13: A baking sheet. Cookies!

#14: A cooling rack. Cookies!

Be a Better Cook - I'll Help -- recommended for you foodies out there!

The michael5000 Kitchen #15: "Oatmeal Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies"

Provenance: A few weeks ago, I let you in on the secret of the Pumpkin Cookies. And you are welcome. But now, as we enter the Season of Giving, I am going to go one step further. I am going to make the ultimate sacrifice. I am going to give you -- free of charge or commitment -- my signature Oatmeal Almond Chocolate Chip recipe. I do this at considerable sacrifice to myself. My real-world social life, and possibly my marriage, has largely been dependant on my ability to crank a batch of these puppies out from time to time. I'm pretty sure, in particular, that we will see no more of former L&TM5K reader Vida after this post; she will simply no longer need me. I'm honestly not sure where I got this recipe. The original, much-besplattered document is a half-page that looks like it was printed off a Mac in the early nineties or something. I've only been using the recipe for seven or eight years, though. Early on, I made a couple of key alterations to make it more, you know, delicious. And these cookies are nothing if not delicious. Indeed, at this Thanksgiving just past Sister Jen brazenly threw over the Pumpkin Cookies in favor of the O-A-CC as her favorite michael5000 holiday cookie. It was a real watershed moment.

The Recipe: Preheat oven to 375F.

1 1/4 cups Butter 3/4 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup sugar

Cream the Butter and Sugar together. I usually do this in a largish metal kettle, putting the Butter in the preheating oven for a few minutes to get it pliable. Then, stir or beat in:

1 Egg 1 tsp. Vanilla

OK. In another mixing bowl, mix these dry ingrediants nicely together:

1 1/2 cups Flour 1 tsp. Baking Soda 1/2 tsp. Salt 1 tsp. Cinnamon 1/8 tsp. Nutmeg

Frankly, I make it a pretty generous tsp and 1/8 tsp on the spices, because that's just the kind of guy I am. Anyway, at this juncture you can blend your dry mixture into your gooey mixture, and you'll start to have a thinnish cookie dough. Now comes:

3 cups Oats

I usually go with a 50/50 mixture of the old-school rolled oats and the thinner "quick oats" variety. But whatever. If it comes in a cylinder and has a picture of a religious dissident on it, you're on the right track. At this point, it should be getting difficult to stir, so make sure you have a stout wooden spoon at hand. And, there are two more critical ingredients to add!

12 ounces (a standard bag) Chocolate Chips 1 cup Almonds

With the almonds, you can use slivers, slices, or chunks -- the cookie will look different depending on which you choose, but it will taste the same. But, make sure you have ~toasted~ almonds. If you have raw almond slivers, toast them in the oven while it's preheating. It matters. OK! Slap generous dollops of your very chunky mixture onto cookies sheets. (It's going to be sticky, so be prepared to rinse your hands a lot.) Bake for 9 or 10 minutes, and cool 'em on a rack if you've got one.

The Results:

These are some extremely goddam tasty cookies.

The L&TM5K Advent Calendar December 7

From the In-Laws5000 family postcard collection.

The michael5000 Kitchen #14: "Pumpkin Cookies"

Provenance:

With the American holiday season looming afore us (note festive masthead, above) I am prepared to share with you, the L&TM5K reader, some of my favorite seasonal baking recipes. We'll start with Pumpkin Cookies, which have over the last however many years gone from being a strange little recipe I liked to being a mid-level family5000 holiday tradition, especially beloved of sister jen.

My much-annotated physical copy of the recipe is from the inside of a label of major brand of canned pumpkin. I may have had it for as long as two decades. I know I had it by 1994, because I have a vivid memory of trying to make these cookies while recovering from my first and most severe episode of Clinical Depression. They burnt literally to charcoal, causing me to sit on the kitchen floor sobbing for a good half-hour about how I was so worthless I couldn't even bake a batch of cookies. Later, it was determined that the oven's thermostat was broken. But, hey, that's not a heart-warming holiday memory! That's a grim, bitter, awful memory! So let's move on to the recipe!

The Recipe:

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

2 1/2 cups White Flour.
(You can substitute up to one cup with wheat flower if you are so inclined*)
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Salt

Combine in medium bowl.

1/2 cup Butter
(that's one stick, natch. You can reduce this by up to 2 Tbsp without causing trouble*)
1 1/2 cups Sugar
(You can get away with as little as 1 cup*)
1 cup canned Pumpkin
(which is, quite inconveniently, half a can. For this reason, it's often practical to make a double batch)
1 Egg
1 tsp Vanilla

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl. I usually partially melt the butter to make this easier, and although I believe serious cooks frown on this it doesn't really seem to hurt anything.

Add the pumpkin, egg, and vanilla, and beat until everything is nice and creamy. Then add in the dry ingredients and stir until you've got a well mixed dough. Plop on a greased cookie sheet, although if you forgot to grease the cookie sheet you'll probably get away with it. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

2 cups Powdered Sugar
(thought you were done, didn't ya)
3 Tbsp Milk
1 Tbsp melted Butter
1 tsp Vanilla

Stir until smooth. When the cookies have cooled for a few minutes but are still warm, put a little of this glaze mixture on each of them. It will melt a little and both spread over the top and sink into the cookie itself a little bit before congealing, rendering great yumminess. Don't do this while the cookies are still hot, though, or it will all just run off the sides.

*I have been using this recipe long enough to do some experimenting during a few relatively health-conscious phases.

The Results:

I've always liked these, and I seem to keep liking them better every year. The ones that I pre-baked for the Thanksgiving feast were just perfect, and I've had to impose elaborate security measures to keep me and Mrs.5000 out of them until the day arrives.

The Michael5000 Kitchen #13: Improvisational Lasagna

Today's Post is Brought to You by:

Abundantia -- Roman goddess of good fortune and prosperity!!

Improvisational Lasagna

Provenance: Contemporary. This recipe was developed only last fall, and is derived very loosely from the recipes on the side of the Trader Joe’s lasagna noodle box.

The Recipe:

Several Lasagna Noodles
A couple of bottles of any Spaghetti or Pasta Sauce (preferably without high-fructose corn syrup. You know what they say about high-fructose corn syrup).
Whatever veggies happen to be in the fridge
Whatever cheeses happen to be in the fridge, within reason.

Chop up the Veggies. Grate up what seems like enough Cheese, but then keep the Cheese out because you’ll probably end up wanting to grate up some more.

1) Use either two 8 1/2' x 5'ish baking pans or one 9' x 9'ish baking pan. Put a thin layer of Sauce on the bottom of the pan, and then put a noodle or noodles on top of it.

2) Sprinkle some Veggies on the Noodle(s).

3) Pour some Sauce over the Veggies.

4) Sprinkle some Cheese over the Sauce.

5) Put down another Noodle layer.

If you still have Veggies and room in the pan(s), return to Step 2. Otherwise:

6) Pour the remaining Sauce on the top Noodle layer.

7) Sprinkle the remaining Cheese on top of the Sauce.

8) Bake at 375 F for 45 minutes.


The Results:

This recipe embodies some of the greatest virtues of casual cooking. It is, as you would expect from the ingredients, yummy. It is very easy to make. It is reasonably nutritious, and inexpensive. It is good for using up ingredients that are reaching the end of the road. And, unless you are feeding many mouths, it can be stretched over a week to ten days worth of occasional meals. Excellent!

The michael5000 Kitchen #12: Ex-Girlfriend’s Granola Revisited

Provenance: Digging further into the recipe box back on LiveBlog Sunday, I discovered an index card with a recipe that seems to derive from, but be somewhat more exact than, the Ex-Girlfriend Granola recipe we have discussed before. Sometime between 1991 and, at the latest, 1999, I must have codified a working version of the recipe. As usual, I have no memory of this.


The Recipe:

Set oven to 300 F.

Melt in a large baking pan:

A stick of Butter
½ cup Honey
½ cup Maple Syrup
1 Tbsp Vanilla
2 Tbsp Water

Mix in:

5+ cups Oats
½ cup Wheat Germ
½ cup Sunflower Seeds
1 cup Nuts
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Nutmeg
1 tsp Allspice

Cook an hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes.

The Results:

With 5 cups of Oats, the recipe is much more manageable to work with than with the vast volume of oats I tried last time. Indeed, this seems like maybe too FEW oats – it’s a pretty rich cereal in these proportions. Also, the Cinnamon-Nutmeg-Allspice combo strikes me as unnecessarily complicated, and probably just reflects my college self throwing in everything at hand. I’m thinking maybe go up to 7 cups of Oats, and eliminate the Nutmeg?

Incidentally, it doesn’t seem to matter too much for this recipe whether you use whole or rolled oats.

The michael5000 kitchen #11: Dad5000’s Almond Bread

Provenance: This recipe is scribbled on the back of a credit card receipt from the Phillips 66 station on the north side of Emporia, Kansas, where I taught from 1996 to 1999. I bought 11.43 gallons of unleaded at $1.09 a gallon. It was November 30, 1997, and I might have been coming back from Thanksgiving with Amy and Bob, who were housesitting a place in Lawrence. Or maybe that was 1998. Hardly seems important now.

Bread machines tend to be a guy thing, I’ve been told, and after my dad got his in the mid-90s he used it regularly for several years. I was impressed, and asked for and received my own as a machine as a Christmas present. This bread was his best recipe, and he must have read it out for me on the phone as I wrote it on the closest scrap of paper to come to hand, the credit card receipt.


The Recipe:

If you do not own a bread machine, purchase a bread machine.

Put the following in your bread machine:

1 1/8 cups Buttermilk
2 cups White Flour
¼ cup Oatmeal
¼ cup Oat Bran
1 tsp Salt
2 Tbsp Brown Sugar
1 ½ Tsp Butter
1 tsp Yeast
½ cup Slivered Almonds

The Results:

This is surely one of my favorite breads ever. It’s a little bit sweet, a little bit oaty, and – from the almonds – a little bit crunchy. Plus, it reminds me of my dad. And it’s great for PBJ!

The michael5000 Kitchen #10: Irish Cream

Provenance: The recipe card is in the handwriting of Mrs. DrSchnell, which places it from the later Lawrence years, 1994-1996. I have very vague memories of perhaps making this when I was rooming with occasional L&TM5K commenter Dug, which would mean in or around the spring of 1994. I could not have made it very often, however, or I would weigh 500 pounds.


The Recipe: “Bruidhean Irish Crème Liquer”

1 ¾ cup Brandy
14 ounce can Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 cup Cream or Half & Half
4 Eggs
2 tsp Instant Coffee
1 tsp Vanilla
4 Tbsp Chocolate Syrup

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Keeps refrigerated for 1 month.


The Results: All you have to do is glance at the ingredients to comprehend that this will taste good. Indeed, it tastes freaking wonderful. Hell, it would probably be a good way to wash down the Better Than Robert Redford Dessert, had you requested it as your last meal and were done worrying about consequences.

It did strike me as I left the liquor store with the brandy that I could have bought a bottle of commercially blended Irish Cream for roughly the same price and been done with. But if you are tired of drinking the same old brandy night after night from the dozens of barrels you have stashed away in your brandy vault, and you want to “jazz it up” a little, this might be a good way to do it!

The word “Bruidhean” makes the recipe sound all authentic and ethnic, but since the indigenous cultures of the Emerald Isle did not really have access to chocolate syrup, vanilla, or instant coffee, I’m thinking this recipe is a fairly recent invention in the grand scheme of things.

The michael5000 Kitchen#9: Potato-Cheese-Chili Soup

Provenance: This recipe is slightly adapted from a very popular cookbook that you may have heard of. Since I have never been in the habit of going out and, like, buying cookbooks, I would guess that my copy of this book comes from the time when the Quality Paperback Book Club would offer you “Four books, four bucks, no commitment, no kidding,” and then beg you to do it all over again once you had used them for your four books and then unceremoniously dumped them. I never figured out how that business model worked, but I sure did have a lot of Quality Paperback Books in the early 90s.

My copy of the cookbook falls open naturally to this recipe, which I’m sure I have used many more times than all of the rest of the recipes together. Unlike most of the recipes in this series, this is not one I am recovering from the mists of time; I always make this one at least a couple of times a year. I’ve made it for parties and to feed couples with newborns, and it is a winter perennial here at the Castle.

The Recipe:

4 Potatoes
3 cups Water

Cut the potatoes into cubes of about 2 centimeters to a side. Don’t peel them, because that’s a silly waste of time, texture, and, to a lesser extent, nutrients. Boil the potatoes in the water in a large soup pot for twenty minutes or thereabouts.

1 Tbs Butter
1 Tbs Olive Oil
1½ cups chopped Onion (more or less one medium Onion, as it turns out)

Start the Onions sautéing in the Butter and Olive Oil. And they start to soften, add:

1¾ tsp Salt
1 tsp Cumin
1 tsp dried Basil
2 large cloves Garlic, minced or crushed or whatever
1 Tbsp Black Pepper

Then, dice up:

1½ cups Red Bell Pepper (or green or yellow, but red looks best)

And sauté for a few more minutes.

By this time, you have probably taken the Potatoes off of the heat and let them cool a bit. Set a third or so of the potato cubes aside, and pour the rest of the potatoes and the potato water into your blender. Blend them into a mash, and pour back in with the unblended potato cubes. Add the sauté, stir the whole mess up, and put back over a low flame.

Then add:

1 cup Diced Green Chilies (the larger of the two sizes of cans they are typically sold in)
¾ cup Sour Cream
1 cup Milk
¾ cup grated Jack Cheese, packed.

Let it simmer for a while, and you’ve got yourself a tureen of soup!


The Results: Yummy yummy. This is a very rich and satisfying winter soup.

The michael5000 Kitchen #8: Strawberry Nut Loaf

Provenance: I had a friend during my college years who was clinically obese. Dealt a hard hand in many ways, she was nevertheless funny, kind, and often quite charming. She was obsessed with food, and quite literally so I think. We corresponded for several years, and every letter would include two or three recipe cards, almost none of which I ever used. They were just her way of caring, I think. Most of these recipes I discarded over time, but I hung on to three of four of the most promising, presumably thinking that maybe someday I would give them a try. Well, that day is now.

The Recipe:

1 cup Strawberry Jam
1 cup Butter
1½ cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla
½ cup Sour Cream
1 cup Nuts
¼ teaspoon Lemon Extract
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
½ teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
1 teaspoon Salt
3 cups Flour

Cream Butter and Sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients, first the wet and then the dry. Bake at 350 F for about an hour. Makes two loaves.


The Results

This turns out to be really yummy. It’s basically a PBJ cake, very moist and kind of hard to keep your hands off of. I made it with peanuts, which I (after the great Brazil nut chopping debacle of ’09) ran very briefly through the blender. Almonds and walnuts would probably both work as well, although it seems like they would substantially change the nature of the beast. Maybe I’ll try it with almonds next time.

Though I didn't notice this so much myself, you see, it seems that the taste of the peanuts ran a bit riot. I had dropped part of a loaf by for Mr. and Mrs. ChuckDaddy, and told them of course that it was "Strawberry Nut Bread." The next day, I heard back from Mrs. ChuckDaddy, who wrote:

For some reason (?) I thought you said "strawberry" bread so my taste buds were confused when I bit into something that tasted very much NOT like strawberry. Surprising, but really yummy. :)

When informed of her ghastly faux pas, she began to rant:

So now that the village is busy analyzing the true taste sensation of this so-called Strawberry Nut Bread, I really must say that IMHO it should be called Peanutbutter Bread. It definitely tastes like a healthier version of our beloved Peanut Butter cookie. This strawberry thing is just craziness!!

Probably she'd been drinking. It totally tasted like strawberries to me.

The only thing I’d add to this recipe is that you should probably butter the loaf pans. I didn’t, and had a little bit of a hard time getting the loaves out in one piece.

The michael5000 Kitchen #7: "Marvelous Minestrone"

Provenance: This recipe is printed on a half-page handout from the Lawrence, Kansas Community Mercantile natural foods co-op. The Mississippi Street address indicates that I picked it up sometime between about 1993, when it moved to that location, and 1997, when I (by that time living some 90 miles away) stopped shopping there. I do not recall ever using the recipe, which is elaborate enough that I probably would remember, nor are there any significant stains or other signs of use on it. I am a little puzzled by a small happy face in what looks like my own penmanship on the recipe card. What might that indicate? That I actually DID make the recipe and liked the results? That I thought it looked tasty, but never got around to making it? Or was there some other motivation to draw a smiley face, now lost in the mists of time? We’ll never know.


The Recipe:

2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
4 – 6 cloves minced or pressed Garlic [I used 5]
1 large Onion, chopped
2 medium Carrots, chopped
4 – 5 stalks Celery, chopped [I used 5]
2 Tablespoons fresh chopped Parley
1 Tablespoon dried Basil
2 teaspoons dried Oregano
1½ teaspoons Black Pepper
1½ teaspoons Salt (or to taste)
3½ Tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar
2 Tablespoons “Sweetener of Your Choice.”
5 – 7 cups “Water or Stock”
4 medium-sized Tomatos
1½ cup Green Beans, cut to 1” lengths
2 cups cooked Navy Beans
6 – 8 ounces Pasta

Heat Olive Oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. In it, sauté the Garlic, Onions, Carrots, Celery, Parsley, Basil, and Oregano for several minutes. Add Pepper, Salt, Vinegar, Sweetener, Water or Stock, Tomatoes, and Green Beans, and simmer over low heat until vegetables are tender but not falling apart. Add the beans and cooked pasta and heat through. Serve with grated Parmesan or Asiago cheese.


The Results:

This is a recipe that contains within itself a certain latitude of interpretation, which I suppose is appropriate for a traditional dish like minestrone. For some of the simpler choices, I used 5 cloves of garlic, 5 stalks celery, and 8 ounces of pasta, the latter concept (i.e. measuring an ingredient by weight) requiring the purchase of my first ever kitchen scale (I picked up a new set of measuring spoons too, while I was at it). For the “Sweetener of My Choice” -- did I mention this recipe came from a natural foods store? -- I used White Sugar, the traditional sweetener of my people.

The 5 – 7 cups of “Water or Stock” presents a vast range of possibilities. I used a carton of Trader Joe’s Vegetable Broth, which turned out to be four cups, plus a cup of Water, plus a cup of Red Wine, which an asterisk suggested as a stand-in for one cup of Water or Broth. That brought me to six cups of liquid which, with 8 ounces of pasta, made for rather too little broth in the mix. I believe I’ll try for 7 cups of liquid and 7 ounces of pasta on the next go around.

Despite the long list of ingredients, the recipe posed no special problems once I bought the scale. I do always groan, though, at recipes that call for a quantity of “cooked beans.” I have no idea how much the various beans swell when cooked, so I will always end up (as now) with the amount that actually ends up in the recipe, plus a huge surplus of boiled beans in the fridge, plus another surplus of dried beans that I overbought, always thinking for some reason that a cup is much bigger than it actually is.

Oh, how did it taste? Pretty good! It had, Mrs.5000 noted, a bit of a “bite,” but I think that is due to me accidentally putting in 2 Tablespoons rather than teaspoons of Oregano. By the time we were done with the stuff, we were calling it "Oregano With Vegetables." Must learn to be more attentive to recipe measurements.

It is worth mentioning, too, that this is probably one of the healthier recipes in my files. It is probably better for you, for example, than the Better Than Robert Redford dessert. It can now join the salsa at El Burrito Loco on 82nd Avenue as a food that I can use to sneak that most vile of fruits, the tomato, into my diet. I can’t believe I actually purchased and cooked with four of those things, but you know me – anything for a project.

The michael5000 Kitchen #6: Ex-Girlfriend’s Granola

Provenance: This recipe is written on a postcard dated 27 September, 1991, addressed (with my name spelled incorrectly) to my first apartment in Lawrence, Kansas, where I went to graduate school. It is from my girlfriend of the time, of whom perhaps the less said the better. I used the recipe a lot that year and occasionally for a few years afterwards; this was my first go at it for at least a dozen years.

The Recipe: is quite wordy. Here goes:

THE ESSENTIALS:

A TUB O’OATS, largish, uncooked.
1 – 2 cups Wheat Germ
1 – 2 cups Sunflower Seeds
1 – 2 cups Nuts
2 – 3 Tablespoons Cinnamon

THE GOOD GOO:

¾ cups Oil
¾ - 1 cup Honey
1 stick Butter
¼ cups Maple Syrup
1 Tablespoon Vanilla
2 Tablespoons Water

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The oven goes on 300. Make efficient use of the first wafts of heat by melting the goo in the bottom of a wide, sided cake pan. Stir the essentials into it until evenly coated and pop in the oven for about 90 minutes, taking it out several times to stir so that everybody’s evenly toasted. [She then goes on for quite a while about different variations and options, none of which I believe I ever tried.]


The Results:

Careful readers will have noted the ambiguity of the phrase “A TUB O’OATS.” I must have known what this meant at one time, but I don’t now. Taking a stab in the dark, I used a standard 42-ounce tube-shaped container of Oats, the kind you often see a jolly-looking religious dissenter portrayed on, but this turned out to be I think rather too many Oats. Using the largest cake pan in all of Castle5000, considerably larger than anything I would have owned in graduate school, it was still only possible to bake the ensemble by making a little mountain in the middle of the pan. Attempts to “stir so that everybody’s evenly toasted” resulted in numerous avalanches, which in turn led to pointed little remarks from Mrs.5000 about much she treasures a clean stovetop.

But how does it taste? Familiar, for one thing. Like the "chili" recipe, this tastes like the first year of graduate school. And, it's not half bad. Quite rich, though – you wouldn’t want to eat more than a small bowl of this unless you were about to climb up a glacier or something. Also, it’s quite…. um…. oaty. If I continue to experiment with this recipe, a key area of focus will be trying to figure out what the hell the ex-girlfriend meant by “A TUB O’OATS.”

Updates

An new version of the hummus recipe, extensively revised according to reader suggestions, has proven quite satisfactory. I call it Hummus 2.0, and it is available at the bottom of the hummus post.

Also, I was delighted to hear that Kadonkadonk gave last week's Better Than Robert Redford dessert a try, and not at all surprised to hear also that she made herself a little sick with it. The Better Than Robert Redford dessert is not to be trifled with.

The michael5000 Kitchen #5: “Better Than Robert Redford”

Provenance: This recipe comes from and is in the handwriting of frequent L&TM5K commenter DrSchnell, who in turn got it (if memory serves) from an aunt who didn’t like to talk about her “Better Than Sex” recipe in front of the kids. DrSchnell likely gave me the recipe sometime during our mutual residence in Lawrence, Kansas, between 1993 and 1996.

I don’t recall if I was ever served this dish by DrSchnell. I attempted to make the dessert myself sometime last year, but made two very critical errors – trying to substitute almonds for peanuts, and accidentally buying one instant and one non-instant pack of pudding – and ended up with a sticky, barely edible mess. This time I paid closer attention.

The Recipe:

2/3 cup Chopped Peanuts
1 cup Flour
1 stick Butter

Mix these and press into a 9” x 13” baking pan. Bake at 350 F for 20 minutes. Cool.

8 ounces Cream Cheese
1/3 cup Peanut Butter
1 cup Powdered Sugar

Mix these together until smooth. Then mix in 1 cup Cool Whip. Spread mixture on cooled crust layer. Chill.

1 small package (3.9 ounce) Instant Chocolate Pudding
1 small package (3.9 ounce) Instant Vanilla Pudding
2 ¾ cup Milk

Beat two minutes. Spread mixture on top of Cream Cheese Layer, then cover with remaining Cool Whip from a 8 – 9 ounce package.

Sprinkle with another 1/3 cup Chopped Peanuts and 2 ounces Chocolate Shavings (which you can grate from a standard Hershey Bar.

Chill. Eat. Get Fat.

The Results:


Oh. My. God. This really is ridiculously more brute-force delicious than anything has any right to be. I found that it was best not to concentrate on anything else but the very small bites that you put into your mouth; this dish would be wasted on a social occasion. I recommend very small portions, as large portions would probably kill you.

Don’t trust me? Here’s frequent L&TM5K commenter Vida, who lives near Castle5000 and got a big chunk delivered to her door:

It's an explosion of texture. First there's the nutty topping, and then there's a chocolately, soft layer. Then there's a nice complimentary layer underneath (not sure what this is made of) and then there is the scrumptious cookie crumbly layer on the bottom. All these layers really explode in the mouth. And then there is that nutty aftertaste…. I think it's really tasty.

Later, she added:

Vida: By the way, thank you for not putting any nutrition facts with this recipe. I don't even want to know how much fat this has.

Michael5000: Well, you know, you need a CERTAIN amount of fat in your diet just to stay alive....

Vida: Yes, and one piece of this would cover me for 50% of my life, assuming I live a long time.

Incidentally, I missed the part about covering the Pudding Layer with Cool Whip. I doubt it makes much difference in the taste, but the chocolate shavings and the mixed nuts sprinkled on top probably look a little better against the white background.

Would it change things much if you went with two packets of Vanilla Pudding? Two packets of Chocolate Pudding? I dunno. Ask DrSchnell’s aunt. It is, however, vitally important that they both be INSTANT pudding. Trust me on this.

The michael5000 Kitchen #4: “Chili”

Provenance: Unknown. Several pieces of evidence point towards this being a creation of my own devising. The ingredients are inexpensive, bland, and pedestrian, which fits my culinary budget and tastes to a tee… well, at any time really, but especially during the lean years from 1989 to 1992. In any event, I have clear memories of making this dish quite often during my first year of graduate school, 1991-1992.

A Word: I understand that there are those who “take chili seriously.” I also understand that those people, and probably many others, would not consider the below to be “chili.” I’m certainly not going to try to defend it.

The Recipe:

2 cups Beans and Lentils, assorted.

Soak [overnight, I meant]

Boil an hour – check [to made sure the beans are edible, I meant]

Add 1½ cups Macaroni

Boil another 15 minutes and drain.

Add:

2 16-ounce cans tomato sauce
1 cup grated Mozzarella Cheese
1 packet Chili Mix
1 ton Oregano

Add, according to mood, any of these:

Olives
Mushrooms
Green [Bell] Peppers
Red [Bell] Peppers

[I think the idea was that the heat of the boiled Beans is enough to melt the cheese and heat the Tomato Sauce and other ingredients to a reasonable temperature for consumption with no further heating. This actually seems to work pretty well.]


The Results:

This “chili” tastes like the first year of graduate school. Like, a LOT. Since this makes it hard for me to notice anything else, I turned to Mrs.5000 for an objective opinion. She allowed that it was “OK,” adding that “it doesn’t taste that much different than canned chili. Um, with macaroni in it.”

When I made the test batch, I found that we didn’t have any Bell Peppers or Mushrooms in the house, and I really couldn’t imagine actually putting Olives in it, so we were tasting the stripped down version. Also, the entire house supply of Oregano turned out to be 1 ½ teaspoons, so we fell well short of the “ton” that my young self called for. (I have since replenished our Oregano supply with a big ziplock bag full that I bought from the bulk section at Limbo and labeled “DOPE” in bold letters, in the hope that my mom will find it in our spice cabinet and find it amusing.)

What cracks me up about this recipe now is the idea of going to all the effort of soaking and boiling your own beans, and then throwing in an envelope of “chili mix.” You would think that coming up with a blend of spices would have been the fun part.

And I guess the macaroni part kind of cracks me up too. And incidentally, if you decide to use this recipe yourself, it turns out that it really doesn’t take a full 15 minutes for the macaroni to boil. But you already knew that.

The michael5000 Kitchen #3: Wheat Germ Nut Burgers

Recipe #3: Wheat Germ Nut Burgers

Provenance: I would have picked this one up in the bulk section of a natural foods grocery store, probably the Lawrence, Kansas Co-Op in 1991 or something. I have no specific memory of having made the recipe before, except for a vague sense that I’ve used rosemary in SOMETHING and I don’t know what else it would have been.

The Recipe:

½ cup Wheat Germ
1 cup Rolled Oats
1 medium Onion
½ teaspoon Rosemary
2 cups finely chopped Brazil Nuts
4 Tablespoons Water
2 teaspoons Basil
2 Eggs, well beaten
2 cloves Garlic, minced

Mix all ingredients until well blended. Form into patties and bake about 10 – 15 minutes on each side at 350 F.

The Results:

First off, I tend to agree with Mrs.5000 that this recipe needs a new name.

Next, I just want to say that finely chopping 2 cups of Brazil Nuts is kind of a pain in the ass.

Thirdly, the recipe leaves me unclear about exactly what stage these bad boys are supposed to be at when you are finished. Are these patties that should be stored and subsequently grilled when ready to be placed on a bun? Or should a warm bun be ready as soon as they are done baking? The text yields few clues.

Fourthly, what I got once all ingredients were “well blended” was not something that adhered well into what you would call “patties.” I ended up with three or four “coherent clumps,” three or four “loose aggregates,” and two “piles of crumbs.” I should confess here to a nagging fear that I might have used two cups of Oats by mistake, but I’m not sure.

At this point, you are probably wondering how they taste. And the answer is: surprisingly good! And somewhat like hamburger, maybe, although my understanding of what a hamburger tastes like is 22 years gone now and I am not the most reliable witness on this point. We grilled them with a little oil and made them into cheeseburgers, but then pretty much anything is better with cheese so that's a bit of a no-brainer.

Quite to my surprise, I think I will keep and experiment more with this recipe.

The michael5000 Kitchen #2: Hummus

Recipe #2: Hummus

Provenance: Written in the handwriting of frequent L&TM5K commenter mhwitt, this recipe was almost certainly put to paper between 1987 and 1989, the period when he and michael5000 shared a skanky off-campus apartment near the University of Oregon. The index card it was written on has numerous stains, suggesting frequent use, but I have only very vague recollections of using this recipe.




The Recipe:

2 cups cooked or canned Garbanzo Beans [note – this is a standard 15 ounce can]
6 Tablespoons Tahini
1/8 cup lemon juice (+more to taste)
Juice of Garbanzo Beans (enough to thin hummus sufficiently)
Pinch of Cayenne Pepper
2 teaspoons Olive Oil

Blend!

The Results:

With apologies to mhwitt’s younger self, this recipe yields a hummus that is marginally passable but by no means especially appetizing. There is something of a bitterness about it, which may be due to an excess of the Tahini. It is also bland; this may mean that “more to taste” is an important aspect of the lemon juice, or that my pinch of Cayenne Pepper was too stingy. I also deeply suspect that the “2 tsp” of Olive Oil, the only part of the main recipe in my own handwriting, should be “2 Tbsp.” The word “garlic” that I appended at some point might not have been a bad idea, either.



Updates! Updates based on actual reader suggestions have been made to the M5Kitchen Recipe #1, Soda Bread.


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UPDATE: Hummus 2.0

Taking elements from the blizzard of comments and personal messages regarding this recipe, I retired into the Castle5000 Culinary Studios and emerged with the following recipe, which attempts to honor the essence of the existing text, yet modify it in diverse ways suggested by you the readers in order to make it, you know, taste better.

The Revised Recipe:

2 cups cooked or canned Garbanzo Beans [note – this is still a standard 15 ounce can]
4 Tablespoons Tahini
1/8 cup lemon juice
Juice of Garbanzo Beans (enough to thin hummus sufficiently)
2 cloves Garlic
1 teaspoon Cumin
1/2 teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil

Blend!

The Results:

Much, much better. Very tasty, in fact. The only flaw in the ointment, or rather in the hummus, is that it was a bit too garlicky. This was due to me being interrupted during preparation by a pair of nice young men representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints; when I got back to the blender, I had another garlic clove in there before I remembered that I'd already done the garlic. Well, live and learn.

The michael5000 Kitchen #1: Soda Bread

...and so a new fiasco begins!

It would be an understatement to say that I am not a foodie. My interest in food preparation peaked, as so much does, in the early twenties -- not coincidentally, the time when I had the least money to buy anything fancier than bulk oats, beans, and noodles. Even then, my dabbling in the culinary arts was never what you would call Sophisticated; I made many a hockey puck before I figured out that brewer's yeast was the weak link in my bread recipes.

Once out of graduate school, I let other people -- restuarants and sprawling multinational agribusiness corporations -- take over most of the cooking. My cooking repertoire has long been designed to minimize time of preparation and use as few dishes as possible, and so I have subsisted on a diet of various bean & cheese combinations, eggs, and pasta, supplemented in recent years by whatever Mrs.5000 comes up with when it's her turn.

The Recipe Box

Hardly used over the last 15 years, I have dragged a recipe box with me from home to home. Except for a few signature items, like my famous oatmeal almond chocolate chip cookies, most of the recipe cards in there have been doing nothing but gradually yellowing. It's a silly state of affairs.

Therefore, it's time for a new L&TM5K Project! Over the next however many months or years, I shall gradually try out all of the recipes in my box. Those that are worth making, I'll keep; those that aren't, I'll pitch. I'll share the recipes, and the results, with you here.

Recipe #1: "Brown Soda Bread"


Provenence: Clipped from the Christian Science Monitor, sometime in the early 90s. There was a period of several months when I was making this bread a lot, if memory serves.

The Recipe

3 cups whole-wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1 tablespoon salt [see update]
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 to 2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350. Combine dry ingrediants in a large bowl, and mix thoroughly. Add enough buttermilk to make a sort dough, firm enough to hold its shape. Knead on a lightly floured surface for about three minutes. Form into a round loaf and place on a buttered cookie sheet. Cut a cross on the top with a sharp knife. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes [see update], or until the loaf is nicely browned and sounds hollow when rapped with a wooden spoon.

The Results: Easy and fun to make. Tasty, but 45 minutes might be too little time in the oven, as the center of my loaf was still doughy. The "1 1/2 - 2 cups" range for the buttermilk seems imprecise; next time around I'll keep it on the 1 1/2 cup end of the range to try to see if that improves the texture. On the salty side.

UPDATE: Per Vida's comment, I have made subsequent loafs (loaves?) with a teaspoon of salt rather than a tablespoon, and find it is a little tastier that way. I have also been leaving it in for the full 50 minutes, too, and that seems to have solved the undercooked middle issue.

And, per Rebel, here's a picture: