Gadgets R Great - and me hatin' on Rachael Ray

Hey, food eaters. I know it's been awhile, but here I am. Even though I haven't been in the foodblog circuit lately, I've still been eating on a regular basis -- and that means cooking! I've got lots of photos and videos that need to be posted, so forgive me that we'll be mucking around in the past for a little while. To start, here's something actually pretty recent!!

A couple of weeks ago, I made a mushy dip from some delicious stuff: yam, yellow onion, yellow curry, cumin seed, black beans, lemon juice and waterchestnuts. Once it was all cooked through, I whipped it all up in my trusty Magic Bullet to make a paste. I ate it with tortilla chips, but I'd imagine it would be awesome on pita or fancy crackers. It was SO GOOD -- a dip you don't have to feel bad about pigging out on because it's all vegetables!

This is a video of me talking about how much I love my citrus juicer, with the crazy yam dip featured in it.

Citrus Juicer v. Rachael Ray: Experimental Cookery miniVideoBlog from Molly O on Vimeo.

I found another video from when I first heard Rachael Ray say she didn't like kitchen gadgets = a long time ago. My husband Nate (who in this video I refer to as my fiancé) holds the camera while I talk about garlic gadgets:

Gadgets R Great ep.1: Garlic Tools -- Experimental Cookery miniVideoBlog from Molly O on Vimeo.

The point of all this bad video blogging -- (How awkward can I be?! Yeah, let's record it on video and post it on the internet so the whole world can see. Great idea!) -- is that I love kitchen gadgets! Since I've started cooking and started blogging about it, my parents have really gone out of their way to make sure I get the top of the line in kitchen gadgets every Christmas. This year I got a ball whisk!! You know how when you're whisking in a bowl and only the very top of the whisk touches the bottom? This whisk stills whisks but actually touches the bottom of the bowl. Mixes much better.


Now why would I waste my time with an inferior whisk when I have this bad boy? My other favorite specialty gadget is the Microplane -- the KATANA OF THE KITCHEN. I use it for nutmeg, cinnamon, chunks of parmesan cheese. I also sleep with it under my pillow.


Gadgets R Great. I'm not talking LETTUCE KNIVES or anything ridiculous like that. I'm with Rachael Ray on that one -- just use a freaking real knife, weirdo. But there are some gadgets that are just exactly perfect for the task you need to do. It's in any good cook's best interest to have a small arsenal of tools so that you can conquer any food that may be on sale when you go to the grocery store and have the afternoon to experiment.

In a related thought, I have a pretty decent apron collection that I'll have to share sometime in the future. I wear aprons purely for practical reasons, but I do color coordinate them to what I'm wearing. Maybe it's the narcissistic cooking blog, maybe it's that I'm just naturally really domestic and like looking like a 50s housewife -- but it's probably that I'm really messy.

... I also kept this video of Nate's mouth burning from eating a whole garlic clove. Enjoy!

Nate Bites It: Full Clove of Garlic -- Experimental Cookery Outtake from Molly O on Vimeo.

Mommy Lester's Pasta Salad

In Chicago with Busty. Needed to make some pasta salad -- Mommy Lester's signature stuff: tri-color rotini, broccoli, balck olives, cucumbers and Italian dressing -- 'cause we're going to a little get-together BBQ thing. I tried to convince Amanda to put in some garbanzo beans and bell peppers, but she wouldn't budge on the recipe. Not experimental at all! We played some pop culture / anything goes Take Two Scrabble. And we had some beer. Good times. I love life.

6/21/09 Pasta Salad and Take Two Scrabble with Busty, Nate and Jake from Molly O on Vimeo.

Amelia's birthday!

This morning I made cranberry walnut banana bread, cake brownie cupcakes and haystacks for my friend Amelia's birthday. Used Gawker (a Mac stop-motion program) to record my time in the the kitchen baking, fixing my lunch to bring to work and doing the dishes.

It's a surprisingly fast little video for the time I spent in the kitchen, with the interval at 1 frame taken every 30 seconds. I'm just glad it didn't catch me doing anything too embarrassing.

Amelia's Birthday: Experimental Cookery StopMotion! from Molly O on Vimeo.

You might remember my previous attempt -- arguably a failed attempt -- at haystacks a few posts down. The good news is that I had the recipe wrong! My Aunt Tammy uses PEANUT BUTTER (about a cup) and butterscotch chips. -- Not BUTTER and butterscotch chips like I tried last time. Epic fail! This time they were delicious.


The cupcakes were great, but -- don't tell anybody -- straight outta the box.


The banana bread is an old family recipe (that we got out of a favorite cookbook). Seriously, the best banana bread ever. It was perfect, but I let it get a little crispy around the edges ... because I was uploading the stop motion video and sort of forgot about it. Oops! That's the risk you run when you never set a timer in the kitchen. I know the inside will be delicious.



While the goodies were baking, I made a quick salad to bring to work tonight: spinach, cherry tomatoes, turkey (though I prefer Genoa salami), garbanzo beans/chickpeas, walnuts, cranberries. I bring along one of those little spritzer salad dressings -- the raspberry vinaigrette is so good.


So that was my morning in the kitchen -- really super fast!
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Amelia! =]

MiniVideoBlog: Fun with Butter!

Butter! - Experimental Cookery MiniVideoBlog from Molly O on Vimeo.

Hey, food freaks!
What's the one thing that makes everything in your kitchen taste better? That's right! Butter.
(Other acceptable answers: Tabasco, Tony's, basil, garlic. But this post is about butter.)

I bought something cool at the grocery store today, and it set all sorts of ideas buzzing in my head because of a meal I made last week. Here's a quick minivideo of me... talking about butter. = Dorktastic! ... Maybe I shouldn't be posting this on the Internet... I'm looking for a new job.

I'm not going to lie -- I sort of stole this whole idea from my parents and their awesome neighborly holiday presents. They made some sort of seasoned butter for their friends. But intellectual property rights be damned! That's what I love about cooking. Did you know that you can't copyright an ingredient list? You can only copyright the actual 'how-to' text part of the recipe. Don't know how I know that.

Brainstorm time! Other flavor variations to try:

• brown sugar/cinnamon
• red curry!
• basil/pesto
  

Get ready for another exciting recipe! Coming soon. haha.

Special Video Post - Beer Cheese Curry Chili

Hey, Internet. Here's a special edition video post since my sister's in town for Thanksgiving. We came up with a silly way to make dinner: Eight ingredients, chosen at random by some guy in a blindfold (actually Haley's friend Rob, who made the video).


Garbanzo beans, Great Northern beans, red curry paste, corn, broccoli, a Grain Belt Premium beer, some fresh Wisconsin Muenster and some brown rice. (We ended up leaving out the rice.)
Cheese, beer, broccoli... only means one thing: beer cheese soup. We started by checking out this recipe.

Starring me, Haley, Nate and Rob --


We started by sautéeing carrots and onions in some butter. We took it out and then used more butter to make a roux with the red curry paste and some flour. A roux is something I ought to be well-acquainted with because it's the start of every good Cajun dish, but, to the shame of my mother, I wasn't sure if I'd ever made one without my Mom. Good thing Haley was there. She taught me how to thicken it up with flour, making sure it was brown enough -- which was a bit of challenge because the curry paste gave it a lovely rust color.

After this, things went along pretty quickly. We added the veggies back in and dumped in some beer (after testing to make sure it was good still). A lesson for you, young kitchen padawan: always have some organic vegetable broth in your fridge. You never know when you may need to make soup. We then added the garbanzo beans, Great Northerns, corn and chopped broccoli.


The one big improvement to this recipe that I would recommend would be to use a cheese that melts better; muenster just doesn't cut it even though it tastes so darn good. We grated the cheese and slowly -- very slowly; Nate put in one shred at a time because he's Nate -- added it to the chili-ish Frankenstein soup we had created with our godlike kitchen powers.

Here's us enjoying it.





... After dinner, we made s'mores. I'll assume you know the recipe for that one.



Next time on Experimental Cookery...
It's pre-Thxgvg! Get ready to get your pumpkin on.
My friend Jerome will teach me, Nate, Haley and Brian how to make his infamous pumpkin soup. I'll share a friend's recipe for a delicious dessert, pumpkin crunch.