eG Foodblog: Foodmuse (2010) - What foodblogger Grace Piper eats in a week

[FoodMuse]

Best simple chicken dinner.

Recipes to follow

Chicken dinner by gpiper, on Flickr

[Pam R]

Here's breakfast.

Cold quinoa, leftover slaw topped with an egg. I think I did a little better with the photography here.

Are leftovers a typical breakfast for you? I love to find something in the fridge that'll work well for breakfast -- and this looks great.

[Shelby]

I love leftovers for breakfast!!! Most everything goes well with a runny egg on top!

Thanks for allowing us a peek in your life, I eagerly await more!

[FoodMuse]

@Pam

I am a fan of leftovers for brekkie. Quinoa is perfect with whatever else I can scrounge up.

Thanks Shelby!

I'm now wishing I'd hadn't impulsively agreed to be the guest blogger this week. Mostly because I want to wow you guys, and have taken my time planning out a week. Vanity rears it's ungly head. I guess I'm mostly showing you what I cook during most weeks.

Last night's chicken dinner is a great example of an easy weekday meal. We eat lots of bone-in skin-on chicken thighs. White chicken meat is not allowed in the house, it just won't get eaten. It just has zero flavor. I snuck some into a stew once and Charles(my guy)picked it out.

This recipe might sound boring, but I promise you it is delicious. Very, very juicy and the topping is a good as it looks in the photo above. It develops a sort of Ritz cracker flavor.

Ingredients

4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs

2-3 Tablespoons each of mayo and dijon

1 1 minced green onion

1 tsp garlic, minced

Kosher salt and pepper

1/2 cup Panko breadcrumbs

3 tablespoons melted butter

seasoned salt

Preheat oven to 350

Mix up the mayo, dijon, onion and garlic. S+P Chicken.

Smear this all over the chicken and push a good teaspoon or so under the skin(key).

Mix bread crumbs with the butter, a pinch of seasoned salt and pepper. Separate this mixture into 4 section in the mixing bowl and pat them on top of each piece of chicken.

Move rack in the oven to the lower part so that your topping doesn't become too dark.

Bake on a shallow sheet pan until internal temp registers 165 or juices run clear, about 45 minutes. Let them rest a few minutes before serving.

I had this with broccoli with garlic butter and leftover quinoa and the Thai slaw.

Edited November 3, 2010 by FoodMuse (log)

[ambra]

I'm now wishing I'd hadn't impulsively agreed to be the guest blogger this week. Mostly because I want to wow you guys, and have taken my time planning out a week. Vanity rears it's ungly head. I guess I'm mostly showing you what I cook during most weeks.

'A Day in the Life' blogs are just as good as any!! Looking forward to your next meals.

[heidih]

Grace- you mentioned lower carb eating as part of your lifestyle. I noticed the quinoa versus a starchy grain, and no "hyper fat fear" in the use of cream cheese as a snack and butter in you meals. Can you give us a general idea of how you incorporate lower carbs and what lead to the choice. I was also interested to see that you are aiming for the fattier fishes. I am headed that way myself and would be interested in your general methods. I think I may have an erroneous fear of them being a bit smellier than the average fish.

Oh as to wowing us- I just love seeing how others really cook and eat and appreciate your giving us a window into your kitchen

[FoodMuse]

I'm now wishing I'd hadn't impulsively agreed to be the guest blogger this week. Mostly because I want to wow you guys, and have taken my time planning out a week. Vanity rears it's ugly head. I guess I'm mostly showing you what I cook during most weeks.

'A Day in the Life' blogs are just as good as any!! Looking forward to your next meals.

Thanks Ambra,

I now have some Cornish Hens that I've never cooked before and parsnips to make something interesting.

In the meantime here are some Masala Eggs I cooked for breakfast over the weekend I thought you guys might be interested in. This is based on a Nigella Lawson recipe.

I told you I like to keep foods spicy! This will wake you up.

2 eggs

1/4 tsp cumin, coriander, turmeric powder

sprinkle of salt

1/4 tsp, maybe more of Sambal Oelek

fresh cilantro, 1 or 2 minced tablespoons

1 tablespoon green onion

Whisk it up with a fork and cook in a little nonstick pan. I cooked it in gee, but butter works too. I like eggs a little undercooked, but you could cook it up as scrambled eggs.

Masala eggs by gpiper, on Flickr

Cooked masala eggs by gpiper, on Flickr

[heidih]

What is the crispy crunchy item accompanying the good looking masala eggs?

[FoodMuse]

Hi, thanks for sharing your week with us. I sorely miss our foodblogs.Will we getting a peek into your refrigerator?

Um... That would mean I'd have to really clean it first.

Since you asked, I have lots of hot sauces and condiments and all the goodies I got at a recent Brooklyn Food Swap. I get together with a group of like minded urban domestics and we swap our homemade goods.

Here's an excerpt from a recent blog post I wrote about it:

I went to the BKFoodSwappers food swap in Brooklyn last night and made out like a bandit. If you aren't familiar with the idea of food swapping, basically you bring some homemade food item and barter it for something tasty someone else made. We had a fantastic crowd of about 30 foodies.

I brought mango habanero hot sauce, papaya habanero ketchup, quick refrigerator pickles and an apple butter spiked with a tiny amount of habanero.

If you want to find out what I got out of the swap click here. Now is a very very good time to be interested in food in New York.

[FoodMuse]

What is the crispy crunchy item accompanying the good looking masala eggs?

I'm so glad you asked!!!! It's so good and so easy. I just came up with it this past weekend. First time is a charm. We'll be having this every week. I had some vegetables in the fridge and I like crispy so I came up with this vegetable fritter inspired by

Indian onion Bhaji. It's fast if you have a food processor with a shredder. This could be done with almost any veg combo, though I think having onion in there is important.

Shred

3/4 eggplant or 2 zucchini

1 onion

1 carrot

Mix with this batter

Here's where I started to eyeball things. I went 1:1 Besan(Chickpea) flour and rice flour (I made this by blitzing rice in my spice grinder) It was probably 2-3 Tablespoons of each at one point I thought it looked a little too wet and added more rice flour.

1/4 tsp baking powder

2 tsp curry

little cayenne

black pepper

salt

handful cilantro

little fresh minced hot pepper

Water- Just keep adding it until it's just moist then add in the veg.

I plan on making it again and measuring, but you want the batter to look like this. As you can see it's very wet. Don't worry this is pretty fool proof. Fry your first the size of a quarter to test for seasoning.

Vegetable fritters uncooked by gpiper, on Flickr

Heat a pan with about a 1/2 inch of vegetable oil to about 365.

Using a big spoon gently drop in the fritters and flatten them out. Brown on each side for about 3 min each side and put on paper towel to drain. Serve hot.

These reheat really well. They were just as good the next day. I reheated them for breakfast at 400 degrees on tinfoil for about 15 min. I didn't expect them to be anything more than edible. I was wrong! Delicious.

I know this looks like it's absorbing oil, but you have to trust me it isn't. Once it's drained on paper towels it just delicious crunchy goodness.

Fryning vegetable cilantro vegan fritter by gpiper, on Flickr

Hooray Finished Veg Treat!

Untitled by gpiper, on Flickr

It definitely needs a dipping sauce or hot sauce. A lime cilantro relish would be perfect. Or maybe an Indian chutney.

[nakji]

Mango chutney and coriander chutney, maybe? Or a flavoured salt, like yuzu salt might be nice as well.

What did you end up serving them with?

[johnder]

Given you are in Brooklyn (Park Slope?) what are some of your favorite restaurants or places to get coffee?

[Pam R]

Grace, did you have the Cornish last night or is that tonight? How did you decide to cook them?

[FoodMuse]

Sorry to have fallen a little behind here.

Wednesday's nights meal was a complete disaster. It's looks delicious and the recipes are solid, so I thought I'd still recap for you. The problem was with the ingredients. The chicken legs were from a 10 lb bag I bought that was 99Cents a lb. I should have known better. The meat was odd and spongy and even though it was cooked through had a raw texture.

I made my standard cheese sauce, but because my cream had gone bad I substituted soy milk. I've subbed soy milk in other recipes, but this gave it a sweet odd flavor. Charles still ate the chicken, but I just ate the bacon off of it. That's a great way to cook chicken legs. I just wrap them in a few slices of bacon, roast until it's almost done and drizzle with maple syrup.

Chicken legs wrapped in bacon on a bed of onion by gpiper, on Flickr

I was invited to the Food Network office, more on that later.

[johnder]

I made my standard cheese sauce, but because my cream had gone bad I substituted soy milk. I've subbed soy milk in other recipes, but this gave it a sweet odd flavor.

Unless you used unsweeted soy milk it isn't surprising you noticed a sweetness in it.. Almost all soy milks have some level of sweetner added to it during processing. If you reduced the soy milk down, it would be considerably sweeter than cream. Silk soy adds cane sugar to their products for example.

Heavy cream has 0g of sugar per cup, while most soy milks have between 5-8g of sugar.

[heidih]

No shots of the crispy bacon on the otherwise not so great chicken or did you snag it all before you had a chance to click?

[FoodMuse]

Given you are in Brooklyn (Park Slope?) what are some of your favorite restaurants or places to get coffee?

Yup, I'm a Sloper. Not much of a coffee drinker, but we love Stone Park Cafe for brunch. They have a crispy oyster dish that is spectacular. Here's my blog post about it. I appreciate the quality of the food at Bario. I think the dinner menu is a little limited. I think Yamato has the best sashimi around and a spicy hot and sour chicken soup that is very thick with tons of mushrooms. That soup is my goto cure when I feel a flu coming on.

Charles like Cocoa Bar for coffee. They have pretty good wifi. I've gotten some good work done there. They do have a rule about no computers in the evening.

Are you in the Slope?

@johnder

I really should have known better than to use that soy milk. It doesn't say it's the sweetened variety, so I thought maybe I could get away with it.

@Pam R

Cornish hens and roasted parsnips will be dinner tonight, unless Charles goes out to dinner and then I'll just fry up some chicken wings for myself. Those little hens are a little too special to cook just for one. I love hot wings. Butter, hotsauce and chicken wings? What could be better.

nakji

I had the crispy veg fritters with my friends Date Tamerind Sauce. She's looking for the recipe for us.

Last night was fun. I was invited to the Food Network event for launching there new iPad recipe application. I got there a little late so I missed most of the panel discussion. Nice App. I wish I had an iPad. Very often I will email a recipe to my iPhone and bring that into the kitchen with to refer to.

Food events are always great. The people are just consistently friendly and it doesn't hurt that food is at the center of everything. The food last night was spectacular. Especially this shrimp with a chimi churi sauce. I met of with Emily HanHan of Omniverous.com there and we were trying to figure out the secret of why it was so good. I'm contacting my person over at the Network to try and get it.

Here it is!

Food Network event for the IPad app by gpiper, on Flickr

Here I am with Ed Levine who founded the terrific site Serious Eats. I had met him years ago when I was working with not very nice boss. We were having dinner and he was laying into me about what a waste of space this guy was. Ed is quite.... abrasive. I give as good as I get and I'm pretty sure I said something about our company crushing his. I quit not long after that dinner in disgust with that boss for so many reasons and was happy to tell him, "You were right, I was wrong."

Ed Levine founder of SeriousEats.com and Grace by gpiper, on Flickr

Take care friends,

Grace

Edited November 5, 2010 by FoodMuse (log)

[FoodMuse]

For heidih

A photo of that disasterous dinner. Looks wonderful, doesn't it? I probably make this once a month and it's always great. That was an annoying evening.

Bacon chicken by gpiper, on Flickr

[FoodMuse]

Here's my long awaited Cornish Hen dinner.

The hen was ok. Despite stuffing 1/2 a stick of butter mixed with seasoning, including paprika, garlic and little anchovy sauce under the skin, we thought it was kind of bland. I do have a problem with over salting, so I tried to show restraint. Maybe too much. The dark meat was great, but once again neither of us wanted much of the breast.

The sides were great.

I made a stuffing, which I served as a side by sauteeing:

1/2 onion, minced

1 carrot, minced

1 celery stalk, minced

1/4-1/2 tsp of poultry seasoning, I used bells

Salt to taste

and mixing it into quinoa made the way I made it in a previous post. So good!

We also had it with a cucumber/tomato salad, cherry relish and roasted vegetables.

I roasted 2 big parsnips with 1 chopped carrot, 1 celery chopped, 1/2 onion tossed with a good amount of olive oil, salt and pepper on a sheet pan at 400-425. At about 30 minutes in I put the Hen's on the pan and roasted another 45 minutes. The vegetables were great.

Cornish Hens with flavored butter stuffed under the skin, on a bed of parsips. by gpiper, on Flickr

Cornish hen dinner by gpiper, on Flickr

[FoodMuse]

Grace- you mentioned lower carb eating as part of your lifestyle. I noticed the quinoa versus a starchy grain, and no "hyper fat fear" in the use of cream cheese as a snack and butter in you meals. Can you give us a general idea of how you incorporate lower carbs and what lead to the choice. I was also interested to see that you are aiming for the fattier fishes. I am headed that way myself and would be interested in your general methods. I think I may have an erroneous fear of them being a bit smellier than the average fish.

Oh as to wowing us- I just love seeing how others really cook and eat and appreciate your giving us a window into your kitchen

Hi Heidih,

I was doing a fairly strict Atkins for awhile and lost 30lb in 3 months and that was before even starting to work out. It was pretty spectacular. I've put some back on, so I've started moving back to what worked before. I found there are lots of misconceptions about the diet, ie. living on cheeseburgers, bacon and lettuce.

It may be a better way of eating if you know how to cook. I ate and still eat lots of eggplant, greens and cauliflower. That vegetable fritter recipe earlier in the thread is pretty spectacular. I was thinking if I wanted to make it lower carb about grinding roasted soy beans(snack aisle) in my spice grinder and using that for the crisp you get from besan(ground chickpeas).

I really don't get the bad rap blue fish gets, it has the best moisture. I have trouble getting Charles to try flaky fish now. The skin has a great layer of fat and flavor. I don't think of it as especially fishy. Charles has said I shouldn't blog about it because it is so cheap now and if word gets out about how good it is the price might jet up.

Wild salmon is fattier that farmraised. You can actually see the layers of fat.

Fish recipes coming soon.

Off to make my usual brunch.

[FoodMuse]

Our usual brunch: an omelette stuffed with sharp cheddar and usually a little soft gouda, bacon, sausage and pancakes. I had some caramelized onion laying around so that's on the plate too.

This is Charles'

Charles' brunch by gpiper, on Flickr

Here's mine. I'm not a pancake fan so I tend to have a little salad, jalapeno and sour cream.

Grace's Brunch by gpiper, on Flickr

[FoodMuse]

I feel like alot of people think you need a deep fat fryer for great wings. Not so! I shallow fry til brown about 3-4 per side and bake for another 15-20 minutes. Always perfect and juicy.

I made us hot wings for dinner last night and they were fantastic.

Ingredients:

2lb chicken wings, separated

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup hot sauce, Franks Red Hot Original, only brand that tastes like good Buffalo Wings

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp each paprika, cayenne, salt, pepper

I brine the chicken in a bowl of cold water with 2 tablespoons salt for about and hour to an hour and a half. Drain in a colander and set aside.

Shake up the flour and spices in a paper bag. Sometimes the bags leak creating a terrific mess, so I've taken to putting it in a plastic grocery bag.

Put your drip dried, should still be wet, chicken in the bag all at once and shake like crazy. I like to let it sit for about 1/2 an hour to let the spices permeate, but you don't need to.

Chicken wing destined to be hot wings by gpiper, on Flickr

Preheat the oven to 350

Heat about 1 1/2 inch veg oil in a frying pan to about 365 degrees, until the oil shimmers and smokes a little. Fry the wings for 3-5 min on each side until a nice golden brown.

Wings in shallow oil by gpiper, on Flickr

Place each brown wing on a cookie sheet you've lined with tinfoil and topped with a cookie cooling rack.

Wings ready to finish cooking in the oven by gpiper, on Flickr

When all the wings are on the rack finish them off in the oven.

The wings portions cook fastest. I take them out after 12-15 min, the drumstick portions need maybe 18-20 min.

While they bake, melt your butter in the microwave and stir in the hotsauce.

Toss your cooked wings in the sauce and serve.

I served with with a cucumber, tomato, mint, cilantro, vidalia onion salad and leftover vegetable patties. That recipe is upthread. This a great simple meal. I love appetizers for dinner.

Hot Wings for Dinner! by gpiper, on Flickr

[Anna N]

I feel like alot of people think you need a deep fat fryer for great wings. Not so! I shallow fry til brown about 3-4 per side and bake for another 15-20 minutes. Always perfect and juicy.

. . . .

As long as the weather holds I toss my wings in oil and grill them outdoors on the gas grill before tossing them with some sauce = wonderful and no deep-frying needed.

[ChefCrash]

Thanks Grace for a wonderful blog, the wings, the eggs Masala and Charles' breakfast are my kind of foods.

Your videos are great too.

[FoodMuse]

Anna N-

Jealous. No outdoor space here in Brooklyn. I had a grill on my roof for awhile, until it was swiped by construction workers.

ChefCrash

Thanks I need to do more videos, it's a been a few months.

Dinner last night was Philipine Pork Adobo. I got this recipe from a friend in Manila. It is so easy to make. Basically you dump a small amount of ingredients in to a pot, bring to boil, lower to simmer and let it go until it's done. The apartment smell amazing while is cooks.

Pork Adobo by gpiper, on Flickr

2 lb Bone in pork rib tips

1/2 cup soy sauce, brands count here! Yamato is my fave, Kikoman is motor oil

1/2 cup Rice Wine Vinegar

1/2 cup Cider Vinegar

Cinnamon stick

3 whole cloves

1/4 tsp ground allspice

1 whole head of garlic, peeled, chop each clove in half

1 can coconut milk, try to get Chaoktoa, other brands are made for the American market, the difference is 2 1/2 inches coconut cream vs maybe 1 inch if you're lucky

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
  
• Put all ingredients, except coconut milk, in a pot and bring to a boil.
  
• Turn down to a simmer, cover and put in the oven.
  
• After 1/2 an hour give it a stir.
  
• Now you can cook it until it's just tender or falling apart tender. I tend to go back and forth on this for variety. Might take and hour or up to 3 really depends on what cut you use. I've also made this with bone-in skin on chicken thighs.
  
• When you have it at the point you like it remove the cover and reduce on medium heat until the sauce has evaporated by about a quarter. Here's picture just before adding the coconut milk.
  
  Adobo cooking by gpiper, on Flickr
  
• Turn off the heat and spoon in the top cream of a can of undisturbed coconut milk(not cream of coconut) then pour in about half of the milk. This is also to taste.
  Great over cilantro rice or if your me quinoa. This doesn't freeze especially well.