Cooked Celery?!

My office is fairly ethnic, especially considering there’s maybe only 60 of us.  One of my coworkers always brings in homecooked meals and since she’s Persian (I think) she always brings in meals that I am completely unfamiliar with.  Those of us that eat lunch together on the break room usually share our meals so it’s always a treat to try something new.

I was especially intrigued when this specific coworker brought in a green dish that looked like spinach and something else.  I was completely taken aback when I found out that (a) it was not spinach and (b) that the “something else” was celery!  The second time she brought it in I made sure to find out how she cooked it.  She instructed me that the dish consists of onion, beef, parsley, mint, and celery and that she cooks the dish for 5 hours!!!  I sort of scoffed when I heard she cooks it for 5 hours, because why would I ever slave away in the kitchen for 5 hours when the dish in the making is not a big hunk of meat.  However, I was interested in cooking  a dish that included parsley and mint.  Since she only gave me general directions on how to cook this dish I searched online and found a recipe from the blog Tameshk In Kitchen.

Celery Stew (source: Tameshk in Kitchen)

I had already planned on making another main dish so I decided to modify the recipe (or as my coworker said after I explained how I cooked it: very modified) so I could serve it as a side dish.  I only really wanted to try to cook celery, which is why I severely modified the recipe.  I finely chopped one onion and sauteed it in some olive oil.  After 5 minutes I added the celery, a bunch of finely chopped parsley, and a bunch of finely chopped mint.  I let the mixture cook on medium for as long as I could stand it (probably around 45 minutes), occasionally stirred it, and eventually added a couple tablespoons of water to help soften the celery since I didn’t cook it for 5 hours.

I definitely did not use enough parsley and mint, but I liked how the side dish turned out.  If you make this recipe, don’t get scared by the suggested amount of parsley and mint because it’s almost like spinach in that it softens and shrinks after cooking for a long period of time.  Basically, there should be enough parsley and mint that it looks like spinach, hence why I first thought there was spinach in the recipe.  I was worried about the herbs overpowering the celery, but they blend well together and complement the typically bland celery flavor.  Next time I try to cook celery I want to make the celery stew recipe with the beef because I think it’ll add even more flavor.  But I was pleased with  my first attempt at cooking celery (served alongside North African Meatballs courtesy Melissa d’Arabian).

Cooked Celery

Homemade Pizza

One of our wedding gifts was a pizza set: pizza crisper,  pizza cutter, and pizza cookbook.   Last night we finally made our own pizza using the basic thin-crust pizza dough recipe and the classic pepperoni pizza recipe.  I had never made pizza dough before and was worried about completely screwing it up.  I thought on was on-track to ruining it when I realized that I bought the type of yeast that would require extra steps.  I didn’t want to worry about making sure it was “active” so I bought rapid-rise yeast when I went back to the store.

Another wedding gift we received was an awesome food processor.  It has been sitting in its box under our side table for the past 3 months because we don’t have room in our kitchen to store it, so it finally came out of its hiding place.  Before I read the pizza dough recipe I didn’t realize you could make pizza dough using the food processor.  I followed the recipe instructions pretty much to a T and was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is (although time consuming) to make dough.  The recipe makes enough dough for two pizzas, so half of the batch went into the freezer for use later  this week or month.

before....after

We topped the pizza with a simple pizza tomato sauce (recipe also from the cookbook), caramelized onions (another cookbook recipe), pepperoni, pancetta, fresh mozzarella (should have used a low-moisture type…oops!) and shaved pecorino-romano.  I followed the suggestions in the cookbook and placed the pizza crisper in the oven while it preheated so that it would be piping hot when the pizza was placed on it.  I also “rolled” the pizza dough and prepared the pizza on a sheet of parchment paper that could easily be placed on top of the stone and then be easily removed after cooking.  The only downside to cooking on parchment paper was that I used too much sauce and I didn’t use low-moisture mozzarella so there was too much liquid cooking on the pizza that eventually dripped off the sides and collected on the paper.  If the parchment paper wasn’t there then the moisture would have just dripped off the pizza crisper since it’s perforated.  Next time I’ll use less sauce and the correct type of cheese and cook the pizza straight on the stone.

Despite my mistakes the pizza came out great!  It was incredibly time consuming and definitely was a labor of love, but it was so much fun to make and eat.  The flavors were great and the dough had decent flavor.  One of these days I want to use a rolling pin to roll the dough super thin for a cripsier pizza.  If you’ve never made pizza before or never had much success making it, I highly recommend the cookbook: Pizza and Other Savory Pies. It has easy-to-follow instructions on the best way to make homemade pizza and there are plenty of basic and specialty pizza recipes.

homemade pepperoni pizza

Suede Bar & Restaurant: Open-Face Ahi Tuna Burger

This past weekend I was in Vegas and for some el cheapo reason, I stayed at the Westin Casuarina, you know, the hotel that immediately comes to mind when you think of Vegas.  Despite the horrible walk you have to endure to get to the strip (it’s less than 2 blocks, but it’s a shady 2 blocks), the inside of the hotel was very nice.  The only restaurant in the hotel is Suede Bar & Restaurant.  Without even looking at what the restaurant was charging for food, the Husband and I quickly made our way to a table to satisfy our incredibly empty stomachs.

There was a good variety of choices and the prices were manageable.  I was immediately drawn to the “ahi tuna burger”.  Seeing those words together immediately brought me back to Maui where I had an incredibly delicious ahi burger with a wasabi aioli.  But as I was ordering the ahi tuna burger I started reading the description, which described the ahi tuna burger, as an “open-face” burger on “grilled tofu”.  I’m half asian and I like tofu, but my gut instinct was that the grilled tofu was not going to do this meal justice.  The waiter and I tossed around ideas of substituting the tofu with a burger bun or kaiser roll, but I decided not to make any changes and I stuck with the grilled tofu.

The ahi tuna burger came out looking very appetizing.  But after the first bite I knew it wasn’t going to be nearly as satiating as I had hoped.

if only it tasted as good as it looked

The grilled tofu tasted just like plain tofu, which would have been ok if something else on the plate had some kick to it.  I started craving the wasabi aioli, or a teriyaki-based sauce, but the only sauce that was drizzled on my plate for plating aesthetics was  not nearly enough to give the dish the flavor it should have had.  The ahi tuna burger had some flavor to it and was actually ok by itself but it wasn’t enough when paired with the tofu.  I cleaned my plate but wanted more.  Thankfully I ordered the sea salt fries (which were delicious!) with the burger so I didn’t walk away hungry.

I will probably never ever stay at the Westin Casuarina again, but in the 0.0001% chance that I do, I would return to Suede and try something else.  The restaurant looks promising and there are plenty of other dishes that looked very appetizing; it just so happened that my expectations were very high that day.

nondescript cupcakes

I can’t remember which recipe I used for these cupcakes, but I do remember that I forgot to store them in an airtight container so the next day they were already kinda stale.  The frosting is a basic buttercream recipe from the cookbook, “Cupcakes” by Shelly Kaldunski, which was purchased at Williams-Sonoma.  The buttercream is supposed to have volume, but every time I add the butter, just as it’s described in the directions, the buttercream falls flat and no matter how long I whip the frosting, the volume never reappears.  Whenever I make this recipe I have to settle for wimpy, unattractive, boring frosting.  So I tried to jazz it up by coloring some of it and drizzling it on top of the white buttercream.

yum yum yum....nom nom nom

If anyone has ever had success with this particular buttercream recipe let me know what you did.  But until I figure out the secret, I’ll have to use other buttercream recipes, which have worked well in the past.

Iron Chef America (ICA): Flay vs. Cardoz

Tonight’s episode of Iron Chef America (ICA) features Chef Cardoz challenging Iron Chef Bobby Flay with snails as the secret ingredient.  Cardoz specializes in Indian cuisine and he chose to challenge Flay because of his use of spices.

My main beef with this episode is the use of WWE wrestler Batista as a judge.  Because when I think of a food critic I definitely think of Batista, someone who had never before this episode eaten escargots.

Batista Will Now Judge Your Cooking

(source)

Recently I saw an episode of ICA with Tiki Barber as a judge.  And as you might expect, he barely added anything of value to the judging.  I fear that ICA is becoming more  like the Japanese version in regards to use of “celebrities” as judges.  I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want an actual established food critic to be a judge of Iron Chefs.  I think it’s so odd to see Jeffrey Steingarten rip into the chefs with such venom, whether or not it’s deserved, and then to have one judge only contribute by saying something so simple and nice.  I’d rather watch a panel of judges bicker amongst each other and viciously critique the dishes than listen to bland commentary from someone I am expected to be excited to see.