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Cooking with Nicole: Toast Cups!

Well, it’s just about New Years, so I know a lot of you will be either hosting or attending parties. And parties means DIP! So here’s how my family makes toast cups, the perfect accompaniment to dip. We always use toast cups for the crab dip I showed you how to make in my last Cooking With Nicole, but it would suit any creamy dip, really.

The only thing you need to make toast cups are bread and mini-muffin tins. You definitely need to go the mini-muffin route, as your guests would drown themselves in dip with full-sized tins.

You can use whatever bread you like, just remember that more flavorsome bread will compete with your dip. My mom always uses cheap white bread, as it toasts up a treat and it’s so mild.

Before you start, set your oven to 400 degrees to preheat. Also, we do oil our tins before that first baking with a really light coating of olive oil, or a spray of PAM if we have it, but I’m not sure you really have to do this step.

The first step is to cut the crusts off your bread. I always do four slices at a time (more gets unwieldy). I stack them up:

And then slice off the crusts:

Next, I lay out the crustless bread like a little grid:

I then use a REALLY heavy rolling pin (you don’t need a heavy one but it’s so much easier) and I flatten the bread:

Only AFTER it’s been flattened to I stack the four slices to cut them. If you try to flatten them when they’re stacked, they amalgamate into a single super thick slice that’s impossible to separate. So, I stack:

Then I slice into four:

After you’ve got your slices, you put them into your baking tins, molding the bread into the cup of the muffin tin. Don’t be too rough, it’s easy to stick a finger through them at this stage. But if that does happen, the bread can usually be squished back together. Here’s the tin all set to bake:

Once your tins are ready, stick ‘em in the oven. Most ovens only hold two tins at a time, as you only want to use one shelf because you’re toasting the tops as well as the bottoms.

You’ll bake the toast cups for anywhere from 5-12 minutes, depending on your oven. Do not walk away at this stage, you definitely want to keep checking them. They’ll go from underdone to burnt in seconds. So keep an eye on your oven.

You know they’re done when the tops are toasted and so are the bottoms. They’ll look like this:

Aren’t they perty?

We normally make these the day ahead, and put them in plastic bags with the air sucked out. Then, right before we serving them, we chuck them onto a baking tray and reheat them at about 350 for just a few minutes. They taste perfectly fresh, then, and regain their crispness.

I hope you enjoy your toast cups, and your New Year! I’ll be incognito for a few days–going to Chicago to stay with friends, then driving back to Pennsylvania. But I’ll see you in 2012, and don’t forget there’s a contest under this post and another over at Denise Townsend’s site.

Be safe and merry merry!

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Published on December 30, 2011 in Cooking with Nicole!. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

Cooking with Nicole: Peeler Family Crab Dip!

Hello friends!

Here’s something I haven’t done in a while: a cooking with Nicole! But I was home and making our usual holiday treats, and I thought I’d take pictures and share with you our Peeler Family Crab Dip. It’s Peelerific because it includes our Peeler Family Secret Ingredient. I’ll share that ingredient with you, but just don’t tell anyone. Okay?

We have a recipe for this, but I’m not going to bother putting it here, as we’ve totally changed it over the years. But here’s a picture of everything you’ll need (sans secret ingredient) and the cream cheese (which I forgot to put out):

The recipe is super (not) healthy and full of frightening, typically American ingredients. For my overseas readers, I have no idea how you’d make this. I never quite found a processed cheese product in the UK that matches Velveeta’s curious (and slightly alarming) unctuous viscosity. I probably turned you off even trying to find anything like Velveeta by using the words “unctuous” and “viscous” together. I apologize.

Anyway, for this recipe you will need:

about 1/2 an onion, very finely diced

a small pack of mushrooms, very finely diced

1 lb of Velveeta (mmm viscous)

1 8oz packet of cream cheese

1 cup sour cream

imitation crab meat (you can use real, but we’ve found it really makes no difference as all you really taste is mushroom. In fact, were I to make this for my own friends, I’d probably make it with artichoke or something like that)

Secret Ingredient (TBRevealed)

You want to do a really fine dice on the onion and the mushroom, but especially the onion.

Then you want to melt a little butter (about a tablespoon) in a nice, deep saucepan over medium heat. You’ve got a lot of unctuous cheese product to melt, so don’t be stingy with your pot.

Then you want to toss in the onion and the mushroom, cooking them till the onion has softened and the mushrooms have released their liquid, which you’ve mostly cooked off. You don’t want to brown anything though, so adjust the heat on your stove accordingly.

Once the mushrooms and onions are ready, throw in your various fatty substances. I usually cube up the Velveeta, partially to marvel at its consistency. But, yeah, all you really have to do is chuck in the sour cream, cream cheese, and Velveeta and melt it.

While everything melts and mixes, chop up your imitation crab meat. Again, feel free to use real crab meat. Or use none, and increase the mushrooms, for a vegetarian version. I can also envisions a version with artichoke.

When everything is melted, throw in the crab meat and fold it in. If you do use the imitation stuff, you probably want to break it up with your spoon so it’s nice and small.

Finally, you add your Peeler Family Secret Ingredient, which is sherry. Yes, sherry. We put it in basically everything, but mostly my dad. From whom you first have to wrestle the bottle.

Add the sherry to taste. We put about 1/4 cup full, but we like it sherry-riffic. Here’s the finished dip!

Serve the dip in some sort of heated pan, as it congeals like crazy. We serve it with toast cups, which I’ll teach you to make in my next Cooking With Nicole.

And that’s our Peeler Family Crab Dip. It’s super simple, really fatty, and absolutely delicious. Ask me any questions you may have in comments, and enjoy!

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Published on December 23, 2011 in Cooking with Nicole!. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

Cooking With Nicole: Turkey Ragú

Hello my friends! I know I haven’t done one of these in a while, mostly because I haven’t been cooking. I live alone, and don’t really entertain much in Pennsylvania, so cooking hasn’t been top of my list.

That said, I’ll be in London on July first for a whole month and I have loads of friends there, and friends coming in from places, and friends, friends, friends. For whom I intend to cook, seducing them into visions of domestic bliss with me living amongst them. And then hopefully one of them will offer to transport me  to London and sponsor the louche lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed. Think it will happen?

It might, actually, if I make what I’m about to show you. It’s a simple ragú, which is fancy for a meat-based pasta sauce. They’re thicker and chunkier than your normal tomato sauce, with more stuff than tomato, if that makes sense. I love ragús, but the problem with them is that they’re very heavy for summer. Granted, I’m going to London and not Hawaii, but still. No one wants to eat a winter meal on a summer day.

Then I saw this recipe over at the New York Times. I loved a number of things about it: I loved that it looked a bit lighter than most ragús, especially with the use of turkey meat instead of the beef, veal, and pork many recipes call for. But I also loved that except for being a tad bit lighter, it wasn’t too fucked with–the soffritto is the traditional onions, carrots, celery, and garlic, without any Neapolitan flourishes like dried fruit or nuts.

Anyway, it looked good, it looked like something my friends will eat, and it looked like something I can make a day ahead of someone’s arrival, so that he has a nice meal waiting for him while I get to enjoy his company rather than my kitchen’s. That’s my perfect kinda cookin’, right there. ;-)

The first thing I did, as the recipe calls for, was to render my pancetta. Unfortunately, I no longer live in a place where pancetta is readily available. But a nice, thick-cut, bacon will do nicely. Now, this recipe is on crack with its timings, especially the fat rendering. It’ll take longer than 2-3 minutes to properly render some bacon, and bacon is nothing if not properly rendered. ;-)

So plan for about 5-10 minutes, depending on how much fat is on your pancetta.  Here’s mine, fresh in the pan. Mmmmmm. Bacon.

While the bacon cooked, I chopped up all the vegetables. Remember to chop the soffritto finely–it’s supposed to be almost like a paste as it cooks down, not like a bunch of chicken-soup vegetables. I cut corners by grating the carrots, rather than chopping. I also threw in a bunch of mushrooms I had left over from the party I’d held a few days earlier. They were delicious, giving the ragú a nice earthy flavor and chunkier texture. Here’s my lovely veg all ready to go in the pot:

The next step is to take the bacon out and put it on a plate, but leave the fat in the pan. Pour in the olive oil, then add your vegetables. And here’s what you want them to cook down to. They should be soft, and just starting to get golden and stick to the pan. You don’t want to burn the hell out of anything, but you want some lovely caramelization happening so you can scrape up all that goodness when your wine goes in.

When the vegetables are done, take them out and add them to the same plate that you did your bacon. Then fry up your turkey, breaking it up so it’s in nice small chunks and cooked through. Then you just throw all the veg and bacon back in, and add your red wine. Let that cook on the bottom of the pan for a few seconds, then start scraping all that caramelized goodness up into the sauce with a wooden spoon (be sure to use wooden as many pots are damaged by metal spoons). This is called deglazing your pan, for those of you who give a toss. ;-) When  you’ve got all that lovely goodness off the bottom of the pan, then season everything and add the crushed tomatoes. It’ll look like this as it cooks down:

To serve, spoon some sauce over pasta and add a dollop of ricotta cheese.

This sauce is super easy, super fast, and tastes relatively light for the season. But it’s absolutely delicious, and you can really taste the vegetables, the garlic, and that lovely bacon.

Buon appetito!

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Published on June 20, 2011 in Cooking with Nicole! and Food!. 1 Comment Tags: .

Cooking with Nicole: Eggplant Stew with Potatoes, Mushrooms, and Chickpeas

Hello my darlings! Last night I made the most fabulous vegetarian stew that I HAD to blog about. It seriously rocked my casbah. I took the recipe from what has to be the ultimate vegetarian cookbook. If you are a vegetarian, or like eating vegetarian, and you don’t have this cookbook…that’s like being a mammal and not having nipples. Seriously.

The cookbook is by the charming and lovely Madhur Jaffrey, a British cooking celebrity and actress whom you may recognize from Eastenders, among other shows. I adore her. Here’s a pic of the book:

And here’s the recipe I used:

(Sorry, I cannot get that last pic to rotate to save my soul.)

The big changes I made to start with was that I automatically threw an onion on my list, as everything Must Have Onion. I also knew I wasn’t going to be able to find asafetida at my local shop, so I knew I’d need extra garlic (a decent enough exchange), and I knew I was going to use red chili flakes instead of an entire dried chili. That last one is because I “know” how much red chili flake to use, whereas every time I fuck with a whole chili I end up burning someone’s face off. Usually my own.

After shopping, I had a lovely spread:

This is the kind of recipe where you want everything chopped and ready to be thrown in. It’s not that it’s difficult, and despite the wide variety of ingredients it’s actually a very straightforward recipe. But there are things, like frying spices, that need to be done quickly so they don’t burn.

So the first thing I did was a LOT of chopping. But first, some garlic smooooshing. If you don’t know how to crush garlic, as this recipe calls for, here’s how ya do it.

Choose a very wide bladed knife (a butcher knife, or a sudoku, as I have here), and lay your garlic clove out in the middle of an empty space:

Then, keeping a firm grip on the hilt, balance the knife (blade away from you) on top of the garlic clove, almost as if you were making a table top out of it. Then, once you’re confident you’re not going to slice the heel of your palm off (again, have the blade facing AWAY from you), use that heel to punch down on the knife, crushing the garlic underneath. You might try going slow and squishing, the first few times you try it, working up to a nice, swift motion as you become more comfortable. Just do be careful; such big knives can do some damage.

What you end up should look like this:

Despite the term “crushed,” it’s not going to be a paste (unless you’re the Hulk). It’ll be slivered, so that once you’ve crushed all your garlic, you can run your knife through the pile a few times, and be left with nice, chunkily chopped garlic that will melt into your stew:

After you’ve crushed your garlic (and, again, because I wasn’t able to find asafetida, I used the entire clove), you can start chopping everything else. Or make your friend do it (thanks, Eric!). Try to keep all the veg uniform in size. That’s partially for cooking time, but also so it looks nice in the bowl. For this recipe, I did a nice thick dice, as the recipe called for. Here’s everything all chopped up. First was the potato and onion, which I put into the same bowl as they go into the pot together:

I left the eggplant and the mushrooms (which I quartered AND forgot to take a picture of) separate, as they would go in a few minutes apart from each other and from the onion/potatoes.

While the last few things were being chopped, I put a very large stew pot over medium heat, adding the peanut oil. Whenever you’re cooking something with strong spice, such as Indian food, you always want to gently fry your spices. The key word there is “gently”: it’s very, very easy to burn your spice. When your oil is the right temperature, add your cumin and–as I didn’t use a whole chili–your red pepper flakes. The oil should be hot enough that the spices sizzle, but not smoke:

After about 10 seconds of enjoying all those gorgeous aromas, start adding the vegetables as Ms. Jaffrey commands. First add the potatoes (and onions):

Give everything a good stir, coating your veg in all that gorgeously fragrant oil. Let this cook a few minutes, then add your eggplant, and do the same:

Cook for another few minutes, then add your mushrooms:

After another few minutes, add your turmeric and ground coriander. Again, you are going to be knocked out by these smells. Stir the spices in a bit, then add your tomato puree (we used roasted tomato w/ garlic because, really, who can have enough garlic?). Next go in all those lovely chickpea and fragrant cilantro (fresh coriander). Finally, add a LOT of salt–use what the recipe calls for, but don’t be afraid to add more after tasting–and then the water. The recipe calls for four cups, but what you want is enough water that it reaches just the middle or bottom of the topmost veg. Keep in mind that all of these vegetables will cook down dramatically, and you don’t want to waste time boiling off tons of extra water.

As for cooking times, I cooked this for about 20 minutes with the lid on, then realized it was never going to boil down enough. I took the lid off, and cooked it another 30 minutes w/out the lid. Then again, I’d nearly doubled the recipe. So, my point is to play this one by ear. It’s not going to turn into a thick gravy, but it shouldn’t be soup, either.  You may have to adjust the time/method of cooking (lid on or off) to get your desired consistency. But definitely start with the lid on, till the veg boils down and you know what you’re working with.  Here’s everything as it began simmering away:

And here’s the stew all cooked down and ready to go:

To serve, we warmed some different breads–naan and some lovely wheat loaves–for dipping, and added a dollop of Greek yogurt to our bowls:

It was absolutely, amazingly delicious, and I can’t recommend this recipe highly enough. Let me know if you try it, and how it goes! And feel free to ask any questions you might have. Happy cooking!

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Published on November 15, 2010 in Cooking with Nicole! and Food!. 10 Comments Tags: , , , .

Cooking With Nicole: Enchilada Pie

This week, I’ll be showing you how I make my enchilada pie, which is sort of like a Tex-Mex lasagna. I don’t use a recipe for this, and I make it differently all the time. But the basic ingredients are always the same, and I’ll give you variations as we go along.

For the version I’m showing you, I made a vegetarian enchilada pie. I was attending a (very fun) potluck thrown by my colleague, and I knew she was vegetarian, as was at least one of my other colleague’s wives. So, keeping in mind my second law of catering,I made a vegetarian version of this dish. Everyone ate it with no meat, but at least two people would not have eaten it with meat.

For all versions of this dish, you’ll need the following:

  • Taco spice
  • Refried beans
  • Tortillas of your choice
  • Enchilada sauce
  • Cheese (Mexican blend, or cheddar, or whatever you like. Just lots of it)
  • Olive oil

For this version, my filling contained:

  • one  zucchini squash (courgette)
  • two large portobello mushrooms
  • one red pepper
  • one large onion

For a meaty version, your filling could also contain any of the following: ground beef, ground turkey, strips of chicken, beef and/or turkey, or anything else you’d like.

Here are my filling ingredients, all lovely and ready to rumble:

The first thing I did was chop all my vegetables into rough, big, but still bite-sized cubes. After which I put everything in a bowl, and coated the veg in olive oil and taco seasoning to marinade. Vegetables don’t need too long to marinade; I think I left these in for about 1/2 hour.

Here’s shots of the veg with and without the marinade:

As you can see, the marinade isn’t smothering the veg, but don’t be skimpy with it, either. A lot of the flavoring for the dish will come from this single layer. Also remember if using mushrooms that they soak up oil, so I’d use about 1/4 of a cup of oil for this many veg. Even if they seem a little dry, the mushrooms will release all their juice (and the oil) upon cooking.

[Note: If I were making this with, say, chicken I intended to grill and cube, I would have marinaded the chicken overnight. If I were using a ground up, taco filling (the turkey taco filling would be sublime in this), I would just cook any vegetables I used (and you can use all or none of the above with your taco meat) with the meat.]

After the veg is done marinading, I dump it into a big Pyrex dish, and roast it at 400℉ for, oh, maybe 30 minutes? Just keep checking it every fifteen minutes, stirring the veg around, till it’s roasted.

You’ll know it’s done when it looks like this:

While the veg is roasting (or the meat is cooking, depending on what version you make), I get everything else ready.

First of all, you want to put two cans of refried beans on to cook. You could, probably smear them on cold, but I think this would be a pain in the butt. Plus, the final dish will cook faster (obviously) if the ingredients are already warm. I use refried black beans:

But you can use whatever you like. While you’re by the beans at the grocery store, you also want a can of enchilada sauce. I’ve found through lots of tastings that the more ghetto and rinky-dink the can looks, the better the sauce tastes. So don’t go for the (white people’s) fancy, organic, stunningly packaged sauce. Go for something in the part of the store that houses all the authentic Mexican food, and that has the shittiest label possible. It will, inevitably, be the best enchilada sauce. For this version, I used this bad boy:

It was really, really tasty. You could also use the salsa verde version, or–gasp!–make your own, should you be so inclined.

When your beans are hot, and your vegetables are roasted (or you meat ready to roll), we can start assembling. First, at the bottom of another large pyrex dish, spread a layer of the enchilada sauce. This should keep the pie from sticking, but I still gave my dish a brushing of olive oil.

On top of the enchilada sauce, place your first layer of tortillas. I cut mine in half, and jigger them about quite a bit. You’re never going to get a perfect cover, so don’t drive yourself batty, but do get as much tortilla coverage as you can:

On top of these tortillas, you add your first layer of black beans. There will be two layers, eventually:

At this stage, you can also sprinkle a layer of cheese on top of the beans, if you’d like. Next comes another layer of tortilla:

On top of which you spread your layer of roasted veg (or your meat filling):

And then you’ve got another layer of tortilla, then one of beans (and cheese if you wish), and then one, final layer of tortilla. Upon this last layer of tortilla, you pour a generous amount of your enchilada sauce, and then start covering that sauce with your cheese:

You end up with a lovely enchilada pie, waiting to be baked:

Cover in foil, and bake the whole thing in a 375℉ oven, for about 30-45 minutes, or until the edges are bubbling. Take the foil off for the last fifteen minutes of baking, till the cheese melts and bubbles.

Serve with sour cream, guacamole, and salsa.

Obviously, you can make this dish any way you choose. Here are some possibilities you can explore:

  • Don’t like beans? Use two layers of veg, or two layers of meat/veg.
  • Don’t like veg? Use just a layer of meat between the beans.
  • Want more filling? Use two layers of filling with only one layer of beans, sandwiched in the middle.
  • Want a veggie/meatie Enchilda Neopolitan? Use one layer meat on the bottom, a layer of beans in the middle, and then a top layer of veg. OMG I just made myself hungry.
  • Make a fajita version, with grilled, marinated meats and veg.
  • Do a super simple, Taco Bell bean burrito version with a layer of cheese and roasted onion, a layer of beans, and another layer of cheese and roasted onion. I’d make out with that pie. A big, stinky, oniony make out. And I’d love every second.

If you can think of any other varietals, or you already make a variety, do share with the class! Or ask me any questions. AWESOME.

Here’s a picture of the finished product, sitting with all the other delicious food we consumed at the potluck:

We have to do it again soon, colleagues! YUM!

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Published on October 18, 2010 in Cooking with Nicole! and Food!. 9 Comments Tags: .

Cooking With Nicole: Seven-Layer Dip

Today, mah friends, I’m going to show just where you can stick that tomato rose from last week: directly into this seven-layer dip! Yes, it’s another seventies staple.

You’ve undoubtedly had a version of this dip. They’ve become common at grocery stores in the past few years, but there’s nothing like making it yourself. Everything is so much more fresh, and you can adjust the layers with whatever you like.

First, you start out with stunning smorgasbord of ingredients:

And a little help from a kitchen must have: The Joy of Cooking:

Here’s the recipe, itself:

Keeping in mind that I grew up in a family home that doubled as a catering biz, I have some “common sense” tips that people who didn’t grow up cooking might not think about. First of all, whenever you make a finger food…make sure it fits in people fingers and their mouths. In the case of a dip like this one, make sure everything’s diced fairly fine. After all, the whole point of this dip is in the name: seven-layers. A person wants all seven-layers in their gob, with every bite. If I leave my olives whole, or cut up great big chunks of tomato, that’s not going to happen.

The second thing to keep in mind when serving large amounts of people is that you want every recipe to be as palatable to as many people as possible. If I was making a tiny version of this dip for 6 close friends, all of whom I knew LOVED spicy foods, I’d use jalepeños. But if I’m taking this to a pot luck with people whom I don’t know well, as this particular dip was, I don’t use the chiles. Why? Because people who love spicy food will still eat this dip without it–it’s still creamy and delicious. But people who hate spicy food won’t touch it if there’s chiles in it. Meaning I go home with a huge quantity of dip that I neither need (hips!) nor do I want (it’s been sitting out at all day).

So always keep in mind the intention of the food (is it a fingerfood?) as well as the intended audience (and cater to the majority).

Otherwise, this dip is completely straightforward. I’d suggest prepping everything before you start layering, just because it makes the smearing all that much more enjoyable. And who doesn’t enjoy a good smear! Here’s me, all ready to go:

Start with your refried beans (I actually use the Frito-Lay Bean Dip, two cans) and your avocado. Don’t skimp on your lime juice. It really adds a fresh zing. I also think this avocado layer is what separates a homemade seven-layer dip from the store bought variety. Whatever they use to preserve avocado and keep it from going brown tastes really preservative-tastic. When you make it at home, all you have are fresh, and fresh-tasting, ingredients:

Then move on to your sour cream layer. I’ve almost never used the entire amount, but I also make this recipe from memory and not from the recipe, which I think is significantly bigger than the one I usually make. That said, keep in mind “balancing” your layers, whenever you make a dip like this. On top of your sour cream comes your diced spring onions. They add a really fresh, sweet, oniony taste:

And, finally, add your diced olives, your diced tomatoes, and your shredded cheese. I use mature cheddar, but use whatever you’d like. Doesn’t it look nummy? And yet… something’s missing…

I know! A tomato rose! Now that’s what I call a seven-layer dip:

I sprinkled this one with some chopped chives I had from making omelettes.  You could also use chopped parsley, cilantro, or some leftover green onion. The green just adds a little contrast to the orange of the cheese and the red of the tomato.

Finally, the recipe says to heat this dip up. To be honest, I’ve never eaten it this way (although I do plan to at some point). I’ve always served it cold, and it’s delicious that way. It’s also a lot easier to transport and keep fresh if it’s not warmed up, if you’re having a picnic or a potluck.

And that, my friends, is a seven-layer dip! Next time you’re tempted to buy one, resist and make it from scratch. It’s so much better, and you can tweak the recipe to suit your own tastes. Love chile? Add a shitload! Like onion?  Use chopped vidalia instead of green onion. Not a fan of raw tomato? Use canned salsa. Once you’ve made it a few times, it takes about 1/2 hour to make, from start to finish, and you have a way tastier product. Plus you get to say, “I made this, bitches!” which always impresses people. Just don’t actually say that, especially the “bitches” part. Just carry the dip out, all normal-like, and absorb the ooohs and aaaaahs. Act humble. Gloat inside.

It’s a cook’s prerogative!

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Published on October 4, 2010 in Cooking with Nicole! and Food!. 6 Comments Tags: , , .

Cooking With Nicole: The Art of the Tomato Rose

Making flowers out of things that aren’t flowers is a staple of seventies cuisine. I was only alive for two years of the 1970s, but my mom’s cooking repertoire was mostly formed in that decade.

So I am, at least in stomach, a child of the seventies.

This time, however, the proof is not in the pudding, but in the tomato rose. Yes, folks, one of my many completely pointless talents is the ability to turn just about any vegetable out there into some kind of flower. And one of the most satisfying of my Tricks With Vegetables (or fruit, in this case) is the tomato rose.

You want to start with a very large, very red tomato and a very sharp knife that gives you some mobility:

Begin your cut at the top, right by the green bit. Insert the sharp side of your knife under the skin. You’ll probably need to practice on a few tomatoes to get the right thickness of peel: too thin, and it looks anemic; too thick, and it won’t curl but will break. As for the width of your peel, you want about a good inch, so your rose isn’t too squat or too narrow when you roll it up. Here’s my first cut (keep in mind I have tiny chimp fingers if you’re using my thumb as a measuring aid):

Continue slicing around the tomato, just like you would if you were peeling an apple to make a pig-tail peeling:

Continue cutting all the way down and around the tomato. The key here, again, is thickness of peel. You don’t want it too thick, or you won’t be able to roll it without breaking it. Nor do you want it too thin, or you end up with a sad little anorexic rose.

When you’re done peeling the tomato, you’ll have a nice long tomato skin to flower-up:

To begin forming the flower, start by rolling one end of the skin–outside-of-the-tomato-inwards:

Continue rolling, keeping the tomato tight so it makes a nice, firm rosebud. And yes, I giggled typing that:

Keep rolling until your rosebud has become a rose. After which, you can secure it by either nestling it in a dip, as I’ve done below, or securing it with a toothpick or two if there’s nothing in which it can nestle.

And that, my friends, is how one makes a tomato rose. Be careful, or I may turn you into a garnish! Next time on Cooking With Nicole, I shall continue the Seventies theme with the above nestling-tool: good, old-fashioned, Seven-Layer Dip. YUM. See you shortly!

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Published on September 27, 2010 in Cooking with Nicole!. 12 Comments Tags: , .

Cooking With Nicole: Turkey Tacos, or “Put a Bunch of Shit in a Pot”

For those who have followed me here or on Twitter, you know I love tacos of all kinds. I’ve tweeted a lot of pictures of tacos in my day: chorizo tacos, tongue tacos, goat tacos, tacos in fancy restaurants, tacos from trucks, tacos for Taco Tuesday, the list is endless. But when I make tacos for myself and my friends, I usually make my Turkey Tacos.

Why? Because I like to put a lot of really unhealthy shit in my tacos. I want to slather on the sour cream, pile on the cheese, and add a healthy dollop of guac. And I want to eat two, till I’m bursting at the seams with taco goodness. And yet, I don’t want to feel too guilty, or feel like I can only make tacos once or twice a month, because they’re just piles of fatty goodness.

So I’ve learned to make a healthier filling, which mitigates my guilt about eating tacos as often as I can. It’s also a great way to use up leftover veg (something I’m terrible about).

Basically, my tacos are filled with ground turkey (obviously), and then Any Veg I Find In My Fridge. Hence the “bunch of shit in a pot,” part. For this outing, I had a of couple droopy carrots, a zucchini, a ginormo red pepper, an onion (you always want an onion), garlic, and what I thought were shelled edamame, but were actually pods of edamame, so they didn’t end up in the tacos.

Your first step is to cut up your veg, adding it to a pot over medium flame, into which you’ve added a generous few tablespoons of olive oil.

You can see that I’ve done quite a chunky dice on my veg. I’m an adult; I’m doing the cooking; I don’t need to be fooled. If you are cooking for kids who don’t necessarily want to know they’re eating veg, don’t forget you can always grate a carrot or grate a zucchini into a sauce, and they’re usually none the wiser. Chop the red pepper up fine, and it pretty much melts into the salsa-like texture of the final product, so they think it’s tomato. As they get older, you can stop grating and start slicing, so this is a great way to “thin edge of the wedge” some vegetables into their lives.

While I’m softening my veg (not browning, just softening), I usually cook the turkey meat (and this time I am going for a little browning) in a separate skillet to save time, while not overcrowding my pan. Rule number 4 of cooking meat is never overcrowd you pan! As liquid’s released in the cooking process, if you’ve got too full a pan you end up releasing too much liquid and steaming, rather than browning, your meat.

When both the turkey and the veg are done, combine and add a shit ton of taco spice. I buy the little jars of spice, rather than the individual packets. But if you buy the packets, to figure out how much you need, think in terms of pounds of meat and pounds of veg. And then add some extra, to make it even tastier.

After adding the spice, remember to add a cup or two of water that you’ll simmer off. This is especially important with the vegetables: if you don’t do this you have what’s more like fajitas than tacos. Which is delicious, but when you want taco meat, you want taco meat, and no fajita will do the trick.

While your filling is simmering away, you can pull out yer good stuff. Mmmm. Creamy.

And here’s the final filling. It’s actually about half vegetables, but you’d never know by the taste or the texture. Granted, some of that’s probably from all the MSG in the taco spice, but let’s not get persnickety! ;-)

Other good news: It freezes like a dream. So this is a good trick for making guilt-free tacos that are really, really tasty. And remember the grating vegetables trick: it works especially well in spaghetti sauce. So you can be feeding your kids the marinara they like, but spiking it with grated carrot and/or zucchini.

For those of you who are entirely vegetarian, or want a vegetarian option, do everything I did up until the turkey part. Instead of browning meat and adding it to the mix, open up and rinse three or four cans of beans. I like a combo of chickpea and kidney, OR cannellini and black beans. But obviously you can go nuts. Just add the beans, add the spice, and add the water (probably a bit more than with the meat) and boil the fuck out of it, till it’s the right consistency. I used to make this a lot in Edinburgh, as my former partner loved it and we didn’t have to worry about it being halal. You can eat it like a stew or as a taco filling.

This isn’t a fancy recipe, and it’s not even a recipe, really. But it’s a good way to think about cooking–use what’s in your fridge, try to sneak in vegetables wherever you can, and try either different meats than beef, or no meat, whenever possible. I’ve got nothing against the moo-cow, however Bessie isn’t very good for us on a daily basis.

Coming up next on Cooking With Nicole, I’ll teach you how to make a tomato rose garnish. How is THAT for seventies chic?

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Published on September 20, 2010 in Cooking with Nicole!, Food! and Nicole Peeler. 13 Comments Tags: .

Cooking With Nicole: Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit!

Hello mah friends! Today, we’ll be cooking Cuban black beans together. Cuban food is one of my all time favorites, ever since I went to Miami to visit my friend, Marcia Martinez, when I was a senior in High School. Her mom fed me picadillo, rice, and black beans, and I was hooked.

First of all, before we start, you might want to help yourself to an apron:

Because this recipe’s a spitter. Secondly, when it comes time actually to cook your beans, you might want a little mood music. Buena Vista Social Club, anyone?

And now for the recipe. The one I use is from this fabulous cookbook:

It’s such a great book, and the other recipes in here are fabulous. But for today, we’ll be using this recipe, for Cuban Black Beans:

You can tell from the schmutz on the pages how well loved this recipe is to me. It’s a great choice for lovers of Cuban food, or lovers of Mexcian food who’ve never tried Cuban. It’s also a great choice for vegetarians, or those who’ve gone gluten-free. You can serve it as a taco-filling, as a side dish for Cuban or Tex-Mex, or with rice as a main course. Make it brown rice and you’ll be so fucking hippie-tastic and healthy you’ll want to make out with yourself.

The first step is to soak your beans overnight. I hear much talk of pressure cookers, and rumors of how “nowadays you don’t have to soak your beans,” but I’m a soaker. I’ve always soaked my beans, and I’m sticking to it. I don’t really know why people bitch about this step: you put beans in a bowl and cover them with water. It takes two seconds. You don’t have to massage them for twenty-four hours, or anything.

When it comes time to cook your beans, use a large pot. There’s a lot of cooking down, and stirring of hot liquids, and this recipe tends to spatter, anyway. Mitigate risk to yourself and your clothing by using a big enough pot.

The second step to any bean recipe is Boil The Shit Out Of Them, and this one is no exception. So take your big pot, dump in yer beans, a diced red pepper, and a few bay leaves, like so:

Then cover with about 2 inches of water. One of the tricks to this recipe that comes with making it a few times is getting the timing/boiling right. The beans will cook, at this stage, for about 2 hours. You can add more water if you need to, but ideally, after making it a few times, you’ll get to where you know how hard to boil the right amount of water for a two hour cooking time.

When you have about a 1/2 hour left of boiling yer beans, you’ll want to start making your sofrito. Sofrito is the base of most Spanish food, and its influence is felt all over South America, the Caribbean, and everywhere else the Spanish set up shop. All it is is pepper, onion, and garlic, all softened together in lots of olive oil. Talk about yum! Here’s yer fixins:

The key to sofrito is not to fry everything hard. Keep the oil hot enough it sizzles, but no so hot it just fries everything brown in two seconds. You’re softening the vegetables, you’re not browning them. So watch your oil. It should look about like this as it goes in:

The other thing that I do at this stage is to throw in a few heaping teaspoons of red pepper flakes. I don’t use the rocatillo chiles the recipe calls for: they’re hard to source, and I always end up forgetting I’ve just cut up chile and touch something I shouldn’t. Ouch! So I use the red pepper flakes, instead. Obviously, you can adjust this seasoning to your preference, or feel free to follow the recipe and use the fresh chile.

The other thing you do, after the sofrito is cooked, is add the cumin and the vinegar to it. I use both, and I use the maximum amount suggested. Obviously, you can adjust to your taste. I use the cider vinegar, but when I was in Spain I always made this dish with sherry vinegar. It was SUBLIME. So if you can get your hands on the sherry vinegar a) use that and b) tell me where you got it.

After the two hours are up, and the sofrito’s made, fold it into your beans.

See how the vegetables aren’t fried brown? And also not fried to mush? As for the beans, you want them to be very much cooked down, but still quite liquid. You have another 1/2 hour of cooking, and you can always do some of that with the lid off if it’s still too wet for your liking.

When you mix in the sofrito, some magical bean alchemy makes them go all creamy. Yum! This is just from adding the sofrito:

After that, you cover the pot and let it all simmer together for another 1/2 hour. Again, if you’ve used too much water to start, you might want to take the lid off for a portion of this cooking time to evaporate some of the liquid.

Eventually, you’ll have a massive portion of beautiful, beautiful beans. What I did with this batch, as I live alone, is to freeze it in cup-sized portion. It’s a perfect meal-for-one, either served over rice or as two delicious burritos.

Oh, and of course I had one yummy dinner, right away. Just a spoonful of light sour cream, all over brown rice.  Yum!

So that’s how you make Cuban Black Beans. It’s so good! And thanks to Marcia to introducing me to Cuban food. If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear from you!

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Published on September 12, 2010 in Cooking with Nicole!. 8 Comments Tags: , , .

Cooking With Nicole! Cooking Tip: Bell Peppers

This semester, I’m teaching a class that involves, amongst other things, creating author platforms. In other words, how to market your self as a “brand.” Which is hilarious, on a number of levels, but especially because everything I’ve learned has been the hard way. I had no idea what to expect when I sold Tempest Rising. I’d not planned on being an author, and hadn’t spent years talking to people at cons, or befriending other writers, or reading books on the Craft or the Business. What I did was randomly write a book from my little corner of the Ivory Tower, and when it sold, I was dropped right into the soup.

So I am learning as much from this class and from my students as, hopefully, my students are learning from my (mis)adventures as a newbie author. And one of the things we’re talking about in the class is sustainability, or how you can actually do what you say you’re going to do. My bug bear is, and always has been, blogging. Unless I’m traveling, going to a con, or randomly hit by inspiration, I have no idea what to blog about. In other words, it’s hard for me to sustain my blogging. One of the things we’ve talked about in the class is having thematic subjects regularly to blog about, or blogging about your interests, or challenging yourself to a new hobby that you can then blog about, in terms of your engagement, success, etcetera.

And that was my a-ha! moment. I decided to do a combination of the above, with cooking. I’m a good cook (my parents were caterers on the side when I was growing up), and I love cooking, but I never do it anymore. I’m always “too busy,” “in a rush,” whatever. So one of the things I wanted to do this year was get back into cooking. And then I realized that was a great opportunity for blogging: It’s a passion of mine, it’s something I want to do for me and I like to share, so why not blog about what I love?

So I’m going to start a new blog series, here, called Cooking With Nicole. It’s not going to be a regularly scheduled thing, but I’ll do it as I have time and inspiration.

What do you think?

To give you a taste, I thought I’d start the series with a cooking tip on how to make perfect bell pepper strips, for either fancy dipping or chopping, like you might want for a mango salsa recipe or any other recipes where the pepper will clearly be seen.

Start by cutting the top and bottom off the bell pepper. You can either eat these, throw them away, or chop them up on their own depending on what you’re serving and why.

Next, make an incision vertically down the red pepper. Then, run your knife along the inside of the pepper, like so:

This cleanly removes the guts of the pepper and any of the bitter, white connective tissues holding them in place. After which, you should be left with a clean pepper smile:

…that you can easily slice into perfect, aesthetically pleasing, admittedly a little OCD strips of bell pepper:

These are also very easy to chop, and they make a nice, clean, even and proportional diced pepper for raw salsas, dips, and other recipes where your bell pepper won’t get stewed and mushy. That said, this is also a really easy method for chopping that actually saves you a lot of time, once you get used to it.

And I always eat the ends . . . so it doubles as snack time. :-)

Next time on Cooking With Nicole, I’ll be sharing my favorite Cuban black beans recipe . . . Sofrito here we come!

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Published on September 6, 2010 in Cooking with Nicole! and Nicole Peeler. 27 Comments Tags: , .