Ham Pie Sandwiches

BAGEL!

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:39:00 +0000

For the first time in weeks, we've had a whole bag of bagels in the house. This clearly leads to LUNCH PARTY.

I toasted a sesame bagel and ate it with cream cheese, red bell pepper, green onion, leaf lettuce, and black pepper. YEAH!!

Winter is awesome: roasted cauliflower and carrot

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:48:00 +0000

Want to cram more delicious winter vegetables in your maw? Me too!

We have been all about the cauliflower lately, so I took one of the two in the refrigerator, cored it, and chopped it into pieces. Yes, we had two cauliflowers--what's wrong with that? There are two of us!

I scrubbed, trimmed, and chunked up three or four carrots before mixing them with the cauliflower. Then I tossed everything with red wine-dijon vinaigrette, spread all the veg evenly in two baking dishes (our regular casserole dish was too small), and threw it all into the 375F oven for about 40 minutes.

Voila: plenty of tasty roasted veg with satisfying crispy brown edges! Eat it with:
- A big vat of stew or soup of your choice.
- A tasty savory sloppy joe-style sandwich, of either a meaty or a lentily variety.
- Baked bbq tofu or tempeh. Bonus: cook everything at once!
- A roast, if you eat, you know, roasts. Double cook everything at once bonus!

YEAH!

5 years

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:09:00 +0000

Does everyone have David Bowie firmly in their heads now? Ok then.

Yes! So today is the official 5th anniversary of Ham Pie Sandwiches. TIME FOR CAKE--except I actually didn't make any cake. Instead, gaze in wonder upon my lunch!

I toasted some sourdough bread (baked by the lovely Veronica) with honey mustard, red pepper, cremini mushrooms, green onion, salami (on one of two slices), havarti with dill, and cracked pepper. On the side we have a fuji apple, clearly sliced before I put my sandwich business into the toaster oven, but delicious nonetheless.

I think this is a completely appropriate way to celebrate five years of normal, achievable food, don't you?

Everybody likes gratin

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:11:00 +0000

The gratin dish has quickly become our favorite thing ever. The best part is that it's HUGE and thus holds enough content to create actual leftovers. We have been making and eating every gratin in the land, most notably chard and cauliflower.

On this particular occasion, we were making pasta puttanesca--i.e. with a simple tomato and olive sauce--for dinner. This is fine and all, but it's fairly plain. So, to dress it up, we threw the finished & sauced pasta in the gratin dish, scattered a mixture of breadcrumbs, cheese, and herbs over the top, and baked it at 375F for about a half hour.

Clearly, the crispy business on top is the best part of any gratin. In fact, you can use it to transform practically anything reasonably bakeable--such as the aforementioned pasta--into a pan of glorious deliciousness. Go forth!

Crispy crunchy gratin topping

breadcrumbs (or just finely chopped bread)
olive oil
cheese
salt, pepper
various seasonings, herbs, or vegetables

Essentially, we just want to finely chop (or grate, or blitz in ye olde food processor) everything, mix it all together, then spread it over a pan of whatever it is you want to gratinée.

The proportions here are almost totally up to you. I like to start with a more or less equal ratio of breadcrumbs to cheese, but it's also totally fine to go for lots of breadcrumbs and only the tiniest bit of cheese, or a lot of cheese and only a few breadcrumbs. Then you can add a whole lot of different herbs or seasonings, or you can leave them out entirely. It's all about using (or using up) whatever you have on hand.

So. Mix your desired amount of breadcrumbs with your desired amount of grated cheese. I usually make my own breadcrumbs by chopping up any stale (or not stale) ends of bread I have lying around. You can use nearly any kind of cheese you want. Obvious grating cheeses like parmesan and romano work well, but so do gruyere, emmenthaler, white cheddar, and gouda. If you want to crumble in some blue cheese or feta instead of grating anything, go for it. It all depends on what you have and the particular flavor combination you're going for.

Mix a drizzle of olive oil or melted butter with the crumbs and cheese. Use just enough oil to moisten everything slightly. Season with a tiny bit of salt (be careful here, since cheese is salty) and several good grinds of pepper.

At this point, you can chop and add whatever else you like to season the gratin mixture. We decided to add some fresh parsley, a handful of green olives, and a couple cloves of garlic. Other things that might be good: chopped shallot or green onion, any other herbs you like, some paprika or hot pepper flake, a spoonful of pesto or tapenade, or some roasted red pepper or sun-dried tomatoes. You could do a red pepper and shallot crumb for a pan of baked macaroni and cheese, a black olive and basil crumb for cauliflower gratin, a feta and sun-dried tomato crumb for a dish of zucchini and eggplant, or a simple cheddar crumb for a dish of scalloped potatoes. Anything goes as long as it sounds good to you.

Now spread your gratin topping lovingly over your dish of food, stick it in the oven (on a cookie sheet if there's any danger of overflow), and bake it. The temperature and timing will vary depending on what you're making, but it's generally reasonable to start out at 350 or 375F and check for progress after about half an hour.

The completed gratin will be beautifully browned, crispy, and fragrant on top, and hot, bubbling and moist underneath. Hooray! Complementary textures for the win!

Lemon cardamom oat bars--er, loaf.

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:33:00 +0000

Last night, after a large and virtuous dinner of an Ol' Reliable and a bowl of vinaigrette-roasted cauliflower and carrots, I made a batch of (never home)maker's lemon cardamom oat bars.

I had been scoping these out for a few days, since they looked so easy and sounded so good. However, I was a little suspicious because they require no oil or butter whatsoever. Of course, I only noticed this after I had already started mixing up ingredients. At that point I said "well, let's see how they turn out," finished mixing, spread my batter into a parchment-papered loaf pan (we have no 8x8 pan and probably never will, considering how long we've managed without one), and threw it into a 350F oven. Verdict: they turned out well, but were just slightly dry. I may try adding a spoonful of applesauce or labneh to the batter next time.

We had whole cardamom pods instead of ground and an actual lemon instead of a bottle of juice, so the first order of business was creating ground cardamom and lemon juice. I bashed the seeds out of four cardamom pods with a mortar & pestle, fished out the husks, and ground the aforementioned seeds coarsely. I tore off a quarter of a lemon and squeezed the juice out through my fingers, catching the seeds in my palm.

Then I mixed those with an egg and half a cup of maple syrup, and added in the dry ingredients. I never mix the dry and wet ingredients separately, so I threw the 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1 cup rolled oats and 1 cup flour straight into the bowl of wet, mixing once after the oats and again after the flour. The resulting batter was a little thick, but still pretty easy to press into the pan with the back of my spatula.

Even with all the cardamom-bashing, this was one of the fastest recipes ever! For once it did indeed take me less than the oven preheating time to completely finish a batter. Usually I end up running all over the kitchen putting ingredients back right after I've used them. This time, even though I did clean a little as I went, I was entirely done by the time the oven beeped. NICE.

Since I was using a loaf pan, I ended up baking these for a little over the required time--more like 35 minutes. The result was a panful of super-fragrant oat business, which was tasty as is but even better with apricot jam. I have a feeling it would be extra super plus good with some labneh or Greek yogurt. Maybe I should actually go and get some of that within the next, uh, day. Otherwise the whole pan of delicious business is going to be gone.

Butter Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:58:00 +0000

We had Inga and Dave over for brunch, and boy are my arms tired!!

Oh, wait.

Menu:
Buckwheat waffles with maple and/or birch syrup
Scrambled eggs
Baguette pieces with butter and/or apricot jam
Salad greens with vinaigrette (for authentic Brooklyn-in-CA brunch)
Roasted fingerling potatoes with yellow onion
Coffee
Mimosas

Yes, it was a very carbohydrate-intensive brunch, but that's ok! A good time was had by all.

So, since most of the other things on the menu are pretty intuitive, let's talk about this birch syrup. We had never heard of it before John's dad sent us a little jug from Alaska for Christmas.

In a lot of ways, birch syrup is like maple syrup--it's just derived from birch sap instead of maple sap. However, it's thinner, darker in color, and smells a bit like molasses. In the picture up top, there's birch syrup in the front left quadrant--check out how pale it makes the maple syrup look!

Clearly, a batch of buckwheat waffles was the perfect testing ground.

For the waffles, we switched up the standard Joy of Cooking recipe, subbing buckwheat flour for about a third of the original white flour. When you have a waffle iron, a jug of birch syrup (and one of maple), and people coming over for brunch, you have to make waffles, right? Right. We made waffles.

We made so many waffles that several of them got to make their temporary home in our freezer. This, in turn, means we can now have waffles and syrup for dessert on the slightest of impulse. Hooray!

Buckwheat waffles

1 cup unbleached white flour
3/4 cup buckwheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
a stick of butter, melted (8 tbsp, for those of you)
1 1/2 cups milk

This is super easy. Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix gently until combined.

Cook 1/2 cup of batter at a time in a hot greased waffle iron. You'll know your waffles are done when they stop steaming. Pry them off the iron with a chopstick, flip them onto a plate, and eat them with butter, syrup, jam, fruit, or whatever else you like on your waffles.

Of course, if you don't want sweet stuff on your waffles, that's fine too. These contain little enough sugar that they can totally take a savory addition instead. For instance, juicy braised greens with hot sauce and crispy bacon would be an excellent plan.

Brandy butter rice soup redux: using what we canned

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:12:00 +0000

The other day John and I decided we wanted our awesome tomato rice soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, so we pulled out the first-ever jar of home-canned tomato sauce.

Using our own canned tomato was a little nerve-racking! I mean, nobody wants botulism in this day and age (or, you know, in any day and age). But all my jars looked good, smelled fine, and presented no issues whatsoever, so I ventured forth and did meet with victory upon the field of battle. It wasn't even St. Crispian's Day or anything!

To open home-canned jars, use the flat side of a standard bottle opener. Hook the broad edge over the top of the lid, and the little punched-out edge under the lip of the jar. Press down on the top of the opener with your thumb as you pull the lever arm upward. The lid will come right off with a nice pop. Voila!

Yeah, you guys probably know this, but it never hurts to have more info, right? Especially considering the lack of general cooking & food preservation knowledge in American culture over the past 40 years.

Anyway. This soup is more than the sum of its parts. I blame the butter and the brandy.

Brandy butter rice soup

butter
garlic (&/or onion, shallot, etc.)
tomato puree or sauce
vegetable broth
raw long grain rice
brandy
salt, pepper, basil
fresh parsley &/or other garnish of your choice

Melt a large chunk of butter in a reasonable soup pot. You can cut it with olive oil (or replace it entirely) if you so choose.

Smash and peel a good eight or ten cloves of garlic. I like to leave mine in large chunks, but it would also be fine to mince them. When your butter is melted, add the garlic to the pot. Cover, turn the heat to low, and cook slowly for about ten or fifteen minutes. This long slow poach will essentially give you garlic-infused butter, which is of course well worth pursuing.

When your garlic is all tender and lovely, add your tomato to the pot. I used a full jar of our summer tomato sauce; you can use whatever form of tomato is available to you. Season with salt, pepper, and basil. I want to experiment with other herbs in the future.

Turn the heat up to medium and simmer for about five minutes. Now it's time to add your rice. Since the rice needs to cook in the soup, you'll need to add some vegetable broth as well. So. Add about half a cup of rice, plus a cup or more of vegetable broth, according to how thick you like your soup. Add in a good shot of brandy as well. Bring the pot to a boil, turn down the heat, cover, and simmer until the rice is cooked through. The time will vary based on the type of rice you're using. I think mine took about fifteen minutes from zero to tender.

When your rice is cooked, your soup is essentially ready. If the soup is too thin for your liking, take off the lid and boil it down a little longer; if it's too thick, add a little more vegetable broth. Taste and correct any seasonings, and you are done.

Eat your soup with chopped parsley, chervil, or whatever other herb sounds good to you. Some sour cream or plain yogurt would be nice too.

Since this is tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich is the obvious companion choice. Toast or biscuits would work too. Otherwise, a white bean vinaigrette could provide a good contrast in texture & acidity.

Salads with things on them

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:02:00 +0000

The salad with things on top heads the list of great dinners at our house. Our most common variation is the Ol' Reliable: a massive amount of greens topped with seared marinated tempeh. But what happens when you don't have any tempeh, or are in the mood for something else? Well. What other things could you put on top of your greens?

If you eat meat, you could have a green salad with chunk tuna (as in a salade Niçoise) or a tuna salad. I would go for either a traditional tuna salad or a more Waldorfy variation with apple or pear, toasted pecans, celery, and what have you. A tuna vinaigrette with capers would be great too. If tuna is not your thing, you could sear off a couple thinly sliced or pounded pieces of chicken or beef with a little garlic, slice them up, squeeze on a little lemon juice, and serve them on top of your salad. But if you want to keep everything vegetarian, it's a good plan to go for a chickpea salad, a white bean vinaigrette, or a liberal application of egg.

While it's certainly possible (and delicious) to make a big green salad with simple chopped eggs, it's substantially more interesting to transform those eggs into something more. This time, I made egg salad.

Butter lettuce with egg salad

Hard boil as many eggs as you want to eat. Ice them, whack them all over with the back of a spoon, and peel them. Rinse and chop; mix with a large spoonful of mayo, a smaller spoonful of dijon mustard, some finely chopped red onion, chopped chives or dill, and a spoonful of capers if you like that kind of thing. Season with salt and pepper. We put a little Tapatio hot sauce in this particular batch; I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a great choice. Slightly spicy egg salad? Yes, please.

For your greens, core, wash, dry, and tear up a head of butter lettuce. If you want to use other salad greens, go right ahead; this works with nearly any kind of green. I might even deliberately choose a more bitter lettuce like endive, for a high contrast against the super-creamy egg.

When you're ready to assemble everything into one glorious plate of deliciousness, arrange a few handfuls of lettuce on your plate, and add some finely chopped red onion and any other chopped vegetables you'd like. Dress with vinaigrette (or oil and lemon) if you so desire; we had ours dry.

Now grab a fork, sit down, and eat.

I especially like this style of dinner because you don't just get full--you also feel great after you eat it. In the land of super-salted, oiled, and stomach-weighting dinners, this is a rare and precious commodity.

White bean and kale soup

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:50:00 +0000

I believe the applicable phrase is "aww yeah." I wish we had another pot of white beans all soaked and done so I could eat another batch of this tonight. I really do.

White beans and kale are:
- the perfect flavor combination: creamy and rich vs bitter and tangy
- super cheap yet super healthy
- hearty & rib-sticking for a satisfying winter dinner

Go forth and make some!

White bean and kale soup

white beans
olive oil
onion/garlic/a combination
carrots
celery
hot peppers of your choice
dry vermouth for deglazing
bean or veg broth
kale or other appropriate greens
salt, pepper, sage, thyme, marjoram, a bay leaf
lemon juice or apple cider vinegar
optional liquid smoke

If you're using dried beans, start them the day before you want this soup. Sort a cup or two of beans, wash them in two changes of cold water, soak them overnight in twice their depth of water, and boil them, covered, for about an hour, or until cooked through & lovely. It's also a good idea to add a bay leaf to your beans for extra flavor. Presto: a big pan of beans plus homemade white bean broth, all ready for your soup!

Ok. When you're ready to make the actual soup, chop up some onion and garlic and sauté them with a slug of olive oil in the bottom of a large soup pot. While those are softening, finely dice a couple of carrots and sticks of celery; add them to the pot and continue to sauté. If you want some spice in your soup, mince a hot pepper and add it as well. Add a pinch of salt to help draw out the vegetables' juices. If your pan gets too hot and the vegetables start to stick, deglaze quickly with a little dry vermouth. In fact, just deglaze no matter what, since dry vermouth is awesome.

Once your vegetables are all tender and beautiful, season them with your preferred amount of pepper, sage, thyme, and marjoram. You can also add some red pepper flakes or paprika if you don't have a hot pepper yet still want spicy soup. Then add your cooked beans and their broth (and, incidentally, their bay leaf) to the pot. If you're using canned beans, drain off the canning liquid and use two or three cups of vegetable broth and a new bay leaf instead. You could also add some vegetable broth if you just don't have enough homemade bean broth to make the soup adequately liquid; it's all good.

Bring the pot to a boil; lower the heat; cover; simmer. I'd give it at least ten or fifteen minutes for the flavors to meld before you taste it and correct any seasonings. While you're waiting, wash, destem, and chop up a bunch of kale or other winter greens of your choice. Since greens shrink a lot when cooked, be sure to use a whole lot of them! I used an entire batch of curly kale for this (admittedly large) pan of soup. Anyway. When you'r ready, add your greens to the pan, stir, and let cook for another five minutes, or until wilted. Take the pan off the heat.

To finish the soup, we need a little acid. So. First, taste your pan of soup to see what you're dealing with. Then either squeeze the juice of a quarter (or even half) of a lemon into your pan, or add a tablespoon or so of apple cider vinegar. Stir everything together and taste again. The acid will have heightened the flavors and made the soup feel almost less heavy than before.

If you want a smoky soup, it is also time to add a few careful drops of liquid smoke. Add maybe three to five drops, stir, and taste. The if you want a smokier end product, you can add a drop or two more. Liquid smoke can be super overpowering, though, so be sure to add it bit by tiny bit.

Now is the time when you can eat plenty of delicious soup! Serve yourself a bowl, garnish with a bit of torn parsley or grated parmesan, and dig in.

Things to eat with this soup:
- toast, pita bread, or cornbread
- a grilled cheese sandwich, if you feel the need for such a thing
- a big green salad
- some sort of delicious pickle, such as pickled carrots
- nothing at all; it's totally a full meal & very satisfying all by itself.

HOORAY.

Hot rice salad with Mediterranean vegetables

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 03:46:00 +0000

This is exactly the kind of thing I want to eat now that it's the new year. Cheap, easy, healthy, good.

I guess this is more of a hot rice salad than anything else, though I don't exactly think of it that way. I'm much more likely to call it "rice stuff" or possibly "a big tasty mess." I'm perfectly happy with those titles, especially since "mess" usually equals "delicious" around here; however, they aren't really that descriptive. So let's call it hot rice salad with Mediterranean vegetables.

That wasn't so bad, was it?

Hot rice salad with Mediterranean vegetables

olive oil
red onion (or yellow; it's cool)
garlic
green olives
artichoke hearts
red pepper
dry vermouth
tomato puree
chard
fresh parsley
salt, pepper, oregano, basil, maybe some marjoram
cooked rice

If you don't happen to have a bunch of leftover rice lying around, put a pot of it on first. Give it maybe fifteen minutes or so before you start cooking everything else; this way the rice should be done by the time you need it. I used long grain brown, which was more than satisfactory.

When you're ready to cook, warm up a wide sauté pan and sauté some chopped onion and garlic in a slug of olive oil. Since I was cooking just for me, I probably used about a quarter of a red onion and two or three cloves of garlic. If you like hot pepper, you may want to mince some up and add it as well.

While the onion and garlic soften, chop up some green olives and add them to the pan. Chop up part of a red pepper and add it to the pan. Drain some artichoke hearts of any overambitious marinade, quarter them, and add them to the pan. It's pretty much all cutting things up and adding them to the pan.

Add some salt, oregano, basil, and whatever other herb you think might sound good, stir everything to combine, and cook for about five minutes, or until the vegetables are nice and tender. Deglaze with a splash of dry vermouth if you have some hanging around. Then add a couple big spoonfuls of tomato puree (or sauce, or whatever). If you add more tomato, the finished business will end up more like a pasta sauce, which is great, if that's what you want. You could totally put this on pasta. However, we are currently doing rice.

Anyway. Give the tomato sauce a few minutes to cook, so all the flavors distribute well. You might need to add some more salt at this point too. Then add as much rice as you like. You want to aim for a roughly equal volume of vegetable mix and rice, or maybe a little more vegetables, but it's ultimately up to you.

Give it another five minutes or so on the heat while you wash and chop a big handful of greens. I used the darkest of red chard, with red leaves as well as green, which was awesome, but you can use practically any cookable green you like. I maybe wouldn't go for the very sturdiest greens like cabbage or collards, but other than that, use whatever you want.

Add your greens to the pan, stir to mix, and cook for another minute, or until they're just wilted. Sturdier greens will take a few more minutes; tender greens will wilt just fine off the heat entirely. Turn off the burner, add some chopped parsley, and you're done.

Now eat it and feel better about your life and the world in general.

NYE

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:32:00 +0000

Post-holiday roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:48:00 +0000

Well. This christmas I got food poisoning and spent most of the day either in bed or face down on the floor, so I have zero delicious holiday food to discuss. How about we talk about some of the presents I gave instead?

Like everyone else on the internet, I wanted to give some handmade gifts this year. I had been half-planning to give out little bottles of homemade schnapps, but since 90% of the people to whom I give presents live at least 500 miles away, and the post office doesn't ship alcohol, that was out. So instead I went to the bulk bins and grabbed everything I needed to make some homemade pickling spice and barbecue rub.

The only ingredient that wasn't in the bulk bins was celery salt. Well, then! I made a batch of that as well. It's a good thing the farmer's market around here regularly features gigantic leafy heads of celery. The end product turned out so well I considered giving it away too. Then I realized that I hadn't had brunch with anyone in so long that I didn't know who else actually drank bloody marys, so I decided to just use it for my own.

I had initially wanted to package these in little spice jars, but ended up going with plastic bags instead. This was due to both 1. shipping costs and 2. the high likelihood of glass jars breaking in the flurry of holiday mail. It's ok though! Festive ribbon totally saves the day, right?

I have to say, there was an awful lot of ribbon all over the place this season. It was by far the most Martha Stewarty I have been in years.

Merry christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 20:19:00 +0000

Christmas eve

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 23:29:00 +0000

Today is the day for the annual making of a large vat of marinara sauce, shredding of several blocks of cheese, kneading of a whack of dough, chopping of all the vegetables, & assembly, baking, and eating of our own delicious pizzas for dinner. Yes! Christmas eve pizza party at our house!

We have:
- mozzarella, asiago, parmesan, and romano cheese
- peppers hot and mild and green and red
- a big bag of delicious tiny cremini mushrooms
- red onion, yellow onion, garlic, shallot
- a stick of salami for me, because pepperoni is too much but salami is just right
- oregano, basil, red pepper flake, & other appropriate spices
- tomato puree and olive oil
- flour, yeast, water, honey

This will clearly work out splendidly. I do need to figure out a different crust recipe, but that is a manageable task for the day.

Since there is also a half pound of ground lamb in the fridge, I may end up mixing and spicing and cooking it sausage-style, then putting sausage crumbles on at least one pizza. Lamb sausage would be pretty great on pizza, wouldn't it? I even have fennel seed to add! Oh man, what a great idea! THIS MAY NOW HAPPEN.

So we will make and eat a delightful variety of pizza.

We will also deliver lots of the aforementioned almond cookies to our next-door neighbor and the coffeeshop that is functionally my office.

Later we will go out with a thermos (or most likely my stainless steel water bottle, since we have not acquired an actual traveling drinking device not made of gross-tasting plastic since last year at this time) filled with black russians, and walk all over town and look at the lights and pretend it's colder than 40F, which it won't be.

Tomorrow after presents we're going to go have massive holiday breakfast at Veronica's. I am further going with tradition and bringing cranberry orange nut bread, although minus the nuts. This is actually also tradition, since both John and I find walnuts disgusting in baked goods. Besides that, there will be eggs and coffee and mimosas and coffeecake and homemade bagels and cream cheese.

In short, yay holidays!

Pre-holiday cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:48:00 +0000

Last week I went to a cookie swap and came home with all the delicious cookies in the land. For my contribution, I made our usual holiday cookies from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book. They're easy, tasty, and not too sweet.

The recipe makes--wait for it---5 DOZEN COOKIES. So clearly I had to double the batch, right? Right. The doubled recipe barely fit in my mixing bowl, so you should probably use two bowls (or a really gargantuan one) if you want to do such a thing. This also means that I now have three extra rolls of cookie dough waiting and ready in the freezer. Yay, spontaneous future cookies!

Swedish farmer cookies

2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cups sugar
1 cup slivered almonds--use the thinnest slices you can find, not the big chunks
1 tbsp molasses
2/3 cup softened sweet butter
1 egg
2 tbsp water

Mix everything together and form the resulting dough (which will look crumbly, but is really not) into 3 or 4 long skinny rolls. Just squeeze them together with your hands.

Wrap the rolls in foil or plastic wrap and stick them in the fridge to chill for at least an hour. Then slice each roll into 1/4 inch cookies and bake on parchment-covered or greased cookie sheets for 8-10 minutes. You want to take them out of the oven when they’re just barely golden brown.

Now you have cookies! Eat them with all the tea.

Cabbage, sausage, onion, apple

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Peasant food is the best food. Let's make some!

I actually had this mix of onions, apples, precooked chicken sausage, and cabbage quite awhile ago. However, it's totally appropriate to the dank days of winter, so let's talk about it now.

While we cooked the aromatics first, it's also totally possible to start out by cooking the sausage. In that case, I'd just cook to brown and render off some fat; that way you can take out the meat, sauté the vegetables in the rendered fat, and add the browned meat back in near the end. Since we were using chicken sausage, though, we knew there wasn't going to be an overabundance of fat to render off. If you want to use pork sausage, or substitute some bacon/etc. in, I'd definitely start with the meat and cook the veg in the rendered fat.

For those of you who don't eat meat, I'm sure an appropriately spiced seitan sausage culled from your freezer stash would also work well.

Cabbage, sausage, onion, apple

olive oil
onion
apple
precooked sausage/seitan/etc. of your choosing
green cabbage
salt, pepper

Cut your onion in half and slice each half into long strips. Sauté the onion in a slug of oil while you slice the apple into 1/4 inch pieces. When the onion has softened, add the apple and cook together, stirring occasionally, until the apples start to turn golden brown. Cut up your sausage of choice and shred a big chunk of cabbage while you're waiting.

At this point, scrape the apples and onions to one side of the pan. Put a little dab of oil in the free space (if you're using a lean meat or seitan sausage), and add your sausage. Cook until browned, then flip and brown the other side.

When everything is brown and tasty, mix up all the business in the pan, season with salt and pepper, and scrape everything to the side again. Add your shredded cabbage to the various oil and fat left in the pan; sauté with salt and some pepper. I wilted my cabbage for a little over five minutes, so it still had some bite. If you want to go for thoroughly wilted cabbage, be my guest. In hindsight, I wish we'd had a little caraway seed to add. If you have some, you might want to try it.

When the cabbage is done to your liking, adjust the seasonings and serve. I used the cabbage as a bed for the sausage/onion/apple mixture, which worked out well. It would also be fine to mix everything up in the pan and serve it like that.

This business would be great with a bunch of buttered toast or a whack of mashed potatoes. Hell, if you have some leftover potatoes, go ahead and add them to the pan! You might as well absorb every last bit of tasty onion-apple-sausage fat, right?

Soooup of the eeevening

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:33:00 +0000

The other day John had to stay at work late. As we all know, this means I get to eat WHATEVER I WANT FOR DINNER MUAHAHAHAHAHA with no regard for the food-related desires of others.

A week or two ago we had roasted a post-thanksgiving chicken, taken all the resulting meat off the bones, and boiled the stripped carcass with onion, carrots, and celery for a massive supply of chicken broth. I did eat some of the chicken, but otherwise put a large container of meat and eight (EIGHT!) containers of strained broth in the freezer. Our freezer was extremely crowded, but ready to provide ingredients for any number of tasty dinners at a moment's notice.

So I rifled through the freezer, grabbed some chicken broth and lamb meatballs, and went to work.

Soup with lamb meatballs and copious greens

olive oil
garlic
ginger, fresh if at all possible
green onion
mushroom
chicken broth
meatballs
chard
soy sauce, sriracha, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil
salt, pepper

If you don't have a freezer supply of meatballs, start with them. Any kind of meatball spiced to work with Asian flavors should work fine. I made mine by mixing ground lamb with breadcrumbs, ginger, lemongrass, and hot red pepper, all chopped finely. Then I formed them into balls a little smaller than a ping-pong ball and cooked them over medium-high heat until browned on all sides & done in the middle.

I like to use precooked meatballs because 1. the char you get from pan-frying is delicious and 2. you don't have to worry about them cooking through (or breaking apart in boiling broth) later. It would probably be just fine to simmer them in the soup until done if you prefer, however. In either case, have them formed before you start making the soup itself.

Ok. For the soup, start by warming some olive oil in a deep pan over medium heat. Chop up some garlic, fresh ginger, and the whites of a few green onions, and sauté them in the oil for about five minutes, or until soft and aromatic. Add some sliced mushrooms and a pinch of salt, mix everything up, and continue to cook, stirring occasionally. You want the mushrooms to reduce and turn golden brown, so try not to crowd them overmuch.

When the mushrooms have browned, add your broth. Mine was still frozen, so I added some water as well. Put on the lid, bring the pot to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer.

At this point you can add your meatballs and cook until either heated through (in the case of precooked meatballs) or cooked through (in the case of raw). Obviously the time will differ for each, and you might need to play with the heat to keep the broth sufficiently hot. My meatballs were frozen, as mentioned; they took somewhere between five and ten minutes to heat completely.

While your soup bubbles away, wash some chard leaves, strip them off their stems (which you can put in the freezer stockpile), and roughly chop them. Practically any type of cookable green would work here: spinach, cabbage, kale, or whatever you have in the crisper. I just like chard.

When your meatballs are done & hot, add your chopped greens to the pot and stir to combine. If you're using a particularly delicate green, turn off the heat; if you're using something hardy, be prepared to cook another five to ten minutes. When your greens are done, take the soup off the burner and season sparingly with soy sauce, sriracha, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil. Then taste and decide if you want to add any more. When the soup tastes good, you are done.

Garnish with chopped green onion greens, let cool enough to avoid blistering your lips, and eat.

And if you find that you've made more soup than you can eat, well, you just cleared out that spot in your freezer, right?

Why to buy premade hummus

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:07:00 +0000

Yes, making hummus is easy, and yes, it's much cheaper to buy actual dried garbanzo beans and tahini with which to make your own batches seasoned exactly to your taste. It's fresher. It often tastes better. It can even impress guests. Wow, homemade hummus!

But sometimes you just want a lunch like this, and you want it in under five minutes.

It's a gratin!

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:04:00 +0000

So after our sojourn at the cabin with a kitchen stocked in Le Creuset I have to say our desire for enameled cast iron cookware went up pretty far and pretty fast. John and I therefore bought ourselves an early christmas present: a lovely blue gratin dish.

Clearly, we had to christen the pan with a big batch of baked mac & cheese.

We'd normally make the sauce for mac and cheese in a regular saucepan. This time, we made it right in the gratin dish, since cast iron works for both oven and stovetop.

After we drained the pasta, we dumped it into the gratin with the sauce, stirred it up, topped it with bread crumbs and grated cheese, and stuck it in the oven. Yay, fewer dishes to wash!

Thirty minutes later, we were blissfully eating plates of mac & cheese with the crispiest crust imaginable. Hooray!

I am well satisfied with our lot in life.

Cauliflower & olive pasta

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:47:00 +0000

John thought this was going to be gross, but lo! It was not gross; it was good.

What's better than eating in-season veg like cauliflower? Cauliflower in pasta is great & underrated, & everyone should try it. Maybe sometime soon I'll get around to the butternut or kabocha squash pasta, or even to the turnip and rutabaga, although I don't know if those go with pasta per se. They can get in a big gratin, then. It's all good. My point is: seasonal vegetables!

I actually think that this pasta and veg mix would work really well in a gratin, with a little cream sauce and a bunch of breadcrumbs scattered over the top. Maybe that can happen sometime in the relatively near future.

Overall, this whole business fell very much in the Mediterranean area. I was particularly happy to be using some of my oven-dried tomatoes. I've never been that much into the tougher store-bought sun-dried tomatoes, but every time I use these I like them more and more. Maybe next year I should make multiple jars.

Cauliflower & olive pasta

olive oil
onion
garlic
marinated olives (black nicoise or kalamata for preference)
tomato
oven-roasted or sun-dried tomato
cauliflower
deglazing liquid of your choice
red pepper flake, oregano, marjoram, basil, salt, pepper
penne or other pasta of your choice
fresh parsley or basil if you have any lying around

First, put on a pot of water for the pasta; cook it at an appropriate point in the proceedings.

In a separate sauté pan, warm up a slug of olive oil. When it's adequately warm, throw in a bunch of chopped onion and garlic. Season with red pepper flake (or hey, maybe you have an actual hot pepper you want to chop up and use!), oregano, basil, and marjoram, and let soften while you chop up a handful of olives and a tomato. Add these to the pan as you finish chopping.

If you have any sun-dried or oven-roasted tomatoes, get them out, drain off their excess oil and chop as needed, and add them to the pan. If you don't have any, that's ok too. You can always add a couple more olives or some capers for extra pungency.

Add some salt and pepper, stir everything together, and let cook for about five minutes. If things start to look dry, you can add a little water, veg broth, dry white wine, or some dry vermouth to deglaze. Whatever you have lying around will work fine.

Now is the time to butcher your cauliflower. I used about 2/3 of a cauliflower for two people; if you're serving any more people, just use an entire head. Trim off any leaves or hard woody bits, and then cut or break your cauliflower into smallish florets.

Add your cauliflower to the pan. Stir everything up, getting as much cauliflower in contact with the bottom of the pan as possible. (This will encourage your cauliflower to brown, which will make it particularly tasteable.) Let it all cook, stirring occasionally, until the cauliflower is cooked through. Again, deglaze if and when you need to.

When the cauliflower is cooked through, correct your seasonings, mix the vegetables with your cooked, drained pasta, and serve. If you have any Mediterranean herbs around, throw a handful of them on top of your bowl. I think a little squirt of lemon or some finely sliced lemon zest would work really well; grating cheese or feta would be good too. My point is: doctor your pasta however you like.

Now eat it! Yay, winter vegetables!

Steamed cabbage? Really?

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 07:10:00 +0000

REALLY.

I like cabbage. I think cabbage is one of the most maligned of all vegetables. It's cheap, healthy, easy to cook, and delicious as long as you don't boil it to high hell. You want vitamin C? Get that cabbage in your mouth.

Right! Several nights ago we were having frozen vareniki with caramelized onions for dinner. Clearly this was not sufficient! No! So I grabbed my copy of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, looked through the index, and found Steamed Cabbage with Butter and Poppy Seeds.

I chopped up some green cabbage, steamed it over the vareniki pan, buttered it, and tossed it with a couple handfuls of the poppy seeds I've had sitting in my spice cabinet for the past year.

Guess what? It was delicious.

Quickly steamed cabbage turns out to be mild, with a texture similar to steamed bok choy. We usually make our cabbage into intense Asian preparations with sriracha sauce, peanut sauce, or sambal oelek; eating it practically bare was, in contrast, soporific and calming. It was the perfect intro for a night of doing nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

Of course, in the morning I dropped the leftovers into a plain pancake batter, fried them up, and ate them with pungent labneh and sambal. It's all good.

Carrot pickles!

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:48:00 +0000

After my experiments this fall, my only real question is why I didn't try pickling sooner.

After the success of my refrigerator dills, I decided to branch out. Clearly, one of the key items on the thanksgiving (or maybe pre-thanksgiving) table is always the dish of pickles and olives. So I not only made another batch of dills, but also decided to try out these carrot pickles.

Let's just say that the garden next year will definitely contain more pickle components. Hey, it's winter (or "winter"--but it's foggy today in the south bay, and though that is normal for SF, it is highly abnormal in the valley, and definitely sends a clear message that it's going to be 50F for a while). Winter is the traditional time to get out the graph paper and the seed catalogs to plot out exactly what you want to grow next year. In short, jalapeños and carrots are on the list, and I wouldn't put it past me to plant a cascade of beets for good measure.

After acquiring a bunch of farmer's market purple carrots, half a red onion, and a jalapeño, I went to work.

The pickle-making process is super simple. I scrubbed the carrots, peeled the onion, and sliced them and the jalapeño into pieces. I made the brine by boiling a cup of water and two cups of vinegar with a quarter cup of canola oil, and seasoned the business with cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper. When the salt was dissolved, I added the chopped veg and cooked everything together for a little over five minutes. Then I decanted everything into a clean quart jar that I'd preheated with hot tap water.

Since I'd made my pickles with the lid on the pan, eliminating most of the evaporation, I ended up with a lot of extra brine. Okay then! I grabbed another couple carrots, scrubbed them, cut them into sticks, put them in another preheated jar, and poured on the additional brine. This way we had both cooked and raw (or only brine-warmed) carrot pickles to try.

At this point I lidded my jars, let them cool, and stuck them in the fridge. By thanksgiving, three days later, they'd matured into the most perfect instance of spicy pickle I could possibly imagine. Even though we also had a massive tableful of additional dinner, we ate about 1/3 of the quart jar in one go.

A couple things to think about:
- Yes, that is a layer of oil at the top of the jar. I think this is fine; just shake the jar to distribute the oil before opening.
- My brine turned bright pink. This is pretty clearly because I used purple carrots. Yay pink pickles!
- Since these pickles are made with onion and jalapeño, they get hotter over time. Be careful!
- Since these pickles are made with onion and jalapeño, you don't just get pickled carrot--you also get pickled onion and jalapeño.

In fact, after we roasted our post-thanksgiving chicken (what? you don't roast a post-thanksgiving chicken??), and I was looking for something delicious to put on my resulting sandwiches, guess what I found? That's right: my lovely jars of pickles. I didn't use the pickled carrots on the sandwich, though. Instead, I fished out a few of the jalapeño rings and red onions.

On an english muffin with dijon mustard and freshly roasted chicken, they were perhaps the best choice ever.

Orphans' thanksgiving 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:13:00 +0000

It was an excellent night.

We made:
- Veganomicon cassoulet with olive oil biscuits
- Lentils vinaigrette
- A big green salad with backyard sungold tomatoes
- Mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy
- Roasted mixed root vegetables in vinaigrette
- Garlic dills and spicy carrot pickles
- Maple-roasted cashews

Chrissy and Ben made:
- Tofurky
- Roasted pecan, olive, and grape salad
- Pumpkin pie

There was also plenty of wine.

Notes:

- I made the vinaigrette dressing (for both salad and roasty veg), the croutons, and the lentils the night before. This worked admirably. The vinaigrette recipe makes over a pint, so you should expect to see it around over the next few months.

- I did not like the cassoulet! It was just kind of stodgy and tasteless. We had added seared marinated tempeh to it, but I kept the spices mild to match the cassoulet recipe. Yeah, no. It would have been a much better idea to just do our customary super-spicy marinade, with maybe some liquid smoke added, and then to sear it separately and strew bits liberally over the top of each serving bacon-style.

- The biscuits, which I made with rice milk, were good. We ate the leftovers for breakfast in the morning.

- For the potato seasoning, we poached a bunch of minced shallot and garlic in olive oil and mashed them in. With some rice milk, salt, and pepper, this made the best mashed potatoes ever. Who says you need butter for mashed potatoes? You do not.

- Similarly, the mushroom gravy was really, really good. It was so much better than last year's version, which did not contain either 1. enough mushrooms or 2. nutritional yeast. This year's version contained plenty of cremini mushrooms and the required nutritional yeast, and it was fabulous on both potatoes and tofurky.

- I really like tofurky! I don't think I'd ever had it before. It was particularly excellent mixed up in a big bite with potatoes and gravy, as all thanksgiving main courses should be.

- So I made garlic croutons, then forgot to put them on the salad! SO SAD.

Garlic croutons

good stale bread
olive oil
garlic

Smash and peel a couple of cloves of garlic and steep them in maybe 1/4 cup of olive oil for twenty minutes. In the meantime, get out the loaf of stale bread that's been hiding on top of the refrigerator. Cut it into reasonable crouton pieces. Toss the croutons with the oil, turning well to coat. You can pick the garlic cloves out or leave them in; I left mine in. Then spread the croutons on a baking sheet and bake at 350F until golden brown, paying attention to make sure they don't burn. This took about ten minutes for me, but it'll depend on your bread quality and piece size. Salt the croutons right after you take them out of the oven. Voila! Now you can put them in a container, put it in the cupboard, and forget all about it until after dinner is over.

- The roasted veg were a bit overdone, but still good. This year we had radishes, fingerling potatoes, onion, garlic, carrots, brussels sprouts, and golden beets. Was that it? I think that was it. We just tossed them with vinaigrette, salt, and pepper, added some fresh rosemary and thyme, and roasted at 350F until great.

- Lentils vinaigrette are totally going to become staples in our house. OH MAN. I just ate the last of them today for lunch, and they were still perfectly textured and flavored. Granted, I did use the slightly more expensive (and sturdier, and better textured) Puy lentils instead of standard green, but they are well worth it. If I had to pack a lunch to work, I would definitely be spending a good number of Sundays making big batches of lentils vinaigrette to eat all week. I can just see them sitting in a corner of an excellent bento.

- Then there was pie. Pie pie pie pie pie pie pie. I think there is one piece left for me to eat tonight. Pie.

- Guess what I made out of the leftover mushroom gravy and roasted veg?

THANKSGIVING OMELET!

I warmed the gravy and root veg in a little saucepan, then made the omelet itself in a regular nonstick. I used two eggs and followed the classic Julia Child omelet method (that is video, for those of you). When the eggs were 90% cooked, I poured in the gravy and veg, folded the omelet over, let it cook for another 30 seconds or so, and flipped it out of the pan.

With a handful of chopped parsley and forgotten garlic croutons strewn over the top, this omelet became perhaps the best leftover thanksgiving concoction ever.

Thanksgiving run-up

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:13:00 +0000

Sunday I brought home double our usual amount of vegetables from the farmer's market. Yesterday we made the actual grocery store run. I also made carrot pickles, which I will discuss once I get the pictures actually on a computing device of some kind. Of course, I have to make a vast spread of holiday food first.

In the meantime, I'm taking a cue from Jes and compiling this list of last-minute American thanksgiving dinner ideas. The majority of these are vegetarian, for those of you. Anyway. Go forth!

Pre-dinner snacks

- Marinated olives, toasted nuts, and vegetable crudités, none of which you need me to tell you about.
- Refrigerator pickles.
- Salami rolls.
- A few little bowls of hand-popped popcorn.
- Hummus and pita or carrots is never a bad idea.
- Red wine is always a nice thing to drink over an afternoon of cooking.

Soups & stews

- Black bean sweet potato soup, a classic at our house.
- Tuscan white bean soup.
- Brandied tomato rice soup: much more than the sum of its parts.
- Split pea soup is always great for blustery evenings.
- French onion soup.
- Carrot and white bean soup.

Salads

- Grain salads: quinoa, rice, barley, or even wheat berry are all good, and can be made the night before. They can also all take cooked chickpeas to boost the overall protein content.
- Green salads with fruit: spinach salad with walnuts and dried cranberries or fall salad with pear, pecans and dried blueberries.
- Shredded salads: Red cabbage and apple salad or carrot salad.
- Salads of root vegetables: beet and goat cheese salad, raw beet, pear, and cashew salad, or the slightly unseasonal (but maybe welcome in SoCal) potato and green bean salad.

Other vegetables

- Roasted mixed vegetables vinaigrette, which you can make with nearly any winter veg, and which is great with fresh rosemary.
- Mashed sweet potatoes with garlic and ginger.
- Sautéed apples and onions, for that sweet-savory element.
- Sautéed kale (or other greens) with garlic. Tres facil et tres vogue. No, seriously, kale is up there in recent food trends.
- Baked winter squash, which you can then mash with butter & spices of your choosing.
- Cabbage braised in red wine, which is classic for a reason.
- Brussels sprouts with bacon, which are way down at the bottom.

Baked items: savory or neutral

- Olive oil baking powder biscuits.
- Cornbread. I usually use the Veganomicon recipe (though I sometimes unveganize it), but go with your favorite.
- Stuffing with shallots. It's sort of baked, right?

Baked items: sweet

- Cranberry bread: get those cranberries into your body without eating cranberry sauce (which I for one find disgusting even if homemade and beautiful)!
- Chocolate chunk banana bread. Breakfast!
- Apple pie, which is allll the way down at the bottom.
- Fruit crumble or crisp, which you will of course want to make with apples, pears, plums, or other winter fruit.
- Speaking of plums, you can always make another plum cake.
- And though I've never made it myself, our traditional family thanksgiving dessert is pumpkin chiffon pie.

Fill in that menu! You can do it!

Israeli couscous is the best

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:14:00 +0000

Wait, how did we get into the actual run-up to thanksgiving? I still have to talk about fairly summery things! The leaves are still predominantly green! My tomatoes are still alive! And, well, this is living in California: being unprepared for every seasonal event because the weather outside doesn't match the calendar in your head.

So let's talk about Israeli couscous. I have had a bulk bag of it in my freezer for six months, but have somehow never eaten any until now. This, it turns out, was a mistake. I want more!

Israeli couscous & chickpea salad

olive oil/butter
onion
Israeli couscous
more onion
garlic
hot chili pepper
cooked chickpeas
zucchini
sweet or mild pepper
dry vermouth
oregano, salt, black pepper
lemon juice & zest
optional grating cheese, or feta if that floats your boat

Ok. First, you're going to need two pans: one to cook your couscous and the other to stew all your vegetables together into a wash of deliciousness.

I had to look up how to cook Israeli couscous, since I'd never done it before. The main issue was the proportion of water to pasta (because Israeli couscous is actually pasta; did you know?). I found the solution in this Chowhound thread; evidently, one should measure a specific amount of Israeli couscous, barely cover with water, and then add the same amount of water as couscous. Great! However, I didn't just cook the couscous alone. Instead, I flavored it with onion cooked in olive oil.

Start by warming some olive oil in the bottom of your intended couscous saucepan and sautéing half a chopped yellow onion in it. When the onion is translucent, add a cup of dry couscous, cover it with water, and add another cup of water. Put the lid on, bring it to a boil, turn the heat down to the lowest setting, and let the pan sit while you cook everything else. It should take about ten minutes to produce perfect Israeli couscous.

In the meantime, make your vast vegetable mass. So. Warm some more olive oil in a wide sauté pan, add chopped onion, minced garlic, and minced hot pepper, and let everything soften together for a few minutes.

Next, drain a can of cooked chickpeas and added them to the pan along with some oregano, salt, and pepper. I think I may have added a splash of water at this point too. Obviously, chickpeas you soak and boil yourself will be better, but I used canned and they worked just fine.

Give the chickpeas five minutes or so to heat through while you dice a pepper (preferably red bell, though you can use an Anaheim or banana if you want) and chop a zucchini into thin quarter-moons. Add the vegetables to the pan and cook on medium-high, stirring occasionally. When your vegetables are three or four minutes from done, deglaze the pan with dry vermouth. Give everything another few minutes over the heat to burn off the alcohol. Then correct the seasonings and turn off the heat.

By this point your couscous should be done. Pour the couscous into the vegetable pan, add the juice and finely chopped zest of a quarter of a lemon, and mix everything together. Taste for seasonings one last time; besides the obvious salt and pepper, you might need to add a little more olive oil or lemon juice. Some fresh parsley couldn't hurt, either.

Now scoop some couscous into a bowl, grate some cheese over the top if you like, and eat.

I had this for dinner and then immediately the next morning for breakfast, and I'm happy to report that it was just as good cold as it was hot. That's how I like my food: great at any speed.