Pasta Primavera and Garlic Bread and Guns, Germs, and Steel

A lot of the things I cook take awhile, but this dish is healthy and quick and tasty, for the sevantless American cook. Like the trifle, it is particularly nice for farmer's market groceries, which are fresh and spring-y. I used an onion, carrots, broccoli, snap peas, bell peppers, zucchini and mushrooms. I also made garlic bread from scratch, which is less quick and easy, but you could buy a baguette and that is good too.

I started the garlic bread first, mixing 3 1/2 cups of bread flour with 3 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon salt, 2 tablespoons shortening, and 4 1/2 teaspoons yeast. Add 2 1/4 cups very warm water and stir with a spatula. Continue adding the flour and stirring, 1 cup at a time, until the dough is easy to handle (up to 6 or 7 cups total). Spill it out of the bowl and knead it for about ten minutes until it is springy and nice.

Wash the bowl and put the dough back in. Cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit for the length of one Dr. Who episode on instant Netflix (45 - 55 minutes). Grease two bread pans (I like using shortening and then a bit of flour) and punch the inflated dough. Tear it into two pieces, each of which you should roll into a 18" by 9" rectangle. I spread a few cloves of crushed garlic over the rectangle so it nice and flavorful. Roll the rectangle up and pinch it periodically so the air gets out and place it in one of the bread pans.



Let warm for the length of another Dr Who episode and then place the pans in an oven preheated to 425 and let cook for 25-30 minutes.

After I put the bread in to bake, I started the pasta boiling. We had some fun shapes and colors which definitely made everything prettier and more tasty. I cooked about 2 pounds to feed our house of 6 with some left over.



After about 12 minutes, I drained it and left the colander in the sink, covered with a large pot lid to keep most of the heat in.

As the pasta cooked, I chopped up all the veggies and started the broccoli, onion, and snap peas sautéing with a couple tablespoons of oil. I was pretty generous with the oil because I didn't use any other sauce on the pasta. Robbie had steamed some carrots the night before and I used the leftovers so they were already soft, but if yours are not, you should put them in with this first round of veggies. They sautéed for about 7 minutes.



Then I added the bell peppers, mushrooms, steamed carrots and zucchini with a bit more oil and let them sauté a few minutes more.



Finally, I melted about 1/4 cup of butter and mixed it with 3 cloves of crushed garlic for an extra garlic-y taste sensation. I sliced some of the freshly-baked bread (I have a bad habit of not letting it cool, it's too tempting) and laid out the buffet spread for my hungry roommates.



Gun, Germs, and Steel is a book by Jared Diamond about why European people were able to conquer and exterminate and enslave so many non-European people. The short answer is that they had guns, germs, and steel, but the longer answer explores why they had those things and many of the non-European people did not. It is fascinating and readable and extended over lots of interesting disciplines, sometimes discussing how wheat and bananas evolved and other times discussing how good hunters coming from Africa killed off all the large mammals on not-Africa. It's excellent and I, of course, recommend it highly, even for people (me) who aren't crazy about non-fiction. So check it out!

Yummy Ratatouille

I made ratatouille for the first time last Wednesday! It was pretty good, but a little too liquidy, so you will want to check the pot pretty frequently (I did not do this).

First step is to chop up lots of things - an onion, 3 garlic cloves, an eggplant, 2 zucchini, a yellow squash, 2 bell peppers, and 4 tomatos



Yummy cut things!



Put 1/4 cup of olive oil in a big pot and put all the veggies in (except the tomatoes) with a couple bay leaves and some thyme and salt and pepper.

Leave them in there, covered, over a medium heat, for 15-20 minutes.



Meanwhile, add some chopped parsley to your chopped tomatoes. Pretty!



Now that the other veggies have softened, add the tomatoes and parsley to the pot and cover for another 15-20 minutes. Be sure to watch it and uncover it when everything is soften enough, but not falling apart. While you're waiting, stick a baguette in the oven to make it nice and crusty.

Dinner!



It is finals time, which means that, if you are an English major, you are all done reading the assigned books for the semester and you can enjoy reading stuff for yourself. What I want to read most is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I read it once last year and it was Most Excellent. If you enjoy alternative reality period novels that include magic, silly and cranky and pedantic English people, and novels that have fun and informative (lying) footnotes, then you should read this novel too. I happen to like all if these things, and I love, love, love stories that have parts set in Faerie. So this is what I'm reading now.

Enjoy with your tummy and with your brain :D

Pizza and Dinosaur Comics

Last Wednesday, my dear friend Joleen came over and made pizzas with me. They were mozzarella with peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and onions, and, my special creation, smoked Gouda with sliced pears. Hooray!

First, we made some delicious dough, courtesy of Betty Crocker. First, take a cup of flour and mix it with a teaspoon of salt, 2 1/4 tablespoons of yeast, and 1 delicious tablespoon of sugar. Sift it nicely and make a little well in the middle to pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil and one cup of very warm water. Stir it up until the flour is mixed in and then add in more flour, one cup at a time, until you've gotten 2 1/2 to 3 cups. Eventually, it'll be really uncomfortable to stir and lots easier to just knead it, but don't do this too soon, because it'll be sticky and awful. Knead it until it is consistent and then leave it in a warm-ish place for 30 minutes.



See how nicely Joleen kneaded this? Hooray!

Meanwhile, you can grate some cheese! Joleen grated 2 1/2 cups of each mozzarella and smoked Gouda.



And I cut up a couple of zucchini, a few tomatoes, 2 pears and a red bell pepper. Also, I sautéed an onion.



Yum!

Look over there! Your dough is twice its original size! Time to punch it!




Knead the air out of the dough and split it in half. Roll each out with your rolling pin and put each on a baking tray. Stick them in your 425 degree oven for about seven minutes so the crust doesn't soak up the sauce.

Take the crusts out and spoon some tomato sauce on one but olive oil on the other. Then sprinkle (generously!) the mozzarella on the tomato sauce crust and then decorate it with the veggies. Pile on the yummy smoked Gouda on the olive oil crust and arrange the pears in some artistic manner.



So pretty! And delicious! Cook it for another 8-10 minutes and enjoy!


Sometimes I read webcomics. Maybe you do too? Dinosaur Comics, by the very clever Ryan North, is my favorite! Here is a link so that you, too, can enjoy the bizarre hilarity of dinosaurs talking about things anachronistically: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php. The first thing that is my favorite about Ryan North is that he does not draw and uses clipart pictures of dinosaurs, which never change positions, instead. My second thing is that he is chock full of literary references and time travel paradoxes. In case you did not know, these are two of the most important items in a writer's toolbox.

Spiced Lentils with Spinach and Apples and Indian Pulan

This is a delicious recipe (or, rather two recipes that I am combining so you can cook both at once a bit easier because they compliment each other so well) that is (are) time and chopping intensive but super fun! It took about an hour and a half from start to finish so if you have that amount of time and find cooking things relaxing (which is maybe why you are here?) you can make this and relax by the warm, spicy stove.

First you chop so many things into very small pieces! Like 2 cups of onion, 2 stalks of celery, 1 tbsp of ginger, 3 cloves of garlic, 1/2 lb fresh spinach, and 2 tart apples for the first dish (lentils) and 1 cup chopped onion, 1 tbsp of ginger, 3 carrots, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 bell pepper for the second (pulan). Also, put 2 cups rice on to cook (this is especially nice if you have a rice cooker. Get one, you can ignore it completely!).

...


30 min. pass and everything is chopped! Hooray! I promise you will be so happy you did this step all at once later.



Now, put 2 cups of dried lentils and 5 cups of water in a big saucepan, bring it to a boil and then simmer it for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, you wanna get two skillets out and put a tbsp of oil and a tbsp on butter in each (mine were the same size, but for you one can be a bit smaller because I will be referring to them as "big" and "small" - big is for pulan and small is for lentils, if you just wanna make one of the dishes). When everything is nice and hot and melted, put the 2 cups of onion in the smaller skillet and the 1 cup of onion in the larger along with the 1 tbsp ginger, 3/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp coriander (in the larger). Saute the onions in the smaller skillet for about 10 minutes, and the onions and spices in the larger for 5-8, adding a bit of water to the large skillet to avoid sticking.



Add the celery, 1 tsp cumin, 2 tbsp dry mustard, 1 tbsp ginger, 1 tsp coriander, and 1/2 tsp turmeric to the small skillet and let it cook for 10 minutes or until the celery is tender. Put the carrots and 2 cloves of garlic into the big skillet and let that cook for 5 minutes, then add the bell pepper, cover it, and let it cook for five minutes more.

While you are waiting, stick a tray in the oven with shredded coconut and almond slivers on it (a cup of each). Keep an eye on it! 10 minutes at 350 degrees is plenty.

Back to the skillets! Scrape the contents of the small skillet into the saucepan of lentils along with 3 tbsp lemon juice and 3 cloves of garlic. Still it all together and let it all simmer 10 more minutes. As for the larger skillet, add 1/2 cup raisins and the cooked rice. Turn the heat all the way down and cover until you finish up the lentils.

The larger skillet:

Back to the lentil saucepan! Add some salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste, along with the chopped spinach and apple bits. Let it cook just a few minutes longer until everything gets soft and nice. You can put your toasted coconut and almonds on the rice dish while this is going on.

Here's the lentils finishing up:

Now eat it all! Hooray! Robbie and Jessica and quite excited for dinner!



Also, Robbie made chocolate chip snicker-doodle cookies for dessert! What!? Bridget couldn't eat them fast enough, we needed to help her.



Here are more pictures of our dinnertime, courtesy of Bridget!



I am astounded by the dinner topics we cover! Palace intrigue!



Eve is pretty!



Eve has found something of Utmost Importance in the paper!



Robbie is pensive.



Bridget is also pretty!

The End!