Orange on top

Seasoning a Wood Cutting Board

I found brand spankin' new cutting board at a second hand shop. The unseasoned wood was pale and shaggy. Tiny splinters pushed across the surface and gnawed on my hands. I didn't care. I knew how to treat this board until it glowed with beauty.

Beeswax and mineral oil are harmless to consume, and won't taint the flavour of food. Mineral Oil won't turn rancid, unlike olive or vegetable oil, and fills the fine cracks inside your cutting board. When the board is full of good oil, food juices won't soak into it and go rancid or cross-contaminate. The beeswax will give a temporary top coat to seal in the good oil, seal out food germs, and be water-resistant. A good cutting board should be seasoned every 6 months in dry climates and once a year in moist climates.

Supplies:
USP Mineral Oil
Unscented Beeswax
Fine Sandpaper --> only needed if your board has splinters before you oil it
Paper bags or newspaper to cover your work surface
Heavy Duty paper towels or rags

1. Lay your board on the table. Pour a small amount of oil onto the board and wipe with the grain using a rag. The wood will hungrily soak up the oil, so keep applying until no more will soak in. Treat both sides of the board. Don't forget the edges.

2. Melt a generous amount of beeswax in a pot and mix your oil into it. I used 1 part wax, 2 parts oil for my board and was pleased with the results. Use a heavy duty paper towel to spread a thin layer of the wax/oil mix onto the board. The wax will harden quickly so try not to drip or spread thickly. The thinnest possible layer is all the board will need.

My board is large enough for a watermelon and has no handle hole. I prefer boards without the handle because I loose pieces of carrot and celery into the handle. I then need to fish the veggies out of the handle before I can pick up the board.

It practically glows in the sunshine. Quite a beautiful colour compared with its shaggy pale beginning.

Marmalade

Oranges are versatile. With the benefits of vitamin C, they aid the immune system. In the long and dreary winter, Christmas oranges bring a reminder of summer's bright glow. Orange is a standard flavour in Italian Sodas, gummy candies, and liqueur.

Today I tested 10 oranges. They make beautiful juice. I managed half a pint from them. More importantly, 10 oranges is the perfect amount to make 4.5 pints of Marmalade. Paddington Bear would have been proud to carry one of these jars of jellied oranges.

2 cups thinly sliced orange peel (about 10 medium)
1 quart chopped orange pulp (about 10 medium)
1 cup thinly sliced and seeded lemon (about 1 large, 2 small)

Marmalade begins with destroying the oranges. Save the juice for breakfast and remove any seeds and scarred looking peel. Crush and slice the membrane that held all the juice cells and put in a large pot or pan -- if you want a clear jello-like look to your marmalade, blender the membrane. Cut the orange peel into thin strips, long and narrow is elegant while short and skinny is practical. Place that into the sauce pan. Slice the lemon paper thin and add it into the pan.

Bring to a boil, simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and cover the pan, keep in a cold place overnight -- at least 12 hours.

1.5 quarts water
Sugar (approx. 6 cups)

Bring your orange mixture to a boil and cook until the peel is tender, about 5 minutes. Measure everything and add 1 cup of sugar per cup of mixture into the pan. Don't skimp on the sugar as that provides the needed preservative, counters the bitterness of the orange peel, and activates the natural pectin. The final product will have a minimal sugar taste and be pleasantly tangy.

Bring everything to a boil and stir continually until the gelling point is reached, perhaps around 40 minutes. To test the gelling point, put a teaspoon of marmalade onto a plate and chill it to room temperature. If the stuff on the plate feels like jam, then it's gelled. If not, cook the mixture longer. Patience is a virtue, without it you would have orange syrup.

Once at the gelling point, remove everything from heat. Now you can store your marmalade in the fridge or can it. I chose to can mine, keeping 1 pint in the fridge and three on the counter. Follow directions for your boiling water canner and process the jars for 10 minutes.

More onion-free diet resources

(For those who are fine with onions and garlic, have a video of someone opening a wine bottle with a shoe.)

If you got here through searching for "onion-free" or "garlic-free" you know how little information there seems to be. Hopefully this will help. You can also search for sattvic, which is the onionless diet of the Hare Krishna followers. Googling "sattvic recipes" turns up 37,400 results. Another strategy is "allium-free" as that's the genus for both onions and garlic. While you're here, I'll share what I've found.

How do I find out if I'm allergic/intolerant?
Thanks to the placebo or "nocebo" effect (Latin for "I will harm"), testing yourself can give you the wrong conclusion. It's worth a visit to the nutritionist. And if you have to do a restricted diet, they will tell you how to get the nutrients you need. I know someone who cut out so many foods without thought for nutrition that she gave herself scurvy.

Does all restaurant food have onions or garlic?
No, if you can ask the place to avoid cross-contamination. Order simple foods (steak, green beans, noodles with butter) and ask if they would cut and cook it on clean surfaces. Be polite! If you don't sound apologetic for inconveniencing the kitchen, the waiter could be tempted to ignore your request. Waiters are used to people crying "Allergy!" when they just don't like the the food.

How do I adjust recipes so I can have them?
You can replace the onion and garlic with truffle oil, asofoetida (also called hing), or kalanji seeds if you can find them. You can imitate the taste of caramelized onions with some fresh ginger, cayenne pepper, and a small amount of maple syrup.

Are there cookbooks for this?
These are the only ones I found: The Vegetarian Table: India and The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking. The Higher Taste: A Guide to Gourmet Vegetarian Cooking and a Karma-Free Diet has an online version here.

Links, please!
Onion-free Yahoo group
Sattvicfood.com
About.com's tips
Tribe.net onion-free forum
A sattvic tag on a blog called Angelic Monkey
The Higher Taste (sattvic recipes)
Freewebs.com onion-free and dairy-free recipes
Dietenlightened.com's onion-free section
Onion allergy tag on a blog called Little Cabbage
Krishna Food Channel
A chicken chili recipe on About.com

If you know any more, by all means please comment!

Blackberry Buttercream Frosting

I baked a sponge cake from the New Best Recipe. When turning the cake onto a surface to cool, wire racks will leave a mark. Kinda fun. I used a serrated knife to even the edges and level the top as I wished for a two layer cake. Frosting glued the layers together, although blackberry jam would work well.
1/2 c softened Butter
1/2 c Blackberries
1 tsp Lemon zest
1/8 tsp Salt
16 oz + 1 c Powdered Sugar

Beat the first 5 ingredients until creamy. Slowly add the sugar, beating on low to prevent the powdered sugar from leaping out of the bowl. A paper towel around the mixer will confine the sugar to the bowl and away from the countertop. Wash your blackberries if they be fresh, thaw the frozen ones. Puree them in a blender and strain out the seeds. Add to the frosting bowl and blend until purple.
All those seeds and mush that you strained out will be happy if put in a pot with sugar to taste, a dash of lemon juice, simmered for 20-30 min., then poured into a jar. Instant jam. Store in the fridge.

Salsa!

Momma ripped out a magazine insert with three different salsa recipes. We needed something to take to a party, so we riffed off two of the recipes to make our own.

1 c diced pineapple
1/2 c finely diced red onion
1/2 c diced cucumber
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T chopped cilantro
2 T grated ginger
squeeze of lemon
drizzle of honey
salt and pepper to taste
Mix together and let rest 1 hour in the fridge.

For this salsa, the heat comes from the ginger, aided by the garlic and onion, and the acidity of the pineapple, rather than the traditional chilies.
So for an onion and garlic free version for myself, I upped the ginger and cilantro and black pepper. Tastes wonderful with blue corn chips, and would go nicely over baked chicken breasts or thighs. (Put lemon slices on the chicken pieces before roasting them, and then serve them over spinach with the salsa. Would be so good.)

1 c diced pineapple
1/3 c diced cucumber
1/4- 1/3 c chopped cilantro
4 T grated ginger (or more!)
Lemon juice
Honey
salt and LOTS of black and white pepper

I'm also reading Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie. It's an excellent cookbook, has a huge section of delicious-looking salads (if we only had the greens!), pastas, then goes through things to do with different meats (lots of seafood), a section on veggies, and some desserts. I wish the veggies took up the whole book. We don't really eat meat in our house, we eat pasta only rarely since Mum can't eat it anymore, so I'm not feeling entirely inspired. But the things he does with carrots! We're running out of carrots in our fridge!

And in other news, there's a new food and cooking channel on TV, the Cooking Channel. They have Julia Child on, Monday through Friday at 1pm Central time! And I got to watch "the Galloping Gourmet" for the first time yesterday. He's a scream.

Birthday dinner

Less talkin, Moroccan

PS. That is not an editorial comment at the previous post!

in other news

We figured out that I have sensitivities to garlic and onions (in the same plant family), as well as dairy. Did you know that it was even possible to have trouble with garlic and onions? There's pretty much nothing on the web about it, except for a couple forum discussions. It probably hasn't gotten the popularity of gluten-free and dairy-free diets. So the last several months have been a bit challenging as I feel as if I'm relearning how to cook.

Basically my favorite way to cook veggies: sauteed with olive oil or butter, salt and lots of pepper, one or two additional herbs or spices. In this case, Mexican squash (not much different than zucchini) with paprika, toasted walnuts and rice. It's a very simple meal. I would usually add an egg, but the egg went in with the rice--I beat the egg, added rice, salt, pepper, oregano, and then scooped and dropped in a pan to make rice cakes.

Kale for the first time! Sauteed with salt and pepper, sprinkled with almonds, it was so good.

Mark Bittman's pad thai--except it was "ghetto" because we don't have tamarin paste, so I added lemon juice. And I used mung bean noodles instead of rice noodles. It was good, but it would probably be better if I followed the recipe more closely and if we had had cilantro on hand. I left out the garlic and scallions. With omitting garlic all the time (garlic is in the flavor base for pretty much everything!), I'm making an effort to draw more from other herbs and spices. We made the investment and went in on a bottle of white truffle oil, but I'm trying to save that for sauces and things, and for other things build complexity with other ingredients. Asian and Indian-inspired foods have been easier to modify and get that complexity than with Italian or French-based recipes.

Sweet potato stir-fry, another Mark Bittman recipe. I love sweet potatoes. Once again, the garlic was left out. Cayenne, lots of black pepper, cumin went into the seasoning, and once cooked, the stir-fry had lemon juice squeezed over top. This was Shanna's plate, so she got chopped scallions too. Peanuts, rice, baked mexican squash, fried egg finished it off---and the weather was nice enough to eat outside!

The leftover stir-fry got mixed with egg and pan-fried into patties. Yummy!

The same egg-and-pattie treatment with leftover wild rice pelof, zucchini and mushrooms.

Shanna made this pureed roasted pepper soup for me. So far pureeing has worked the best for making soups without onions and garlic. Otherwise the broth just doesn't seem very interesting and the veggies float around forlornly without the flavors locking together.

Roasted chick peas, baked sweet potato and rice. The chick peas were so much fun to bake and to eat!

Eating out of the house is tricky because onions and garlic are in everything; it's difficult to enjoy anything containing them when you know you're going to feel awful afterwards. But over spring break, the three of us went to Seattle. We ate at favorite vegetarian-vegan restaurant of Shanna's family--the food was all so fresh and simple that it was easy to get the garlic and onions left out. The food was very good: the bell peppers were stupendous, perfectly cooked, with good flavor. And the plating was well done.

Easter:

One need not blog to live, but one must eat . . . and how we've been eating! Easter breakfast

Pancakes (thanks to Shanna) with butter, jam, peanut butter, syrup, ricotta cheese and bananas for topping (syrup-bananas-ricotta combo, oh, so good) with mimosas, fried eggs, and orange and grapefruit slices. Can you believe we thought of dinner after such a meal?

But we did . . .

Lauryl cooked up salmon, Shanna roasted beets, and I made wild rice pelof.

And Lauryl made up a whole other entree! She cooked herself out. Shanna and Lauryl gave up cheese for Lent, so Easter had to include something with cheese: a sort of primavera lasagna, ricotta in the layers, asparagus, mushrooms, peas and zucchini. We were stuffed. We skipped dessert.

Beef and Porter Pie, give or take

Butter and olive oil for sauteeing
Half to 2 pounds ground/any type beef
1 onion, chopped
Middle of the garlic head/a few huge cloves, minced
2 carrots, sliced
2 celeries, sliced
7 big baby bella caps, chopped
1 bottle porter or any dark beer
Some water
Few pinches of thyme
Bay leaf
Salt and pepper
IT butter and IT flour for roux (optional)
Pie dough

Cook meat, saute veggies, pour liquid into veggies and simmer for ages or add a roux. Put it all together and bake at 425 until crust looks good or someone bites your arm. Eat with peas and cheese-covered cauliflower for optimal effect.

Mushroom Pillow Pasta! In Reverse!

Soupy Things

The blender is probably the scariest appliance in our kitchen. It is big. It is loud. And it turns perfectly solid food into mush. I try not to go near it. Love and hate relationship, you know the sort. But soup I wanted and soup it would make.

Asparagus makes wonderful soup, nice and unsweet but naturally yummy. I also like the colour. This soup was a mixture of frozen and fresh Asparagus and a homemade stock. I forgot to add salt to the stock and came close to oversalting the soup itself.

The real exciting part was the presentation. I cooked the tips of the asparagus and made an herbed whip cream. The whip cream had Sage and salt and white pepper in it. Although I took the photo very quickly, the cream had deteriorated something awful soon as it touched the hot soup. I guess the soup burned the whip cream.

Bon Appétit!

Oasis World Market in Blacksburg, VA

Red bean flavoured popsicles, fufu flour, mint drinkable yogurt (delicious), jarred lotus rootlets--

strawberry puding mix (or in English, pudding)--

and inordinate carrots.

Mushrooms have bubbles? Is that OK?

And this one too . . .

I found the website for Saveur magazine. Typing in "apples" brought up so many wonderful things!
From http://ourchocolateshavings.blogspot.com/2009/09/apple-pudding.html:

Apple Pudding
Serves 4

2 big apples (I used Cortland), peeled, cored and roughly chopped
1/2 lemon, juice and zest
2 x 1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1/4 cup of self-rising flour
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
50 grams of room temperature butter
1 egg

Preheat your oven to 350F.
In a small bowl, combine the apple pieces, lemon juice and zest, cinnamon and brown sugar. Set aside.

In a another bowl, using an electrical mixer, beat the butter and sugar (about 2 minutes). Add the the egg and vanilla extract until just combined. Slowly add in the flour until just combined. Divide the apple mixture into 4 individual ramekins and spoon over the flour mixture. Bake for 40-45 minutes. Enjoy!

Remind me to make this

Buttery Apple Cake-Tart

This recipe started life as Ligita's Quick Apple Cake, which is a classic recipe in itself. As things tend to do in my kitchen, however, this evolved, and now it's a close relative of Ligita's cake, but definitely its own dessert. For one, I bake it in a shallow tart pan, which allows for maximum crustiness and a somewhat lighter texture. I've also taken out the cinnamon, which I felt was masking the delicate flavor of the browned butter, and replaced it with a vanilla bean, since vanilla bean sauteed in brown butter is one of the best things ever, trust me. The result is something really unique, like I said, a cross between a cake and a tart, crisp and soft, buttery, fragrant and fruity. And trust me again, you will want some whipped cream or ice cream alongside.
Source: adapted from Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax
Yield: one thin, 11-inch cake; serves 8

3 large tart apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup (150g) plus 3 tablespoons sugar
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks/180g) unsalted butter
1/2 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise (i.e. cut a bean in half crosswise, then split the half lengthwise)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup (140g) all-purpose flour, sifted
1/4 teaspoon salt
Vanilla-flavored whipped cream or ice cream, for serving

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Generously butter an 11-inch (28cm) nonreactive tart pan or other similarly-sized glass or ceramic baking dish. Toss the apples in a bowl with the lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of the sugar. Spread the apples evenly in the prepared pan.

Combine the butter and vanilla bean in a small saucepan (not nonstick - you need to be able to see the butter change color). Cook the butter over medium until the milk solids are light brown and the whole thing smells deeply nutty, about 7-10 minutes. Watch carefully to avoid burning.

Allow to cool for a few minutes, then remove the vanilla bean (add it to your extract!) and pour the browned butter into a medium-sized bowl, scraping the black vanilla seeds and browned butter solids in too. Stir the 3/4 cup (150g) sugar into the butter. Gently stir in the eggs; stir in the flour and salt just until blended. Spoon the batter evenly over the apples and spread into an even layer. Sprinkle with the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.

Bake until lightly golden and crusty, 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack. Cut into wedges and serve from the pan warm, with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Update: so I made this and it was pretty good but just way too sweet. Next time I won't toss the apples with sugar and I'll cut the sugar in the custard to about 1/2 cup.

Oh, how I love brussel sprouts! They are my solace in the depths of paper writing all the term.
Or whatever.

Anyway, Lauryl roasted brussel sprouts in cast iron with balsamic vinegar and generous black pepper. I'm in love.

The other veggie I fell in love with this week was rutabaga with butter and rosemary and white pepper.

Me: 2. Oven: 0.

Round Things and Yay-We-Made-It-Through-Finals Oysters