Sausage and pepper pasta

Grab bag of peppers from Reading Terminal Market: $1
1lb sausage (from a bigger 5lb package): $0.89
Whole wheat pasta: $1.50
Onion: $0.25
Garlic: $0.05
Meals for the next 3 days: Priceless

Yakisoba

Fried noodles! These packages of Yakisoba are sold with 3 bundles of noodles and sauce packets for about $4. Get the fresh refrigerated ones, not the ramen-style instant ones.

Saute meat - remove.

Saute veg.

Add noodles.

Stir in the sauce packet. Yum!

Applesauce

This was for a healthy eating project for the free pediatric clinic at Cooper. The empire apples were generously donated by a friend, Tom, whose family owns a fruit and veggie farm in South Jersey.

Applesauce is ridiculously easy to make. The hardest part is peeling and chopping the apples (30 apples later and my left hand started to cramp).


The rest of the work is done by mother nature, as the apples don't need much dressing up other than some lemon juice, salt, and cinnamon. Let it simmer with a couple splashes of water for 30 minutes. Add a couple spoonfuls of brown sugar if the apples are too sour.

I made two versions, one with sugar and one without. Both were great, but the one with sugar was more like pie-filling (not complaining).

Shanghai bok choy (or any stir fried veggie)

Shanghai bok choy probably isn't really bok choy at all, but it's small leafy vegetable that is best served with a light sauce. My sauce consists of only 4 ingredients:

-Garlic
-Chicken stock
-Corn Starch
-Salt

Mix the last three together in a bowl. Bless the oil (i.e. throw the garlic into the hot oil for 10 seconds), sautee veggies in a wok for about 2 minutes until mildly wilted. Throw the sauce in, cover for 2 minutes. Uncover for 1 minute to let the sauce thicken. The veggies let off a surprising amount of water, so go easy on the volume of the sauce to avoid a watery puddle of veggies.

The ultimate italian hoagie: Primo Hoagies

I am fortunate enough to live a few doors down from Primo Hoagies, objectively the top sandwich place in Philly (though I haven't tried Sarcones). However, the place is only open for lunch, and I'm almost never around during the day. Luckily, I got a chance this saturday to test it out.

My first experience with an Italian sandwich was from Marzullo Brothers in Montclair, NJ, who sold a ridiculous amount of homemade foods, including my alltime favorite: fresh mozz.

Primos is a weird place. It's really bare looking, all white with just a big menu up front. Like the cheesesteak places, there is no real line, just two registers and a dude in an apron who looks like he's wasted away his youth taking sandwich orders.

I got the Old Italian, which, unlike a regular Italian hoagie, has dry-cured capacola and sharp provolone. $7 bucks, about a foot long, with oil, vinegar, peppers and lettuce.


The sandwich was actually much larger than I expected. It honestly had a substantial heft when the guy handed it to me, like when someone hands you a bowl of something and it turns out the bowl is full of pennies or something (good analogy, brad).


Anyway, long story short, I have never enjoyed a sandwich as much as this one. The ingredients were fresh sliced to a perfect thickness (the capacola was thin, but the provolone and proscuitto were thick, which somehow makes sense). The bun was a little warm, perfectly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, unlike the sweet doughy mess that Subway serves. It was a beautiful thing. I might make this a Saturday tradition.

Breaking Bread

So bread is my new challenge. This is something you can't just throw together, like most of my meals. I've tried the super basic no knead recipe made famous by the NYT and Sullivan Street Bakery, and it turned out well, just not perfect. This most recent recipe is a new and improved version with some added beer and vinegar, as well as less water so the dough is more manageable.

Let's start with the ingredients: flour, water, beer, salt, rice vinegar, and yeast.

Mix it up, let it rise overnight with plastic wrap on top. Then knead it 15 times and proof for a few hours.



I tried to double the recipe, and that's where it went horribly wrong.



The rectangular loaf actually puffed up much nicer and had a more regular crumb, but the round one was too damn flat. I think my dutch oven is too big.




So lesson learned: either use a smaller vessel (forget preheating it, you're just wasting energy) or use more dough. At least it tasted good.

Catch up: Risotto, Salmon, Peanut noodles, Eggy salad

Alright, life has gotten in the way of this blog. I will give you a quick highlight reel of my last month of eats:

Mushroom risotto:With a little help from chef Kim I whipped up a hearty favorite, shiitake and cremini veggie risotto. Steps include sauteeing mushrooms, simmering sliced leeks in half and half, heating veggie broth, sweating onions, and toasting short grain rice. The key to risotto is to add liquid to the rice slowly, only after the previous batch of liquid is absorbed. The pan should be hot enough so the broth you add sizzles and bubbles, and quickly gets absorbed into the rice. Then add in all of the prepped ingredients, including good parm and sliced scallions.

Slow cooked salmon:
This is a really easy way to do salmon, in a 250 degree oven with olive oil, salt, pepper. 20 minutes in the oven (target temp 115 degrees). Top it as you like. I like lemon, cilantro, capers, and more olive oil.

Peanut sesame noodles:
A summer favorite, stolen from thekitchn.com . I use less noodles than they say, but the same amount of sauce (their version is too dry and bland). Forego the chicken if you'd like, as these noodles are great for lunch. Use crunchy peanut butter or add crushed peanuts.


Eggy salad:

Basic rocket salad with olive oil and lemon dressing. Added some nice tomatoes, red peppers and sweet red onion, plus an over-medium egg on top.