How to cook without a book: pasta with vegetables

Like most weeks, there are 3-5 weeknights (yes sometimes every weeknight) where I get home from work and think what are we going to eat.  I am tired, and we rely on take out so much already, to where I have really been trying to make things at home for dinner with what I have on hand.  So, one of the weeknights this week, when I was so, so close to calling the hubs and asking him to get some food on the way home, I picked up the How to Cook Without a Book, book.  I didn't even have the energy to read through one of chapters at that point, but I saw the "Pasta with Vegetables", and it was simple. 

I thought, I can do this.  This will be ok. 

So, I pulled the broccoli heads out of the fridge veggie drawer, grabbed some elephant garlic from the counter (that I had meant to plant in the garden over a month ago--oops) and a box of pasta and a small container of shredded Parmesan cheese.

The formula from the book is simple:  a pound of pasta, a pound of veggies, garlic and parmean cheese.  Oil or butter to cook it in and salt and pepper to taste.  

I started with boiling the pasta.  I added the pasta to the boiling water, it cooked while I washed and chopped the broccoli into bite size florets.  Then I chopped the garlic.  I added the broccoli to the pasta after 8 minutes and then let the brocolli boil with the pasta for another 5 minutes.  While that was happening, I added some oil to a small frying pan and sauteed the garlic.  Once the pasta/brocolli was done, I drained it in a collander, reserving 1/2C of the pasta liquid.  Then I put the pasta and broccoli back in the pot, added the liquid, the garlic and poured a generous amount of cheese over the op and mixed it all up with a spoon.  Flavored with salt and pepper to taste.

It was great.  It made a lot of food.  Hubs and I both liked it, ate it for dinner and then there was enough left over that I actually ate it for breakfast the next two days :)  

What I really liked about this method/formula of cooking is that it all goes in progressive steps, so while pasta is cooking, you are prepping broccoli then once broccoli is cooking you are sauteing garlic and then you use the pasta liquid and add it to the final product with cheese and the S&P.  It was so methodical and it seemed that there was set aside time for each specific portion of the food preparation that it ended up being really enjoyable.  And fast, this was all completed in about 20 minutes.  Also, lets not forget that it uses ingredients you already have on hand.  Use whatever veggies you have, use the cheese you have, use the pasta you have.  Make it work.

I had never thought of cooking the veggies with the pasta.  I will be doing this again.  I think green beans would be a good veggie to try this way.  Cheers to the most brilliant weeknight cooking method I have ever known.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Whipped Shortbread

This is my first week joining the Baked Sunday Mornings Roundup.  I'm super excited, I love the cookbooks and have been thinking about this online baking group all week.

 The recipe this week is the Whipped Shortbread from the Baked Occasions cookbook.  I actually didn't make the recipe on a Sunday morning, I made it on a worknight evening.  It was the best thing I could have done after a long day at work.  It was simple, it was clean, it was creative, it was calmness to my mind.  The recipe came together really quickly and had only a handful of ingredients, including sifted powdered sugar.  It was really enjoyable to make and it turned out perfectly.

I love the commentary the Baked authors put at the beginning of each recipe.  They mentioned how the bakers in their bakery tried out basically everything they thought would be good as a topping on these cookies.  Pecans, pistachios, Skor bars, etc.  That sounded so fun, an invitation to experiment.  So that is what I did.

First, I halved the recipe.  I have loved all things from Baked, however, a full recipe is just too much for a 2 person household.  So, no regrets, I halved the recipe.  Then, I scoured everywhere for fun toppings.  I did chop some pecans to see what a traditional topping would taste like, then I sprinkled some yellow sugar sprinkles on some, some chopped up Skor bar on others and the rest were left plain while baking.

Then after baking, the ones that were left plain were covered with the best toppings of all.  I had some caramel cream cheese icing left over from the salted caramel layered cake from the Baked Elements cookbook.  I had made the cake a couple weeks ago and frozen the extra frosting as well as some extra salted caramel sauce.  So, I put the cream cheese caramel frosting on some of the cookies and drizzled the salted caramel sauce layer over the top.  Oh it was heavenly.  Then, with the remaining plain cookies, I melted some semi sweet chocolate and put some of that on the top and drizzled over that with the salted caramel sauce as well.

They were beautiful.  I tried one of each type.  The cookie is melt-in-your-mouth good.  I had never had home made shortbread cookies before.  I actually googled shortbread cookies and shortbread cookie toppings because I didn't know how they would taste and what type of toppings would go well with the flavor.  They were fantastic.  My favorite was the cream cheese frosting with the caramel and the chocolate with the caramel.

Of course there were more cookies than we could eat at one time, so I took them to work the next morning.  I got to work early, before most everyone else and put them on a nearby table.  Later in the day, 2 coworkers were talking about how good they were and said they had to taste one of each kind.  The first coworker said he like the Skor topping the best.  The other coworker talked about how they are such a perfect cookie for the Christmas season and this time of year.

Unfortunately I never knew that this was a perfect little holiday cookie, and feel my childhood or christmas cookie (and baked good) knowledge was a little lacking because of this.  But Baked, you brought back some historical cookie knowledge with this one.  I learned about a classic cookie, a classic holiday treat.  I am quite excited to see what other baked goods of historical significance I will learn about as I make my way through the cookbooks.

I <3 you whipped shortbread cookie, your topping combinations are endless!

Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, Chocolate Chip Cookies

Because everything I have made out of the "Baked" series of cookbooks has been amazing, I decided I would make their chocolate chip cookies today.  I was imagining bakery-perfect cookies.....and they tasted good, but were quite flat and the ingredients seemed off.

2 cups flour to 2 1/2 cups chocolate chips and 2 sticks of butter?  Seems like some more flour would be needed.....

This is a close-up of how the best cookies turned out, compared to the picture in the cookbook.  I don't know how theirs turned out so thick and round and nicely shaped.

Aside from being a very flat cookie, I did some experimenting using parchment paper vs a silicone mat on a cookie sheet. In one of the Baked cookbooks, they mention that you can use either, but that they found the cookie was less crisp on the bottom when they used the silpat mat, so they always use parchment paper, and they said that a person could use one piece of parchment paper twice.

So, I cooked multiple batches of cookies comparing the silicone mat, and the parchment paper.  Also, the recipe says to chill the cookie dough for 6 hours.  I have never chilled anything for 6 hours, and had somewhere I wanted to take some cookies in an hour, so I cooked some without chilling and then, six hours later cooked the rest of the dough

What I found:  the cookies on the silicone mat actually seemed to come out better than the parchment paper.  They seemed to keep their shape better and didn't go quite as flat as the parchment paper and I liked the bottom of the cookie slightly better.  So, I think I will use the silicone mat moving forward for cookies, unless I don't want to do more dishes, then I will use the parchment paper of course :)

As for the chilling:  I didn't see a real difference between the chilled and not chilled dough, and I didn't notice a taste difference.  So, I didn't see that as a value-added step.

You can see below the comparison of the silicone mat vs the parchment paper and the chilled dough vs the non-chilled dough.  Overall my main learning was that the silicone mat seemed to help the cookies keep their shape better than parchment paper.

And, unfortunately, I am not going to make this recipe again as is.  I might make it again with some added flour and less chocolate chips, but I don't want any more flat cookies.

The first batch of cookies, dough not chilled, using both silicone mat and parchment paper.  You can see the silicone mat cookies held their shape better.  The parchment paper cookies were more flat and melded together.

 This was the second batch, using the dough that had been chilled for 6 hours, and I spaced the cookies on the parchment paper out a bit more to make sure their "flatness" wasn't due to over crowding.  Even with more room, they were just as flat and the silicone mat cookies again retained some of their round and less flat shape.

This is a summary of the two different batches, the chilled and non-chilled dough cookies from the silicone mat on the top row, and the chilled and non-chilled dough cookies from the parchment paper.  I don't see any difference for chilled vs non-chilled and the silicone mat cookies definitely came out better.  The verdict is:  use the silicone mat!  And, need to figure out what went wrong, or what needs to change to get a thicker, fluffier cookie.

Baked Sunday Mornings Recipe Schedule (from Baked Occasions)

• December 6, 2015-Whipped Shortbread, p. 231
• December 20, 2015-Brown Sugar Oatmeal Whoopie Pies with Maple Marshmallow Filling, p. 242
• January 3, 2016-Brutti Ma Buoni, p. 30
• January 17, 2016-Dolly’s Doughnut, p. 36
• January 31, 2016-Chinese Five Spice Scones, p. 41
• February 14, 2016-Conversation Heart Cakes, p. 50
• February 28, 2016-Pistachio White Chocolate Cheesecake, p. 67
• March 13, 2016-St. Patrick’s Drunk Bundt Cake, p. 77
• March 27, 2016-Mega Easter Pie: a Meat and Cheese Utopia, p. 84
• April 10, 2016-Mae’s Crescent Cookies, p. 236
• April 24, 2016-Hippie Cake, p. 90
• May 8, 2016-Derby Cookies, p. 107
• May 22, 2016-Strawberry Supreme Cake, p. 100
• June 5, 2016-Chai Spice Trifle with Mixed Berries, p. 120
• June 19, 2016-Brown Sugar Shortcakes with Brown Sugar Syrup, Mixed Berries, and Whipped Cream, p. 128
• July 3, 2016-Nanaimo Ice Cream Bars, p. 138
• July 17, 2016-Cheesy Bastille Day Beer Bread, p. 144
• July 31, 2016-Traditional Linzer Cookies, p. 238