To-DIE-for Thai Chile Chicken

Have I ever had the chance of actually dying from doing a school project?  Thankfully the answer is  "no," no matter how stressed I've gotten, or if I've been heard claiming that I might. However, the risk was real in this final cooking project, where I made chicken spiced with Thai flavors. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything has taught me a lot throughout this quarter, but nothing has been more valuable than the book's information on food safety.

Thawing in water (there was
originally more water in the
container than this)

As silly as it sounds, I had never worked with raw meat before this chicken dish. Since I'd purchased chicken breasts in advance, I put them in the freezer. The problem was that I forgot to thaw them in the refrigerator over the course of a few days before cooking. By the time I started, I was in a hurry and actually considered just thawing them in room temperature to speed things up (yikes!). My cookbook may have saved my life with this information: "you definitely don't want to cook still-frozen meat. Ideally, you'll thaw it . . . in the fridge. Second best is to put the wrapped meat in a large container of cool water and change the water every thirty minutes or so. I don't recommend defrosting meat in the microwave, because it semicooks, or on the countertop, because harmful bacteria can grow" (Bittman 717). It's unnerving to think that I could've gotten food poisoning or sick with e.coli without my cookbook! Instead, I learned how best to thaw meat in a jiffy without sacrificing safety by using the cool-water method suggested. I also avoided double-cooking my chicken and making it tough.  I placed my chicken into a large zip-top bag submerged in cold water, and changed the water periodically until I was ready to cook.

Plastic wrap in position

The first step of my recipe was to toss the chicken of even thickness with coconut milk and peanut butter, and sprinkle minced Thai chilies over it. Since I would be broiling the chicken, it made sense that I needed the breasts to be the same width to cook evenly. However, I had no prior experience using a meat mallet. My cookbook author offered some food-safety advice on this too. He wrote that a piece of plastic wrap can be placed on top of the meat, between the mallet head and meat surface, as a precaution against contamination (Bittman 702). At this point I had learned to be worried about meat and bacteria, so I applied this tip, and found it to be an easy step for insurance. Plus, it made my cleanup a lot easier because the plastic wrap kept the meat from sliding around. I completed the procedure for this step and then moved on to put the pan of seasoned chicken under the broiler.

While it was cooking, I went ahead to prepare the recipe's side of bean thread noodles and garnish of sautéed bell peppers. My lazy and unknowing self might've sliced the bell peppers on the same, unwashed cutting board as the chicken if not for my book. Once again, it protected me from bacteria; this time with a sidebar that warned to wash any and all surfaces that come in contact with raw meat before using them with other foods (Bittman 701). I carefully washed my cutting board after reading this, and sliced my bell peppers on a clean, safe surface. Finally, I cooked them on the stove, took my chicken out of the oven, and assembled the dish.

Thai-Chile Chicken

Thai-Chile Chicken was one of the most educational recipes I made using How to Cook Everything. Through it I learned not only how to cook simple-but-flavorful, most-but-cooked-through chicken breast, but also how to cook safely. I'm sad to see Quarter 2 end, because I've had so much fun in the kitchen! The good news is that I will definitely be able to take away cooking techniques, baking methods, and food safety from this project, and apply them in my cooking endeavors from hereon out. I might also try reading another nonfiction book, because I've now seen how helpful they can be. What have you learned through this IRP that you'll be able to use later on? If you cooked for it, did you ever come across food safety issues? What were your main complications? Leave a comment below!

Carmelized, Stuffed Tomatoes

Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything has so far been completely foolproof. It has guided me to cook with success for any recipe that I've tried, whether it's for a classic dessert or simple soup. All that I've had to do is follow its spelled-out directions. However, since this is my fourth blog post I  not only challenged myself by cooking a less common dish, but also by altering the recipe!

Tomatoes stuffed with cilantro-lime rice

The author's original recipe for oven-roasted tomatoes stuffed with rice was geared toward Italian cuisine. It called for Italian sausage, white rice, extra-virgin olive oil, and parsley. I almost didn't go through with the recipe when I found out that I didn't have any Italian sausage on hand. Then, looking at a chart of alternate vegetable-and-filling combinations that the author provided, it occurred to me that I could make substitutions for each ingredient. The chart had combinations for several cuisines, including Chinese (stuffed mushrooms with jasmine rice, soy sauce, and sesame oil)  and Indian (stuffed chayote with bay leaves, yogurt sauce, and basmati rice) (Bittman 371). This told me by example that if I kept my substituted ingredients aligned with one cuisine, I'd be more likely to have success in terms of flavor. My only other hesitance was about texture. Luckily, the author had some encouraging information on this, too: "You can easily improvise stuffed vegetables. . . keep in mind that moist stuffings work in any vegetable" (Bittman 369). To me, this meant that it would be possible to make ingredient substitutions as long as I preserved the approximate consistency of the original filling. With this combined knowledge about flavor and texture, I was able to recreate my stuffed tomatoes around Mexican cuisine. Instead of Italian sausage, I chose ground pork as my meat. The lean ground pork had less juice than fatty sausage, so I made up the difference by using brown rice instead of white. Brown rice needs more water to cook. Finally, I kept to the Mexican style by making cilantro-lime rice and using a neutrally flavored oil. I omitted the Italian parsley and olive oil.

Hollowed out tomato (left), and
seeds (center) and white core (top
right) to be discarded 

Once my self-created filling was complete, I had to stuff it into prepared tomatoes. The book helped me hollow out the tomatoes with the following instructions: "Cut a 1/4-inch slice from the smooth end of a tomato... Use a spoon to scoop out all of the insides, leaving a wall about 1/4-inch thick. Discard the woody core and seeds" (Bittman 372). This was so explicit that I didn't have any questions about which parts of the tomato to keep or throw away, or how much of the tomato to leave whole. As described, the quarter-inch wall left the tomatoes just strong enough to hold the filling without sagging. The instructions also helped me roast my tomatoes for the same amount of time later on. Their uniform thickness made them cook evenly.

When I tasted the finished dish, it was delicious--maybe even more so than the original Italian dish might've been! Thanks to How to Cook Everything, I was not only successful when following its recipes, but its side notes and graphics as well. I'm actually glad that I didn't have any Italian sausage to cook with today. The situation allowed me to be creative, and that will help me cook as an adult; hopefully I won't need to use a cookbook for every single dish I make. What improvisations have you made while cooking? How did you know that something was going to work? Are there general guidelines that you use to help you? Please, share them with me in the comments below!

An Apple Pie to Say Goodbye

Although I'll have to wake up for school in less than seven hours, I still can't believe that break is ending. I'm not ready for it to be over! As a last hurrah! for the holiday season, I spent my evening baking an apple pie with the help of Mark Bittman in How to Cook Everything.

To be perfectly transparent, baking this pie was very labor-intensive and intimidating for me. I've never made a pie before. The techniques used were all very new. Thankfully, though, my cookbook had lots of advice and tips to offer on just about every step. 

Prepared Ingredients

I started by gathering all of my ingredients, which mainly included apples, cinnamon, flour, and lots of butter. I felt silly measuring out my flour. This was because instead of scooping it in one scoop with my measuring cup, I tried a more time-consuming technique from my book. It said that "to measure flour accurately, use a spoon to overfill the measuring cup, then sweep the top evenly with the flat side of a knife" (Bittman 16). It took longer to do it this way, but I think that it helped my pie have a light texture. If I had scooped the flour normally, I would've compressed the flour and ended up with way more than I needed. I'll definitely be measuring flour the correct way from now on!

As I'm naming it, the "Spoon-and-Sweep"
dry-ingredient measuring method

After that, I followed the recipe's steps to make my pie crust. I cut butter into the flour using two knives, and moved on once the mixture resembled cornmeal as advised by my book (Bittman 928). This took a lot of arm work, so I was glad to know exactly when to stop. The book's cornmeal comparison for coarse crumbs was helpful to me, because I knew to keep going until the flour granules looked a bit thicker than usual. Without this, I would not have known what "coarse crumbs" really meant. I finished the crust by adding water and forming the dough into a ball with my hands. I let the dough chill in the freezer for half an hour. This led me to the part I dreaded-- rolling out the dough.

 I wouldn't have been
able to roll out this dough
without my cookbook

Over the holidays, I tried to rolled out sugar cookie dough. It felt impossible. The dough got stuck to my hands, the counter, and the rolling pin, no matter how much flour I sprinkled on everything. Thanks to my cookbook, the dough rolling for my pie was much easier! The book suggested (as I expected) for me to add flour when the dough became sticky. But, its key tip was that "if it continues to be sticky, and it's taking you more than a few minutes to roll it out, refrigerate or freeze again" (Bittman 929). This piece of advice saved me so much time, because as expected, my piecrust dough started sticking to the rolling surface. After I refroze it for a few minutes, it rolled very easily and I didn't even have to keep adding flour! This also made my piecrust more tender instead of tough, because I didn't have to overhandle it to flatten it out.



Finishing the pie was simple from there. I transferred my rolled out piecrust into the baking dish, and put it into the freezer. While letting it chill, I prepared the apple filling according to the book's recipe on page 931. Then I put the apple slices into the pie crust, arranging them so that the center of the pile was higher than at the sides, as recommended (Bittman 931). This helped my pie look a little bit neater, instead of being uneven or lumpy. The lower height of apple slices on the edges also made it easier for me to seal the top crust on.

An hour and four-hundred-fifty degrees later, my pie was complete! It baked perfectly, and it came out of the oven steamy and golden brown. There couldn't have been a better way to end break than eating a slice of this pie. I wouldn't have been able to bake a properly textured, delicious pie without Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. And, I'm glad to have learned some general baking techniques along the way. What are some of the most surprising little tips you've learned for successful baking? Leave a comment below! I'd love to hear some of them!

Mon Petit Choux

"Mon petit choux?" My little cabbage? While this pastry has a silly nickname and an intimidating real one, "Choux à la crème," it is more feasible to make than its fancy French names suggest. In fact, it is really only a cream puff. Even so, my experiences making cream puffs in the past have always failed. Since the filling is easy, it was always the shell that made my efforts go awry. My cream puffs were often more like cream flats-- they either sagged after I took them out of the oven, or they were tough and never rose at all. However, after reading the highly-detailed recipe in my cookbook How to Cook Everything, I thought that I should give it another try.

First, I started as always by cooking the dough on the stove. The ingredients for this are simple: butter, flour, eggs, a dash of salt, and water. My only problem with this in the past was knowing when the dough was "done," and overcooked dough could have been part of the reason for my flat pastries. The cookbook helped me with this issue by saying that after I combined the ingredients and brought them to a boil, I should "stir constantly until the mixture pulls away from the pan and forms a ball, about 30 seconds" (Bittman 942). To me, this meant to turn off the heat and stop cooking once the dough was no longer very sticky, and once it formed a ball without being purposefully pushed into one. The timing of an approximate number of seconds was also a helpful guide. When my dough came off of the stove, it had the perfect texture as was ready for the next steps.

The cream puffs weren't perfectly
round or particularly pretty, using my 
spoon-and-plop method. But, that was 
the gentlest way of handling them, 
and I decided that I'd rather them be 
imperfect and soft, than round 
and tough or flat.

Cooking the dough for cream puffs is always followed by beating in eggs using an electric mixer. I put my dough ball into the stand mixer, and added eggs one at a time. Unfortunately, this was another step that I had not previously known when to stop for. Thankfully, the cookbook suggested that I "stop beating when the mixture is glossy and try to handle the batter minimally from here on out" (Bittman 942). I followed its advice and turned off the mixer once the dough had an eggy shine to it (before, I had always mixed until it dried up a bit). The author's tying-in point about not touching the dough too much after mixing made perfect sense with this. It meant that the dough should just be handled gently in general, in order to rise when baking. This was key knowledge for forming puffs to put into the oven later on. This time, I scooped up the dough with a round spoon and just plopped the dough onto the pan, instead of overhandling them in attempt to make them perfectly spherical. When my cream puffs actually puffed when baking, it was mainly thanks to this step and one other one.

That other step was the author's, which was to prick the baked puffs once they came out of the oven in order to release steam (Bittman 942). I never would have thought of steam being why my puffs flattened on the occasions that they did rise in the oven. However, it is logical that the weight of condensed water from the steam would pull down my puffs. Following the book's advice, I poked a hole in each of my puffs with a knife, and they finally stayed "puffy."

Successful, puffy cream puffs

Once my cream puff shells were successfully baked, filling them and completing them was a snap. I am so glad that I used How to Cook Everything to help me with all of the struggle points in my baking. After many failed trials, I actually made choux à la crème! They are absolutely delicious, and I will definitely be making them again. Now that I've perfected the cream puff shell, I'm hoping that next time I can fill them with a more complex cream. This time, I used whipping cream that I sweetened and added vanilla to. Do you know of another type of cream puff filling? Do you have any ideas on different flavors of filling, or how to get those flavors? Please comment below! (Also, Merry Christmas!)

Hearty Pasta e Fagioli

What defines a kitchen activity as "cooking?" In other words, what makes something "count" as cooking, instead of just throwing together some Kraft Mac n' Cheese? This question inspired me to do my Quarter 2 IRP on the book How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I would like to learn how to cook in the way the author describes it--from scratch, or with real ingredients (unlike that mystery, neon orange "cheese" powder . . . as delicious as it is).

Pasta e Fagioli

Healthy, wholesome vegetables
that are used in the recipe

For my first blog post, I decided on cooking a soup dish known as Pasta e Fagioli, or pasta and beans because it uses plenty of wholesome vegetables as its main ingredient. In all, its ingredients are as follows:

"1/4 cup of olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, peeled and diced
1 1/2 to 2 cups hard vegetables, like potatoes, winter squash, parsnips, or turnips, peeled if necessary and cut into smaller than 1/2-inch dice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 cups chicken, beef, or vegetable stock or water
1 cup peeled, seeded, and chopped tomato
1 1/2 to 2 cups of soft vegetables, like green beans, cooked dried beans, zucchini or summer squash, or dark, leafy greens like kale or collards, cut into smaller than 1/2-inch dice
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
2 cups canned beans
1 cup small uncooked pasta" (Bittman 124).

The list's examples of, say hard vegetables, was very helpful to me in getting ideas on what to put in the soup. Usually I am discouraged to cook because I worry about not having all of the right ingredients. Seeing the general list with examples made me realize that there were a variety of vegetables to choose from, and that my soup with probably turn out well no matter what.

 Before even starting the cooking process, I knew that the most difficult part would be dicing all of the vegetables as called for. It seemed daunting to me, because before, I've been uncomfortable with using knives. It has taken me a very long time to slice even an apple, because I worry about cutting myself. But, my book had a guide on how to use knives that was very helpful. First it said that, "the best way to hold one for maximum stability and flexibility is to grip the handle as close to the blade as is comfortable and put your thumb on the inside, against the hilt, with your other fingers wrapped around the other side. You can even stretch your forefinger up the blade a little bit for more control" (Bittman 12). By holding the knife this way, I felt much more confident that I wouldn't hurt myself. Placing my forefinger on the blade as suggested made the knife feel much more stable in my hand, thus allowing me to dice all of the vegetables much faster. This stability also allowed me to dice the vegetables into much smaller pieces than I would've expected, because the knife went exactly where I wanted it to.

Because of the easier knife grip, I was able
to dice this entire bowl of vegetables
(a quart) in only about fifteen minutes!

Suggested Knife Grip
(note my forefinger on the 
opposite side of the blade)

Aside from my fear of knives, this recipe originally intimidated me because I was working with unfamiliar vegetables. For example, one of the hard vegetables included a parsnip, which I didn't know how to prepare. Thankfully, the book solved this problem as well. It said that parsnips should be treated like carrots, and that their woody cores must be removed. One must cut the parsnip in half along its length (after peeling), and then use a paring knife to dig out the core (Bittman 328). The comparison to carrots helped me because I already knew how to dice and peel a carrot, and I just had to do the same thing. The coring instructions told me exactly how to deal with the foreign part of the vegetable, and I found that using a paring knife was much more efficient than any other tool would've been. Its sharp point allowed me to remove the core without wasting any of the parsnip flesh. After following the author's guide, I was quickly able to prepare the parsnip just like the rest of the vegetables. As a plus, I will also know how to deal with parsnips if another recipe calls for them in the future.

Parsnip and its Core

Sauteing the onion,
carrots, and celery

After preparing and chopping all of the ingredients, I was ready to cook the actual soup. The recipe is cooked by first sauteing the onion, carrots, and celery in olive oil, and then adding the stock and other vegetables. Then, everything is left to simmer over medium heat until the vegetables soften. The beans are then added. Finally, the uncooked pasta is added and the soup is simmered until the pasta becomes soft. (Bittman 124). Cooking this was simple, because it was just a matter of adding things to a pot and waiting. I had cooked pasta before and the process was similar. I simmered the soup for a total of about thirty minutes, and then voila, my Pasta e Fagioli was complete!


Overall, the most challenging part of this recipe was getting comfortable enough with a knife to dice a large quantity of vegetables. Using the book How to Cook Everything, I was able to do this, and cook a fantastic and healthy soup! Now, I would like to be able to keep up the chopping skills I learned, and to practice that knife grip. Do you know of any other recipes that I could practice with(possibly one that requires lots of cut-up vegetables)? Or, do you know of any other tips on how to use knives efficiently? If so, leave a comment!