Sriracha Shrimp

Sriracha sauce is one of those miracle ingredients that ought to be a staple in every pantry.

Its spicy, vinegary flavor is essential to many Asian dishes, punches burgers up a notch, and rounds out the flavor of tacos and enchiladas. You can (and should) add a dash to eggs and chicken and even salad dressings. We're contemplating experimenting with it in dessert dishes.

Seriously.

It's that good.

Anyway, for those of you who want more than just a hint of sriracha's zippy flavor, the DDH found and executed this sriracha shrimp recipe. As written, it is spicy. Really spicy. I mean, I'm sort of a wimp about spiciness (though, sidenote, my New Mexican spice-wimpiness translates to a pretty high spice tolerance in the Midwest, and the Germans pretty much think I have magical spice-enduring powers), and the first night of this was a little much for me. The spice mellows a bit when eaten as leftovers, however, and you can also use less sriracha to start with (note to self: use less sriracha to start with).

Either way, I highly recommend pairing this with a bland, absorbant grain like rice. We ate it with some quinoa (technically a seed, but it acts like a grain) and tall glasses of milk.

Sriracha shrimp with quinoa, vegetables,
and sriracha garlic bread.

 

Sriracha Shrimp
Adapted from this Bon Appetit recipe.

Heat a large skillet on medium. Add 2 Tbs. butter

and 6 Tbs. Sriracha sauce. You could about halve this (and add more butter, if you want) to cut down on the spiciness.

 Stir together until butter is completely melted and the sauce is combined.

 Add 3+ cloves minced garlic

 



Have I told you how much I love my garlic press?

and sautee for about thirty seconds.

 

The sauce may start to thicken a bit.

Add 1 pound shrimp, peeled. (To make skewers of shrimp, like as fancy appetizers for a fancy dinner party, you could leave the head or tail on. If you plan to just eat piles of shrimp mixed in with rice, make sure they're completely peeled and detailed. Or you will get chemical burns on your fingers de-tailing spicy shrimp. Not that I would know this from personal experience or anything.)

If you're using pre-cooked shrimp, you want to just sautee until they warm up, a minute or two. If the shrimp are not yet cooked, cook until done.

Scramps.

When the shrimp are almost done, add 1 Tbs. lemon zest, 1 Tbs. dried mint (or 2 Tbs. fresh, chopped), and 1 Tbs. dried basil (or 2 Tbs. fresh, chopped).

 

Zest in back (I zest any lemons I buy and
freeze it so I always have zest on hand).

  

Mix well and cook about a minute longer (or, if using fresh herbs, until herbs wilt).

As mentioned, you can skewer lines of shrimp for a fancy presentation:

Fancy Dinner Party style.

 Or eat piles of them with rice, quinoa, or pasta.

We found lemon juice to be most effective at stopping burning after the DDH rubbed his face with srirachified hands (yes, he washed them first. That doesn't really mean anything to capsaicin).

Yum.

Pretty colors!



The Great Cookie Experiment: Sugar

If there's anything I've been craving this pregnancy, perhaps it would be cookies. It's hard to say, because I'm quite the cookie fan anyway.

I've been baking a lot of cookies lately, usually chocolate chip. I thought it would be fun to experiment with some cookie basics. For Science! Of course.

In Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, Michael Ruhlman presents the "essence of cookie" ratio: one part sugar to two parts butter to three parts flour. This produces a shortbread cookie, rather than the chewier drop cookie base you usually use to make chocolate chip cookies. But if I wanted to eventually divine The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, I decided I'd better start with the basics.

Plus, shortbread cookies are tasty, too.

The first experiment had two parts: one, to get a taste for the cookie this ratio produces at its most basic, aka the all-purpose flour, white sugar shortbread cookie.

Second, I wanted to vary some of the ingredients to get an idea of different sugars, fats, and flours affect the finished cookie product.

For the first night, the simplest substitutes: sugars.

I made a tiny batch of Ruhlman's essential cookie ratio, one each with white sugar, brown sugar, and honey.

The white sugar is basic, obvious, subtle, traditional. Brown sugar usually features prominently in the various drop cookie recipes I used, and I expected it to provide a bit of depth to the unadorned cookie flavor (remember, these cookies are otherwise completely unseasoned--no spices, no vanilla). I wasn't sure how honey would react, but was curious what effect it would have on both the texture--since it's a liquid instead of a powder--and the taste of the cookies.

Now, no scientific lab in the country would call this a rigorous or clean experiment. I made the batches one at a time; the butter was in varying stages of softness (and I know this effects the outcome of the cookies) and they were in the refrigerator chilling for varying lengths of time (but for several hours, so, probably that didn't matter that much).

Also, I didn't weigh the butter the first time but just cut it in half following the little tablespoon guidelines on the package; when I weighed the second half, I realized that it was likely .10 ounce or more larger than the "half" I used in the first batch. I don't know if that's a material degree of difference. My scale only measures to the .05 of an ounce anyway.

Oh, and I mixed them all in the same bowl without cleaning it between batches. So. Dangerous cross-contamination or whatever.

Full disclosure. ^_^

Anyway, for each batch I followed the same procedure:

Weigh out one ounce of sweetener.


White sugar.

Brown sugar.

Honey.

Pour in a bowl with two ounces (ish) of butter.

Butter.

Beat together until creamy.

White sugar; not beaten enough.

Brown sugar.



Honey. See how much smoother it is?

Stir in three ounces of flour.

Flour.

Work into dough. With the exception of the honey batch, this was hard to do. The doughs, with such a high proportion of flour to fat, were crumbly and dry. Perhaps more vigorous mixing would have helped to better incorporate the flour. Perhaps all shortbread doughs are like this--I usually make higher-fat drop cookie doughs.

White sugar.

Brown sugar--not fully mixed.

Honey.

Anyway. I did manage to mash them all into balls.



White sugar.



Brown sugar.



Honey--a much more cohesive a dough than the others.

I tasted all of the doughs at this point, and the results were as I expected. The white sugar makes a dough that doesn't really taste like much--slightly buttery, slightly sweet, mostly just white. The brown sugar gave the cookie, still only subtly sweet, that toasty, molasses flavor that brown sugar imparts (because brown sugar is pretty much white sugar + molasses). The honey tasted...weird. The honey flavor was much stronger than even the brown sugar flavor, and perhaps because it's unexpected (you don't run into honey-sweetened cookies that often), it was jarring. More on that later.

The dough chilled while I went to Zumba and made dinner and ate dinner. Eventually I came back to it and preheated the oven.

I took the chilled doughs out and forced the DDH to sample them. You wouldn't think you'd have to force anyone to sample cookie doughs, but he doesn't like shortbread. He said the two sugar ones were fine, but he spit out the honey one and called it nasty. The DDH does not care for unexpected flavors. While he didn't particularly care for any of them, he thought the brown sugar one tasted best and (obviously) the honey one the worst. I gave him a bit more of the brown sugar dough to take the honey taste out of his mouth.

I made three balls out of each cookie dough, trying to make them roughly the same size, put them on my silpat-lined cookie sheet,

Left to right: Honey, brown sugar, white sugar.
For some reason, the brown sugar was super crumbly
compared to the white sugar--I feel like something else messed
it up, since if anything brown sugar is more moist than white.

and baked for about twenty minutes. Usually you roll shortbread dough into a log, chill it, and slice flat round cookies off, but that was too much work with my three crumbly doughs; I figured that if I treated them all the same it would count for the purposes of the experiment.

Left to right: Honey, brown sugar, white sugar.

The DDH repeated his performance tasting the final cookies; he maintains shortbread is kind of gross to start with, that the honey ones were disgusting, the white sugar ones tolerable, and the brown sugar ones mildly tasty.

I actually liked all three, though I agreed that the brown sugar would be my favorite.

The white sugar shortbread really is just the perfect essence of a shortbread cookie. It doesn't taste like anything except that short taste that defines shortbread, and as such would be the perfect backdrop for whatever flavorings you wished to use--citrus or spices or nuts. Lemon poppyseed shortbread? Cinnamon vanilla? Pistachio? All would be perfect with that base, which is not very sweet and thus makes a nice "grown-up" cookie that could showcase fun "grown-up" flavors.

White sugar shortbread cookies.

The brown sugar shortbread was a better cookie just plain, because it had more flavor. It's still not very sweet, but the touch of molasses added depth. If I were to make plain shortbread cookies, I might make these, with a bit of vanilla and salt to punch up the flavor slightly. And brown sugar, I think, is the sugar of choice for drop cookies--it would go best with the chocolate.

Brown sugar shortbread cookies.

And the honey cookies...they really do taste different. Technically, they were the most flavorful of the three, and once you adjust to the flavor, or expect it, that's a good thing. I could see serving them with jam or pats of butter like biscuits, with mint tea or something. I may never make them again because I think more people would agree with the DDH that they're disgusting than would agree with me that they're tasty, but I was glad to have tried the experiment. I'm not too beat up about eliminating honey as a sweetener in my future cookie experiments, anyway, since it's by far the most expensive of the three.

Honey shortbread cookies. You can see the texture is much
different from the dry sugar cookies.

So there you have it, the Great Cookie Experiment Part One: Sugar! I plan to use the same ratio to vary the fat (butter vs. coconut oil vs. ?) and the flour (white/All-Purpose vs. whole wheat vs. half-and-half). Then, armed with those results, I plan to start playing with the ratio to see if I can achieve other cookie textures and whatever else we want to try!

Lemon-Butter Tilapia

I like fish. Pretty much any kind of fish. Tilapia, catfish, salmon, trout. Fishy fishes, oily fishes, fried fishes.

We don't eat fish often. Oklahoma is, after all, landlocked, though I'm sure there are river or lake fish that you could find nearby.

But honestly?

I'm scared of fish.

I like to eat it, hate to cook it.

First, it's expensive. I mean, yes, I buy pretty expensive high quality land animal meat sometimes. But I'm confident in my ability to coax my money's worth out of a steak or chicken breast or pork roast.

But a fish? Not so much. I've ruined too many fishes to be willing to commit much money to their purchase.

However, frozen fish fillets (usually salmon or tilapia) do come in my meat co-op bags periodically.

So I make the DDH cook them.

I have ruined every fish I have ever touched. But he makes a pretty mean salmon, and is pretty handy with a tilapia, too. They're nothing fancy, but they're tasty and simple and fishy (in a good way).

Here's the DDH's super-simple tilapia recipe. But in this category, I definitely welcome other people's suggestions!

Lemon-Butter Tilapia

Heat 2 Tbs. butter and 1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice in a skillet until the butter is melted.

Butter frothing just slightly.

Place your tilapia fillets in the pan.

Fishy fish.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

The trick with fish is keeping it from overcooking. Such thin fillets as this take barely two minutes a side. You'll want to flip them as soon as you notice them going opaque at the edges.

Compare this opaque white to the translucent pink of the
uncooked sides in the pictures above.

A fish spatula makes this process much, much easier.

Sprinkle the other side with more salt and pepper.

Continue cooking until done. Again, this will not take long. As soon as it starts flaking apart when you poke it with your spatula, snatch it off the heat. It should be just opaque all the way through, and flaky but still moist.

Opaque, flaky, moist--delicious.

Repeat with any additional fillets, adding more lemon juice and butter as necessary. (The first two he cooked were deliciously lemony; the second two barely lemony at all. I like super lemony fish and he prefers it less lemoned, so that works for us, but you may wish to adjust.)

The second batch, cooked in a hotter skillet, browned some on the edges, which gives it a nice flavor. If you want this browning, make sure your skillet is really hot before putting the first batch in--you don't want to leave your fish on the heat too long trying to get it to brown and end up drying it out and overcooking it.

Browned fish. The weird yellow color is just our heinous
kitchen lighting, but you can see how there are more
browned spots and edges than the batch pictured above.

Serve with vegetables, or perhaps over rice.

A balanced meal.

The other problem with fish? There are never any leftovers. ^_^

French Toast

A few weeks back, I made the most amazing, delicious, scrumptious, wonderful batch of impromptu French toast out of stale Panera bagels.

I went to eat a bagel, discovered it was rock-hard, and decided that, instead of throwing it away, I would try to make French toast.

I didn't have a recipe or a plan, just some eggs and milk and stale bagels and cinnamon and it turned out perfectly.

Fast forward to Saturday. I wanted French toast. We had some bread that wasn't quite stale, per say, but you never really know, in Tulsa, if bread will go stale or moldy, and we were unlikely to eat it before it went whichever way it decided to go.

Anyway. I had this stack of bread, which the DDH obligingly dried out a bit in the toaster, and I panicked. "I can't remember what I did for the bagels. Those turned out so well. I don't want to mess up this bread. I wish I had written down the bagel-process. I need a recipe!"

The DDH rolled his eyes. "You don't need a recipe to make French toast. It's just French toast."

"That's what you say now," I said, "but you won't be so certain if I ruin it all and you have nothing to eat."

The DDH decided not to argue and went back to doing...whatever it was he was doing in the other room.

I looked up a recipe for French toast and promptly did almost nothing it said to do. Because that's how I roll.

And it turned out just fine.

This recipe is for all of you who don't really need a recipe for French toast, but want one anyway. Feel free to ignore everything it says. It's hard to go too terribly wrong with eggy bread.

French Toast
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

This recipe makes enough batter for eight slices of commercial sandwich bread, made moderately soggy. If you use more, thicker, or drier bread (or bagels!) you may need more batter; if you prefer less-soaked toast, you may use less.

BUT. Unless you are short on eggs, you should make more batter than you think you'll need, because everyone should at least once have the experience of eating leftover batter cooked into oddly-seasoned scrambled eggs. Your tastebuds won't know what to do with themselves.

Eight slices o' bread.

 Crack four eggs into a large bowl.



Eggs.

Use a whisk or fork to beat up the eggs, as you would for scrambled eggs.

Add two cups of milk:

Moojuice.

Whisk together until well combined.

See the yellow flecks suspended in the milk? That's what
happens if you add the milk before beating up the eggs.

Add approximately 1 tsp. vanilla and spices to taste. Cinnamon is a must-have. My personal Secret Ingredient is ginger. Other popular spices are nutmeg, cloves...any of those warm spices that belong in pumpkin pies. I don't recommend using all of those in one batch, though, unless you want pumpkin pie flavored French toast. Which, now there's an idea....

Add about 1 heaping tsp. of each to taste.

The usual suspects.

Whisk to combine.

Spicy batter.

 Add in a good shake or three of salt.

There are two schools of thought on French toast preparation: the Dipping School and the Soaking School. I belong to the latter. I want toast that's as much egg as bread. I want it crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside and completely its own delicious thing.

Other people like plain toast with a little egg glaze on it. De gustibus non est disputandum, as my dad always says.

Anyway, so if you're a Dipper, you want to heat your skillet, then dip your bread to your liking into the batter and toss it on the skillet right away.

If you're a Soaker (congratulations on your good taste), pile some bread in there and leave it to soak while you heat the skillet.

Soaking toast.

The only problem with this method is that the first few slices you soak might soak up all your batter, leaving the last couple slices dry and sad. Sometimes this is acceptable or even desirable, if, say, you have some weirdos in your house who like less eggy French toast. But for best results, only soak two to three pieces at a time, and don't leave them in too long. Admonish them to leave some batter for the other toastlets. Alternatively, split the batter between two bowls so you can soak all the bread at once.

Meanwhile, heat a scant tablespoon butter or oil (a neutral flavored oil like coconut or canola, not olive oil, unless you want some really weird-tasting toast) in a large skillet.

Oiled pan.

Put the battered bread in the hot skillet.

Cook for about two minutes on each side or until browned. You'll have to keep adjusting this time as your pan gets warmer, the same way you do when making pancakes. Luckily, you can keep flipping toast back and forth until it's nicely browned on both sides without making a bit mess.

Remember that this is egg soaked bread, so you do want the egg to cook all the way through.

Nicely browned.

This is what happens if you're not firm with your bread and you let it hog all the batter: it gets really mushy and floppy.

There's nothing wrong with that, technically. They will cook fine and actually be the most delicious of all the bread pieces.

 

Unfortunately, it means that the rest of the bread will not have much batter to soak in:

And will be drier and less flavorful than the rest of the batch.

Which, honestly, is nothing a little honey can't remedy.

See how it doesn't brown evenly because there's not as much
batter on the outside of the toasts.

 Regardless, in the end, you will have a glorious pile of eggy bread:

Eggy bread.

 

Serve plain or topped with butter, sugar, jam, maple syrup, and/or my favorite: honey.

French toast with Michigan cherry butter.