A little foreplay goes a long way

Last week, I started my summer evening math class.

Calculus. Advanced calculus. On lovely summer evenings. As a matter of fact, yes, I am a masochist who enjoys having no life. Strangely enough though, having no life requires a lot of planning and forethought. I’ve got a tight bit of time between work and school to cook, eat, and do a bit of homework. Cause it’s not like I’m going to be doing homework at 10:30 at night after class. Yes, 10:30 at night. I love my life.

Believe it or not, I was actually smart enough to do a bit of cooking ahead on the weekend.

I made and froze a spaghetti sauce (with a few variations) that Recipe Guy likes. Some day I’ll make it again and show you the variations, not the least of which minimizes the number of dishes required (holy crap it’s tasty, but holy crap the dishes!).

The day I ate it, Wednesday, I boiled water, cooked pasta, and dumped the thawed-in-the-fridge-all-day sauce into the pot. I added a little extra cream to encourage the delicious sauciness of this dish. (wine would work too, but I’d somehow managed to run out)

I also prepared a vegan lentil and eggplant stew that requires variations of its own before I post it. On the day I ate it, Thursday, I let it thaw in the fridge, heated it in a bowl, and served it with a warmed pita bread and a couple olives.

And was running late and didn't take a pic. Dammit.

So, that was two dinners down. Friday, I don’t have class so I’m not going to worry about it, but I still had two days of cooking and eating dinner in about an hour.

One way to minimize cook time is with a crock pot. You can do all the preparation the night before, stash it in the fridge, and put it on to cook in the morning before you leave for work. The trick to this is remembering to actually turn the crock pot on.

Red beans are an awesome crock pot recipe. Yes, I made them on the stove in that version, but I’ve done them in the crock pot more than a couple times. Works just fine. And, if you make the rice on the weekend, dinner is waiting for you when you get home. Just add parsley. Yes, I like parsley.

Precooking rice also works if you’re planning a stir fry.

Stir fries are superfast cooking meals. But they are a little heavy on preparation time with all those fresh veggies to chop. But, since I was chopping the veggies for Monday’s Red Beans on Sunday, I also chopped the veggies for Tuesday’s stir fry.

Stir Fry In Advance

What you need:

In advance:

• Half an onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 small head of bok choy
• 8 mushrooms
• A handful of beansprouts
• 1-2 tsp cornstarch
• ½ c water
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp fresh chopped ginger
• ½ tsp sriracha (aka cock sauce) (optional)
• ½ tsp sugar

Um, that pic includes the red bean stuff... you'll just have to ignore those parts.

On the day you eat it:

• Peanut and sesame oils
• 1 small lean steak, like inside round or flank
• Rice that you cooked a couple days ago

What you gotta do:

In Advance:

Rinse, and chop all the veggies to the size you prefer. I like things a little smaller than bite sized. That way, I can eat a few pieces at a time, and they cook a little faster.

The beansprouts can just stay in their bag until the day you cook.

Store the chopped veggies in an air tight container or large ziplock bag.

Combine the cornstarch, water, soy, sugar and ginger in a small container or bag, and store it next to the veggies.

On the day you eat it:

Don’t forget to take the steak out of the freezer in the morning or the night before. Let it thaw in the fridge and don’t worry if it’s still a little frozen when you start cooking, it’s easier to slice steak thinly when it’s a little frozen.

When you get home from work, put a large pan or wok on the stove with a bit of peanut oil and sesame oil in it. While the oils heat over medium high, slice the steak thinly against the grain.

Takes about 2-3 minutes to slice the steak and heat the pan.

Drop the steak in the hot hot pan, the cutting board in the sink, and grab the veggies and sauce from the fridge.

The steak should only take a few minutes if the pan is big enough and hot enough, and if the steak is sliced thin enough.

So, we're at about 6 or 7 minutes now.

When it’s started to lose its pink, open the veggie container and upend the contents into the pan.

If you want these to cook a little faster, throw a tablespoon of water in with them and cover the pan.

That takes about 3 or 4 minutes.

Once the veggies are softened and the meat has lost its pink, give the sauce one last shake and dump it into the pan. Give it a stir to spread it around, add more water if necessary.

Stir in the beansprouts and put the lid on.

One minute to add and stir.

Turn off the heat and nuke your rice.

3 minutes for the rice.

You should be at about the 13-15 minute mark here.

Once the rice is warm, top it with the fast, healthy dinner that you just cooked in 15 minutes.

What's the fastest dinner you've ever made?

Pistachio Porn

Around the same time I posted the request for recipe requests, I also asked the guys at work. Most of them defer and claim they’ll love anything I make. I think they’re just afraid I’ll stop bringing them cookies if they offer any critical feedback. Anyone who’s ever critiqued my writing knows that’s just not true. I’ve been absolutely shredded in the past and I’m still… um, if I wasn’t in school I’d still be… writing.

Fortunately, we’ve got a new guy at work.

When I told him I’d make anything, any recipe that would challenge me, but still fit in the magic cookie tin, he came back with this:

Indian Spice Cookies

Wow. Neat! I’ve used garam masala in curries, but I’d never seen garam masala used in a dessert.

Garam masala isn’t a spice on it’s own, so this isn’t quite like making a snickerdoodle which has the cinnamon on the outside… and it’s not quite like a gingersnap. Ginger snaps use a mixture of spices, but they’re all “sweet” spices. Garam masala includes things like cumin (used in making chilli and curry) and black pepper!

I was so making these things.

But of course I can’t just make a plain old cookie even if it was crazy spiced. But I didn’t want to mess with the reportedly soft and chewy texture by adding nuts or something, so I decided they needed some kind of prettying up. A little bit of icing never hurt any cookie. So I made a rosewater glaze and then pressed the damp glaze into finely chopped pistachios.

A bit of a gilded lily, yes, but I think the sweetness of the nuts and glaze worked well to balance the amazing bite of the cookies.

These went over amazingly well with the guys in the construction trailer. And yes, I know, I’m shooting fish in a barrel, but I figure if the cookies weren’t great, 6 guys wouldn’t have cleaned out the entire tin in half a day.

Unfortunately I didn’t actually have garam masala on hand. What I did have were many of the spices that often go into the mixtures that you find in the spice section. Those mixtures can vary in content, and in heat level so I made my own, and scaled down the more savoury spices. If you’ve got some in your cupboard already, give it a shot. If not, here’s what I did for mine:

Garam Masala:

• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 1/2 tsp ground pepper
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves (I think I may have used allspice though)
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Put them all together in a jar and shake.

Now that you’ve got perfectly balanced garam masala, you can make the cookies.

What you need:

Cookies:

• 1/2 cup butter (softened)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. Vanilla
• 1 tsp. Garam Masala
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Topping:

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tbsp water
• 1 tsp rosewater
• About 1/2 to 3/4 cup of very finely chopped pistachios

What you gotta do:

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Cream the butter and brown sugar.

Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.

If you feel like dirtying another dish, sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl. If not, pile the flour on one side, and put the other dry stuff on top.

Mix the dry stuff together a bit before starting to incorporate it into the wet part.

Spicey!

Drop teaspoons of dough onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment if you don’t want to have to wash it afterwards.

Bake the cookies for a mere 10 minutes. Watch them. Don’t let them get too brown. They’re quite golden in colour already and a little extra will have them looking too dark.

Cool them on a rack while you chop the nuts. 

put all the glaze ingredients (not the nuts) in a bowl and mix them.

Dip the cooled cookies into the glaze

and then press them into the nuts.

Once they’ve set, pack them up in the cookie tin, take them to work, and see if anyone can guess what they’re seasoned with.

I’m going to give Lyra Marlow’s suggestion of creamsicle cookies a shot in a couple weeks. And I’m really wondering how I can pull of angel’s suggestion of strawberry shortcake!

What’s the strangest ingredient you’ve ever put in a cookie or dessert??