Balthazar’s Cream of Mushroom Soup
So last week when it was all chilly and brrrrrrr, I saw this vegan mushroom soup and knew I would be making mushroom soup to warm my bones. And it seemed perfect because having a new labmate who is vegan made me realize that my blog is not vegan friendly. In fact, I struggled to recall a single recipe admist all the POUNDS of butter, dairy, eggs, and cheese that is vegan. My tumblr is actually vegan-hostile. What better way to remedy this than by making something deliciously vegan?
Except then, of course due to my perfectionist nature, I had to hunt around for other mushroom soup recipes to see how the ingredients and ratios compare, which of course led me to this cream of mushroom soup which is decidedly not so vegan friendly. Well, this soup, with its hefty 2 (TWO!!!!) pounds of fungi, won me over and all thoughts of my first vegan tumblr recipe went flying out the window.
I know I could have made the vegan cashew cream to be the “cream” in my mushroom soup but…. I figured if I am going to try Balthazar’s Cream of Mushroom soup, I have to try it as written. And of course, it was delicious. Creamy and so very earthy, really the only way 2 pounds of mushed up cooked mushrooms can be earthy. Next time can be cashew cream vegan time.
Warm Mushroom Salad
I know I haven’t been posting too regularly about what’s been going on in my kitchen, but hopefully I will get caught up now that I am post-vacations and post-annual-thesis-committee-meeting (went well! thank goodness!). I have a few delicious morsels I hadn’t had time to share with you before I threw my sunscreen, bug spray, and bikinis into a suitcase and headed to Barbados, and of course, there is still a post about Japan that will eventually be written… but for now, there is this tasty warm mushroom salad.
Mushrooms are one of those ingredients that I didn’t particularly care for as a child, but have grown to love and even crave as an adult. My family would often eat these big brown mushrooms (I once asked my mom what they are actually called and she told me “Brown Mushrooms”) that are dried and sold in Asian food stores. They are rehydrated and were included in soups, stir frys, or chopped up in fried rice. They had a strong taste that I am still not fond of, but I have happily found many other varieties of mushrooms that I fully enjoy.
This warm mushroom salad was hearty and filling for a salad, thanks to the earthy taste and dense texture of the sautéed mushrooms. I added some crisp bacon chunks (hello lovelies) for extra indulgence and the pretense of nutritious protein, and shaved parmeggiano reggiano, though I think a tangy soft cheese such as Gorgonzola or blue cheese would also be fantastic. I found that very little of the dressing was actually needed, partly because I don’t like my salads drenched in dressing, and partly because there was enough buttery juices from the cooked mushrooms to dress the salad. Since the dressing contains the tangy acidity, I would either reduce the amount of oil to make the dressing a bit more concentrated or try to drain the cooked mushrooms before tossing the salad together. It’s a bit more intensive than your average salad, what with the COOKING and ROASTING and all (does that defy the definition of a SALAD then?), but it’s definitely worth it.
Warm Mushroom Salad
adapted from Smitten Kitchen, originally adapted from Sunday Suppers at Lucques
1/2 cup hazelnuts
2 tablespoons finely diced shallots
3 tablespoons sherry or a white wine vinegar
9 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 pounds mushrooms (cremini or a mix of wild mushrooms), cleaned and sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 ounces salad greens such as frisé, arugula or a mix of your choice
1 cup mix of fresh herbs (optional) such as chives, tarragon
1 teaspoon fresh thyme or a couple pinches of dried
1/4 cup sliced shallots
1/4 pound pecorino (I used parmeggiano, but think a tangy soft cheese would be delicious as well)
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Toast the hazelnuts on a baking sheet for 8 to 10 minutes, rolling them around once or twice to make sure they toast evenly. Rub nuts in a dish towel (I just used my fingers) to remove skins then let cool. Chop the hazelnuts coarsely.
- Whisk the shallots, vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon salt together in a bowl and let sit for five minutes (this will soften and almost pickle the shallots), before whisking in 5 tablespoons olive oil.
- Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter until the butter foams. Add half the mushrooms, half the thyme and season with salt and pepper. Sauté the mushrooms for about 5 minutes, until they’re softened but not limp (your cooking time will depend on the type of mushrooms you used).
- Transfer mushrooms to a plate then repeat with the second half. When they are cooked, return the first half of the mushrooms to the pan then toss in sliced shallots, cooking for an additional 2 minutes.
- Spread salad greens on a plate. Sprinkle fresh herbs on top, if using. Spoon hot mushrooms over the salad greens. Pour three-quarters of the vinaigrette in the sauté pan and swirl it in the pan until heated. Season it with 1/4 teaspoon salt and freshly ground black pepper. Pour over salad and toss carefully. Adjust to taste — you may need more salt, pepper, vinaigrette or even more sherry vinegar.
- Use a vegetable peeler to shave cheese over the salad. Sprinkle with hazelnuts. Serve immediately.
Baked Eggs
Though my family is not religious, we did participate in the tradition of dyeing and decorating eggs for Easter. When we were younger, my mom would boil dozens of eggs as an instant child-proofing measure for the activity, thereby minimizing the mess and collateral damage to the kitchen. When we got older, we adopted a more sophisticated method of poking small holes in the top and bottom of the egg, and blowing out the yolk and white so that the colored and often bedazzled (we had a glitter phase) shells could be kept indefinitely. Even now, my mom still displays an example of my Easter artistic genius in one of her large cabinets of random curios and trinkets; it sits proudly between the carved jade dragon and Buddha souvenirs from China.
I haven’t decorated an egg in years, but I treated myself to a special egg breakfast this Easter instead. I had seen baked eggs here and here, and was curious about the texture of the egg and yolk. I love both the crispyness of a fried egg and the luxurious softness of the yolk of a poached egg, and it seemed that baking eggs may encompass both these attributes.
I started with a base of bread (the stale ends of a loaf finished days before) and a few cherry tomatoes, added some sautéed spinach and mushrooms, and popped 2 eggs on top. After a dusting of salt and pepper, and a healthy handful of both gruyère and parmesan, I baked the dish in the oven for 15 minutes, until the cheese had formed a crispy crust over the eggs, but parts of the yolk maintained a luxurious flow.
It was a tasty breakfast, simple to put together, and felt like a complete meal. The eggs were not crispy enough to rival a fried egg, but the browned cheese did add a nice salty crunch, and the yolk was certainly reminiscent of a poached egg. Next time I would add bacon or sausage, to add more punch of flavor and omit the layer of bread altogether and just serve the eggs with a nice crusty buttered piece of toast.
Baked Eggs
adapted liberally from Smitten Kitchen and Bitchin’ Camero to accomodate what I had in my kitchen so that I didn’t have to change out of my p.j.’s on a Sunday morning to go to the store…
serves 1 hungry person who loves brunch
2 eggs
1 slice of bread (stale is OK)
1 tablespoon cream
4-5 cherry tomatoes
2 big handfuls of baby spinach, probably equivalent to 2 cups
3 cremini mushrooms, sliced
1/8 small red onion, finely diced
1 small clove of garlic, finely chopped
1/8 cup of grated cheese, gruyere or parmesan or both or any other melty cheese
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 400 F.
- Cut bread slice into cubes, about 1/2 inch each, and place in bottom of ramekin or small baking dish. Pour the cream over the bread. Cut tomatoes in half and add to the ramekin.
- Heat small skillet on medium high with about 1 tablespoon of oil. Add garlic and onions and cook for 2 minutes until beginning to soften. Add mushrooms and cook for additional 4-5 minutes. Add spinach and cook just until wilted, about 2 minutes. Season vegetables with salt and pepper to taste. Add vegetables to the ramekin, on top of the bread and tomatoes.
- Crack two eggs on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Top with the grated cheese.
- Bake until the egg whites are set, about 10-15 minutes depending on the size of your baking dish.
Mushroom and Zucchini Quiche
On the weekends, I really enjoy taking the time to cook or bake breakfast. During the week, I’m in such a rush to get to lab, either by some ungodly early hour if I have a 12-14 hour timecourse, or before 8 am on most other days, that I eat either on the walk to lab or after I have gotten experiments started. Weekday breakfast is mostly a fleeting thought amidst the innumerable worries and concerns about experiments and the schedule of my day- just eat something to survive the morning until mid-morning snack, or lunch.
But on the weekends, even though I still go to lab, I am usually less in a rush, less consumed by all work-related thoughts. I take the time to make myself breakfast, sometimes simple greek yogurt with fresh fruit on top, sometimes something more involved, like pancakes, an omelette, or our go-to tasty breakfast sandwich of toasted english muffin, melted cheese, over-medium egg, bacon/salami and ketchup (YUM). I appreciate the process of putting breakfast together, and then the luxury of enjoying a freshly made, warm breakfast while watching some brainless TV or going through a magazine.
This Saturday, by combining items that were already in the fridge/freezer, I baked a mushroom and zucchini quiche before I headed off to lab. I’ve made a few variations of this quiche before; it’s extremely easy to throw together and you can imagine endless permutations on the fillings to include your favorite vegetables and/or meats (or like me, whatever happens to be languishing in your fridge, begging to be used before they go bad).
Mushroom and Zucchini Quiche
I don’t even know where I got this recipe; I think it was from looking at a variety of recipes from different food blogs and food sites, taking the elements that I knew I wanted and accounting for what I had on hand. I only had 1 shallot, 1 zucchini, a handful of mushrooms, and 3 eggs, so the recipe I’ve posted can certainly be modified if you want more veggies, more eggs, etc., though despite these restrictions, the ratio of veggies to filling worked out pretty nicely.
1 pre-made frozen pie crust, 9”
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk (I had 1%)
about 1/3 cup goat cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup grated fontina cheese
6 cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 zucchini, coarsely grated
1 large shallot, diced
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper to taste
1. Take out pie crust, let thaw about 15 minutes. Poke crust all over with a fork to allow air vents so that the crust stays flat and does not puff up. Bake at 400 degrees 10 minutes, until just begins to brown. (Note: I think the reason for pre-baking the crust is to prevent it from becoming soggy with the filling. The problem I found with pre-baking was that my crust became awfully brown while baking the filling, and I didn’t find the crust extremely UN-soggy, so I am tempted to NOT pre-bake next time- as well as hopefully having the time for a home-made crust!)
2. While crust is baking, prepare the filling. Cut vegetables, heat the butter in a medium-sized skillet over moderately high heat. Add the shallots first, letting cook for 2 minutes before adding the mushrooms and zucchini. Season with salt and pepper (a generous pinch of salt, 2-3 turns of pepper), stir, and let lightly brown, cooking for about 8-10 minutes.
3. Whisk eggs, milk, and goat cheese together. Add about 1/2 teaspoon salt and a few turns of pepper. Allowing the goat cheese to come to room temperature before this step allowed some of it to be whisked into a creamy eggy mixture, and left some small chunks of goat cheese. If you like bigger goat cheese chunks, you can just whisk together the eggs and milk, adding the goat cheese chunks directly to the crust with the veggies. If you like a creamy, more uniform egg filling, you can beat the goat cheese first with an electric mixer until creamy, then add the eggs one and a time, then the milk while beating.
4. Transfer veggies to the pre-baked crust, spreading pretty evenly on the bottom. Pour egg mixture over. Top with the grated fontina cheese.
5. Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes, until the middle of the quiche has set and the cheese on top has started to brown. Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes to let the quiche finish setting up. (I did not wait, but cut myself a slice immediately… hey, I was hungry!)
Risotto with Mushrooms and Asparagus, and Seared Scallops
I have a confession to make. I don’t really know how to cook rice.
I know, I know, I’m ASIAN and I don’t know how to cook rice?!?! How can this be???
I blame it all on technology. Seriously. I grew up in a household that had not one, but three rice cookers. One for everyday use, a larger one for parties, and a newer one, gifted many Christmases ago from Grandma, just in case the everyday one broke (which never happened). When I reached that age where I could “help cook,” my parents taught me how to measure and wash the rice, how to add the appropriate amount of water (to the first line of my pinky finger when held perpendicular to the bed of rice, the tip of my pinky just touching the top of the rice), close the lid, and then… PUSH THE BUTTON. Twenty or so minutes later, without fail, perfect, fluffy, white rice.
When I left home for college, one of the first things I packed was a mini rice cooker. It wasn’t until Andreas and I started cooking dinner together just a few years ago that I came upon two startling realizations: he doesn’t own a rice cooker, and more importantly, I have no idea how to cook rice on the stove. Now, I understand the principles of cooking rice… and you would think that someone who mixes and boils and incubates things for specific times all day long in the lab would be able to handle cooking rice on the stove-top. However, I have had so many failures of under- or over-cooked rice and every untasty stage between, that many rice dishes that I find mentally irresistable (risotto and paella, mmmm….) are also overwhelmingly intimidating. My few laughable attempts resulted in gummy yet paradoxically crunchy, mostly inedible concoctions.
A few weeks ago, Andreas and I had a lovely dinner at Grotto, and embarked on a transcendent experience with each bite of their parmesan risotto. It was the perfect consistency- creamy, yet firm; the flavor was full and robust. It inspired me to try my hand at risotto at home, once again. And I’m so glad I did, because it turned out pretty freaking awesome.
I’m not quite sure what I did this time that made this endeavor so much more successful than previous ones. I can only think of two things: it was my birthday (yes I’m about a week behind on posts), and I set the stove setting between 5 and 6 (moderately high heat) and DID NOT TOUCH IT FOR THE ENTIRE PROCESS. I have this horrible habit of fiddling with the stove during rice cooking- which is probably the sole reason for my inability to cook rice. I blame it on insecurity: I set the temperature, but then start to doubt myself and so I fiddle with it, then a few minutes later, convince myself that now it’s too high, and lower it.. only to return yet a few minutes later to adjust it to somewhere in between.. you get the idea.
Anyway, I wanted to cook myself a nice birthday dinner, and since the temperature has been steadily dropping, the warm richness of risotto seemed like a fitting indulgence. I paired it with seared scallops because it felt a little extravagant, I love them, and they are a light counterpart to the risotto. I had hoped I would have some risotto leftover to try an arancini (risotto cake) recipe… but of course, there was none. Next time!
Risotto with Mushrooms and Asparagus
adapted from Gourmet, 2003
1 cup arborio rice
1 large shallot, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup white wine
4 cups chicken broth (low sodium)
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan reggiano (the real stuff, I swear it’s so much more amazing than regular parmesan)
2 tablespoons butter
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 1 inch length
8-10 cremini mushrooms, chopped in slices or chunks
1. Pour chicken broth into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Once boil, reduce heat to low simmer.
2. In medium sized skillet, melt 1 tablespoon butter and saute mushrooms and asparagus about 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Once done, set aside.
3. In medium sized saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium high heat. Add shallots and garlic, stirring often to soften for a few minutes. Add rice and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup white wine and stir rice, until wine is mostly absorbed.
4. Ladle 1 cup of simmering broth to the rice and stir until mostly absorbed, about 5 minutes. Continue to ladle in simmering broth, one cup at a time, until rice is tender, yet still firm, and creamy looking, about 20 minutes. Additional broth may be needed to get the risotto to your desired consistency. Take off heat and add parmesan, salt and pepper and mushrooms and asparagus from earlier. After cooling, the risotto thickens quite a bit, so if you are re-heating, add a bit of broth to loosen the risotto.
Seared Scallops
8-10 large scallops, rinsed and patted dry with paper towels
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon oil
1. Remove “foot” from scallops. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Heat butter and oil in skillet over high heat, let the skillet get really hot to nicely sear the scallops. Place scallops in skillet with space between them. Cook scallops without moving them until golden and crisp, about 2-3 minutes. Turn scallops and cook on other side for 1-2 minutes.
