earth food

grown from the page at earthside.org/Food & in support of the forth-coming cookbook of the same name by June Perg Floyd

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

A Twist on Dipping Oil

Ciabatta bread dipped in a mix of plain yogurt, extra virgin olive oil, and paprika.

Q: What, exactly does one call that?
A:tasty.

Peppermint tea is good with this.

The facts speak for themselves.

Labels: bread, olive oil, paprika, tea

posted by pd wilson # 07:22

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

tofu and rice

This can be prepared using a microwave oven and a rice-cooker - there are numerous other ways to accomplish the same basic meal, but what we used this time is:

standard four-cup rice-cooker
standard 1500W microwave oven
Botan rice
[reverse-osmosis-filtered - $0.39 @ Wallyworld] water
16-ounce package extra-firm tofu (the "cold-pack" kind)
extra-virgin olive oil
soy sauce (Kikoman)
garlic powder
ground (powdered) red pepper (cayenne)
beef stock

(note 1: any and all of these ingredients have substitutes - email if you want a list)

Instructions:

Cook some rice - 3 cups should be plenty for two people
After the rice is ready, break up about half the tofu into a [microwave safe] bowl
drizzle some olive oil over the tofu
Add the spices to the tofu and olive oil in the bowl
Pour in about 2 ounces of beef stock
Stir the contents of the bowl and microwave it on high for about 60 seconds.
take the bowl out of the microwave and add about a cup or a cup and a half of rice
drizzle more olive oil and some soy sauce over the rice (the tofu is in the bottom of the bowl, under the rice, at this point).
Stir up up.
Enjoy

Labels: beef stock, cooking, olive oil, rice, rice cooker, tofu

posted by pd wilson # 00:13

Saturday, January 27, 2007

leftover tortilla integrity

Ingredients

Note: this one is probably not easily repeatable - or at least, most food techs who are just interested in preparing a meal for consumption today won't go to the trouble of e.g. buying a package of tortillas and leaving them opened in the crisper drawer of the fridge for 2 weeks just to reproduce the condition of the torillas. I suppose a similar dish could be prepared using rice that hasn't been frozen, and fresh tortillas. Fortunately, Ghetto Kitches Labs maintains a substantial inventory of various specialized ingredients specifically for these types of experiments.

Most of a quart of white rice - left over from an order of egg foo yung. It sat in the fidge until it froze. Nothing wrong with that, really, but it needed defrosting.
Four whole wheat tortillas sat in the drawer in the bottom of the fridge in a torn package until the exposed part of each of the tortillas had gotten quite dried out and hard.
A 7 ounce package of Starkist tuna
olive oil, garlic powder, soy sauce, chili sauce

Directions

Remove the frozen rice from the cardboard chinese food container, placing it in the large [microwavable] glass mixing bowl [Anchor Hocking]
Adjust the "temperature" dial of the microwave to be somewhere around "medium" - this setting changes during cooking, so the precision used in this step is not particularly important - the idea is to thaw the rice gently, then heat it up causing it to give up some moisture to the tortillas
Place the bowl in the microwave and lay the partly dried out tortillas over the top - on top of the rice
Start the microwave - the timer setting doesn't really matter, since the m/w has to be stopped frequently to check the state of the rice and the tortillas
After about a minute or a minute and half, stop the m/w and check - if the rice is not thawed, run it some more. It may be useful to adjust the temp, but if the rice gets too hot to quickly, the rest of this won't work right. Also, if the tortillas get too hot too soon, they will get too tough or (in the extreme case) too crispy.
Once the rice has thawed, but before it gets hot, move the tortillas underneath the rice - a spoon might be useful for this, but is not required.
Drizzle some olive oil (enough to plausibly make its way down thru the rice and onto the tortillas) over the top of the rice, increase the temperature setting incrementally and run the m/w some more. Repeat this step until the rice is steaming, and the tortillas have softened enough to eat.
Take the bowl with the rice and tortillas out of the m/w, open the tuna and empty it over the rice.
Add garlic powder, chili sauce, and soy sauce on top of the tuna, to taste.
Stir the rice and spices into the rice [use chopsticks], then [again w/ the chopsticks] drag one of the tortillas out from under the rice - most of the way - capture some of the of the rice and tuna onto the tortilla and role it up - if you want extra chili sauce, this would be the time to add it. Repeat this step with each of the tortillas until the tune & rice are taken.
Enjoy!

Notes

This is good with coffee.

This dish is significantly more complex and takes quite a bit longer to prepare than most of the stuff we do here.

Additional spices and/or different types of oils, rice, or tortillas would give the dish a slightly different character using the same procedure.

Labels: chili sauce, garlic powder, microwave, olive oil, rice, tuna

posted by pd wilson # 06:12

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Instant Garlic Toast™ and Instant Garlic Toast Extreme™

Original Instant Garlic Toast™

If you have a pop-up toaster handy, and some of that garlic juice in a pump-spray bottle, and some extra virgin olive oil, Original Instant Garlic Toast™ is within your grasp, and just moments away. Simply:

Toast some bread
Spread some olive oil on the toast
Spray the oiled toast with some garlic juice

Logical standard substitutions and variations apply - for example:

butter, Brummel & Brown™ 30% yogurt spread, or other types of oils may serve in place of the extra virgin olive oil
Different types of bread should be tried
we would like to try this will walnut oil and sourdough bread
margarine is Evil, even if tasty - use it only at your peril and if you can't get any other ingredient for the oil layer
you can use an oven for this, but it takes longer - arguably, use of an oven contra-indicates the use of the term "Instant"
However, if you want cheese on your garlic toast, forgoing the "Instant" in favor of Traditional Over Garlic Toast™ is probably a good idea.

Instant Garlic Toast Extreme™

If - like the folks here at Ghetto Kitchen Labs - you're not a sniveling, wimpy little consumer who lives in fear of kitchen appliances - and if you like your garlic toast hotter, with more olive oil and garlic than what you can feasibly get from applying the Original Instant Garlic Toast™ algorithm, you may want to try Instant Garlic Toast Extreme™ - it takes a bit longer to prepare, but we believe that the term "Instant" still applies, since this is just too easy - all that's required is a bit more vigilance against fires that may start due to mis-use of kitchen appliances - and for that reason, we are constrained to provide the following disclaimer of liability:

disclaimer

Disclaimer of Liability: Earth Food and Ghetto Kitchen Labs are collectively and individually not responsible for your screw-ups. Furthermore, we make no warranties or guarantees, neither expressed nor implied, concerning this algorithm or its suitability for any purpose, public or private, living or dead, summa cum laude. We haven't even tried this ourselves, and we don't recommend that you try it. In fact, we do recommend that you not read the rest of this article if you are the kind of person who would even think about blaming - or suing us - for any problem you have had in the past, have now, or may have in the future. We didn't do it, we weren't drunk, we weren't there. By reading the rest of this article, including the forthcoming algorithm for the production of Instant Garlic Toast Extreme™, you thereby agree to indemnify and hold harmless Earth Food, Ghetto Kitchen Labs, and all their respective employees, associates, owners, operators, and designees, henceforth, in perpetuity.

So don't blame us if your toaster catches fire, your home is destroyed, or any other disaster befalls you. Instant Garlic Toast Extreme is not for everyone, and it is certainly not for the faint of heart, or those with an impaired understanding of what makes smoke come out of kitchen appliances. Don't try this if your let kitchen appliances are mysterious or intimidating to you.

If, however, you are the kind of person who buys the toaster with the extra-wide slots - not so you can easily toast bagels, but because you found empirically that, while it is possible to squash a ham-and-cheese sandwich flat enough to fit into regular toaster slot, you just didn't want to have to work quite that hard at it, then this idea might be for you.

general considerations of production and use

The concept that underlies the production of Instant Garlic Toast Extreme™ is - like Instant Garlic Toast™ - relatively simple. The basic idea is that, when it comes to extra virgin olive oil and garlic, "more is better" - hence, while the ingredients for Instant Garlic Toast Extreme™ are the same as those for Original Instant Garlic Toast™, the proportions differ - specifically, the amount of bread remains the same, while the amounts of oil and garlic juice are increased proportionally.

Instant Garlic Toast Extreme™ also plays to the idea that olive oil and garlic juice - like the bread that carries them - are better consumed while still warm (perhaps even hot, but not so hot as to burn the roof of your mouth like, say, a pre-maturely delivered pizza).

With that in mind, the instructions are eerily similar to those for Original Instant Garlic Toast, differing only in degrees of precision, and in the number of [iterated] steps to accomplish the end result.

So [finally] here are the instructions for Instant Garlic Toast Extreme™:

using a brush (or a paper towel, or your fingers, if you don't have brushes and paper towels lying about) carefully spread a layer of olive oil on the slice(s) of bread
Spray the bread with garlic spray
cycle the bread thru the toaster, using a "light" setting - the idea here is to warm the slices, perhaps toast them slightly, but not necessarily to brown them in one toasting, since this would result in burnt toast, eventually...
Repeat from step one until the toast is browned, saturated with oil and garlic, and hot.
Enjoy!

recommended side dishes

Both wine and pasta go very well with either Original Instant Garlic Toast™ or Instant Garlic Toast Extreme. We recommend Chianti and a thin vermicelli, ever so slightly al dente. Cheese of all sorts is also good.

additional caveats

If your supply of toasters, bread, garlic juice, olive oil, or whatever ingredients you are substituting, is either severely constrained, or critically limited, you probably shouldn't be trying this.
Some of the steps of the process will need to be performed once for each slice Instant Garlic Toast Extreme&trade: which you intend to produce - that is: twice for two slices, four times if you have a 4-slot toaster and want four slices, etc. If you don't "get" this, you probably shouldn't try this procedure.

future development

Note that Ghetto Kitchen Labs is also working on a process for Instant Garlic Toast Extreme^ULTRA™. The experiments have had some limited success, but the the recovery of the cheese which slides off the bread and builds up in the bottom of the toaster is an economic concern for which we as yet have no definitive solutions in the short term.

As always: Have fun, and be careful.

Labels: bread, disclaimer, garlic, garlic juice, oil, olive oil, toast, toaster

posted by pd wilson # 11:41