New York State of Mind

It's been well over a year since I contributed to this blog, and I have to admit, I really missed it! I've decided it's about time you all knew what I was cooking again and so, consider it resurrected!

A lot has changed since the beginning of this blog. It started in an ill-equipped kitchen (thank you dorm life), then moved to a small kitchen (kudos off-campus apartment) and now, it's moved to a new city...and an even smaller kitchen. But, that kitchen is all mine :) I now live in Queens, NY in a studio apartment on my own, and now that I'm an "adult" with few obligations other than my full-time job, I've got plenty of time for cooking. I must say, more time allows for much better cooking.

In bringing this blog back, I decided not to finish my initial goal of cooking my way through Giada's "Everyday Italian" (Unfortunately, my budget will not allow me to buy lamb and veal and other Giada-y foods). Instead, you're just going to hear about what I cooked that night and maybe a little about my day and my musings on life.

Like tonight for example, it was a Shrimp Scampi night. This recipe is my usual I'm-really-hungry-and-need-food-in-ten-minutes meal, because it usually only needs the amount of time needed to cook pasta. I didn't really follow a recipe, and as always, I improvised a lot.

As the water boiled for the pasta, I seasoned the shrimp with salt and pepper and chopped my garlic. Thanks to my mom (and our shopping weekend), I now have a knife sharpener PLUS my chopping skills have greatly improved, so chopping garlic isn't nearly as tedious or messy as it used to be (like getting most of it on my hands and having garlic hands for a week).

I heated a pan over medium heat and tossed in the butter, coating the pan and being sure not to burn or brown it (I have Cooking Mama to thank for those skills, you don't mess with her eyes of fire). After it all melted I added the shrimp. It's hard to believe that two years ago I would've dry heaved at the thought of shrimp. Now, I honestly can't get enough of them. It helps that they're easy to make and don't take long to defrost or cook. It also helps when you buy the peeled kind so you don't have a repeat of this.

Next I added the chopped garlic and tossed it all about, and then flipped all the shrimp. This was all within a two-minute span where I frantically grabbed items from cabinets and the fridge because (as usual) I didn't lay everything out beforehand. If you saw my counter space, you would understand why.

Once the shrimp were completely cooked, I removed them from the pan then hit it with some white wine ( Yellowtail Pinot Grigio: cheap enough that I can afford it, but doesn't come in a box). I had to add a little more butter as well (I never said this was a healthy dish), and I let it all cook for about 30 seconds. I then tossed the cooked pasta into the pan to thoroughly coat it with the sauce.

Top it with the shrimp and bam! Shrimp Scampi! Super easy. And notice how nothing went wrong? I've come a long way from Rachael Ray-ing my way up a flight of stairs with cooking supplies in tow and eating at my desk in my dorm. Granted at the moment I'm eating on my futon at a coffee table, but you do what you can.

Because I was feeling super domestic tonight, I also made chocolate chip cookies. When I moved in, I had somehow forgotten my most prized kitchen item, my red KitchenAid mixer, and when my mom visited this weekend she brought it to me. I couldn't very well let it sit there unused. And so my co-workers will be treated to some Random Tuesday chocolate chip cookies.

Speaking of my mom's visit, it was mostly centered on finding decorations for my apartment, but me being me, it also revolved around food. We were sure to hit up my local bagel place, we browsed Chelsea Market, stopped into Max Brenner for chocolate, had lunch at S'Mac, and grabbed ginormous slices of pizza at Dani's at the end of the night. We also walked over five miles in Manhattan and ran three in the hills of Queens (who knew Queens had hills??). Needless to say, my apartment looks great and I'm glad I got to visit/revisit some old/new NYC favorites.

I think that pretty much covers tonight. I won't be updating this every single night, but frequently enough. Stay tuned :)

Make Way for the Queen of Improvisation...

As I type this blog, I am being blinded by the sun while trying to watch football (but of course, not the Bills game because it's nowhere to be found!) on my TV that is poorly positioned in relation to my window. Despite these trivial annoyances, I do have a lot to be grateful for like being able to burn over 250 calories while playing DDR today, or having two available washers on a Sunday in a dorm, or eating a delicious meal inspired by Everyday Italian.

My use of the word "inspired" is not merely a way to diversify my word usage. Today's dish probably came out much differently than what Giada would have intended it to be. It was from the "Everyday Entrees" chapter in the "Everyday Grills and Sautees" section. It's name? Grilled Seafood Salad. I will point out that it is a Seafood salad and that no specific seafood is mentioned in its title, therefore, I feel less guilty in having to change its contents. It went a little something like this:

I started by making the dressing in a different method than I had ever used before. I heated some EVOO (the real thing, NOT the spray) in a pan then added some chopped garlic and herbs. The recipe calls for fresh parsley (which I have plenty of thanks to my mother's bountiful herb garden), marjoram, and thyme. I didn't even have the dried variety of the last two and didn't really see the purpose in spending money on them when all I needed was some fraction of a teaspoon of each. As I was about to proceed minus two herbs, I decided to look at the ingredients of my Italian Seasoning. Alas! It contained both marjoram AND thyme and even some oregano for good measure. Crisis averted.

I sauteed all of this for about 30 seconds just to emulsify all the flavors, then removed it from the heat and let it cool. As it cooled, I plugged in the George Foreman and moved on to the seafood portion.

The seafood called for in this recipe is scallops and squid. My problem was not with trying either of these (I am a big fan of calamari and have been meaning to try scallops anyway), but in finding them without spending an arm and a leg. My good friend Katie was kind enough to give me a lift to Wal-Mart the other night so I could pick up some other things I needed, so I decided to look there for the seafood as well. Unfortunately, neither was anywhere to be found. But as luck would have it, I still had some frozen shrimp back at my room and decided this seafood would do just fine. I once again had to go through the trauma that is peeling shrimp (one of the legs got stuck on my finger and literally made me shudder) and dried them as well.

Once my dressing was room temperature, I whisked in some lemon juice, salt, and pepper. I then dipped each shrimp in the dressing then placed them on the hot grill. Shrimp doesn't take long at all to cook, so from this point on, it became similar to an episode of "Chopped" since I hadn't thought to take any of my other ingredients out from the fridge or prepare them in any way.

First, I had to peel then chop a carrot. The recipe said to cut the carrot into two inch long, thin strips which was difficult to do quickly and without losing a finger. I escaped that task unscathed. Next, I had to chop half a yellow bell pepper in the same manner. This was slightly easier, but still time consuming for safety purposes. Once again, I made it through. I had my half cup of cannelini beans stored in the fridge having used the other half in a previous dish so I dumped the rest of those and the now chopped veggies into the remaining dressing. I tossed them all together to evenly coat them.

At this point, my shrimp were ready to be flipped, and then it was time to start assembling. Giada's salad uses arugula leaves and some radicchio. Well, Wal-Mart also failed to carry either of these produce items. However, I had a bag a Spring Mix salad back at home and was able to substitute this instead (I'm pretty sure there was a bit of radicchio in the mix which was a bonus). I placed some of the salad on my dish then topped it with the veggie and bean mixture. I then placed the hot shrimp on top of this.

As I've mentioned before, the George Foreman grill allows the "fat" of your food drip off the grill and into this little collection tray. Seeing as shrimp really don't have any fat to drip off of them, all that ended up in the drip tray was some excess dressing. I decided not to waste a drop of it and drizzled it on top of the salad.

It's difficult to see all the elements of the salad in the picture above because this was post-tossing to get the dressing throughout it. However, it was amazing and quite filling. It was extremely flavorful and balanced. I was actually very proud that I didn't overdo any of the potentially strong seasonings! My shrimp wasn't over cooked at all and there was plenty of dressing to go around without leaving a pool of it at the bottom of the plate. Personally, I love when there's a hot (temperature-wise) element in salads so this was right up my alley. Another successful recipe!

The next day of cooking will be this coming Thursday when I go for another stuffed vegetable recipe in the "Everyday Contorni" chapter: Stuffed Tomatoes!! I can't wait!

Another Open Letter to Shrimp:

Dear Shrimp,

You are wonderful, fantastic, divine, and a plethora of other adjectives that have yet to be invented. I'm sorry for my deep dislike for you all these years and hope you can forgive me. I see us having a beautiful relationship in the future.

P.S. I love you.

We've already been over my prior severe aversion to shrimp, but I'll elaborate a bit more. My mother used to order Shrimp Scampi at restaurants and make it at home back in the shrimp-less "dark ages." I always thought it smelled so good, but never thought to maybe try it because I was convinced I did NOT like shrimp.

Talk about a complete 180. I made Scampi on Couscous tonight, and I absolutely loved it!! Honestly, why didn't anyone force this down my throat years before?! This was so flavorful and awesome, I will begin to explain the process.

I started by heating a teaspoon of olive oil. I reduced the amount of oil for this recipe just to keep the WW points down and used the olive oil spray if necessary. Once the oil was heated, I added a clove of garlic, half a chopped onion, and half a chopped carrot (I pulled another Rachael Ray and saved the "nubber" of the carrot for snacking while cooking). You let this cook about five minutes until the onion has softened. To this, you add some canned tomatoes with their juices. The original recipe that makes four servings and calls for 16 ounces of chopped tomatoes, but for my single serving I used only about two to four ounces. With the tomatoes, I added two ounces of clam juice, a tablespoon of some cooking wine, and salt and pepper. This is brought to a boil and allowed to simmer for about ten minutes. The liquids should be reduced by then and the tomatoes should fall apart.

I let this cool, then put it in my handy dandy chopper to puree it. I added some water every so often as Giada said to do in order to get a broth-like consistency. Next came the tricky math part. In the original recipe, you now take two cups of the tomato mixture with one cup of water and bring it to a boil. I had to break this down to one serving and figured out I needed 1/2 cup of the tomato mixture and 1/4 cup of water. I brought this up to the kitchen to cook the couscous.

According to the recipe, you're supposed to bring all of this to a boil and then add the couscous (I only added 1/4 cup of couscous...the food so nice they named it twice). You then cover it and set it aside so the couscous can absorb all the liquid. I hadn't thought to bring my cookbook upstairs with me and did my best to try to memorize what needed to be done up there. Bad idea. I sort of left out the covering step and the couscous kind of attacked me. It started spitting at me like crazy over the heat, and it hurt! I turned off the burner and removed it from the heat so it would calm down. I tried to slowly bring it back to the heat, but knew it was too soon when it went right back to spitting. Eventually, I tamed the couscous and was able to keep it over the heat long enough to absorb all the liquid.

Next came the shrimp. Because my mother went grocery shopping with me this time, I bought the right kind of shrimp for the recipe. I actually bought RAW shrimp this time, but I had to peel it this time through (no pre-cooked, pre-peeled salad shrimp). First of all, when I opened the bag of shrimp, it had not completely defrosted yet and my hands were frozen as I attempted to peel the shrimp. I was on the phone with my dad at this point and he heard me freak out as I tried to peel them. Once I got rid of most of the ice, I saw that the shrimp still had legs! LEGS!! So help me God they had legs. My roommate found this humorous as did my father and she offered to help me out. I decided to be an adult, and just do it.

After running the shrimp under some hot water to get rid of the ice, I finished peeling them, legs and all, and moved on. Thank God they were the "EZ Peel" variety. If I had to pull off each leg by itself, I may have died a little. Once they were all peeled, I cooked the shrimp in another teaspoon of olive oil and another clove of garlic. I cooked them until they were a white/pink color and had my roommate check them out (she's quite the seafood aficionado) to make sure they were cooked all the way. To my surprise, they were!

I turned off the electric frying pan and once it had cooled, I added the juice of half a lemon, some fresh parsley, and some crushed red pepper.

I put the couscous on a plate and added the shrimp on top of them. I then heated the remaining tomato mixture and added that on top. I'm pretty sure if I were on Iron Chef, I would lose points on presentation on this one, but it really didn't matter once I start eating it. The sauce was very tomato-y and spicy and the lemon worked with the salt of the clam juice. The couscous held the sauce really well and the shrimp were absolutely amazing. I think it's safe to say that I am officially a shrimp fan.

I should mention that I looked this recipe up on FoodNetwork.com to get a ballpark figure as to how long it would take to make it. The recipe said about 30 minutes. This is very wrong when you have to work in two kitchens (one being a floor above the other), and when you're shrimp are frozen and full of legs. I'm not entirely sure how long it took me to make this, but it was longer than 30 minutes. It only took me about five minutes tops to eat it.

So that was recipe number two from the "Everyday Entrees" chapter and the "Everyday Grills and Sautes" section. Friday I will be moving on to the "Everyday Contorni" chapter again making another stuffed vegetable: Eggplant Rollatini!! Check back then for something that is sure to be delicious :)

P.S. Check out the beautiful rainbow outside our window!