Pasta puttanesca

After trudging through a few hits and misses, I decided to revisit a dish that I hadn't made in a while: pasta puttanesca.


I first learned about pasta puttanesca from watching one of my cousins prepare it for another cousin who was going to be arriving late at night. I believe it was around Christmas, and our family was gathered at my aunt and uncle's. She chopped olives and capers and mixed it into some tomato sauce while the older relatives praised her in Korean about how quick and efficient she was (they love doing that).

I didn't even taste the dish (she had added some meat, and at the time I was diligently vegetarian) but the combination of ingredients had me hooked and I've been making my own variation of it ever since.

Hit or miss

Here are some other recipes I have attempted recently.


Beans baked in tomato sauce
I primarily chose to make this recipe because it required items I was trying to get rid of in my pantry/freezer purge. Also, sometimes I like making things that just sit in the oven for a while - after a flurry of prep work, you can sit back and relax or do other things while it finishes cooking.


The end result was a dish kind of like baked beans - after all that time in the oven, the beans and tomato sauce melded together into a thick, stew-like consistency. I must admit, this cooking method has me intrigued (I wonder if I could make chana masala like this), but overall it was a little too sweet for my taste (I could cut down on the honey next time) and I kind of got sick of the leftovers. It could be a good make-ahead side dish though.
Hit or miss?

The Bean Chronicles: Chickpeas II

My quest continues, looking for the best, most consistent way to make beans.


The bean: Chickpeas
Amount: 1-pound bag
Method: No soak in the oven. I really liked the black beans I made in the oven - a very easy process and yummy beans to boot - so I thought I'd try it with chickpeas. Also, I'm trying to use filtered water instead of tap. I had heard that if you use hard water out of the tap, sometimes it takes longer to cook the beans.


Cooking time: About 2 1/2 hours. After checking the beans at about the 1 1/2 hour mark (the beans were not quite done), I forgot about them in the oven. I meant to check them at the 2-hour mark, and they probably would have been perfect. But at 2 1/2 hours, they were very soft. Some might say overcooked; I say, perfect for hummus.
Storing? Fridge and freezer
Result:

Chunky cream of broccoli soup

Did you make bechamel? You did, right? And now you have some in your fridge and you're wondering what to do with it?

You've come to the right place.

I think my favorite revelation about bechamel is that it is more or less like those "cream of" condensed soups that we ate as kids (or at least I did). I sort of stumbled upon this in one of my earlier attempts at a simple mac and cheese with mushrooms - I sauteed some mushrooms then added some bechamel and lo and behold, cream of mushroom soup!

Bechamel, and simple mac and cheese

It's March. And, as I usually do at about this point in the year, I drifted off my health plan which, this year, consisted of calorie counting. Because of this:

Bechamel.

Swiss chard and poached egg, two ways

I'm having a bit of an identity crisis... in my kitchen. It's what happens when you are Korean and you spend the first decade of your life in Kansas - you grow up eating Korean food at home and 'American' food at school or friends' houses.

Years later when you're stocking your own kitchen, you discover that you have two or three versions of everything - Western (i.e. balsamic and champagne vinegar, olive oil, basil, rosemary, etc.) and Korean (sesame oil, rice vinegar, gochujang, etc.). Even rice! I currently have basmati and Japanese, and only by sheer will power did I resist buying some brown rice and wild rice. Couple this with living in New York, a can of coconut milk and a jar of chipotles in adobo sauce and you have one overwhelmed pantry.