Experimentation: Vanilla Extract

I have been thinking about making my own vanilla extract ever since I saw on Claire Saffitz makes her own with random clear alcohols. 

Since I am allergic to vodka, I would like to make mine from white rum. 

I have a post from earlier considering Tahitian vanilla. I think I will use this bean to create the extract. Ideally, I would like to make this as a gift for people since the quantity of beans I need to purchase will make more than I can probably use for a long time. I don't use a lot.

I also like the idea of making this from gin, however, I'm concerned that gin's juniper berries would alter the flavor too much. 

YouTube video reference: 

• SuburbanHomesteaderWY: Making the best Vanilla Extract you have ever tasted. 

I will update you as I accumulate ingredients. 

Update: 9/14/2020

I was able to procure some Grade A Tahitian Vanilla via Amazon.com. And have commenced with the making of the Vanilla Extract. I read and heard that it should be soaked/steeped/brewed? for a couple months before you begin to use it. One video I saw suggested waiting 6 months. I don't know if I'll wait that long! 

Trying new recipes: Cachupa - a dish from Cape Verde

I am learning Portuguese. This means I come in contact with a wide variety of people. One friend of mine recently mentioned not being able to get Cachupa due to the quarantine. I never heard of it and told her I would learn to make it. After hours of research, I think I have a recipe that I can make. I'm using most of the ingredient list from a recipe suggestion from this friend, but also making a few substitutions. 

The recipe comes from: https://afrotourism.com/travelogue/recipe-wednesday-cachupa-celebrating-in-cape-verde/

Caveat: I'm cooking this with a crockpot. It is not traditional. However, I am too busy to be babysitting food on the stove. 

Here is what I am using for this recipe: 

Ingredients: 

2 cups of hominy corn (I could only get the broken pieces, I am sure this would be so much better with the whole corn)
1 cup large dry lima beans
1/2 cup dry stone beans (after my research I've determined any small white bean will do, so I'm using small navy beans)
1/4 cup dry red kidney beans
1 package of salt pork (skinned)
2 links of chorizo sausage (gluten free)
2 links of andouille sausage (gluten free)
1 small cabbage cut in quarters
1 acorn squash (peeled, seeded, and chopped into about 2 inch pieces)
I only have an elephant garlic head- so just one clove (It was so huge I sliced it with a mandoline!)
2 ripe tomatoes (I'm using roma tomatoes)

1 large onion (halved then I sliced it with a mandoline.)
2 bay leaves

1/2 c. olive oil (I eyeballed this)

The night before, I rinsed all my corn and beans and then soaked them overnight. I sauteed the sausages and pork. Then I sauteed the onions and tomatoes in the same pan to get "extra flavor". 

That morning, I threw nearly everything else in the pot (except the squash and cabbage) and let it cook in the crockpot on low for probably 6 hours, then I added the squash and let it cook for a few more hours. 

This was A LOT of food. The beans and corn expanded and was so full, the cabbage couldn't fit. I had to remove (ahem, eat) some of it first before I could add the cabbage. 

Photos: this was BEFORE I added the cabbage. 

Here is what the final result looked like:

Thoughts: 

I definitely would make it again. 

I also never had lima beans like this. I always had the green lima beans when I was a kid and hated them, but this, this was delicious.

Things I would change to make it better/healthier: 

1. Use more Chorizo - it wasn't spicy enough. I was afraid that the chorizo would be too spicy. But I was wrong.
2. Get rid of the Salt Pork, it was very oily. Bacon might be better, but I think just more sausage would be best. 
3. Use more salt and pepper. It was good as it was, but I think more salt and pepper would really help it along. 
4. Halve the recipe, it made so much food. And you can only eat one thing for so long before you can't eat it anymore. 
5. Add more squash, the squash kind of melted into the sauce, which made it more delicious but also I think that it would have been nice to bite into some of the squash. 

Shrimp Tacos

I haven't had shrimp tacos in a long time. I had plans for this shrimp for something else, but tacos sounded better today.

I used this recipe loosely (mostly cuz I didn't have all the ingredients): https://www.delish.com/cooking/a21271308/cilantro-lime-shrimp-tacos-recipe/

Taco ingredients 

(I eyeballed everything, cuz who has time for measuring?)

• 1/2 cup of lime juice
• a few sprinkles of dried cilantro (At my house, the fresh never gets used before it goes bad...)
• 1/3 of an elephant garlic clove (Those jokers are huge, I ordered regular garlic for my delivery, but all they had was this kind. Need proof of its enormity? Click here: Wiki for Elephant Garlic)
• 1/2 tsp.  cumin 
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• Kosher salt 
• 12 oz. shrimp, peeled and deveined (mine was frozen and had shells on)
• 6 tortillas

Slaw (aka dressed cabbage)

• Couple of large leafs from a green cabbage - sliced thinly
• Some lime juice
• 1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• A dash of Brianna's Cilantro Lime Dressing (TOTAL COINCIDENCE that their current advertisement on this page was shrimp tacos. Wow...)
• Kosher salt

Used Sriracha instead of the lime/mayo in the recipe. (I figured I kind of already added it to the slaw.) 

Procedure: 

1. Thaw the shrimp. So, on the bag of the shrimp it says you can run cold water over it for like 8 minutes to thaw it. So, I did that and then shelled them. They were already deveined. 
• If you never deveined a shrimp before check this video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOTMQ2oXdLE
2. Marinated the shrimp. (Everything but the tortillas, threw it into a bowl tossed it haphazardly around and then went away to do something else.) Be careful not to leave it too long or the marinade will literally cook the shrimp. I left mine in there a bit long and my shrimp was already turning pink.
3. Cooked the shrimp. I don't own a grill, so I cooked it on the stove top but bonus, I also threw in the juice of the marinade so that was delicious. Place in a vessel with the marinade until ready to serve. The warmed marinade will help keep the shrimp warm also.
4. Make the slaw. Clearly, I had almost nothing to make the slaw with. Thought I had onions, but nope. So, I washed and sliced thinly the cabbage leafs and tossed it in the slaw. I'm not normally a slaw person. But this turned out creamy and delicious. 9/10. (If I had onions, it would have been 10/10.)
5. Warm up the tortillas and then assemble your taco.

It was delicious. 9/10 would make again.

None of the links in this post are affiliate links. 

Underrated foods: the Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich

Everyone sings the praises of bacon. As rightly, they should. It is delicious. 

Sometimes though, you kind of want a salad to go along with your bacon. So what's a person to do? Make a sandwich. 

I feel like a BLT is underrated because of its simplicity. It isn't talked about much because of how easy it is to make. But think about it, it is one of the cheapest sandwiches that has vegetables, protein and grains. 

How do you make your bacon? I like to cook mine in the oven if I can. Just at 400 for about 15 minutes. I like mine extra crispy. 

So for my traditional sandwich:

Bread (white is traditional, but whatever is on hand is fine)

2-3 Slices of Crispy Bacon (get outta here with the soft bacon)

Tomato, sliced (heirloom is fantastic)

Lettuce (green leave or Romain preferred, never iceberg)

Mayonnaise (miracle whip preferred)

Sometimes, just sometimes, I'll get fancy with it and put a little mustard or some seasoning on the mayonnaise before assembling the sandwich. 

Trying New Recipes: Southern Skillet Black-Eyed Peas with Quick Buttery Biscuits

So, during this quarantine Zoom has become pretty popular. I was thinking of an activity that might be really fun to do with friends. One is to cook together. So what I did was purchase this vegan cook book from Chloe Coscarelli for myself and a family member. It is Chloe's Kitchen: 125 Easy, Delicious Recipes for Making the Food You Love the Vegan Way. I watched Chloe on cupcake wars and knew if she could beat out typical cupcake makers with her vegan versions, she must be a good chef. 

Since the recipes are copyrighted, I will not be posting the recipe directly on this page. However, I will document my journey of it. 

The spices in this is surprisingly close to the kitchari I just made the other day. With a few exceptions. (Such as soy sauce and sugar.) So I was intrigued because to be honest I didn't really read the recipe until I began to make it. With exception of buying the main ingredients.

I did my best to follow the recipe exactly. And it ended up turning out to taste kind of like sloppy joe sauce on cauliflower and beans. But that was delicious! 

The biscuits in the recipe were fairly standard except I've never seen so much baking soda in a recipe for about 9 biscuits. 

I liked the flavor profile so much I made it the next day with some kitchari that needed to be recovered. And it was equally delicious.

No photos because it was too delicious. Sorry maybe next time. 

Trying new recipes: Kitchiri with Chapati

I love making Mujadara. So a 2 am decision for me was to make this dish with whatever I had on hand. 

I got the book What to Eat When You Can't Eat Anything by Chupi and Luke Sweetnam a long time ago. Nine years ago to be exact. However, I never really tried any of the recipes. I do this a lot with various recipe books. I love to read them like novels. 

When it comes to looking for a recipe, I don't look in the cookbooks I have, I look online. So, this is a two part effort on my part to (1) catalog all the recipes I've tried in my collection and (2) document my experimentation that I have with them. As the book is copyrighted, I am only going to link to the book and write down the things I did that I substituted and the results.

I doubled the recipe because I was making it in the rice cooker and had a lb of lentils. This as you will see, was a mistake....

Step 1: Prepare the Ingredients

Kitchiri: (Page 108)

So, this recipe I had most of it- the tumeric, cumin, cardamom, fennel seed (I know right, who has that?!), salt, pepper,  and bay leaves. 

I didn't have black mustard or coriander. I looked online and it said that you could substitute coriander with more cumin and the black mustard with more tumeric. So I did. 

I placed everything in a container.

I also chopped one large onion and stored it in the fridge. 

I had 1 lb of lentils so I used 3 cups of brown rice. I rinsed both and let drip dry over night. 

Chapati: (Page 160)

For this, the recipe is so simple, I decided to use up my ground oats for half of the flour. 

I mixed it together, divided it and placed it in the fridge for later.

Step 2: Cooking

Kitchiri:

I added all the ingredients to my rice cooker with enough water to cover it about an inch. And set it to the "whole grain" setting of my rice cooker. I use a Hamilton Beach rice cooker. 

It looked a little dry to me when I checked on it nearing the end of cooking so I added more liquid.

Chapati:

I rolled this out between some plastic wrap (as suggested in the recipe). This allowed me to get it pretty thin. It turned out to be a pretty good little bread. On it's own it is lacking some seasoning. The fact that the main dish it is accompanying is fairly spiced, that's a good thing. 

I found that it cooked better the thinner I made it and also let it cook on low in the pan. 

Step 3: Results

I tried eating the Kitchiri and it was pretty bitter and very dry. I couldn't figure it out what went wrong since this was pretty successful cooking method for Mujadara. So I posted it on a local recipe group I'm in and got many suggestions. I also looked up some YouTube videos on how to make it to see where I had gone wrong. (Besides not actually following the recipe.) Here is what I identified: 

1. It needs more moisture. This dish is more of a soup/porridge. The consistency was too dry meaning there was not enough liquid. Based on the cooking method, doubling this was a mistake since there was no possible way to put more liquid in the rice cooker. 
2. It is missing important ingredients. The spices I lacked actually were some of the most important spices to complete the dish. 

I separated the amount of food into about 12 portions. The original recipe says that one recipe makes 4 servings. 

Suggestions I received to fix the dish: (highlighted ones I used or combined with other suggestions)

• Add more salt
• Add ghee/butter/oil
• Add more tomatoes/tomato sauce
• Add lime juice (or other acid) and some salt
• Add some hot peppers (thai chili peppers were suggested)
• Add a little sugar
• Add dry mustard/mustard
• Add add yogurt/garlic yogurt sauce (greek yogurt + garlic + salt and pepper)
• Make fried rice out of it (adding additional vegetables to it)
• Add coriander (or sub for celery salt)
• Fry some onions, tomato and add chicken bouillon or chicken broth

Experiment 1:

• I took one serving and added: 
• Tomato soup (one can and one can of water) (for moisture and balance flavoring)
• A dash of yellow mustard (to attempt to make it more like the original recipe)
• A little white vinegar (to help balance the flavors)
• I cooked this for a while until the grains opened and the liquid reduced. This tasted phenomenal! 

Experiment 2: 

• I added: 
• Water and Chicken broth (I let it cook down twice) (for moisture and added flavor)
• A dash of yellow mustard
• A few dashes of coriander (I bought some)
• A dash of cayenne
• A splash of lemon juice
• Salt and Pepper
• Dried Parsley
• Butter
• I cooked this for a while until the grains opened and the water reduced. This tasted much more traditional and I really enjoyed it. With this one, I made the garlic yogurt sauce and used it to dip the Chapati in while enjoying this one. (Sorry, no photos of the Chapati.)

Experiment 3: 

• I added: 
• Water and Chicken broth
• A dash of yellow mustard
• A few dashes of coriander
• A splash of vinegar
• Salt and Pepper
• Butter
• An 8 oz can of green chilies (New Mexican Hatch chilies)
• I cooked this until the grains opened and liquid reduced. This was good, but not as good as experiment 2. Somehow I think the green chilies threw off the spices.

I plan to try and use it as a fried rice concoction and also I know of a recipe where they use tomato sauce to poach eggs in, so I thought that would also be a cool experiment. If I end up trying either of these, I will update this post. 

YouTube Video References: 

• The Tadka Project: How To Make Kitchari
• Simnett Nutrition: Kitchari

Secondary recipe Reference: (I looked at a few of them, but this was one I could remember reading)

• Kitchari - The Ayurvedic Institute

Note: I do not make any money of any of the links in this post. I don't know how to do that yet.