Books I Cook On is an event I’m doing for January where I review one of my top 5 favorite cookbooks each week and post my favorite recipe from that book.  Learn to cook, eat healthier – it’s fun!

Before I started this blog, I wrote a food blog where I took a picture of everything I ate and occasionally posted recipes. I hated it.  It took a lot of convincing from my sister to give blogging another shot because I didn’t like blogging on my food blog AT ALL.  Turns out, I have more of a passion for reading and it makes this blog a joy to write on. However, I do like cooking, so I wanted to do a feature this month of some cookbooks that I cook from over and over again.  And hey, cookbooks are books, right?

This week’s cookbook is Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich.

My husband bought me this book and I love it. Mostly because I love cookies.  Alice spent a lot of time going through the chemistry of making the perfect cookie and questioning traditional methods to see if they really did make the best cookies.  The biggest things I learned from the intro were measuring flour very carefully so you don’t use too much and refrigerating the dough.  Those two things will make the chewiest, yummiest cookies ever.  Plus, this book has lots of pictures. Alice’s recipes are so good that my cookies actually look like the pictures when they are done. Huzzah!

This is hands down my favorite recipe from this book.  These oatmeal cookies are chewy and delicious.

Wheat-Free Double-Oatmeal Cookies

If you love oats as I do, the idea of oatmeal cookies with both rolled oats and oat flour (instead of the usual wheat flour) should tempt you, regardless of whether you can eat wheat or not.  I like these so much that I may never look back.  Xanthan gum is the magic ingredient (it’s also, by the way, a natural ingredient) that acts like gluten, adding chewiness to cookies made with flours that don’t naturally contain gluten.  You can even adjust the chewiness of your cookie by mixing the batter more or mixing it less.  Even chewy cookies are improved by crunchy edge, and that’s what the dull side of the foil provides.

1 cup plus 3 TBS oat flour

2 cups rolled oats

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp xathan gum

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs

Generous 1 cup coarsely chopped or broken pecan or walnut pieces

1 cup raisins or chocolate chips (or butterscotch chips are yummy!)

Combine the oat flour, rolled oats, salt, baking soda, and xathan gum in a medium bowl and combine with a fork.

In a large bowl, mix the melted butter, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla.  Whisk in the eggs.  Stir in the oat mixture and mix the batter briskly for about 1 minute (to activate the binding power of the xanthan gum – the more you mix, the chewier and less crunchy the cookies will be). Stir in the nuts and raisins.  Let the dough stand for at least 1 but preferably 2 hours or (better still) cover and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat the oven to 325 F.  Scoop 2 TBS of the dough and place 2 inches apart on lined or greased cookie sheets.  Bake for 16-20 minutes, until the cookies are deep golden brown.

Books I Cook On is an event I’m doing for January where I review one of my top 5 favorite cookbooks each week and post my favorite recipe from that book.  Learn to cook, eat healthier – it’s fun!

Before I started this blog, I wrote a food blog where I took a picture of everything I ate and occasionally posted recipes. I hated it.  It took a lot of convincing from my sister to give blogging another shot because I didn’t like blogging on my food blog AT ALL.  Turns out, I have more of a passion for reading and it makes this blog a joy to write on. However, I do like cooking, so I wanted to do a feature this month of some cookbooks that I cook from over and over again.  And hey, cookbooks are books, right?

This week’s cookbook is The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook by Jaden Hair.

I bought this cookbook because I love Asian food.  These dishes are easy and authentic and I make something out of here at least once a week.  These recipes taught me to not be afraid of turning the heat to high on the stove.  Everyone that watches me cook thinks I’m nuts when the pan is smoking and the smoke alarms go off.  That just means that dinner’s done, baby.  And no, the food isn’t burnt as long as I’m paying attention.  Turning the heat on high makes your food more flavorful and moist.  It’s not that scary once you get used to it.

Also, the introduction to this book has me shopping the Asian market like a pro.  You should see the strange looks I get when I buy lemongrass at the supermarket.  Lemongrass looks like a weed that grows in a swamp (PROBABLY BECAUSE IT IS), but it is oh so yummy.

Lemongrass

The best thing I learned from this cookbook was how to make kick-butt fried rice.  It tastes better than anything you can get at Chinese take-out. So that’s the recipe I’m going to share with you.  But first, here are Jaden’s Fried Rice Secrets:

Use previously chilled leftover rice

To get the perfect fried rice, you’ll want to use yesterday’s rice as it’s had a chance to dry out a bit in the refrigerator. The heat of the pan and the liquid seasoning (soy sauce) will re-steam and hydrate the leftover rice. If you try to use freshly cooked, hot rice (like I did years ago,) you’ll end up with too much moisture in the rice and will make a heavy mess in the pan.

High heat is essential

But high heat doesn’t mean that you need super high BTU’s or a gas stove. All it takes is a bit of patience to let your pan or wok heat up. The high heat ensures that whatever ingredients that you put into the pan gets fried quickly and that each grain of rice gets hot to the core.

Don’t touch

A common mistake of stir frying is to constantly poke, prod, turn and flip every second. In a restaurant kitchen where flames are so powerful they can singe your brows, chefs have to keep things moving. But in home kitchens, our stovetops need a little more time to do their work to heat up and cook our food. If you keep poking at the rice, the grains will break, release more starch and turn the entire thing goopy. It will never have a chance to fry correctly…not enough “wok time” as my Mom likes to say. The best thing is to do is to spread out the rice, use the entire cooking surface of the pan and just leave it alone. Put your spatula down and back away from the stove for a minute. Give the rice a chance to heat up. Then flip, toss and redistribute the rice, again spreading it out and leaving it alone to cook another side.

Fry ingredients separately

Fried rice has many different ingredients, and in my home it’s usually just a mixture of whatever vegetables, meats or seafood I can scrounge up from the refrigerator or freezer. But whatever the ingredients, you want to make sure that you can taste each individual one. To do this, you’ve got to fry your meat or seafood first, remove from the wok or pan when 80% cooked through and then toss it back in towards the end of the stir fry to finish cooking. Because if you try to fry all of the ingredients at the same time in the same pan, they’ll all compete for “wok time” and everything will end up tasting exactly the same!

Use what you’ve got on hand

Oh, and one more tip-you really don’t need to be exat on the measurement of the ingredients.  If you only have three cups of leftover rice instead of four, just use a little less soy sauce.  And if you have a few mushrooms in the fridge, throw them in! Once you get the technique of making fried rice using the secrets above, you can improvise and make up your own recipe, utilizing whatever is in your refrigerator.

Shrimp Fried Rice

8 ounces small uncooked shrimp, shelled and deveined

1/4 teaspoon salt (or 1/2 tsp kosher salt)

freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

2 tablespoons cooking oil (divided)

3 eggs, beaten in a small bowl

2 stalks scallion or green onion, minced

4 cups previously cooked leftover rice, grains separated well

3/4 cup frozen carrots and peas, defrosted

1 tablespoon soy sauce (use gluten-free soy sauce if you are making a gluten-free version)

1 teaspoon sesame oil

In a bowl, toss the shrimp with the salt, pepper and cornstarch. Let the shrimp marinate for 10 minutes at room temperature. Heat a wok or large sauté pan on high heat. When the pan is hot enough for a bead of water to instantly sizzle and evaporate, add only 1 tablespoon of the cooking oil and swirl to coat pan.

Now add the shrimp, quickly spreading out around the pan so that they are not overlapping. Let the shrimp fry, untouched for 30 seconds. Flip over and let the other side fry for 30 seconds, or until about 80% cooked through. Remove the shrimp from the pan onto a plate, leaving as much oil in the pan as possible.

Turn the heat to medium and let the pan heat up again. Pour in the eggs, stirring in a quick motion to break up and scramble the eggs. When the eggs are almost cooked through (they should still be slightly runny in the middle), dish out of the frying pan onto the same plate as the cooked shrimp.

Use a paper towel to wipe the same wok or sauté pan clean (no need to wash) and return to high heat with the remaining 1 tablespoon of cooking oil, swirling to coat. When the oil is very hot, add the green onions and stir fry until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Add in the rice and stir well to mix in the green onions throughout. Spread the rice all around the wok surface area and let the rice heat up, untouched until you hear the bottoms of the grains sizzle, about 1-2 minutes. Use the spatula to toss the rice, again spreading the rice out over the surface of wok or pan

Drizzle the soy sauce all around the rice and toss. Add the peas and carrots, the cooked eggs, shrimp and sesame oil, tossing to mix the rice evenly with all of the ingredients. Let everything heat back up again, until the rice grains are so hot they practically dance! Taste and add an additional 1 teaspoon of soy sauce if needed.

Books I Cook On is an event I’m doing for January where I review one of my top 5 favorite cookbooks each week and post my favorite recipe from that book.  Learn to cook, eat healthier – it’s fun!

Before I started this blog, I wrote a food blog where I took a picture of everything I ate and occasionally posted recipes. I hated it.  It took a lot of convincing from my sister to give blogging another shot because I didn’t like blogging on my food blog AT ALL.  Turns out, I have more of a passion for reading and it makes this blog a joy to write on. However, I do like cooking, so I wanted to do a feature this month of some cookbooks that I cook from over and over again.  And hey, cookbooks are books, right?

This week’s cookbook is Everyday Italian by Giada de Laurentiis.

I came across Giada’s show on the Food Network and my first thought was, “Whatever that beautiful skinny woman is eating, I WANT TO EAT IT.”  And oh my goodness do I love pasta.  This book is full to the brim with pasta plus a lot of other authentic Italian dishes.  The cool thing about Giada is that she is Italian and she knows her Italian stuff.  She takes traditional dishes and adds shortcuts so they don’t take all day to make.  Every recipe I’ve made in this book has been delicious and easy.  This is the cookbook I pull out when a) I want to make tons of food and b) I want to impress people.  When I have people over for dinner, they usually call the recipes I make from this book “gourmet.”  I know I use this book a lot because all the pages are covered in food. If I can only pick one recipe to share with you, it’s going to be Salsa All’amatriciana because that page is the dirtiest of them all.

Salsa All’amatriciana

This is Rome’s most famous pasta sauce, but the recipe actually originated in a town outside of Rome called Amatrice.  This sauce is bold and perfectly balanced with tangy tomatoes, sweet onion, and the salty meatiness of pancetta.  My parents would make it for dinner on weeknights when they either didn’t have a lot of time to cook or when my mom hadn’t gone to the grocery store.  In the time it takes to boil the water, the sauce is finished.  Perfect with bucatini, perciatelli, or spaghetti.

Makes about 1 quart; serves over a pound of pasta as a main course.

2 Tablespoons olive oil

6 ounces pancetta or slab bacon, diced

1 yellow onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

pinch of dried crushed red pepper flakes

1 28-ounce can tomato puree

1/2 teaspoon sea salt, plus more to taste

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste

1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese

In a large, heavy skillet, heat the oil over a medium flame.  Add the pancetta and saute until golden brown, about 8 minutes.  Add the onion and saute until tender, about 5 minutes.  Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and saute until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the tomato puree, and 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.  Simmer, uncovered, over medium-low heat until the sauce thickens slightly and the flavors blend, about 15 minutes.  Stir in the cheese.  Season with more salt and pepper to taste. (The sauce can be made 1 day ahead.  Cool, then cover and refrigerate.  Rewarm over medium heat before using.)

Books I Cook On is an event I’m doing for January where I review one of my top 5 favorite cookbooks each week and post my favorite recipe from that book.  Learn to cook, eat healthier – it’s fun!

Before I started this blog, I wrote a food blog where I took a picture of everything I ate and occasionally posted recipes. I hated it.  It took a lot of convincing from my sister to give blogging another shot because I didn’t like blogging on my food blog AT ALL.  Turns out, I have more of a passion for reading and it makes this blog a joy to write on. However, I do like cooking, so I wanted to do a feature this month of some cookbooks that I cook from over and over again.  And hey, cookbooks are books, right?

This week’s cookbook is Express Lane Meals by Rachael Ray.

This cookbook has a special place in my heart. I bought this cookbook when I had finally graduated from college and my first son was a 5-month old baby.  Cooking seemed like something I should learn since I was sick of my terrible cooking and going out to eat and/or getting processed stuff in a box was not an option for me since I have IBS.  Besides, I was a college graduate and a mom now and it seemed like the next house-wifey thing to do.  This is the book that taught me how to cook and I will always think of it fondly.

What I love the most about this cookbook is it’s divided into sections of how difficult the recipes are.  This came in handy since I’d never cooked more than grilled cheese in my life. I started in section 1 which she calls “Meals For the Exhausted.”  She lists products that you should always have in your pantry and then each recipe comes with a mini shopping list on the side that has 10 items or less so you can check out at the express lane in the grocery store. Genius.

I bought this particular cookbook on my quest for learning how to cook because I saw Rachael Ray so many times on TV doing time saving things and just dumping spices in her hand to measure them.  ”Look, she’s just like dumping things in there and it tastes good! I can do that!”  Even in this cookbook she’ll say things like “a palmful” or “eyeball it.” It made cooking really easy and less stuff to clean up.  My mom tries not to freak out when I cook at her house and I just throw stuff in there.  ”Is that a teaspoon, mom? Oh. Sorry. Too late.”

I did not, however, finish her meals in 30 minutes when I was starting out.  Rachael Ray multi-tasks to the hilt (especially towards the end of the book in the harder sections) and it’s hard to get used to if you’re a rookie cook.  I’d finish my meals in an hour and it would exhaust me.  I’ll tell you what though. The food was darn good. And now I am a multi-tasking cooking queen.  Thank you Rachael Ray for teaching me how to cook in a fun, delicious, and easy way.

Here’s my favorite recipe:

Inside-out Pizza-dilla Margerita

1 Tablespoon EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil), once around the pan, plus more for drizzling

2 garlic cloves, chopped

2 pinches red pepper flakes

1 15-ounce can diced fire-roasted tomatoes, drained

Salt and black pepper

8 8-inch flour tortillas

1-pound ball smoked mozzerella cheese, thinly sliced

1 cup fresh basil, about 20 leaves, torn or shredded

Heat a small skillet over medium heat.  Add the tablespoon of EVOO to the skillet, once around the pan.  Add the garlic and red pepper flakes.  Cook the garlic for a minute, then add the tomatoes and season with oregano, salt, and pepper.  Simmer the tomatoes for 2 minutes, then remove from the heat.

Heat a medium skillet over medium heat.  Add a drizzled of EVOO and a flour tortilla.  Cover the tortilla with an even layer of sliced cheese. Top it with one quarter of the tomatoes.  Scatter one quarter of the basil over the tomatoes.  Set a second tortilla in place on top.  Cook it for 2 minuts on side one, drizzle the top of the tortilla with a touch of EVOO, and flip the pizza-dilla.  Cook for 2 minutes more, or until golden and crisp on the flip side.  Remove, cut into 4 pieces, and serve.  Repeat this with the remaining ingredients to make 3 more pizza-dillas.