Wednesday, March 7, 2012 I'm Back and There's Less of Me \m/

At my last weigh in I was down 10 pounds since starting my diet. That was about a week ago. Since getting this adorable puppy 2 1/2 weeks ago I haven't had much "me time." Yes, even weighing myself in the morning can prove to be an issue. So can showering, going to the bathroom by myself and (of course) cooking.

I've made a few batches of my Kitchen Sink Cookies. They're a great way to sneak a little more fiber (and some chocolate) into my diet. Yesterday's batch had Pretzel M&M's! Nummy.

But, to continue on my high fiber diet that has me shedding the pounds with little effort, I'm eating Smart Taste pasta, whole grain toast with peanut butter, Kashi cereal, yogurt and one meal a day. That one meal always has veggies, sometimes brown rice or barley. Sometimes it's vegetarian and sometimes there's chicken, pork, beef or fish. Sometimes I'll eat cheese, but that's a real treat. My diet has drastically changed from 6 months ago. Three years ago I ate like this all the time. And when I'm ready I'll be getting those clothes out of storage and wearing them. 15 more pounds to reach my old "I'm an actress" weight of 105.

Wish me luck.

I have managed to treat myself a few times. The first week Apollo was here my neighbor puppy sat so we could get some time to ourselves. Off we went to Zaza Gastrobar in downtown Stamford which OmNomCT had raved about. Reading their review I just had to have that lobster polenta, and the rest of the menu looked equally good. I wish I could say I took pictures, but I had relaxation on the mind that night. The restaurant is just beautiful - my color scheme with black and red. The chandeliers alone are worth the trip. The place is pretty hip, something I try to stay away from usually. I can't stand when people go somewhere to be seen. And it's not just restaurants, it's outdoor Shakespeare, too. But that's just me and I'm strange. The music at Zaza was horrendous and too loud, another sign of the tragically hip, but no one is perfect and I expected the food would be the music for my ears. It was.

We started off with the smoked mozzerela plate - served with olives, roasted peppers, grilled eggplant and prochuitto it was the perfect way to start the meal. They have a nice selection of fresh mozz as well, I'll have to try another one one my next visit. The lobster polenta was more amazing than I expected. It's what the lobster mac-n-cheese at Gray Goose in Southport wants to be. (Talk about people wanting to be seen. I actually saw a guy in kakis and a blue blazer with the gold buttons. The atmosphere was annoying and the food was nothing to write about. So I'll stop,) Zaza actually delivers on taste. My other dish, roasted beets with fennel, was simple stupendous. I expected the lobster polenta to rock, but this dish with it's perfectly roasted beets smothered in gorgonzola, walnuts and balsamic was - To. Die. For. I can see myself stopping by on a hot summer day after walking downtown to get a plate of beets to cool my soul. Two Tits Up for Zaza Gastobar.

Speaking of hot summer days Station Eats has opened up their Stamford location. Along with the usual DDelicious Station Eats fare they have ALCOHOLIC MILKSHAKES! Somehow they knew that the only way I can drink alcohol is when it's mixed with ice cream. I'll be stopping in for a shake and stumbling back to the Cove on numerous occasions this summer. If you happen to be driving by please don't run me over.

And last but not least, last night I went to Rico's. Ahhh AHHH! Rico's is located in a section of Stamford that most people don't go to. I'll leave out any mention of bad neighborhoods (or will I?) and focus on the food. (Since they're opening a new restaurant in Newfield Green you won't have to worry about your safety.) The Selleck Street location was empty - but the numerous delivery vehicles in the parking lot told the story. These guys have made a killing doing what Colony doesn't do. Ha! Gotta love the American entrepreneurial spirit - especially when it comes with fan-fucking-tastic pizza. Service was horrendously slow - considering we were the only people in the place. The waiter was a nice young man who was extremely polite, a rarity in Stamford, but it took at least 45 minutes for our pizzas to come out. Worth the wait? Absolutely. These guys execute the trademark pie a thousand times better than the original. Thin crispy crust, the right amount of crisped up cheese on the rim, the sauce is seasoned perfectly. I'm eating a cold slice right now for breakfast and I couldn't be happier. Two Tits Up for Rico's.

And now, to wrap up this lengthy post, a video of my boy :)



-HH

Thursday, February 16, 2012 Kitchen Sink Cookies

The other day I made oatmeal raisin cookies with almost no oatmeal and absolutely no raisins. Neat, huh? This is one of the joys of having gone to culinary school. Understanding recipes and how they work allows you the freedom of changing them around, if need be, and you won't end up with an inedible product.

Professional baking recipes are done by weight, not volume. Nothing about cups in a professional recipe. At different times of the year that cup of flour is going to have different weights, never mind how densely you pack the cup. If you weigh the ingredients you'll end up with a more consistent cookie (or pie crust, cake, bread, etc.)

So here we go. This is basically the recipe. I'll explain the science as best I can, including viable substitutions. You'll notice some of the smaller amounts (baking soda, cinnamon) are in teaspoons. Not everyone has a scale that can measure such small amounts. For the larger amounts a postal scale does the trick. It's worth the investment if you're going to be baking a lot.

Kitchen Sink Cookie Formula

4 oz Butter
7 oz brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
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1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon sour cream
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6 oz AP flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
5 oz oats
1 Tablespoon milled flax seed
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4 oz raisins


Okay, so let's first talk about those lines. Those indicate your mixing pattern. The first ingredients are creamed together in a blender - keep mixing until it looks like a uniform cream. Starting off with room temperature butter is key.

Add your egg and mix it in until the mixture is again uniform. Add your vanilla and sour cream and mix in.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl before adding to the dry ingredients. Once it is all combined add the raisins.

Bake at 350 until done, this depends on the size of your cookie. Mine were slightly less than the size of my palm and they took 20-25 minutes.


Now! Onto the fun stuff and the science - they go hand in hand.

The butter is obviously the fat in the recipe. You can substitute apple sauce for butter if you're watching your calories. You can do half and half and get the taste of butter and half of the fat. The pectin in the apple sauce also helps keep your cookies together. And you can always substitute another fat - shortening, oil, bacon fat. Go ahead.

Brown sugar is what we call an acid (along with maple syrup, honey). The molasses in the sugar reacts with the baking soda to provide a little lift in your cookie. If you don't have brown sugar you can do half white sugar and half molasses, maple syrup or honey. If you were to use plain white sugar you'd need to use baking powder, which contains an added acid. And you'd need to use more of it - one teaspoon of soda is roughly equal to three teaspoons of powder. But why bother? Brown sugar gives the cookies a fantastic taste.

Sour cream is another acid (as is buttermilk, yogurt) that will react with the baking soda. I've started replacing milk in recipes with sour cream. I made corn bread with sour cream... Mmm, mmm, mmm. That'll have to be a future post.

As for the oats in the recipe, that's where I came up short. I used what little oats I had in combination with the crumbs from the bottom of my Kashi cereals to make up the 4 oz. I crushed the cereal a little just to break up any big chunks. You can use steel cut oats, cereal, granola. Have a little fun.

And the raisins...the raisins that I didn't have. I used chocolate chunks from a hot chocolate kit, sliced almonds and pecans. Hence the kitchen sink reference. Go nuts with this one, no pun intended. Dried fruit, chips, nuts, bacon! Just try it!


If you follow the ratios and principles of the recipe you're almost guaranteed not to fail. I say almost because we all make mistakes - and even if you screw it up the ingredients only cost a couple bucks.

So go ahead and try it! What's the worst thing that can happen?

-HH