Madhu Knits and Cooks

My Favorite Knitting and Food Podcasts

I recently got an IPod and have spent the past several weeks familiarizing myself with podcasts.  Perhaps it's not surprising, but I find myself downloading and listening to knitting podcasts at a greater frequency than other podcasts and music choices.  Because I seem to be listening to knitting podcasts everyday during my work commutes, I thought it would be fun to share my favorite podcasts to date:

• KnitPicks:  The KnitPicks yarn, needles and book online company now has a great knitting podcast.  I've listened to all of the podcasts to date and find them extremely relaxing and interesting.  I especially like the "Knitter who Loved Books"  segment of each podcast because it really makes me consider picking up books that I previously disregarded because of their titles, covers, laziness or other silly reason.

• Cast On:  LOVE this podcast.  Brenda Dayne is really fun, interesting and has great discussions about knitting, Wales and life.  This might be my favorite podcast to date.

• KCRW's Good Food:  One of my former L.A.-based friends who is a total foodie highly recommended this podcast.  I finally downloaded it a few weeks ago, and although it is pretty regionally-focused on Southern California, there are just a lot of great general discussions about food that make this podcast valuable to any lover of good food.  I've already learned that I should stew my own chickpeas to make hummus instead of using canned chickpeas (it's a recipe I hope to try soon) and the evolution of wine drinking in America.

I have checked out a few more podcasts, but these three are definitely my favorites.  I hope you check them out, and I also hope that folks will send me their top podcast recommendations.

Soft Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

The office birthday baking continues!   This week, I made soft oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for Mark. 

I used this great recipe from AllRecipes.com, http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Soft-Oatmeal-Cookies/Detail.aspx, and added in about 3/4 cup of regular semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1/2 cup of white chocolate chips (as you can tell if you've seen the past few posts, mixing different types of chocolate chips have been popular in my kitchen the past few weeks).   I also increased the baking time to about 12-14 minutes because the cookies seem to only be fully baked when they are browned throughout (not just the edges).   

Andy's Papaya Shakes (Vegan and Wonderful!)

This weekend, Andy made some Papaya shakes with soy milk.  They were incredibly tasty and healthy, so I asked him to email the recipe to me for madhuknitsandcooks.com.  They are not too sweet and wonderfully creamy.  I highly recommend you try them! 

Here is the recipe, which makes 4 large servings or 8 smaller (approx. 8 oz.) servings:

• 1 ripened papaya that is skinned, pitted and cubed
• 1/2 large carton of cold vanilla soy milk (approx. 4 cups)
• 3-4 tablespoons of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• Ground cinnamon

Note:  If you have a standard size blender, you will probably be able to only make two shakes at a time so just halve the ingredients for each blend cycle.  These directions reflect usage of a standard size blender.

Directions:

• Place half of cubed papaya in the blender
• Cover the papaya with soy milk
• Add 1-2 tablespoons of sugar
• Add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
• Blend until there are no more papaya chunks (the mixture is smooth)
• Pour into glasses
• Add some ground cinnamon as a garnish.  Although you may think that cinnamon makes no sense at all in this recipe (as I did), just try it -- you won't regret it!
• Serve immediately

Bendakaya -- My Mother's Recipe Definitely Works!

• After months of fear and hesitation, I finally tried making my mother's bendakaya (Indian okra dish).  And I am happy to report that it turned out wonderfully well!  You can get the recipe here:  http://madhuknitsandcooks.typepad.com/madhu_knits_and_cooks/2007/04/dont_like_okra_.html

The two things I learned from making this dish:

• It will probably take more than 15 minutes to cook -- more like 20-25 minutes.  But the good thing is that it requires little effort while cooking (just stirring every several minutes or so).
• Don't be afraid to really salt it up toward the ending of cooking.  Even if you think it seems probably salted about 5 minutes before it's done, check before you are completely done to see if there really is enough salt because salt REALLY brings out the other flavors of the dish.

A pizza I didn't mess up!

A few years back, when I was living in D.C., I bought a $9 pizza stone at Target thinking it would change my life.  Since then, I have never made a good pizza.  I usually use the Trader Joe's refrigerated pizza dough, which you can find in a variety of delicious flavors at any Trader Joe's for under a $1.   You can make an entire pizza for less than $7 that is much, much better than any other place (unless you live in New York or New Haven).

At first, I didn't realize you need to pre-heat the pizza stone which of course meant I was cooking the pizza for an hour and inevitably burning the cheese, while waiting for the dough to cook. 

And then I found on the internet that you should not only pre-heat the pizza stone, but also pre-heat the crust to avoid the burning of the cheese problem. 

So finally, I put all of these pieces of advice (which I now feel may actually be common sense) to make a great pizza.  Recipe is below the picture.

For this awesome pizza, I used:

1 bag of Trader Joe's refrigerated whole wheat pizza dough

Pizza sauce -- very easy to make and the recipe makes 2 servings of sauce.  Another recipe from AllRecipes.com:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-Pizza-Sauce-I/Detail.aspx

• This recipe uses tomato paste, garlic, dried basil and oregano, salt and pepper, water and olive oil.
• I highly recommend that you make the sauce a day ahead to let the flavors blend.
• I also highly recommend that you reduce the water needed for the recipe to no more than 1 cup of water and if you want a thicker sauce, you should also reduce the amount of olive oil you use.

1 - 1.5 cups of part-skim, low moisture shredded mozzarella

Any and all toppings that you want -- I usually just mince 3-4 cloves of garlic as well as maybe 1/2 of a large fresh jalepeno for my pizzas.

To make the pizza:

• Preheat your pizza stone at least 30-40 minutes at the full temperature recommended for your dough.
• Follow the Trader Joe's directions to roll the pizza dough (and depending on the dough you use, you might want to hand stretch it to prepare it as some of the flavors do not take well to a rolling pin!)
• Throw the dough onto the hot stone, and preheat the dough for 5-7 minutes.
• Take the preheated dough out of the oven, sprinkle mozzarella and toppings.
• Bake another ten minutes, or until the cheese is completely melted AND the center of the pizza dough is fully cooked through (poke in a knife or fork in the center of the pie to make sure it is no longer doughy)

Enjoy!

HUGE Chocolate Chip Cookies

The birthday baking for co-workers continues to get more and more delicious.  This time around I made some gigantic cookies for Carlos.  I found the recipe at AllRecipes.com at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Best-Big-Fat-Chewy-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie/Detail.aspx.  The recipe is really easy and quick.  However, you only get about 12 cookies or so in a batch because you drop the cookies onto the baking sheet at a quarter of a cup of dough for each cookie.   I would recommend making a few batches at a time because these soft and chewy cookies go quick!

Instead of using just regular semi-sweet chocolate chips,  I also used white chocolate chips as well.  I put in about a cup of regular chocolate chips and about 3/4 cup of white chocolate chips.  The result was fantastic.

Mouthwatering Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

I've made a positive life change recently -- I've been buying fruit on a regular basis.  Unfortunately though I have not been eating my fruit before it ripens too much, but this has created a whole new baking opportunity for me with bananas which I ALWAYS buy too many of than I can eat! 

So I recently made fabulous banana chocolate chip muffins, using the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home Muffin Madness recipe.  I highly recommend picking up this book, especially for vegetarians.  All of the recipes I have made thus are easy and very tasty, including these muffins which I could not keep my hands off of!  And as you can tell, others also couldn't keep their hands off of them because the banana smell out of the oven will make your mouth water.

Birthday Lemon Bars from the Gourmet Cookbook

Given that four of my co-workers have had birthdays the past few weeks, I have been quite busy making them their promised choice of baked goods.  For Heather, I attempted my first batch of lemon bars.  Although it was a great learning experience, and I got to dust off my zester which I thought I would never use again, unfortunately Heather was unexpectedly traveling for work when the lemon bars were brought in and was unable to eat them.  So, it looks like I will be trying to make lemon bars again, potentially with a different recipe than the Gourmet Cookbook one I used this time (p.690 of the 2004 version).

Although my other co-workers really liked the bars, I think there is room for improvement, especially with the lemon topping which I thought could have a more smooth consistency.  So I'll make sure to post if I find a better recipe.

The best picture though out of this baking experiment was of my co-worker Carlos who enjoyed a lemon bar while browsing www.madhuknitsandcooks.com!

Gourmet Tiny Chocolate Chip Cookies

I finally started using the Gourmet Cookbook that I bought last year by using my last egg in a soon-to-expire carton to make the Tiny Chocolate Chip Cookies on page 662 of the 2004 version of the cookbook.  The recipe is also available free online at epicurious.com at:  http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/106172

I made two modifications to the recipe: 

• I substituted mini chocolate chips for regular size semi-sweet chips
• I reduced the baking temperature by about 25 degrees and shortened the baking time to about 4-5 minutes because the first batch got a little too burnt at the bottom even though the baking sheet was placed on the farthest rack from the heat source.

These are a really great snack -- no one can say no to them given how small they are.   They also melt in your mouth given how buttery and small they are.

White Chocolate Dipped Chocolate Chip Cookies

There have been a number of summer birthdays in my current workplace, and I have promised all of the members of my department that I will bake them something delicious for their birthday.  For Danielle, who I sit next to, I recently made her (and of course for the rest of the staff!) some white chocolate dipped chocolate chip cookies.

To make these cookies, I followed the same Allrecipes.com recipe I used here:  http://madhuknitsandcooks.typepad.com/madhu_knits_and_cooks/2006/10/simple_chocolat.html

After baking the cookies and letting them cool, I then slowly melted about 1/2 - 2/3 cup of white chocolate chips in the microwave.  You should be really careful with melting chocolate in a microwave by using a reduced power and only microwaving in 30 second or less increments until just melted.  I then dipped the cookies in the melted white chocolate and used a butter knive to evenly spread the chocolate over a sizeable part of the cookie. 

I would then place the dipped cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet, where they would then be placed in the fridge for about 45 minutes for the chocolate to harden (until the cookies can be lifted off of the parchment paper without leaving any chocolate behind).