Madhu Knits and Cooks

The Pasta Roller Arrives! Homemade Pasta-Making is Here to Stay!

I finally did it friends.  I purchased a hand-crank pasta roller, the famed Marcato Atlas 150 machine.  And sure, some may say that it's just another kitchen tool that I may not use (cough, cough ice cream maker), but after my first use, I knew this machine is going to get a lot of use in our kitchen.

First, it's incredibly easy to use.  Incredibly intuitive.  Second, it makes pasta making SO FAST.  I am used to the laborious, hand rolling of my pasta sheets, which has had me shy away from making pasta more than once a year or so.  This smooth moving pasta roller almost makes homemade pasta a weeknight appropriate dish.  

For this inaugural pasta machine attempt, I used the King Arthur Flour Italian Style Flour Blend (their version of 00) and their accompanying pasta recipe.  I made two slight modifications - I let the eggs come to room temperature before starting the dough (tip from the Marcato guide) and I used the flour well method to incorporate the eggs into the flour.

After the dough rested, the fun began!  I have to admit I was nervous I would break the machine before getting started, but once I got over that fear, it really almost rolled itself!

I first used a test piece, as instructed by the manual, to go through the roller and cutter settings to clean the machine.  And then I got started with the "real" dough, having it go through the thickest setting several times before feeding it through the tighter roll settings.  Each progressive roll through the machine required a good dusting of flour on each side to make sure there wasn't any sticking to the machine.

And then through the machine one last time for the cutting of the strips, which was really, really fun.

The pasta then cooked really quickly - about 3.5 minutes - in a pot of well-salted boiling water.

The noodles were springy, salty, and really delicious after they were cooked.  I was almost tempted to eat them plain! 

I decided though to use the sauce I had been cooking while the pasta was resting, a butternut squash sauce that will be posted later this week.  The final product was fantastic.  The noodles took to the thick sauce well, and it was really a delight to eat these chewy, well-salted, and silky noodles.

Thank you, thank you Marcato for your product!

Madhur Jaffrey Instant Pot Simple Mung Dal with Spinach - and a Note on Cinnamon

Madhur Jaffrey's been a major influence on my cooking of late, as highlighted by yesterday's curtido post.  A major reason for her resurgence in my kitchen is her new Instant Pot cookbook, which I picked up from the library before it closed (and now have no way of returning!).  

My first new cookbook recipe attempt was a modified version of her Mung Dal with Spinach.  It was modified in the sense that I didn't have the right proportion of spinach available, so I halved the recipe entirely with even slightly less spinach.

I learned a lot about Instant Pot dal cooking by attempting this recipe.  First, 10 minutes on low pressure is a perfect cook time for split mung dal, a dal that I had previously completely overcooked in the Instant Pot.  

Second, the 3.5-to-1 water-to-dal ratio was a bit too high, which I ended up taking care of by sautéing the dal for a bit longer with the tadka.  

The third and most important takeaway is that we really don't like cinnamon in dal.  In this simple recipe with ginger, garlic, and spinach, the half cinnamon stick cooked with the dal produced way too much of a deep cinnamon flavor.  While that flavor faded over the coming day, it still was a great lesson learned for us to omit cinnamon in these simple dals moving forward.

Jim Lahey's Pizza Dough - Very Good, But Doesn't Displace My Favorite Recipe

I loved Jim Lahey's pizza restaurant Co. when it was open in NYC, and was so sad when it closed.  It was a regular go-to whenever I was anywhere near that side of town.  And so when I saw that Jim Lahey had a pizza recipe book while browsing my local library stacks, I grabbed it with high excitement.  

The resulting two pizzas I made from the half portion of his no-knead dough recipe were very good with nice salty and yeasty flavors in every bite.  I didn't follow any of his pizza topping recipes, rather just the dough and baking method.

The dough required an 18-hour room temperature rise, which led to a slightly sticky dough that was hard to stretch out nicely.  I imagine my lack of experience shaping pizzas by hand v. rolling probably contributed to this difficulty though.  

What I most liked about Lahey's pizza approach is that he calls for pre-heating a pizza stone 8 inches from the top of the oven at 500 degrees before then turning on the broiler to bake the pizza.  That high heat leads to a nicely cooked pizza in just a few minutes. 

Moving forward, to really make use of this technique, I should pre-heat the broiler for longer before putting in the shaped pizza and leave the dough in the oven slightly longer until there are more black spots across the pizza.  I will probably continue to pre-cook the dough, which I generally do, before adding toppings to avoid the toppings overwhelming the thin dough.  

What I least liked about this pizza was the relatively small pizzas that his portions led to.  One Lahey pie is enough for slightly more than one person, but not quite enough for two.  As a result, for the slightly higher effort of an 18-hour room rise instead of a forget-about-it fridge rise, I think I'll probably continue to default to my standard pizza dough recipe, but now coupling it with Lahey's broiler bake approach.

Sichuan-Style Eggplant - Third Time was Almost a Charm!

Eggplant is perhaps my top cooking enemy, and Sichuan-style eggplant in particular is a feared foe that out masters me every time.  I have tried and tried again, but my homemade eggplant always has a tough, unappealing consistency.  It's almost like eating something that isn't actually edible - simultaneously overcooked and raw.

So when some eggplant arrived in a recent vegetable delivery, my heart stopped a bit.  What was I going to do with these rotund evil bulbs??

Not so much driven by determination to vanquish Sichuan-style eggplant as just a lack of creativity on my part, I re-opened the Madhur Jaffrey World Vegetarian cookbook and turned to the Hot and Spicy Sichuan-Style Eggplants recipe.   And instead of trying to improvise this recipe - at least in terms of technique - I set out to chop and steam the eggplant as directed, an approach I haven't tried before.

Surprisingly the texture was soft and almost melted in my mouth, without having a stringy or tough texture!  Yay, I have mastered eggplant or so I thought to myself.

Unfortunately the disappointment came with the flavoring mix, which resulted in an overly tangy recipe that lingered on my mouth, followed by a slight stomach upset hours later.

My unvetted theory is that inclusion of red wine vinegar in the recipe was particularly problematic, as it most likely caused the over-tanginess of the dish.  However, the whole dish seemed off - slightly sour, somewhat spicy, nothing quite coming together, and just completely unappealing for my palate. 

But at least I mastered an eggplant preparation technique!  I'll take that as a win after years of trying!

King Arthur Flour's No Knead Bread - Another Great Bread Recipe

Could there be an even better version of my favorite bread recipe?  Thanks to King Arthur Flour, the answer is yes!  The KAF No-Knead White Crusty Bread recipe draws from my recent favorite Simple Crusty Bread approach, and provides more detailed guidance to result in a perfectly baked loaf.

The more detailed KAF guidance provides both weight measurement guidance that I followed as well as details on how to substitute a dutch oven for the baking itself.  I also followed related guidance to keep my standard inclusion of rye flour to only 20% of the overall flour weight as to not depress the bread rise too much.

(hello scale, I love you!)

By following the weight guidance instead of the volume measurements, I ended up with a much thicker and dense dough than my usual no knead doughs, which are quite loose and shaggy.

Like my preparation of the original recipe, I did half the amount of dough I made to ultimately produce two loaves instead of four.

I baked the loaf in a 7 1/4 quart dutch oven, pre-heated in a 450 degree oven (480 in our new, not-quite-calibrated oven).  I baked the bread for 28 minutes in the covered dutch oven, and then an additional 8 minutes with the cover off.

The result, when cooled, was great - full of decent holes, great crust, and a much better rise than when you bake on a pizza stone.  I'll be making this again!

Peppermint Chocolate Shortbread - An Almost Complete Disaster

Two years ago, I discovered a fantastic chocolate shortbread recipe from King Arthur Flour.   The cookies - named Chocolate Dreams - lived up to their designation as they were rich, chocolatey, and had a great flaky texture.  

As the cookies were in the oven those years ago, I browsed the KAF comments to see what others thought of the recipe.  A few intriguing comments mentioned adding peppermint extract to the dough, which apparently provided the cookies a Thin Mint-like flavor.  

Those comments have stayed in my head over the past few years, and I recently decided to make this recipe modification myself.  I purchased what I thought was peppermint extract and then made this simple dough.  I didn't notice anything was awry with this alteration until the cookies were baking in the oven and overwhelmed our kitchen with a consuming peppermint smell.

I checked my tiny bottle of peppermint extract and discovered that in fact it was peppermint oil.  Two very different things my frantic internet search immediately told me.  With of course, the latter being far more powerful than the former.

As the cookies cooled, my husband and I still decided to give them a try.  My husband said they tasted like Altoids, which seemed pretty spot on as I hesitantly ate a small cookie myself. 

This recipe attempt wasn't a complete disaster though in the sense that when I took them to work the next day, a lot of people seemed to actually like them!  Even said they tasted just like Thin Mints.  Well, to each her own!

Simple Hard-Boiled Egg Arugula Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette - A Few Firsts

This salad - which I prepared way back when - provided me a series of firsts.  It allowed me to finally try some fantastic balsamic vinegar a friend had brought us from Modena, to attempt hard-boiling eggs, and to try my first "60-Minute Gourmet" recipe. 

Until I had stumbled upon this recipe, I was completely unaware of the 60-Minute Gourmet series, Pierre Franey's weekly New York Times column which ran from 1976 to 1993.  It was interesting to find this piece of recent culinary history as I think it may prompt a new exploration in my kitchen - what recipes have withstood trends of modern America and can really live through the ages?

Part of that new exploration may be because this simple arugula salad with balsamic vinegar was pretty bland for my taste.  The ingredients, which individually were flavorful, didn't quite come together.  Basically, it tasted like arugula with red onions and a hardboiled egg.  With some balsamic vinaigrette on top (tasty vinaigrette though to be clear).  

In addition to trying a new, solid salad dressing recipe that was pretty easy to put together, I also got to learn how to make a hardboiled egg, which I found easy on my first go after extensive how-to research.  I followed the Simply Recipes approach, which was pretty easy and I will likely default to in the future.

An Instant Pot Version of a Madhu Knits and Cooks Favorite - Gujarati Dal

In addition to making new recipes in the Instant Pot, I also have been wanting to to experiment with some of my favorite standbys in this time-saving gadget.  I finally did so with the Gujarati Dal I really enjoy making - could the Instant Pot actually improve this recipe?

Sadly, my verdict is one of disappointment.  While it was nice to not have to stand over the stove while this dal was cooking, the ultimate texture was one of...mush.  Mush that was well-flavored to be sure, but mush nonetheless. 

I used approx. 3/4 cup of a mix of toor, masoor, and split moong dal, with approx. 1.5 cups of water.  I cooked this recipe at 15 minutes on high pressure, allowed 12 minutes for natural depressurization.

I think my flaw was perhaps that this was just too much cooking time, or the Instant Pot may not be as good to use for these thinner, faster cooking lentils.  Or maybe even I should have cooked at low pressure instead of high.  In any case, I was so dismayed with this Instant Pot effort that I may not even try to perfect this approach moving forward.  Oh well, back to the heavier Instant Pot beans!

An Instant Pot Version of a Madhu Knits and Cooks Favorite - Gujarati Dal

In addition to making new recipes in the Instant Pot, I also have been wanting to to experiment with some of my favorite standbys in this time-saving gadget.  I finally did so with the Gujarati Dal I really enjoy making - could the Instant Pot actually improve this recipe?

Sadly, my verdict is one of disappointment.  While it was nice to not have to stand over the stove while this dal was cooking, the ultimate texture was one of...mush.  Mush that was well-flavored to be sure, but mush nonetheless. 

I used approx. 3/4 cup of a mix of toor, masoor, and split moong dal, with approx. 1.5 cups of water.  I cooked this recipe at 15 minutes on high pressure, allowed 12 minutes for natural depressurization.

I think my flaw was perhaps that this was just too much cooking time, or the Instant Pot may not be as good to use for these thinner, faster cooking lentils.  Or maybe even I should have cooked at low pressure instead of high.  In any case, I was so dismayed with this Instant Pot effort that I may not even try to perfect this approach moving forward.  Oh well, back to the heavier Instant Pot beans!

The Instant Pot Enters Madhu's Kitchen - Initial Projects

The Instant Pot has finally arrived in my kitchen!  After eyeing this pressure cooker slash electric pot slash yogurt maker slash many-other-things for several months, my indecision about what type of Instant Pot to purchase finally lifted.  And lifted not because I did proactively did to end my indecision, but instead a friend gave me his Instant Pot that he tried but wasn't a fan of.

Well, his loss was certainly my gain as I LOVE my new Instant Pot.  I've only made a few items in it so far, but the results have been fantastic.  Dried chickpeas cooked in 10 minutes; lentil soup in 6 minutes; and my only repeat to date, steel cut oats in 4 minutes.  

The steel cut oats are definitely my favorite because I like making steel cuts oats in bulk for the work week, but it's kind of a pain to watch the pot on the stovetop for 30 - 45 minutes, ensure the oats at the bottom of the pot aren't burning, and then clean up all of the messy oat water that spills out of the pot as the oats cook.  Just that last stove top feature - the clean up - has been enough to dissuade me from making oats as much as I would otherwise like.  

When I first made oats in the Instant Pot, I followed some internet guidance to spray some oil along the bottom of the pot so that the oats wouldn't stick to the cooking bowl.  It led to a slight flavor in the oats that I didn't totally love, but was fine when honey or brown sugar were added to the oats.  The second time I made the oats, I completely forgot about this oil spray first step, and it turned out the oats were totally fine!  So no more oil in the future.

On my second oats attempt as well, I realized that I didn't quite like my standard 3 - 1 water to oats ratio I use when making oats on the stovetop.  It leads to a slightly watery outcome, so I think I am going to move to a 2.5 - 1 ratio moving forward.  I'll update if that ratio does the trick to produce the hearty, toothy cooked oat texture that I prefer.

Finally, another feature of the Instant Pot that I love is that when your item is cooked, you don't need to really do anything right away.  You can just leave the pot sitting there while you go about your other business.  So unlike stove top items that need to be cared for when done (turn off the heat, stir, etc.), you really can just forget about what's in the Instant Pot until you are ready to deal with it.  Another major bonus for my busy kitchen!