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halloween shenanigans October 31, 2009

Posted by molly in : about the kitchen, particularly random , 3comments

happy halloween! phil and i are getting all dressed up as a couple of fancy party goers who got murdered. i should probably come up with a better name for it, but that works for now :)

today has been full of excitement because phil got to carve his first pumpkin (which we picked from crockford bridge farm) and i got to roast up some pumpkin seeds. i think the pumpkin looks pretty damn scary, don’t you?

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and after scooping out and cleaning off the seeds, i roasted them in a hot oven for about 20 minutes with some oil and plenty of salt. yummy snack or a great addition to salads.

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i usually associate halloween / fall / pumpkins with america, but i’m glad we were able to have a mini celebration at home today, followed by a fun party tonight in foggy londontown.

since halloween candy doesn’t really exist here, i hope all the americans reading this have an extra handful of candy corn for me :)

adapting a cake recipe October 30, 2009

Posted by molly in : about the kitchen , 2comments

one of the most difficult challenges to an egg- and dairy-free person is the cake. how many cake recipes do you know that don’t include eggs or milk or both? luckily, there are plenty of substitutions out there. while they may not be a perfect match to the real thing (consistency is a big issue) they at least afford us the opportunity to bake to our hearts’ content.

i remember the first egg-free cake i made. it was a pineapple upside-down cake with my roommate cara and we used egg beaters instead (turns out i’m allergic to both the yolk and the white so that didn’t really work). then i invested in some good old-fashioned powdered egg substitute. these tend to work much better in baking than the natural egg replacement methods, such as flaxseed or apple sauce or mashed bananas, since there is no added taste and it is purely used to bind the ingredients.

in the summer of 2008, right before i moved to london, phil stayed with me during my last 6 weeks in san diego. we cooked and baked a lot, and he told me all about his signature cake recipe: the flake cake. below is a photo of the cake we made during said summer.

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this cake is so popular in his family, he has been asked to bake it for his brother’s wedding next july. since he’s got some time to prepare, it’s been lots of fun helping him adapt the recipe to be a bit more allergy-friendly, since i won’t be the only person at the wedding with dietary restrictions. i always tell him that we’ll make as many versions as it takes to get the recipe juuuuuuuuust right.

i won’t be posting the recipe just yet – it shall remain a secret for a little while longer (keeping the mystery alive). but i will say that the cake gets its name from a key ingredient: a crumbled up cadbury’s flake.

as today is my last day at my current job, phil baked a small flake cake for the occasion (eggless of course). my coworkers are lucky :)

here are a few nice egg-free resources that i’ve come across recently:

an old classic October 29, 2009

Posted by molly in : salad , 2comments

welcome everyone! i’m so pleased that so many people are finding my blog, especially now that it’s looking a whole lot prettier. right, let’s get down to it.

do you have a standby dish that you just always feel comfortable making? something you can always depend on to be delicious and good for lunch or dinner? well, for us, it has to be our modified nicoise salad. now… i know what you may be thinking: one of the key ingredients of a nicoise is an egg. well, i did say modified…

this salad has been made soooo many times in the particular kitchen that i feel like all pots and pans go on autopilot to make the perfect boiled potatoes and the perfectly seared tuna steaks without any help from either phil or i.

so here it is, from my kitchen to yours:

the particular nicoise salad

this salad is a big old mixture – none of this separated bullsh*t. tuck in. maybe even grab a hunk of warm bread to go with it if you’re feeling fancy.

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the particulars:

  1. get the potatoes boiling away while you prepare the rest of the vegetables. slice the cherry tomatoes in half and roughly chop the mixed greens.
  2. in a separate small pot, boil the green beans.
  3. season the tuna steaks, and sear to your liking on both sides on a hot griddle or frying pan.
  4. once all the hot ingredients are cooked, chop them into small pieces (wait until they’ve cooled a little first).
  5. add them to a big salad bowl with the mixed greens, tomatoes, and some roughly chopped anchovy fillets.
  6. combine the oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, and sugar to create the dressing. toss altogether and serve while still warm.

lesson learned: even on cold nights, this salad still holds up. make sure you use the freshest ingredients possible, especially the tuna. i know tuna’s not the most sustainable fish you could choose, but what’s a nicoise without tuna? don’t make this salad too often then…

particularly pretty October 28, 2009

Posted by molly in : about the kitchen , 1 comment so far

you may notice that things look a lil’ different around here. thanks to my friend leonie, my blog is starting to take serious shape. she is responsible for that gorgeous header you see at the top there. i’m working on the rest of the design to make sure all the colours match up and it is as wonderful as it could possibly look. so please bear with me as i make changes one at a time.

serious time will be put into the particular kitchen starting next week (i only have two days left at my current job — aaggghhhh!) so i’m thinking about what’s in store and what i need to get working on.

some cooking projects i’m going to start planning for:

heavenly cake October 28, 2009

Posted by molly in : desserts , 1 comment so far

after lunch at infinity foods, we went shopping for a few bits at their partner store. at the checkout, they had a box full of little cakes – i grabbed one and was delighted to find no dangerous (for me) ingredients. they were mini vanilla and carrot cakes from the heavenly cake company. below is a pic of the carrot cake i had at lunch and while it was a bit dry, it was still super tasty and the icing was awesome. indulgent.

 

normal posting will resume tomorrow — no more iphone pics, promise!