The Food of Life

Miso Chicken Stir-Fry

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:59:27 -0700

I made a Miso Chicken Stir-Fry tonight for dinner and it turned out excellent. I tend to use whatever I have in my fridge for stir-fry but still try to adhere to some specific theme. I made only a single serving tonight so feel free to double or quadruple the recipe to feed more people. Also, don't be afraid to change around vegetables.

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Nutty Multi-Grain Bread

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:19:00 -0700

I have been working on a few bread recipes and have been pretty happy with an augmented Multi-Grain recipe from King Arthur Flour's website. The bread is pretty hearty and includes a sunflowers, milled flax seed, cornmeal, sesame seeds, and whole oats. The recipe is low salt and contains no butter. A slice of this with honey is unstoppable.

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Calzone Time!!!

nospam@example.com (Isaac Philbrook) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:40:49 -0700

Okay first I must apologize for my long absense. My kitchen was attacked by a malicious beast known only as the landlord... The landlord beast did it's best to stop me from creating, but alas I won... Or patience did. Anywhoo enough of that.

So what we have here is what I like to call a calzone... The dough is the same as my pizza dough, and I just roll it out flat. I plop a big ol' scoop of ricotta in the middle, and then a tiny handful of whatever other cheese you'd like to do ( I like mozerella and Fontina) and then surround the cheesy goodness with Veggies and meat. Seal it all up and shazam you got yourself a calzone!!! I cook these at about 450 for about 15 minutes, or until it starts to get all nice and golden brown.

Sourdough Starter and Bread

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:46:00 -0700

I am attempting to create a natural sourdough starter, or sourdough without any commercial yeast. Sourdough has a pretty interesting history including heavy association with gold miners who would take it with them wherever they went. NPR has some great information history about sourdough and a few recipes at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6061648.

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Dough Window Pane Test

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:15:20 -0700

The Window Pane Test is an easy test to evaluate the readiness of dough for bread while kneading.

After the dough appears to be elastic, 10 minutes using an electric mixer or 15 minutes by hand, remove a small piece of the dough.
Roll the dough between your fingers to repair the tear.
Slowly stretch the dough apart, alternating sides.
The goal is to stretch the dough until you can see light through it without it tearing or ripping.
Once you can stretch the dough sufficiently, you can stop kneading.

I will try and add some picture of this next time I make bread

Quick Pho

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:05:22 -0700

I have been looking towards a number of Asian dishes for healthy recipes and tonight decided to try my hand at a simplified and healthier version of Pho. This version can be prepared in about 45 minutes and is about 588 calories for a 2 cup serving with 40g of rice noodles.

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Losing some weight

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:46:13 -0700

I made a decision last week to try and lose some weight and in support of the decision, I have been trying to cook healthier and track my caloric intake. I will be adding a subcatagory for low calorie and healthy recipes with my estimates of nutritional value. This blog, however, will not turn into a dieting or diet tracking blog and will continue to be food focused. For those interested in tracking your caloric intake, I am using The Daily Plate feature over at http://www.livestrong.com which has an extensive database of food.

Homemade Pizza

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:49:08 -0700

Isaac and I have been working on a few pizza recipes and thought we would subject our friends to it. Isaac took on the Chicago-style stuffed pizza and a more traditional and minimalist Pizza Margherita. I made two thin crust versions, a meat, pepper, and onion combination with a tomato base and the other was a chicken and spinach with an olive oil base.

I think all the pizzas turned out really well and the feedback was mostly positive.

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How to use a chef's knife

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:55:33 -0700

So despite knowing better, I was rushing and misusing my knife over the weekend while chopping ingredients for pizza which resulted in cutting 1/3 way through my index finger. I managed to contain things with some tape and a napkin so I could finish cooking. Once things stopped bleeding and the pizza was off the big green egg, we put a few Steri-Strips on it to keep things closed. Using the opportunity as a teaching tool, I thought I would sit down and document how to properly hold and control a knife. Perhaps I will follow these instructions in the future and save myself from another incident.

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Pizza Test

nospam@example.com (Isaac Philbrook) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:31:54 -0700

I just thought I might share some pictures of my first pizza from scratch in... I don't even know how many years. So it came out alright, i should have stretched the dough out a bit more because it came out kind of thick but all in all not too shabby. The dough was from a recipe book i had that was about 1/2 cube of butter, salt, sugar, all purpuse flour, 3 egg yolks. I also tossed in some garlic, onion salt, and rosemary. The topping is just olive oil sea salt (very light) roma tomatos, mozerella cheese and some parsley flakes ( i would have used basil, but i didn't have any, but i really like the green contrast color)

Bruschetta

nospam@example.com (Isaac Philbrook) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:29:23 -0800

One of my absolute favorite things to make is bruschetta. I probably never make it exactly the same way twice, and it will really depend on what i have in the fridge. This is actually probably one of my favorite things to eat for dinner too. It's simple, quick and easy and really filling. So first the bread, I typically make my own baguettes, and because i like to bake more than I like to eat (looks are deceiving aren't they ;-)) bread has a way of going stale on me; especially since it has no preservatives in it. So when my baguettes start to go bad i know it's bruschetta time. You don't have to make your own bread to do this, if you want to try it, go to your local grocery store and get a medium sized baguette and go to town (it's gotta be big enough to put the toppins on when it's cut).

Okay, so first I mix a bowl of Extra virgin olive oil, and some Balsamic vinegar. We could spend all day talking about these 2 things, so we won't... yet. Anywhoo i use a ration of about 2/3 olive oil and 1/3 balsamic vinegar. Set that aside

Cut the bread. At a diagonal angle start cutting your baguette, you want them to be oval like in shape and however thick you want them, i like about 1/4". line them up on a baking sheet, they can be touching. Now we bake them for a bit, just to get them golden brown. 350 degress about 7 minutes each side on the middle rack i think. Just get them golden brown. We bake them so that when we slop em up with our topping they don't get soggy. When they're done just pull them out and set them aside.

Tomato. Yum. Okay I am a freakshow about roma tomatoes. I love these things. I just slice these guys in thin rings and i use 1 slice per bread slice. So match em up and set em aside.

Cheese. You can just use a bagged shredded mozerealla and some pre shredded parmesean also. It's quick and easy.

Basil, I like to cut basil leaves into thin strips. Basil matches real well with the olive and vinegar and tomato and cheese, plus it adds a neat contrasting color with the red tomato the browned bread, the white brown cheese. If you don't have basil i will sometimes use parsley flakes in it's absense.

Now, you can either use a pastry brush to coat each of the baked bread bits, or what I do is basically slop the roma tomato int the mixture and then plop it onto the bread. I do 1 tomato for each bread slice. Then I take some sea salt and grind just a touch over the top. If you don't think the bread and tomato has enough "sauce" then go ahead and as much as you like. Now sprinkle your cheese on top of the tomato. doesn't take much, moz melts and browns nice. Then just a dab of parm because i like the flava. :-) Shazam! Kick the oven onto broil toss those bad boys in and watch like a hawk! Should only take 2 or 3 minutes for those kids to get all hot and that cheese to melt. Once the moz starts to brown and bubble you are done! Pull em out sprinkle on your basil or Parsley and serve em up!!!

hopefully they look like this or better

Simple Jambalaya

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:57:07 -0800

I have been wanting to make some Jambalaya since Isaac, Sean, and I made a batch of andouille sausage and figured tonight was the night. The following is a quick version of Jambalaya but there are a lot of versions out on the internet. My goal was to use what I had in the house though I started the dinner thinking I had a bell pepper left over from pizza night but I apparently misremembered.
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Coffee!

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:33:59 -0800

I purchased an Aerobie AeroPress about a year ago and love it. For $26, you can’t get a better and cup of coffee. The AeroPress takes some fundamental ideas of how an espresso machine and French press work and combines them into a small and easy to use package. The result is a smooth cup of coffee without the lingering grounds you commonly find in a cup made by a French press. The AeroPress is not a replacement for a cup of espresso nor does it scale, as it becomes labor intensive when trying to make multiple cups of coffee simultaneously.

In addition to the AeroPress, I bought a Capresso Infinity burr grinder and retired my old bean chopper. The burr grinder provides a more consistent grind and produces a better overall cup of coffee. The Capresso is a good upgrade from the chopper but is still considered entry level. I have a few minor complaints with the grounds getting stuck in the chopping chamber and collector but some tapping and regular cleaning helps.

The folks over at CoffeeGeek.com have done a great job grilling the inventor of the AeroPress and have a number of good reviews of the Capresso Infinity.

Cibus Vitae Store - http://www.cibusvitae.com/pages/store.html
AeroPress Thread - http://coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/195166
Capresso Infinity Review - http://coffeegeek.com/reviews/grinders/capressoinfinity

Basic Tools

nospam@example.com (Chad Thunberg) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:47:19 -0800

I have recently been dabbling with baking bread including pizza dough and bagels (yeah, I tend to just dive right in). Through reading, talking with people, and my own experimentation, I have concluded (like most) that baking bread is more science than art. Bread making should be approached as a scientific process and variables should be controlled including ingredient ratios, temperature, and time. A few gadgets worth getting are a digital scale and a candy thermometer.

Digital Scales are most important for solids, like flour, where the volume can very dramatically depending on how tightly packed it is. The combination of a scale and some good notes will ensure consistency between baking.
* TIP: Four cups of flour in most recipes is meant to be 1 lb. You can find a great conversion calculator at http://www.traditionaloven.com/conversions_of_measures/flour_volume_weight.html

Candy Thermometers will give you insight into the temperature of your water and yeast mixture which should be 105 F. I also use an instant-read digital thermometer and a wireless thermometer for meat.

The products we use and recommend can be found at the Cibus Vitae Store.

Scotch Scotch Scotch I love Scotch

nospam@example.com (Isaac Philbrook) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:52:01 -0800

I am pretty new to this whole scotch thing, but boy can it be wonderful. By no means am I an afficionado (that's a fancy word for pretentious), but I know what I like. I am currently doing some work with a friend and coworker helping him with a multi media center. Recently in preparation for this I was at his house helping him with some home network issues. Well long story short it didn't go quite as easily as expected. This guy is most generous, and in return for my work he gave me a bottle of The Macallan. The Macallan is a 12 year old Single Malt scotch and it tastes incredible. It is so smooth and easy that I had to share it with you.

Typically when I buy scotch I actually just get myself some dewars, which is your average blended stuff that you can usually find at any given bar and not pay out the nose for; I mean even Chop Suey has it. Apparently one of the many secrets to this scotch is that is is exclusively aged in Sherry Oak Casks from spain. I'm not sure if that is really awesome or not, but this stuff tastes pretty good. It's not overpowering and in my opinon if you are new to scotch and looking for something really easy on the pallette this is the stuff to get started with. Way better than Dewar's... 2 thumbs up. Anywhoo here is a link to the website, so please give it a whirl because this definitely has my seal of approval. Macallan