Halloween

So this post is only tangentially related to food, but this was just so ridiculous that I had to post it.

Guess what I saw at Target today....

No, my crappy camera phone resolution is not playing tricks on your eyes. This here, ladies and gentlemen, is A HOT DOG COSTUME FOR A DOG! This Halloween, if you don't have small children to dress up in costume - you can dress up your dog! I am particularly amused by the fact that they had to specify that this costume was for pets only. I guess if you wanted to you could dress your cat too.

Here's another favorite - dress your dog as a banana...

Or a turtle....

They had a rooster too, but I didn't take a picture of it. Now here's what I can't figure out - why would anyone want to dress their dog as another animal?! I mean, she's already an animal - why does she need to dress up like another animal?! People dress up as animals for Halloween, so maybe you should be dressing your dog as a person?

A Disclaimer: Don't get me wrong, I am not an animal hater. I have a dog, and I love my dog... which is why I am not dressing her up in costume this Halloween.

Cooking with Rosann!

Rosann and I were roommates when we studied abroad together in Seville, Spain. So of course, when she came to my house this past weekend, we had to have a Spanish-style meal complete with tortilla espanola and manchego cheese!

I've blogged about tortilla before, and if you recall, I made a big gloopy mess on my stove. I have made tortilla several times since then because its easy, economical, and I frequently have all the ingredients on hand. Since then, I've learned a new trick from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, that is much neater and runs less of a risk of making a mess. I've shared this "new" trick below.

The tortilla right after it had been flipped

Tortilla Espanola (Revisited)

Ingredients:
2 medium potatoes, or one large potato
3 large eggs (I used 2 whole eggs and the white of one egg)
Lots of oil, enough to cover the pan, and preferably olive oil because it is the signature oil of Spain.
Several pinches of salt

Equipment:
8-inch frying pan
Two large plates that are the same size for flipping

Method:
1. Peel and slice the potatoes into very thin slices, between an 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. I quarter the potatoes lengthwise to get nice bite pieces. Beat the eggs in a bowl.
2. Fry the potatoes in a large pan with a very generous coat of oil (several tablespoons). You need a lot of oil or it will stick and burn. Season with a pinch of salt. Cook until potatoes are soft and slightly browned. They will look like slightly undercooked home fries.
3. Drain the potatoes on paper towels. Scramble the eggs with another pinch of salt.
4. Heat oil (yes, more oil - or you can use the leftover oil from cooking the potatoes) in an 8-inch pan. Transfer the potatoes to the pan. Pour egg mixture evenly over the potatoes. Allow it to cook until the bottom is golden brown.
5. **The NEW trick** To flip the tortilla, gently slide the tortilla on to a plate with your spatula. Then, place the other plate over it, and quickly flip the plates. Slide the tortilla back onto the pan and cook for a few minutes until the bottom is golden brown.
7. Serve and enjoy!
8. If you did not do the trick right, clean your stove.

Cheesecake-swirled Brownies

As promised, this was the dessert from our "Cooking with Suvarna" adventure. We used the recipe from the Smitten Kitchen, with a few minor uhh... let's call them "adjustments." Now, this recipe provides that you prepare the brownie batter, and then the cheesecake batter, and then swirl the cheesecake batter on top of the brownie batter. Easy, right?

Well, the brownie batter whisked up perfectly...

But when we made the cheesecake batter was when the cooking wheels started to fall off. First, we didn't use "well-softened" (i.e. room temperature) cream cheese as the recipe calls for. Apparently, nuking it in the microwave for 10 seconds did not cut it. Then, instead of just using the egg yolk, we accidentally cracked the whole egg, white and yolk, into the batter (oops!). The end result was cream cheese batter that had little lumps of cream cheese in it that looked like this.

But we were not discouraged - we are, after all, soon-to-be attorneys, here! First we tried using an electric mixer to smooth out the batter. When that didn't work, we tried using the masher thingy that you see in the picture here, but to no avail. So then we tried letting the mixture sit at room temperature to see if the lumps would just "melt" away. Wishful thinking. That's when we contemplated just trashing this batch and whip up a new batch of cream cheese mixture. But, since I am not one to waste perfectly good ingredients, I insisted on trying to use the lumpy cream cheese goo and poured it right on top of the brownie batter in the pan and swirled it around. (Which became a little harder to do since the brownie batter started to congeal a bit from sitting at room temperature for so long). Nonetheless, the brownies still came out wonderfully gooey and chocolatey, the way brownies are meant to be, cold cream cheese and egg white be damned.

See, I'm eating one right here!

Click here for the recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

Cooking with Suvarna!

This post is to prove that lawyers are not just soulless, money-grubbing, ambulance chasers. Some of us can cook too! Suvarna was gracious enough to let me raid her kitchen for a day (Thanks, Suvarna!) Hence, the much classier table setting here, rather than my usual ugly brown wooden table. On the menu was baked macaroni and cheese, fresh spinach salad (pictured above), and cheesecake-swirled brownies. The mac and cheese turned our rich, creamy, and delicious because we followed the recipe (more or less). The cheesecake-swirled brownies came out soft and chewy and well, chocolatey - despite a minor scare of what we thought would doom the brownies (more on that in another post).

Baked Macaroni and Cheese fresh and bubbly in the oven

Baked Macaroni and Cheese
adapted from Everyday Food (original recipe here)

Ingredients:
1 pound elbow pasta
5 Tbs butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk
3 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup Italian-style bread crumbs
salt and pepper

Method:
1. Preheat oven at 375 degrees.

2. Boil pasta in salted water for about two minutes less than instructed on the box. Drain and rinse in cold water to stop the cooking process. (It will cook more in the oven). Return to the cooking pot.

3. While the pasta is cooking, melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a medium saucepan. Once melted, whisk in flour and cook for about one minute. Add milk, about two teaspoons of salt and a good pinch of pepper and bring to a simmer. Continue to cook, whisking constantly, for about two to three minutes (when mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon). Whisk in cheese until smooth. Pour cheese mixture over the cooked and drained pasta, and mix together until the pasta is evenly coated.

4. Melt remaining tablespoon of butter and toss with breadcrumbs.

5. Pour pasta mixture in a large baking dish. Sprinkle buttered breadcrumbs on top. Cover with foil and place in the preheated oven for about 55-60 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 5-10 minutes, or until golden.

Serves 6.

A Simple Ratatouille

Now I will try to write this post without discussing the Disney animated film involving cartoon rats. (Even though it is an awesome movie for kids and foodies). After my post on stir-fried asparagus, which was a recipe that I pulled from a cookbook I borrowed from the library, I decided a new project is to "test-run" cookbooks that that I find at the public library. Economical, tasty, and a good way to try new recipes and cooking techniques. Today's recipe is brought to you by Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything", a helpful reference book, that starts each section with the most basic techniques and recipe and then adds on variations. And at 1044 pages, it really DOES show you how to cook just about everything.

Simple Ratatouille (Sauteed Eggplant with Tomatoes)
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Ingredients:
1 long Japanese eggplant, chopped into 1/2 in cubes (recipe called for regular eggplant, but I live in an Asian household, so all we had was Japanese eggplant. I actually prefer Japanese eggplants because the skin is thinner, so no need to peel them)
About 1/3 cup olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
2 cloves minced garlic
2 teaspoons dried basil (Again, here I substituted dried basil for fresh because that is all I had)
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
1. Put oil and all but one teaspoon of garlic in non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook until translucent (about two minutes).
2. Add eggplant - stir and toss enough to coat the eggplant in oil. Allow it to cook until soft (about ten minutes), stirring occasionally.
3. Add tomatoes and cook for about another five minutes, stirring to break up the tomatoes.
4. Stir in remaining garlic and basil and cook for another five minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste and enjoy.

On Food Blogging: A Disclaimer, an outlet, a rant

Yesterday, I finally saw Julie and Julia, a movie that has been getting mixed reviews in the food blogging scene. This is because Julie Powell, the author of the book and blog upon which the movie was based, has been largely criticized for her rise to fame as a food guru, when really, she doesn’t know how to cook. But from reading this article in Newsweek, I was reminded that Julie Powell, like most bloggers, didn’t claim to be a great cook. Cooking was a simply an escape.

Quite frankly, I enjoyed the movie because I like to watch cooking and see how ingredients are chopped, julienned, parboiled, baked, or what have you, into a final, edible, and with any luck, delicious product. I never met the real Julie Powell, so I have no idea whether Amy Adams’ rendition was true to character. I’ll even admit that my claims to be a foodie, I’ve never really watched Julia Child’s show, “The French Chef,” except for the clips shown on the Food Network in tribute to her life after she died in 2004. But I did find Meryl Streep’s interpretation to be funny and entertaining.

But what I really want to point out is that food blogging for me, as it was for Julie Powell, is really just a creative outlet for me. I don’t claim to be a great cook, I just enjoy cooking. I started cooking on my own in my sophomore year of college, when I had no meal plan, a borrowed copy of The College Cookbook, and a television that was almost always set to the Food Network. While in law school, I started reading food blogs to escape from the doldrums of reading stuffy Supreme Court decisions and memorizing the elements of intentional torts. I started this blog because it just looked like fun. I named it “Food Judicata” because I thought I was being clever by using a play on words with a legal term, even though this blog is more about food than the law. In fact, I’ve thought about changing the name because I really don’t want to write about the law. I’ve spent the last three years briefing, analyzing, and dissecting the law. This is my space to get away from the law. In fact, the law so far has done very little for me as I type this in my pajamas at 11 AM on a Monday morning.

Food blogging, or any blog for that matter, is really just a creative outlet for most people. It is a place for ordinary people to get “published” by a simple click of the mouse.

Zucchini Fritters

See these zucchini fritters? Notice how there are only six left on this plate? That's because I ate most of them while this batch was still cooking. Foods that need to be cooked in batches are dangerous for me because I tend to eat them while cooking, leaving very little left at the end. This was also an easy way to get your serving of vegetables - I almost ate two zucchini in one meal! (In fact, I would have if my mom hadn't eaten some of them). Although not pictured here, these are best served with sour cream.

Find the recipe here at Simply Recipes.