Fun with pitas

One thing about cooking for one-- you're probably going to use your perishable ingredients over and over and over and over and over in a short period of time. Sometimes that's awesome (like the time I splurged on some scallops), but mostly it's boring.

So you find different ways to combine or prepare your ingredients.

Bread tends to go moldy on me long before I'm done with it. I freeze it, refrigerate it, swear on my life I'll eat it all.

I never do.

This time, however, I've got two pitas left in the bag I bought last week, and I think I can do it. Here's what I made with it today:

Pita pizza! Super easy to do-- just lay a pita flat (you may have to do some squishing). Cover it with a quarter cup of feta cheese. Place a layer of spinach leaves on top of the feta, then four or five halved grape tomatoes, another quarter cup of feta, a sprinkle of basil (I had to use dried, but next time I will get some fresh leaves), and salt and pepper to taste.

Put it under the broiler in the oven for about 7-8 minutes (I left it in for ten and the edges were pretty burnt). Top with fresh green onions. DONE.

I was just using ingredients I had on-hand-- like I said, next time I'm going to make sure I have fresh basil, and black olives (oooh, calamatas!) would have been sort of amazing.

Oh, and I finally downloaded Instagram.

I want dessert so ba-a-a-ad!

...sorry for that.

I'm going to a fish fry this weekend and I am so freaking excited about all the good stuff that will be there-- local fish, home-brewed beer, tasty kebabs and portobello mushrooms and thick slabs of bacon cooked over a fire...

My mom and I both had the idea to bring cheesecake. Since we had vastly different ideas of what kind, we're both still bringing it-- hers is going to be a Bailey's Irish Creme Mint cheesecake, while mine is goat cheese (get the bad joke in the title now?) with key lime drizzle and fresh berries (and both cakes are gluten-free for my mama). I just pulled mine out of the oven and it is torture smelling the crust and not digging in right away! But I'm cheating-- this is a trial run, and I'm bringing it to work tomorrow to test on my coworkers, so I'll get to eat it about 30 hours before everyone else. Mwahaha!

The idea for my cheesecake came from a dessert I had about a month ago at one of my favorite local restaurants (Deagan's Kitchen and Bar-- I was actually there three times during the week in question). Their Key Lime and Goat Cheese Crepes were just stupidly good, you have no freaking idea. I haven't been able to get the combo of goat cheese and key lime out of my mind and it's been driving me CRAZY, I TELL YOU. CRAZY!

So here is my answer, born of several recipes I found online and my own touches and modifications to make it gluten-free and totally awesome.

Gluten-free Goat Cheesecake with Key Lime Drizzle and Fresh Berries (ok, I don't have the berries yet but bear with me!)

In true Molly style, I set things up all pretty and completely forgot to take pictures. Worst blogger ever. I SHALL PAINT YOU A WORD PICTURE. Or just, like, tell you how to make this thing.

Ingredients:
Crust
1 stick of butter, plus extra to grease pan
3 cups Honey Chex (measured before crushing)
2-3 tsp. sugar
Cinnamon (a couple dashes)

Batter (recipe taken mostly from here, with inspiration from sundry other similar recipes)
11oz Goat Cheese, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for dusting
1 1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice (I toyed with using key lime juice and may try it next time)
1 tsp. lemon zest
1 tsp. vanilla
6 eggs, room temperature, separated
3 Tbsp. gluten-free all-purpose flour

Sauce (recipe taken from here but with slightly less sugar)
1 Tbsp. corn starch (hint-- Walmart's brand may contain traces of wheat, so check labels if you need this to be gluten-free)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup key lime juice
1/4 plus 3 Tbsp. water

Topping
Fresh berries (I'll probably go with black and red raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries, although if I can find some currants, I'm all over that.)

Instructions:
Pre-heat oven to 350F. Grease a 9" springform pan and dust with sugar. (If you grease and dust well enough, you can probably get away with a regular cake pan but I make no promises.)

Melt butter in a sauce pan. Crush Chex-- my method was to put them in a zippered plastic bag and smoosh them with a rolling pin. Combine butter, Chex, sugar, and cinnamon. Spread into springform pan and use the bottom of a glass to press the mixture down evenly. Set aside.

Note: Please forgive me in this next part-- my awesome friends and family recently bought me a KitchenAid mixer and I didn't even have to get married for it! So I'm going to obnoxiously add little notes as to which speed I used for each step. It's a freaking KitchenAid! Come on! Who do you know who has one who didn't get it as a wedding gift? ME.

Combine the goat cheese, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla in a mixing bowl and beat on medium speed (HEY GUYS I USED SPEED 4 ON MY AWESOME MIXER) until smooth (IT WAS LIKE NO TIME AT ALL AND I TOTALLY JUST STOOD THERE AND WATCHED IT HAPPEN). Add two egg yolks and beat until they're fully mixed in (STILL ON 4, GUYS! IT HAPPENS SO FAST!). Repeat for remaining egg yolks. Add flour and mix on low speed (I USED 2!! But some flour was kind of trapped in the middle of the beater and not getting mixed in so I did have to help a little with a spoon, BUT I CAN COMPLETELY FORGIVE THAT.)

In a separate bowl and with clean beaters (I had to switch to my stupid little cheap-ass hand-held mixer) beat the egg whites until they're firm (this took for-freaking-EVER, but probably not. I just didn't like having to actually participate in the mixing process). Add a third of the egg whites into the batter and mix well. Gently fold the remaining whites into the batter.

Scoop it all out into the pan. Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick poked in the center comes out clean. (I saw several recipes saying to wrap the pan in foil and bake in a hot water bath, which I'm going to do next time). Release latch and FREE YOUR CAKE FROM ITS ALUMINUM PRISON! FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then, you know, cool it off. Maybe on a cooling rack (I'm feeling kind of special because I finally got me one of those today).

Now the sauce! Dissolve the corn starch in 3 Tbsp. water. In a small, non-aluminum sauce pan, combine sugar, lime juice, and remaining water. Bring to a boil to dissolve sugar, then add corn starch mixture and boil, stirring, until sauce thickens. I funneled mine into a squeeze bottle and refrigerated it for awhile, then applied it liberally to the cheesecake.

And like I said, I don't have the berries yet (I want them to be super super extra fresh at the party) so you get a boring picture of a berry-less cake:

 I couldn't resist, since this is just a trial run:

It was at least everything I'd hoped for!! Can't wait to share it!

Let's talk more about casseroles.

Growing up, I'd hear about recipes for casseroles. I had a favorite cheesy potato casserole that I'd make, always following the recipe word for word. The tuna casserole my mom made was a mystery to me because I never saw the recipe card. Casseroles were things with rules and precise measurements and very particular ingredients.

Until, one day, I was hungry.

I almost always have several things on-hand-- cream of something soup, rice or pasta, some type of frozen or canned vegetable, and either cornflakes or saltines. The soup was usually meant to go with a sandwich of some kind. The pasta was waiting for me to buy tomato sauce. Rice... honestly I can't even remember what the hell I'd eat with rice. Fish or something? Vegetables were from the days when I'd tell myself I'd eat healthier, but not so immediately that fresh produce would be worth the money. Saltines are an awesome late-night snack with butter when you're broke, and cornflakes are cornflakes and constantly worthy of being in my cupboard.

Ok, so I had partial components of many meals. The day in question, there was rice, cream of celery soup, cottage cheese, cornflakes, and turnip greens in my kitchen. And not much else.

And then it hit me-- I HAD A CASSEROLE. And from then on, I had a formula:

Something starchy (pasta, rice, potatoes)
Something creamy OR soupy (cream of mushroom/chicken/celery/onion soup, sour cream, cottage cheese, gravy)
Optional filler (canned tuna or chicken, ground beef, peas, turnip greens, spinach, mushrooms, onions, chunks of cheese, or pretty much anything else you want)
Optional topper (saltines, cornflakes, or whatever else you think might make a good crust)

Decide what you want for ingredients. Preheat your oven to 350*F. Cook your starch according to the packaging (if you're using frozen hash browns/home fries, you can skip that and just let them cook in the oven as part of the casserole). Add in your soup/gravy/cream. Add your filler. Mix well and spread into a greased casserole dish. Add your topper (and keep in mind that crushed corn flakes mixed with melted butter is a great topping AND a delicious, if incredibly unhealthy snack) and bake for about 30-45 minutes (maybe longer for frozen potatoes, but I think those take around 50). Enjoy with bread and butter (optional, except in my house).

CASSEROLES ARE EASY AND AWESOME, YO.

And I'll leave you with one more half-assed recipe for one of the more creative casseroles I've seen in my time, The Reuben Bake.

In layers: sauerkraut pierogies,  sliced corned beef, Swiss cheese, Thousand Island dressing, rye croutons. Bake. Enjoy. Sorry I was several weeks late for St. Patrick's Day.

Prep Work

I'm an instant-gratification kind of person, like so many of us are these days. Planning ahead tends to make me impatient. When it comes to eating, if I'm going to be messing around with food, I pretty much want to be eating it now. NOW! But with a tiny kitchen, a little prep work makes cooking much less of a hassle.

I'm going to share some things I do to make meal times easier. To a lot of people these are probably no-brainers, but I never worried about this stuff before and got along fine. Now I've got to adjust to having two feet of counter space, and I'm learning as I go.

1. Wash all your produce as you get it. I love salads-- they're an instant side dish when I'm too lazy or don't have enough pans to steam broccoli or make mashed potatoes. Salads aren't difficult to throw together when all the lettuce and toppings are already washed, and when I'm making a complicated meal, I don't necessarily have the time or the space to wash and strain my lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc. So I wash them when the sink is empty, and they're ready to eat when I want to eat them. If something has stems, this is when I pull off the leaves, like with spinach or parsley. Anything that didn't come in a container than I can reuse goes into a baggy or a container I saved from something else.

2. Cut things ahead of time. In my apartment, red onions are for salads. Period. So when I get a red onion, I can cut it into rings and put it in a sealed container, and when it's time for the salad, I just have to grab my pre-washed lettuce and grape tomatoes and mushrooms and my pre-cut onions and I'm on my way. Also, I prefer lemon, salt, and pepper to salad dressing, so I tend to have a container of lemon slices in the fridge for my salads, and because I love lemon in my water and iced tea too. Sometimes if I know I'll be using it with the next couple days, I'll chop parsley ahead of time or mince some garlic. I tend to keep the little to-go ramekins I get from restaurant leftovers, and these are perfect for prepping small-quantity ingredients.

3. Thaw frozen meat in the refrigerator for a day before you cook it. A steak is going to be so much better if it thaws gradually than if you run water over it and wash away the juices, or if you (oh god no) nuke it.

4. Measure ingredients before you start cooking. I said before I'm not much of one for measuring, but I also don't just pour things from the containers all willy-nilly. If you're making a dish with lots of ingredients, or one that's time-sensitive or labor-intensive (I'm looking at you, risotto), you'll have a much easier time if your ingredients are close at hand, pre-measured into cups or bowls and ready to grab and pour. I do this especially with baking, so that the flour and sugar and baking powder and whatever else are all snug back in the cupboard before I start stirring and knocking things over. Although the thought of my cat covered in flour is a little bit hilarious...

My Mom's Tuna Casserole That I've Made Even Better

The awesome thing about tuna casserole is that everything is basically measured out for you by the manufacturers, so there's no messing around with measuring cups (unless you're the kind who actually measures the four quarts of water for boiling the noodles)! I was a lousy cook until recent years (you could ask my cousin Kyle about our 4am muffin-baking disaster) but even I could throw together a tuna casserole when the prospect of another meal of coffee and ramen became too much to bear. AND SO CAN YOU.

I was going to take pictures of the steps like all the fancier cooking bloggers do but my friend Alicia stopped in and I forgot. But I did get one of the ingredients:

So here's my recipe. Bear in mind I'm one of those people who adds things until it seems like enough.

Ingredients:

1 bag of egg noodles (you can use whatever kind of noodles you want, but I like the squishiness of egg noodles in tuna casserole and just can't get that with other noodles.)
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cans chunk light tuna in water
Butter (enough to grease your casserole dish)
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional (but only if you want non-awesome tuna casserole):
1/4 bag of frozen peas (give or take)
1 sleeve of saltine crackers
Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Cook your noodles according to the package (for real, I'm not your mother. I'm not going to tell you how to cook noodles. Just follow the directions, or don't. I don't). Strain them; don't rinse. Put them back in the pan unless you want to wash more dishes, in which case you should put them in a mixing bowl. But that would be ridiculous, so just put them back in the pan. Stir in the mushroom soup and peas. Add some salt and pepper if you want to.

Open the tuna but READ THIS PART CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING BECAUSE IT IS IMPORTANT: drain tuna juice into a container and give the juice and a couple scraps of tuna to your cat. Unless you don't have one. But if you have one and you skip this step, you are the worst kind of human. And I know you're not, so share with your kitty. This is only the second time I've made tuna casserole since I got my cat Avery, and she already knows this crucial step.

Ok, NOW you can stir in the remainder of the tuna.

(Alicia chimed in at this point to say that her mom would put cheddar cheese in the mix. That's probably good, but this is MY recipe, and cheddar cheese has no part in it. But you can use it if you want to.)

Grease a casserole dish (9x12 or something? I don't know. Casserole-sized). Pour in your mixture and spread it out evenly. Next is the saltine step and you have several options: you can crush them in the sleeve or in a baggy before you put them on the casserole if you want a finer crust, or you can just crumble them in your hands as you go if you want cracker chunks in your crust. I like chunks. (For the record, I use nearly a full sleeve-- I usually end up with about 6-8 crackers leftover.) Coat your whole casserole with these, then with some Parmesan cheese. Cover in foil and bake for 30 minutes (I take the foil off partway to let the crust brown a little. You can also broil if you really want to toast the crust).


Now enjoy it because it is awesome.

Reheating: You can toss your leftovers in the microwave for a couple minutes, but they're going to be dry and gross. The best way to re-heat your tuna casserole is on the stove, and you can do it one of two ways--

1. Double-boil it. I don't have an actual double-boiler; I have pans of different sizes. So I put a small pan in a large pan with enough water in the large pan that the smaller one is slightly in the water, but not so much that it will all boil over. Put your tuna casserole in the smaller pan, cover, and heat. Takes about 10-15 minutes if it's not frozen.

2. Steam it in a baggy. It's got to be one of the zipper kind unless you have some ingenious way of sealing plastic baggies that don't have zippers. Get the air out as best you can, seal it, and put it in a pot of boiling water. It's usually hot enough for my liking in under ten minutes. I portion it into bags when I'm done eating so I don't have to find room in the fridge for the dish, and so it's soft enough that I can do this:

If you can't tell (my skills are not in photography), I've got the baggy in a glass so it will stand up while I scoop my leftovers into it.

With both of the above methods, I like to add a touch of butter before I heat my leftovers. I actually sort of think that leftover tuna casserole is better than freshly-made tuna casserole.

Oh, and I mentioned in my last post that I get all the leftovers now, but I promised some to Alicia. She's lucky I like her so much.

And here's photographic proof that my kitchen is super-small:

That's the whole thing. I'm standing in the bedroom to take this picture.

Taking stock

I just did what I should have done months ago when I moved in and barely had room for all my stuff-- I threw out a bunch of expired cans of soup and boxes of tea. I checked dates on the things in my fridge. I organized my fruits and veggies. I actually looked at what I have in my kitchen. I listened to 90's music. (I do that last one a lot.)

It turns out I have a lot of tomato and cream of mushroom soup, and some unopened Saltines. I have a ton of spices. I have a lot of chocolate and I'm not even all that obsessed with chocolate. My refrigerator looks like a scaled-down produce stand. I've got one piece of frozen salmon and no other meat. I have a couple baggies of frozen berries in the freezer, and some frozen veggies. I don't have much to snack on except some baby carrots. My breakfast options consist of two flavors of yogurt, or oatmeal that I keep forgetting I have.

My mind went somewhere familiar after my inventory, to a couple old favorites that remind me of home and either re-heat well or make a single meal. And I either don't have to buy much to make them happen, or only need some cheap, long-lasting ingredients. Neither are super-healthy, but I want to use what I have so I can start anew next time I re-stock. Also, I'm fairly sure they're better than Taco Bell, which I had last night after a really long day at work*. Healthy is relative**.

First idea- tuna casserole. I've got cream of mushroom soup, peas, and saltines. I need egg noodles and tuna. I have an unreasonable love for tuna casserole. When my mom would make it for our family of four, leftovers were rare. My dad taught me to slap a bunch on a slice of buttered bread (we still dream of opening a restaurant that serves tuna casserole sandwiches, or their cousin, spaghetti sandwiches). My tuna casserole is even better (sorry, Mom) because I make it with peas and I get all the leftovers.
Second idea- grilled cheese and tomato soup. I need bread. Ok, this takes no stretch of the imagination, but my Grandma Sargent made this for me all the time when I was little. She wasn't that kind of grandma whose recipes you want to pass on to your kids, because her recipes essentially involved opening a can or a bag and turning on the stove. I blame Grandma Sargent for my life-long affinity for ramen noodles. Another Grandma Sargent classic is Cream of Chicken Soup on Bread. Seriously, grilled cheese and red soup (my brother's name for it) was one of the more complicated things that Grandma fed us.

I'm also going to get some buttermilk. I've got mayonnaise and the aforementioned spices, so I'm going to make some ranch dressing to dip my baby carrots in. I'll probably also get some fruit for breakfast or snacks. And now I shop.


*Cooking is also my job, so sometimes I really, really don't want to cook when I get home, especially after a long day of cooking for hundreds of other people. Fast food and frozen pizza totally have a place in my diet. DON'T JUDGE ME.

**Anecdote- At work, we were getting a new menu item that involved zucchini. Restaurant people tend to take ingredients found in the restaurant kitchen and make them into non-menu items, which is why my manager cut up, battered, and fried a bunch of zucchini to dip in marinara sauce. Most of us were very, very excited to get fried zucchini, but one guy, when offered some, turned it down, saying, "No thanks, I don't really like health food."

And so it begins

I recently moved into my very own place for the first time. I've always lived with my parents, roommates, or a boyfriend until four months ago. Living alone presents challenges-- the dirty towels always smell musty before I have enough for a full load, it's easy to put off cleaning until things have gotten out of control, no one but me is going to grab me a drink on their way back from the bathroom, and cooking and shopping for one is an art form.

I'm going to focus on the latter. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can eat a variety of healthy and tasty foods without regularly trashing old produce and spoiled meat. I try to come up with combinations of ingredients that will save me trips to the store, because while there are lots of places nearby for me to buy groceries, the more trips I make, the more unnecessary junk I bring home and throw away later.

People often tell me, "It's easy to cook for one. Make big batches of things and freeze them for later." Ok, this isn't a bad idea, honestly. And I do this on occasion-- there is nothing like knowing you've got a bowl of chili just chilling out, practically ready to eat without all the prep work and cooking time. It's an excellent concept, truly. But even pre-cooked, frozen meals present me with problems. One, I invariably end up eating chili for nearly every meal until it's all gone. Two, I have no microwave.

Notice the title of this blog-- The Cramped Cook. My kitchen is tiny. Cooking, for me, involves extra advanced planning. For example, the dishes have to be done and put away because I only have enough open counter space for my dish strainer OR for prep work. If I'm making anything that needs to be strained, the single-compartment sink has got to be clean and empty. If I had a microwave, I wouldn't have a place for a bottle of wine (and that is UNACCEPTABLE, for the record). Anything I re-heat goes in the oven or on the stove. I'll explain my different methods as they become relevant.

This blog is mostly going to be for me to keep track of things that work for me and things that don't, recipes I've tried or want to try, and some brain-storming. Maybe someone will read it and get some ideas, or maybe someone will comment and this will be way more awesome than just a sounding-board for me.