Something Like Science

One of the things keeping me occupied this semester is my capstone: my very own research project in an active disease research lab. My subject is Francisella tularensis, the causitive agent of Tularemia. More specifically, my target is an F. tularensis enzyme, alpha enolase. Waxing poetically about what precisely I'm doing to and with this enzyme (and why) strikes me as too geeky even for this craftblog, so we'll leave the science babble at that for now. Anyway, this work typically takes multiple hours out of each days and leaves me little down time until I stumble back home at night; at which point, for some reason, I've been driven to cook.

I'm not quite sure why I have such an urge to throw myself into the kitchen when perhaps throwing myself into my textbooks, or even my bed would be more advantageous. After all, cooking is essentially what I do in lab each day: mix so much of this with so much of that and incubate this way at this temperature for this long, etc etc. So it's "standard operating procedures" rather than "recipies" and "data" rather than "dinner"; you'd still think I would have had enough.

(Side note: this is not an oblique confession to cooking my data. If I were, I'd probably be a lot further along in my project right now.)

The point of all this jabber? Simply that, as I previously resolved, I'm gaining confidence in the kitchen along with enough successful recipies to begin assembling a kind of personal cookbook. This is a milestone for a girl who has repeatedly and disasterously failed at preparing a simple box of Mac and Cheese.

Today, I bring you one of my favorite desserts in the world (barring Walrus Ice Cream, which you MUST HAVE if you're ever in Fort Collins), baklava.


Baklava!


This was a joint effort between myself and my good friend James. We began with this recipie from the wonderful Simply Recipies blog and took off from there: we used nutmeg instead of cloves (hey, it's what we had), increased the cinnammon content considerably (because cinnamon is the stuff of greatness), and made half of the pan a walnut-almond mix as versus pistachio (almonds and walnuts are also the stuff of greatness).

James handled the nuts, which might not have been the wisest decision considering he spent part of the evening cracking pistachios open with his forehead. Armed with a pastry brush and a bowl of butter, I took on the phyllo. We triumphed mightily.


Mmm, sugar.


So very good, though I do have ideas to tweak the recipie in the future. Next up? Basboosa aka Namoura, once my sugar high wears off. It may take a while.

Today, betwixt cementing stacks of photos into my big book o' pictures and studying for three upcoming exams (Ecology, Molecular and General Genetics and Physics II), I baked a belated birthday cake for my roomate.

Ta da!

It was the Irish Cream Liqueur that decided me on this recipie as the perfect birthday cake for Ryan. I made some modifications -high altitude, of course, and then a bit of muddling for my own fun- but by and large that recipie is the place to start if you want your own tasty cake.

This be Ryan:


Aww, isn't he sweet lookin'? Don't believe it for a second.

This be Ryan making a wish:


Happy Birthday!

And this be the part that makes all the slaving in the kitchen (more than you'd think, for such a simple recipie- I wanted to spackle the thing with its own glaze, and that took a large time investment) worthwhile:


The Final Reward

It's a very moist and very tasty cake. I consider it a wholehearted success and a lovely addition to my cooking-and-baking repitoire. I also get the feeling I may find myself back over the oven soon- I anticipate many future demands for this particular treat from the roomates.

This particular culinary adventure began when I grabbed Mattie, my new mp3 player (who I will soon formally introduce to you all), and set out to walk three blocks or so to the Saturday Farmers' Market on Drake.

An Expedition!

As I am a socially and ecologically conscious little hellraiser, I find Farmers' Markets to be made of fresh, tasty, locally-produced awesome. The market on Drake is exceedingly small (the big event is the Sunday market, directly across Harmony from my old apartment- I swear, this isn't how I choose where to move), but I still found what I needed in the handful of little white tents spread across the asphalt. Combined with some cans from my cabinet, I came up with this:


Loot

Of note: the (local! fresh!) veggies and a special treat for dessert. Said treat, the bread, was a total impulse buy from a bakery at the market. I'm glad I didn't resist it: this stuff is sinfully good.


Lemon and White Chocolate

They offered a host of other tasty-looking options as well, but there's something about the combination of lemon and white chocolate that I cannot easily resist. After getting the bread home and sneaking a slice or two, I've decided that I may have to make a habit of wandering over on Saturdays to buy breakfast for the rest of the week. A small glass of milk, a slice of this delectable bread, and a sunrise sounds like a dreamy way to start the day.


Orgasmic.

Seriously: this stuff is amazing. It's so amazing the loaf hasn't survived the weekend, which is very bad of me. It's a holiday weekend. I'm allowed to indulge, right? But anyway! back to the cooking.

I had the following ingredients:

2 or so tsp olive oil
.5 a large red onion, chopped
.5 tsp ground cumin
1 tbs dried oregano
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 can chopped green chile peppers, drained
1 large can (29 ounces) of crushed whole peeled tomatoes
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 can kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
Black Pepper to taste
Hot Sauce to taste

I cooked the onion in the olive oil for a few minutes and then tossed all the rest of the veggies (celery, bell pepper, jalapeno pepper, garlic, the can of green chili peppers) in with the seasonings. This little mixture I cooked on low for five minutes.


Veggies

Next up the meat of this meatless matter: the tomato sauce, the chili powder, the beans (and hot sauce and pepper to taste). This I brought to a boil, then turned on low and left for two hours. I was going to add some garbonzo beans and maybe some other random veggie/bean bits, but didn't have them on hand.


Chili-tastic

Finally I added the can of corn, cooked it all for a remaining five minutes to make sure everything was nice and toasty, and served it to my little all alone and happy self with cheese, freshly chopped onions (you can never have enough onions) and crushed crackers.


Success!

Voila! Vegetarian chili. Good food plus a good book makes for a happy Tala. What's more, it'll keep well in the fridge and thus feed me for the rest of the week. Score.

While I once had plans to chronicle a weekly cooking adventure here, full meals with top ingredients tend to cost a bit more than I can manage right now (right now it is live-on-cheap-soup-and-toast time). These, however, I had all the ingredients for floating around the pantry:

Yummy.

The recipie is here. They are very good (even though I cheated and didn't use real butter or parchment paper).


Hi mom.

Tigger says: "I'd want some too, if I could actually taste the sugar."

Last night was my first weekly cooking night. As a college student, my typical diet consists of soup, toast, mac and cheese and take-out. Realizing this was perhaps not the ideal human diet, I resolved to cook an actual meal at least once a week, both for the sake of my nutrition and so I can actually learn how to cook. As this was the first week of this new tradition, I stuck to something I knew.

Whatever could this be?

Cooking and I are not fast friends. We do have a history- during my childhood I periodically fixed dinner, and the deal with my ex boyfriend was that he'd buy the food and I'd cook it (because - and I am not kidding- he couldn't even handle cracking an egg or opening a bag of pre-packaged salad without facing down culinary Armageddon). Unfortunately, neither situation compelled me to expand our relationship between the most glancing of acquaintances- as a kid the nights I cooked were Taco Nights, and the ex had the strange compulsion to eat the same thing at every available meal for months at a time.


Chicken Fajitas!

Fajitas are not tacos, but they are still strongly seated within the "Tex Mex" category. I decided, though, that as I haven't cooked them for over a year (since before the aforementioned ex moved out), they'd make a good start- a way to ease myself into the habit. Dan appeared to approve.


Mmmm, Chicken Fajitas

My hope is to start posting recipies with these Saturday Night ventures, but as the big secret this time was "follow the instructions on the back of the seasoning packet" I'll restrain myself. (My secret hope is to turn this into a social event, like my buddy Joe's Friday Afternoon Soup-Fest, but I think I'll have to improve my cooking first. Dan = Lab Rat.)

Next week, I'm thinking Asian. Preferably a dish with lots of veggies and no rice- perhaps Thai. This is not so much totally new territory for me as dangerous territory- all of my casual tries at stir fry or anything similar in the past have ended with abject, un-tasty failure. Any suggestions?