Aromatic Noodles with Lime-Peanut Sauce

This is the 8th and final week of Whip It Up.  The end to the “challenge” won’t change things around here – after all, I’ve been posting a recipe per week since November – it just means that I can go back to posting from my archived recipes and pictures, rather than having to cook something new each week.  This week’s theme is “Make Your Own Take Out”, and I knew immediately what I would be making.  I may have actually drooled on my keyboard when I saw this posted over at Amy’s last month, containing my favorite Thai-inspired flavors (peanut and lime) with a mix of some of my favorite vegetables (broccoli, sugar snap peas, snow peas).  It did not disappoint – it was every bit as good as I was imagining, plus super easy and came together very quickly (in other words, a perfect weeknight meal).  It did, however, make quite a lot – eight Julie-sized portions, to be exact.  I was definitely tired of it by the end of the week after eating it every day for lunch and dinner, proving that you can, indeed, have WAY too much of a good thing.  I suspect it will be quite a while before I make it again… or I’ll just have to have friends over for dinner so they can save me from the leftovers.

Aromatic Noodles with Lime-Peanut Sauce
Adapted from The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces whole wheat linguine
• 2 cups broccoli florets
• 2 cups sugar snap peas
• 2 cups snow peas
• 1/2 cup peanuts
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1/2 tablespoon lime zest
• juice from one lime
• 1 scallion, chopped
• 3/4-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Directions:

1. Toast the peanuts in a dry skillet over medium-high heat until fragrant, approximately 5 minutes, stirring frequently.  Set aside to cool.
2. Cook pasta according to package directions.  Drain and rinse under cold running water, set aside.
3. Steam broccoli, snow peas, and sugar snap peas in the microwave until bright green and crisp-tender.
4. Puree the peanut butter, soy sauce, water, vinegar, lime juice, lime zest, scallion, ginger, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes in a food processor blender until smooth.  Coarsely chop the cooled peanuts.
5. Immediately before serving, toss the pasta with the peanut sauce.  Divide into bowls and top each serving with vegetables and a sprinkle of chopped peanuts,

Reusable Bags

I’ve been meaning to invest in a good set of reusable bags for quite some time now.  Since I often wind up going a month or more between when my husband is able to come down to D.C., I really have to stock up on a lot of groceries all at once (have I mentioned how difficult it is planning out a grocery list for 4-5 weeks at a time?) since I don’t have a car.  This often means that I wind up coming up with upwards of 12-15 plastic grocery bags, so I’m looking to do some heavy duty grocery schlepping.  I’d like a set that folds up easily so I can keep most of them right in Husband’s car so that we don’t forget them, something which is easy to carry (since he no longer lives here, he does not keep the parking spot across the street, so we often wind up walking several blocks with all our groceries), and something which does not complicate the bagging process.

So far, it seems like the most popular reusable bags include:

Baggu ($22 for 3 bags in a pouch)

RueMe ($29.85 for 3 bags which roll up)

Envirosax ($37.50 for 5 bags in a pouch)
 

Flip and Tumble ($9 per bag which rolls into a ball)

Does anyone have any suggestions?  Things you particularly like or dislike about any of these, or any other brand of bags?

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

Fourth grade was a pretty crappy year for me. My teacher was simultaneously going through a bitter divorce when she learned that her teenage daughter was pregnant. She chose to take out her frustrations on us, yelling, screaming, and teaching us that no matter what went wrong in life, it was all our fault. Not caring enough to take any responsibility for her students, her answer for the somewhat disruptive class clown was to sit him next to me, and tell me I had to control him… and if he misbehaved, it was a bad refection on me. Practically every day, he would lean back on his two chair legs, the teacher would yell at him, and eventually take away his chair and force him to stand for the rest of class. Inevitably, he would wait until I was concentrated hard on reading, walk up behind me, yank the chair out from under me, and dump me on the floor to steal my chair. And, everyday, the teacher would tell me it was my fault for not doing a good job of controlling him, so my punishment was that I had to stand while he had to sit.

The one bright spot in the year was my gifted education. Unlike many places, like my husband’s school district, we did not have one completely separate class for gifted. Instead, those in the gifted program just left their regular classrooms for an hour per day. There were three of us from my classroom in the gifted program, and we were all having an equally miserable year. In an effort to drag out the time until returning back to our regular class, we used to walk down the hallway taking three steps forward, two steps backward, essentially progressing forward one step for every five steps taken.

Three steps forward, two steps back seems like the best description of my research right now. Remember the impossible purification I wrote about a few weeks ago? Well… it turned out to not me so impossible after all. One night, lying in bed unable to sleep, I had an idea… a hunch that I thought just might work. The next morning, I told my PI of my plan, to which he replied, “It won’t work. Don’t bother trying.” This statement came from the same individual who just a week before went on and on at my committee meeting about how I was a better biochemist now and had surpassed his knowledge of purification, so surely I could find a way to purify this protein. Rather than get (too) disgruntled and annoyed, I went with my gut and attempted it anyway, and two days later, smugly shoved a coomassie under his nose showing a dirty start lane and two perfectly purified bands in two separate fractions. Three celebratory steps forward!

After showing that Protein Y had properly refolded (the purification involved denaturing the protein and refolding it on the column) and still bound to Protein X, PI said the worst possible statement. “Next,” he said excitedly, “all you have to do is crosslink the lysines and that will be easy!” You see, it’s like sports. The second an announcer makes some comment like “[Quarterback] has not thrown an interception in 612 passes!” it automatically, no-fail, means that the next pass is going to be intercepted. Always. And this rule applies to PIs as well. The second he opened his mouth and described this step as “easy”, I knew I had it coming.

As it so turns out, the family of crosslinkers that will connect these proteins in the way that we need them to be connected works through linking the primary amines in the side chain of lysines. What this means is that you cannot have any amines in the buffers, because it will wind up crosslinking the buffer component rather than the proteins. And do you know what imidazole contains? Secondary amines. Harumph. So, I called up tech support at Pierce and the conversation went a little something like this.

Disgruntled Julie: Do secondary amines affect the crosslinking?
Tech Support: Yes, you can have tertiary amines, but not primary or secondary.
DJ: Is there anything I can do to get around imiazole in the buffer?
TS: Dialyze out the imidazole!
DJ: I’ve spent three years already trying to do that. Not going to happen.
TS: Have you tried doing it in steps?
DJ: 4 step, 6 step, and 8 step. Protein precipitates.
TS: How about overnight?
DJ: Precipitation.
TS: With glycerol?
DJ: With and without.
TS: How much glycerol?
DJ: 10%, 20%, 30%
TS: Spin column?
DJ: Precipitates.
TS: Desalting column?
DJ: Precipitates.
TS: Well, shit.

Indeed. My sentiments exactly. I finally have both proteins purified, and I cannot crosslink them because I absolutely, positively have not been able to dialyze the imidazole out of the protein.

O n e. T w o. Two giant steps backward.

Rice with Mushrooms, Cuttlefish, and Artichokes (Daring Cooks)

There are very few things in life that I find as satisfactory as the ability to ‘kill two birds with one stone.’  Regardless of what it is, I love the feeling of getting double the results from my effort.  I still remember the exact feeling of the light bulb going off above my head in undergrad when I realized that classes for my political science major could also count as my general curriculum requirements.  In lieu of a language, I could apply classes I was already going to take for my major and count them as culture requirements.  Score!

I went through a similar feeling when the stars aligned properly for the two cooking groups in which I participate.  This week’s Whip It Up up theme is “Favorite Chef” – i.e., make a recipe from your favorite chef.  Well, the chef part was easy for me – Jose Andres.  Those in the D.C. area know him from his outstanding restaurants Jaleo (my favorite), Oyamel, Zaytinya, Cafe Atlantico, and minibar.  The rest of you may know him from his public television show “Made in Spain" or perhaps from his appearance on Iron Chef, where he defeated Bobby Flay in ‘Battle Goat’.  But then came the hard part… what to make?  I don’t own any of his cookbooks, so I scoured the internet.  While there were several recipes that piqued my interest, such as this amazing looking Guacamole in a New Way, I was often lacking access to ingredients or supplies (for example, my ice cream maker for the guacamole is in storage in my parents’ basement along with the rest of my kitchen supplies, waiting until I have a kitchen larger than a shoebox). 

Then, the Daring Cooks’ challenge recipe was announced.  And what was it?  Rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish, and artichokes from none other than… Jose Andres.

Cha-ching!

The recipe was chosen by Olga of Olga’s Recipes, and you can view the original recipe here (I made a few changes in my version).  She suggested adding in squid in lieu of cuttlefish, which is what I did, since I was easily able to purchase fresh, cleaned squid at Whole Paycheck Foods.  I was a bit concerned about the squid in the recipe since it is boiled for so long – I have not worked with cuttlefish so perhaps it is perfect for the cuttlefish – but decided to just go ahead and try it as the suggested direct subsitute.  Typically when I deal with squid, if I am boiling it, I do it for no more than 30 seconds.  This recipe has a good 12+ minutes of boiling with the squid.  Indeed, the squid did turn out far chewier than I would have liked.  In retrospect, I should have listened to my gut and pan seared the squid in the beginning, removed it from the pan, and then added it to the boiling mixture for no more than a minute.  I need to be better about trusting my own judgment in the kitchen even when it deviates from a reputable recipe.  Even with the rubbery squid, I still enjoyed this quite a bit, and will certainly experiment with it more in the future.

Rice with Mushrooms, Cuttlefish, and Artichokes
adapted from Jose Andres

Ingredients:

• 6 artichokes, cleaned, chopped into eights
• 1 large portobello mushroom, chopped roughly
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 generous splash white wine
• 1/2 pound squid, mixture of tubes and tentacles
• 3 tablespoons sofregit (recipe below)
• 1 cup Arborio rice
• 3 cups water
• 1/4 teaspoon tumeric

Directions:

1. Cut squid tubes into strips.  Cut apart any large clumps of tentacles.
2. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil in a frying pan and add the squid.  Add bay leaf, artichokes, and mushrooms.
3. Sauté until artichokes are golden in color.
4. Add splash of wine to deglaze the pan.
5. Add sofregit and mix well to distribute the flavors.
6. Add water and bring to boil.  Stir in rice and boil over high heat for 5 minutes.
7. Add tumeric and lower heat to medium.  Boil another 8 minutes. or until rice has softened.
8. Remove from heat and let sit 5 minutes before serving.

  mmm… squid

Sofregit

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 giant tomatoes, or 3 medium sized, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/2 green pepper, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 portobello mushroom, chopped
• 1 bay leaf
• salt to taste
• pinch ground cumin
• pinch oregano

Directions:

Place all ingredients in a frying pan and sauté slowly until all vegetables are soft, approximately 1 hour.

Mushroom & Gruyere Quiche

This week's theme for Whip It Up is appetizers. I struggled quite a bit with this -- while I love to prepare (and eat!) a wide variety of appetizers, now that I'm living on my own, I have no reason to make them. I'm down to cooking once or twice a week and eating leftovers for the rest of the days, and well.... I just can't subside for multiple meals off of something based with spinach, artichoke, and puff pastry. So instead, I decided to make something that works for dinner as well as for appetizers -- a quiche. If I was going to make this as an appetizer, I'd press the rolled pie dough into muffin tins and spoon a bit of the filling into each to make a perfect two-bite sized quiche. But for me for dinner, I just made one big quiche. I use my own hand-rolled pie crusts (I really hate rolling out pie crust so whenever I need one, I'll roll out 6 at a time and leave the rest in my freezer), but I am quite sure that a store-bought pie crust would work just as well for a quiche.

Mushroom & Gruyere Quiche

Ingredients:

• 1/4 pound cremini mushrooms, quartered
• 1/4 pound portobello mushroom caps, diced
• 1/4 pound shitake mushrooms, quartered
• 1/2 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 pie crust
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
• 4 ounces gruyere cheese, shredded

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. In a large bowl, toss mushrooms with onion, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and place on a rimmed baking sheet in a single layer. Roast for 15 minutes, or until cooked and firm. Remove from oven and set aside.
3. Pick pie shell all over with a fork. Prebake for 10 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned.
4. Reduce oven temperature to 350F.
5. Whisk together cream and eggs with thyme. In a large bowl, combine roasted mushrooms and onions with the shredded gruyere. Spread mixture in the bottom of the pie shell in an even layer.
6. Pour cream-egg mixture over the mushrooms, ensuring that all of the mushroom mixture is covered.
7. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of the quiche comes out clean.