Perfect Tortillas

I never considered making tortillas until the day when I wanted to make fajitas for dinner and found that tortillas are somewhat scarce and expensive in France. But as it turns out, tortillas are super easy to make and ten times more delicious than store-bought. And fun! If, you know, you happen to find bread baking types of activities fun. Recipe via The Fresh Loaf. Go there for pretty pictures and an enlightening discussion about various fats.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup lard (this is the Secret Ingredient)
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 cup warm milk (or water, for somewhat less tender results)

Throw the dry ingredients in a bowl and combine. Add the lard, and mix by hand or with a mixer until the mixture is grainy. By hand isn't as difficult as you might think. I use a fork and a spoon and it works just fine.

Add the warm milk and mix until it becomes dough that you can pick up with your hands. If you use some fancy cooking equipment, like a wooden spoon, this will work better. It's not that tablespoons don't work, it's just that they become a bit...bendy. Such are the perils of cooking abroad with an understocked kitchen.

When the dough comes together, lightly flour your hands and scoop it up. Or just turn on the stand mixer for five minutes. If you're doing it by hand, knead it and squeeze it and squish it and dance with it for a few minutes.

Divide into twelve equalish balls. Put them in time-out for thirty minutes.

After the thirty minutes is up, flatten them with your hand and use a rolling pin (i.e. an old wine bottle) to roll them into 6 or 7 inch tortillas. The idea is to make them round, but splatter-shaped tastes just fine.

Lightly grease a griddle or a skillet or a crêpe pan (I am in France) and throw on the tortillas. As many as will fit at a time. They cook very quickly. Regrease, repeat, and try to avoid eating them all before dinner.

Japanese Sesame Chicken

I found this recipe through a complex and untraceable channel of internet links, copied it to Wordpad, didn't save, and lost it when my computer crashed. And couldn't find it again. This is the recreated recipe, and honestly I can't imagine the original recipe being any better.

This is good chicken. Especially if you have a passionate love for sesame seed oil, like I do.

Ingredients:

• Boneless, skinless chicken or turkey breasts (enough for two to four people)
• Vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 1 or two eggs (depending on how much chicken you want to make)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tbsp sesame seed oil
• 2 tbsp sushi rice seasoning (2 tbsp rice or balsamic vinegar plus a couple tsp sugar)

Preheat a skillet with enough oil to fry your chicken. Combine the cornstarch and the egg in a bowl. When the oil is hot enough, dip the chicken breasts in the mixture (you can cut them into nuggets or strips first, if you like) and drop in the oil, preferably without burning yourself. Cook for a minute or two, turn, and cook until done.

This goes very well with red bell pepper. Add bell pepper slices to the oil right from the start. If you're feeling adventurous, give them a swirl in the cornstarch mixture first.

When the chicken is cooked, drain the oil and return the skillet to the heat. Add the soy sauce, the sesame seed oil, and the vinegar mixture. Heat. This won't take long. Toss your chicken onto a plate of that wonderful sticky rice you've already prepared, pour the sauce over everything, and enjoy.

Sticky rice

I feel like a genius today. I just cooked up a giant pot of the most beautiful sticky rice you'll ever see. And not only did I do it without a rice cooker, I did it without instructions! Because the instructions that I found online insisted that they were "100 percent sure that [I'd] burn the rice." Way to be fatalistic, huh? Well, if their recipe leads inevitably to burned rice, then I'd say it's time that they get a new recipe. Mine, for example! Follow these instructions and you can have perfect rice for sushi, for sticky fried rice like you get at Kobe's, or for just about anything else.

1. Buy short grain rice. Not medium, short. It has to be short. Don't buy special sushi rice. Special sushi rice is short grain rice repacked with a higher price tag.
2. Measure your rice. Dump into a large bowl.
3. Add water to large bowl. You don't have to measure yet. Just add lots of water.
4. Let stand for thirty minutes. This will make the rice more supple and help in several small ways. Notice that after thirty minutes your rice has turned a beautiful pearly white, rather than the whitish grayish transparentish that it was before.
5. Wash the rice. If you use a colander, you'll probably end up with little grains of rice plugging up every hole. Use a bowl. Fill it up with water. Pour the water out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat until the water stays mostly clear. All of this is to remove starch that will keep your rice from being sticky. This is a very important step. Don't skip it.
6. Drain the rice in a colander for thirty minutes to an hour. This is not a very important step. I included it here for thoroughness. You can skip it. I always do.
   
7. Add a small amount of water to a large pot. Dump in the rice. Then add one cup water for every cup of rice. Don't stir the rice! Remember all that effort to get the starch out? Stirring will bring it all out again. So don't do it.
8. Bring to a boil on high or medium high heat uncovered.
   
9. As soon as it boils, turn the heat down to low and put on a tight fitting lid. If you don't have a tight fitting lid, feel free to get creative. I have lots of success with stacking a skillet and a heavy Pyrex bowl on top. Seriously. Looks dumb, works well.
10. Go away for ten to fifteen minutes. If you think your heating element is pretty hot, make it ten. If you think it leans on the cool side, make it fifteen.
11. Remove the pan from the heat source but don't remove the lid! Let sit another twenty to twenty-five minutes. You're steaming the rice now, so don't even peek. You'll let the steam out and ruin everything.
12. Take off the lid and celebrate your beautiful rice! If you're making sushi out of it, then this is part where you add the vinegar mixture and then let the rice cool (by spreading it on cookie sheets or plates, if you want to speed up the process). Then you cover the rice with a damp cloth until you're ready to make sushi.

That's it! Okay, so it's rather a long process, but it's worth it. Now go make some sushi! Or go make my Vietnamese fried rice. You won't be disappointed.

Vodka Sauce

Vodka sauce vodka sauce vodka sauce vodka sauce. This is the best pasta sauce EVER! Sort of. I mean, the carbanara sauce is really good too, but this one is HEALTHIER because it uses real (canned) tomatoes and (slightly) less cream. And it's good. Really, really good. I promise.

Ingredients:

• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 large shallot (really, it makes a difference. Shallots are good.)
• 1 small yellow onion
• Olive oil
• Butter
  
• 1 can of tomatoes
• 1 can tomato puree
  
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• Cayenne pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup vodka
• Flour for thickening

Chop the garlic et. al. and sauté for a few minutes in the olive oil and butter (yes, both. Because this recipe just deserves it). Sometimes I add a dash of white wine to make it an extra-drunk recipe. Add the canned tomatoes, the tomato puree, and the pepper and cook for a few minutes until some of the liquid has evaporated. Add the cream and vodka, and thicken with flour if necessary (it's always necessary).

Serve over pasta (yeah, don't forget to cook the pasta) with vegetables, if you like. It goes very well with sautéed mushrooms.

Oatmeal Pancakes

These pancakes are amazing. Seriously. They only have one drawback and that's remembering to prepare the batter the night before. But they're so good that you'll probably be thinking about them all the time anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups quick oats
• 2 cups buttermilk (fake it by using a tbsp of lemon juice for each cup of normal milk)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or more)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Combine the oats and buttermilk in a large mixing bowl and let them soak all night (or at least two hours, but preparing breakfast two hours in advance? Doesn't usually work out). This is where the incredible texture comes from. It also creates a mixture that resembles dough far more closely than it resembles batter, but no worries, the other ingredients will loosen it up.

When you're ready for your pancakes, preheat the skillet and add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl. Add some chocolate chips if you're gourmand like me. They cook up like normal pancakes, except for the incredible scent of oatmeal and honey and cinnamon that permeates the room.

Goes great with raspberry syrup. Or a spoonful of maple syrup and a couple tablespoons of raspberry jam, if you're cheap and don't have the real thing.

Pasta Bolognaise

Another French recipe, but this time it doesn't call for a cup of heavy cream as a primary ingredient. Go figure. It's actually quite healthy.

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 or two cloves of garlic, chopped
• Olive oil, sunflower oil, butter, or whatever
  
• 1 small can of mushrooms, or some sliced fresh mushrooms
• 1 small can of tomato paste. Paste, not sauce.
• Sugar
• Cayenne pepper
• Oregano
• Basil
• Salt and pepper
• Some kind of meat, like chopped ham
• Pasta

Sauté the onion and garlic for a little while, add the mushrooms, and sauté for a little while more. Add the tomato paste and some water until you get a good consistency. Then add the herbs and spices. Cook for a while. Keep tasting to make sure you've got it right. Add the meat (it's precooked, right?) and heat through. Serve over pasta.

Pineapple Curry

This is another excellent "student food" recipe from Mathieu. It's quick, easy, and excellent.

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 can pineapple, cubed or tidbits
  
• 1 onion, chopped
• some bell pepper, if you have some handy
• 3/4 cup cream
• a tiny bit of ketchup or tomato paste
• soy sauce
• curry powder
  
• garlic powder
• ginger
• salt and pepper
• Some kind of meat, if you want it. Chicken is good, but even hot dogs will work.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the chopped onion and bell pepper. After cooking for about five minutes, add the pineapple (save the juice) and cook for another ten minutes or until the onion is tender. Add the cream and the pineapple juice. Stir some flour into a cup with some heated juice and add that to thicken the sauce. Add the herbs and spices. Lots of curry powder, not lots of garlic powder. Add some cayenne pepper for an extra kick. Then add the meat and heat thoroughly. Serve over rice.

This makes probably three servings for normal people, two for hungry people with no other side dishes.