When carrots are cheap...

D. and I found ourselves with a bag of carrots and weren't sure what to do with them. The first thing we came up with was easy. Cut the carrots into smaller pieces, drizzle with really good olive oil (I busted out the Pasolivo for this) and honey, and strip a few fresh branches of thyme. Toss together in a baking dish, cover with foil, and bake until tender.

As for the rest, I had a sudden craving for carrot cake. We didn't have enough carrots for a cake, so I made cupcakes. The original recipe, from Maida Heatter and reprinted in Kathryn Kleinman's Birthday Cakes, makes one 9-inch 3-layer cake. I halve the recipe and it produced exactly one dozen cupcakes. They come out dark, but absolutely delicious. D. and I are purists and don't like our carrot cake sullied by walnuts or raisins, so we omitted them.

Carrot Cupcakes
(Recipe from Maida Heatter via Birthday Cakes by Kathryn Kleinman)

Recipe halved from original

For cupcakes:

2 cups shredded carrots (approximately 1/2 pound whole carrots)
1 cup minus 1 tablespoon sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 plus 1/8 cup corn oil
3/4 cup walnuts, optional
1/2 cup raisins, optional

For cream cheese icing:

8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin tin with cupcake wrappers. If using, steam the raisins for 10 minutes. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and cocoa together. Set aside. Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs until blended. Beat in vanilla, both sugars, and oil. Turn the speed to low and add dry ingredients. Mix until just incorporated. Stir in carrots, raisins (if using), and nuts (if using). Spring-loaded scoops work very well for distributing the batter into the muffin tin, but a ladle will work just fine. Fill the cups evenly and bake 25-30 minutes or until the tops spring back when gently pressed with a fingertip. Remove cupcakes from the oven, cool enough to handle, and very gently move the cupcakes to a rack.

Beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Incorporate vanilla and confectioners' sugar slowly on low speed. Beat until smooth.

I find that these cupcakes are best after being refrigerated for a little while. Once cool, move the cupcakes into the refrigerator for 1 hour or so. Ice and serve.

Ginger Honey Chicken

What can be keeping me from blogging, you ask? Applications are done, we're eating at home more than ever, and with all of the cooking, there definitely has to be something to write about.

Well, there is. However, there's a huge time-sucking obsession that's superseded blogging and taking good pictures of food. Some of you may have heard of it... hell, some of you may be as obsessed as I've become.

Battlestar Galactica. The current version.

Don't worry, Star Trek, you're still my first love.

Since we're really late in jumping on the bandwagon, we've been watching the last 3 1/2 seasons on DVDs via Netflix. D.'s folks gave us all of the seasons for Christmas, which sped things up in time for us to start watching the last 10 episodes of the series. The last 10 episodes ever. Thus, I eagerly await every Friday evening until the last episode airs, after which I'll be beside myself with grief and withdrawal.

Anyway, continuing on the cooking-whatever's-in-the-pantry/freezer trend, we decided to take some of the ingredients from the curry mee to my mother's recipe for ginger honey chicken. My disclaimer to this recipe is that my mother didn't give me the measurements and these estimates have worked for me. Play around and adjust the taste to your liking.

Ginger Honey Chicken
(Recipe courtesy of Mom, amounts are rough estimates)

2 tablespoons oil (any kind works... I prefer olive)
1 cup young ginger, cubed
1 cup chicken thigh, cubed (breast meat is fine)
1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1/4 cup light soy sauce (use more if necessary)
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
pepper
2 tablespoons dark or mushroom soy sauce (for color only... add gradually and stop before the sauce becomes too dark)
1/4 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon cornstarch mixed into 1/4 cup water
scallions, chopped into 2 inch pieces for garnish

Heat olive oil and toast ginger cubes until fragrant. Add chicken and cook until mostly done, then add garlic. Add light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, pepper. Stir well and gradually add dark or mushroom soy sauce for color. Once a caramel brown is reached, stop. Add chicken broth. Taste sauce, which should be smooth and not too salty. There should definitely be hints of oyster sauce and it should not be dominated by the soy sauce. Mix cornstarch in water and slowly dribble into the sauce to thicken. Add honey, stir, and add scallions. Toss everything thoroughly until scallions wilt.

The sauce should showcase the sweet young ginger and the soy sauce should be balanced, made richer by the honey. Adjustments can be made to the amounts at any point.

Up next: What do you do when you have extra carrots?

Curry Mee

Gung hay fat choi, everyone! Happy Lunar New Year!

A few months ago, Sharon wrote about planning out a week's worth of meals. D. and I decided to give it a try ourselves, since we were eating out too much. Between the stress of test-taking, work, life, and the never-ending diet (17 pounds and counting!), we didn't make the time to plan and cook healthy meals. We'd make the healthiest choices possible when we went out, but it was still not good for us.

While we were meal-planning, we decided to clean out our pantry and freezer. Why buy more groceries when we had plenty of stuff on hand? Our problem was that we'd buy without a plan, so we had a mish-mash of ingredients that didn't seem to pair well.

To our surprise, we've had a lot of interesting meals. It's amazing what we've found in our hodgepodge of ingredients. After reading this article in the New York Times, I had to try one of the recipes. Believe it or not, we had almost everything on hand. Instead of half-and-half, we used 1:1 heavy cream and milk. The only things we had to buy were some of the fresh items: lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, ginger, scallions, Vietnamese mint, and noodles. We omitted the bean sprouts and cilantro, because I'm anti-sprouts and D.'s anti-cilantro.

The ginger and lemon grass went on to the next night's dinner: Ginger Honey Chicken.

Coconut Curry Chicken Noodle Soup (Curry Mee)
(from the New York Times, article by Julia Moskin)

Note: I halved the recipe, which made exactly two servings.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 small onion, minced

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1 tablespoon minced lemon grass or pale green cilantro roots

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon dark red chili paste, such as sambal, more for serving

3/4 pound boneless, skinless chicken thigh or breast meat, thinly sliced and cut into bite-size pieces

3 tablespoons curry powder, preferably Malaysian, Thai or Vietnamese

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1 can (14 ounces) unsweetened coconut milk

1/2 cup half-and-half

4 cups chicken stock

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1 tablespoon sugar, more to taste

About 12 kaffir lime leaves or curry leaves, fresh or frozen (optional)

8 ounces dried thin rice noodles (bun or vermicelli), or other Asian noodles such as udon or lai fun

Salt to taste

1 cup bean sprouts

3 tablespoons chopped cilantro

2 scallions, cut into thin rings

2 shallots, thinly sliced and deep fried in vegetable oil until brown (optional)

Quartered limes for serving.

1. Heat oil in a medium pot over medium heat. Add onion, ginger and lemon grass and cook, stirring, until softened, about 10 minutes. Do not brown; reduce heat if necessary. Add garlic and chili paste and stir until fragrant. Raise heat, add chicken and stir-fry one minute. Add curry powder and paprika and stir to coat. Then add coconut milk, half-and-half, chicken stock, turmeric, fish sauce, sugar and lime or curry leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 7 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, cook rice noodles in boiling water according to package directions (about 4 minutes). Rinse and drain.

3. Taste broth and adjust seasonings with salt and sugar. Divide noodles into large soup bowls. Bring broth to a boil, then ladle over noodles. Top with bean sprouts, cilantro, scallions and fried shallots, if using. Pass limes and sambal at the table.

Yield: 4 main-course servings.

Note: To make this rich soup more substantial, boiled potatoes are sometimes added to the simmering broth and cooked until very soft.

The resulting broth is hearty without being too thick, even without the potatoes. One thing to keep in mind is that the noodles will absorb a lot of the broth, so undercook them a little to keep them al dente. Or else they'll turn into mush, which isn't very palatable. I love rau ram, or Vietnamese mint, which adds a nice bite to the rich coconut milk.