Cooking, Cooking, Cooking!

I've been cooking a lot the last couple of days, and I actually need to cool it for a bit in order to catch up and eat some of the food I have left in my fridge. My cooking projects have all been pushing more into the DIY aspect of my cooking hobby, I'm trying new things and thus far have been kicking ass.

Over the weekend I made some delicious miso using a container of miso paste I picked up at Whole Foods. I also made a miso-tahini sauce which I ate with mochi I also picked up at Whole Foods. Unfortunately the Mochi wasn't very compelling, but the miso turned out great. It was really easy too, I just sliced up some tofu, thinly sliced an onion, and chopped some seaweed. I boiled water and added the miso paste to the hot water, creating the broth. Finally, I added some gomasio (roasted sesame seeds). I threw in the rest of the ingredients and it produced quite the delicious combination, salty and savory. The soup was great, next time I plan to include leeks in it.

Monday was grill night, so I cooked up some corn (most of which was blighted by damned cornworms, thankfully I just cut the tops off and grilled it) and a Portabella Mushroom. It turned out well, but it was boilerplate stuff I cook all the time. Tuesday night, however, was a much more exciting food experiment. I decided to make my own pizza dough for the first time. I used bread flour I had in the cabinet, kneaded it up myself, and while it was rising, I started a batch of from scratch pizza sauce. The sauce is simple, I just took onions and garlic and fried them up in a saucepan with some oil and spices and balsamic vinegar. I then added finely diced tomatoes and cooked over low heat for about an hour and a half. I fried up some onions and peppers and mushrooms in my cast iron pan, and steamed broccoli on the side. I used a fake cheese (if you can even call it that, its more of a nut pate) that I had made two days before, essentially it is cashews soaked for several hours, blended in a food processor with onion and garlic and vinegar and a few other spices. When the dough was ready, I decided to make it into two pizzas, and assembled the first one. Unfortuantely I didnt realize how sticky the dough was, and waited too long to transfer it from the pizza peel to my pizza stone in the oven. The stickiness of the dough resulted in a bit of an ugly mess. Fortunately I had another pizza in me, so once the travesty came out of the oven (it was still delicious after all) I threw the second one it and it turned out amazingly.

Wednesday night I decided to make some guacamole, something I make a lot, but I also opted to fry up some of my own corn chips, a process I've been working on, but which I still haven't really mastered. I like the chips a lot, but they're a bit too oily. I may try baking them next. Still, the combination of home made guac with home made chips was excellent, and was my lunch on Thursday.

Last night I decided to try my hand at baking bread using my pizza stone. I found a baguette recipe that involved 4 cups of flour, a teaspoon of yeast, a teaspoon of sugar and 2.5 teaspons of salt. This is cheap compared to what bread costs in the store, and it turned out amazingly. Now that I have embarked on the path of bread baking, I am ready for winter, as I can handle eating all the stews and soups with bread of my own making. I need to stock up on carrots, potatoes, and onions for my winter soup production. I need to look into more of the seasonal foods available in the area. I'm excited for cooking seasonal this winter, because it forces me to think differently about food!