Moving!

In a nutshell, I wanted my own domain, and to switch hosts. So. Back of the Box is moving! It can now (and hopefully forever more) be found at: www.backofthebox.net.

Woot!

Oodles and oodles of poodles with noodles

(*That would be a nod to my favorite children’s book, that is, I believe, now out of print….)

Nooooooodles

Noodles!! Nooooooooodles!! Say it with me, NOOOOOOOOODLES!!!

OK. I get REALLY excited about all things noodle. It could be from growing up in Asia, it could be because my parents never really did potatoes as a starch growing up and noodles were a great change from brown rice (blech), it could be that I like playing with dough…..for whatever reason noodles make me happy.

I learned how to make pasta while working at a restaurant in coastal CA, and I made ravioli, tagliatelle, tortellini, you name it, almost daily for about a year. While I did *not* learn from an Italian grandmother, I learned from someone who did learn in Italy (although he doesn’t speak Italian and it’s unclear as to whether his instructor did). My pasta skills were further edited by the sous chef and my mentor at the restaurant…..and here we are today.

At the restaurant we always made them with about 60% semolina and 40% all-purpose flour. That is, until we ran out of semolina flour and the pasta phase was declared over and therefore no semolina flour got ordered. (I continued making pasta just about daily with only all-purpose flour for about another 6 months – until it was found out I had been making it without semolina, the chef got mad, and I didn’t have to make 30 orders of ravioli 20 minutes before service ever again)

At home I rarely have semolina flour, and I usually make pasta noodles without. I often have store bought pasta in weird shapes on hand (shells and whatnot), but for straight up noodles I usually make my own. It doesn’t take a lot of time, is totally worth it flavor-wise, and dagnammit, its impressive! (amaze your friends! Make noodles!)

Noodles 'drying' on my 'rack'.

Or I *thought* I didn’t have any semolina flour…. as I get to the dregs of my pantry, I unearthed a bag of Bob’s Red Mill (gasp! Big surprise!) Semolina Flour. Lo and Behold – there’s a pasta recipe on the back.

Pasta making is one of those things – kind of like pie crust – that is almost more about feel than a recipe. Hence grandmothers who have been practicing for 50 years make a pasta far superior to that of the likes of me – even if I have made pasta over 100 times. And as with most things you do over and over – you develop certain habits and little quirky routine-type things while making it. I have a certain cleanup routine that morphs into setting up the pasta roller that I do while the dough rests after being kneaded (this routine also involves opening a beer, but that’s just me). I always use my pasta roller (hand crank, Italian, $5 at a garage sale – possibly the most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased at a garage sale, and oh so worth it! At the restaurant, we always used a KitchenAid attachment). I have a bamboo pole that is suspended from the ceiling at about head height directly over my kitchen counter that I hang pasta from to dry (it tucks up onto a few nails and is out of the way the rest of the time….). Did I mention the fact that I like noodles?

This recipe is quite good, and quite possibly foolproof. I shed as many habits as I could, and followed the recipe to a T. I  didn’t use my pasta roller, and I actually measured things. While the feel of 100% semolina dough felt very strange in my hands, the end result was definitely yummy, and had a slightly more toothsome quality to it than the pasta I have been making of late.

Impending yumminess

To sum up: this recipe is awesome, you don’t have to know what you’re doing to pull off great noodles (a plus!), you don’t need any special equipment to make it (unless a rolling pin falls under that category for you – in which case, use a wine bottle. If you have neither a wine bottle nor a rolling pin…..go buy one. Or the other. Either, really), and it has more than inspired me to rethink the way I’ve been making pasta recently and to experiment with bringing semolina flour back into the fold.

Noodles and chicken. One of literally an infinite number of possible scrumptious combinations.

Crackers! Bob! Finally!

I have a love/hate relationship with Crackers. (I also have a love/hate relationship with Bob’s Red Mill as you may know….).

Labna, pickled onion & mint; red pepper hummus & dill; labna, smoked mussels & parsley.

Crackers are that amazingly lovely vehicle for toppings, and are also fabulous to eat straight. This is, however, mostly if you buy them. And if you buy them – they are SO bad for you. What makes them so light and flaky and yummy is all the fat and I always eat a bunch of them and then feel horrible about what I’ve just done. Nevermind the toppings that may have occurred….. They are also horrendously difficult to make at home and have them come out….dlectable. I don’t know why but they always come out dry, tough, or greasy. Or a combination thereof.

But crackers hold a super soft spot in my heart, and so I persevere. Another one of those growing up things. Memories of being camped out in some National Park, or campground, or logger road with a busted oil filter, or at home on a Sunday…..with my mom and dad and 2 sisters, cheese, salami, sardines, onion, pickle, zataar…..fighting over the last sardine and whether or not to open another can….

I have made countless cracker recipes. Countless. Karen Solomon‘s recipe thus far has been the closest thing to a delectable cracker that I could come up with. And don’t get me wrong – her recipe is a really good one. Especially the rich cheese version of her basic cracker…. (and her book is fantastic!) I was just on a quest for a *delectable* one.

In preparation for my trans-continental move, I have been trying to eat my way through my pantry. As you may have gathered, I am getting down to the bottom of the barrel here, and things are getting strange. (I wish the 2 cans of corn smut I have had recipes on the backs of them!). Things are also getting to be heavy on the dry staple side of things. Things are getting Bob’s Red Mill saturated. Enter the Bob’s Red Mill Dark Rye Flour. I had made some rye bread the other day, and noticed that the back of the package has two recipes on it, neither of which are for rye bread (which would be too obvious, I guess?). I decided to give the rye cracker* recipe a shot. Mostly I was in a surly mood and took the words “These crackers are far superior to any commercial brand cracker we have ever tasted. You will love these crackers” as a challenge. The words ‘they obviously were never given Ritz crackers as kids’ seriously came to mind. The audacity of the statement probably furthered my surly mood as well, knowing me….

Delectable!

Holy moly. These dang things are AWESOME! I am a huge fan. I have now made the recipe several times**, and I can say without a doubt that they rock my world. They are my new favorite cracker, and they are delectable alone or covered in whatever topping you throw at ‘em. Finally Bob’s pulls through!

I will say one flattering thing about Bob’s, though – they need to hire me to come in and rework some of their recipes. If they were written a bit better, I might like them (as a whole) more. And dude. The recipe on the bag and the website should match, no?

*Recipe differs from that on the bag. The back of the bag calls for Turbinado sugar, not evaporated Cane juice, and for Margarine instead of butter. While I think (most) margarine is pure evil, this recipe just doesn’t come out as well with butter. Worth getting some non-evil margarine from your local evil Whole Foods or some such.

**I burned the first batch, dropped the second on the floor, and the third got eaten too quickly. Thus the above photos are batch #4 (I had to keep trying until I had some photo-worthy ones, no?) As such, I had a chance to experiment with butter vs margarine and Turbinado sugar vs brown vs white. Use whatever sugars you want, but only use margarine. Also – feel free to do the whole thing in a food processor. So much easier, and if you have it set on pulse, you won’t harm the texture of the cracker one iota.

Mmmmm….fudge….

Growing up, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I ate fudge. OK. Maybe not – but fudge was not something that was often found in our household. (May I remind you that our household was mostly homemade treats, and yours truly was unaware of the existence of Oreos when embarking upon that adventure we call kindergarten?) My paternal grandmother used to send my Dad some at Christmas, but this only continued until I was 10 and we moved to Japan. Come to think of it, I don’t know that any of that fudge passed my lips….

Now when I think of fudge, I think of Granville Island in Vancouver, BC. There’s a fudge shop* that I love to go by every time I’m there. The extremely attractive young guy stirring the giant copper pot may have had something to do with catching my eye the first time I passed by, but these guys truly know what they’re doing. They still make their fudge entirely by hand and if you’ve ever made candy, you might begin to understand the difficulty of making ‘real’ fudge. (OK, really most people screw it up because candy thermometers tend to NOT get used. But still….). These guys do it in giant 20 or so gallon batches. The smell of the fudges wafts around the market as well, so you could be sniffing some fresh fruit or fish or whathaveyou, and all of a sudden you’ll get a whiff of fudge, and whatever is in your hand is dropped like a hot potato and you’re off in search of the source of that heavenly scent.

And I don’t even really *like* chocolate. Or candy, for that matter.

That’s how good these guys are.

In an attempt to get rid of the marshmallows leftover from the Rice Crispy Treats, I went to the back of the marshmallow bag in search of inspiration. There were two recipes, and one happened to be for ‘Easy Fudge’. I am such a skeptic when it comes to the ‘easy’ versions of things – I will seriously go out of my way to make things in the traditional method; a habit that both shocks and awes some of my houseguests…. so I figured I would give this one a try. Mostly to prove my point that traditional methods are traditional for a reason.

Mmmm....fudge.....

This stuff was seriously tasty. A tad too sweet for me, but then most things are, so I’m not surprised. What surprised me the most was the fact that the texture came out right. Often fudge gets grainy when not made well, and some of the ‘easy’ versions I’ve had have been too creamy. This stuff’s texture was spot on. The consistency of chocolate was there, but it was smooth and firm. A friend who stayed at my house for a few nights was given free rein to eat as much as she wanted – and half the pan was eaten when I came back. Need I say more?

Western Family** Easy Fudge Recipe:
1 3/4 cups sugar
2/3 cup evaporated milk
2 TB butter or margarine (...blech)
Dash of salt
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
About 20 Marshmallows, cut into quarters
1/2 cup broken walnuts
1 tsp Vanilla

In heavy 2 quart saucepan, combine first four ingredients. Bring to boil over medium heat; boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly (thus negating the need for the scary SCARY candy thermometer, see?). Remove from heat; immediately add chocolate chips and marshmallows. Stir until chocolate and marshmallows are melted. Stir in nuts and vanilla. Spread into a buttered 9x9x2″ pan (I would seriously suggest buttering the pan and then lining with parchment and buttering that as well. Getting this stuff out was a bit tough). Cool; cut into squares.

*the name of the shop is the Olde World Fudge Company. They don’t have a website (yet), but they’re the only ones there. Hard to miss!

**why oh why does Western Family NOT have their recipes online so I can just link to them? WHY?!

‘Stereotypical’?

I talk a lot. A LOT. It really doesn’t matter who it is or where I am – I have a tendency to end up in conversations wherever I go. Add to that fact that I live in a (really) small town, and that pretty much means I never get anything done

In doing this blog (“you’re doing a blog Caitlin? Finally!!”) I talk to a lot of people about stereotypical backofthebox foods.  Chocolate Chip cookies are the main thing people think of. That and some strange jello salad their great-aunt’s-husband’s-brother’s-daughter makes every year (we have one of those in our family. See header photo…). And now several times people have lamented the fact that the recipe for the most common snack/sweet/junk food in Americana eating culture can’t be found on a box. And they always get them at coffee shops even though the homemade version is so much better. They just don’t have the time/ingredients/cooking skills…..

Umm. OK, people. This is not OK.

First of all, the recipe for Rice Crispy Treats ARE on the box. On the *side* of the box, but it’s there nonetheless.

Secondly. It takes 2 minutes.

Thirdly. Dude. There are 3 ingredients. Literally. Count them 3. (OK 4 if you actually use cooking spray. Fine. You got me.).

Number 4 is a f%^&ing cop out. There’s no skill involved. You’ve just started complaining and needed another reason to round out your list. And the homemade ones ABSOLUTELY taste better.

For me Rice Crispy Treats never really hit my radar – they existed in my universe when I was a little kid in the US, but after moving to Japan at age 10, all cereal related activities that weren’t straight up eating cereal didn’t exist. Japan is not a cereal-ccentric culture and we brought a lot of cereal from overseas. While I think my Dad travels more than is healthy for him, we would never have had it in the house had he not gone to the states and Europe a lot (Thanks Dad!). Needless to say, cooking with cereal turned into a luxury that we couldn’t swing Oh. And giant bags of marshmallows are hard to find in Japan (I think my grandmother used to mail them to us on request…).

Making these treats, a whole flood of memories came back to me from when I was little. Most noticeably – making them with my godmother in her small apartment kitchen. When I was making these, every detail from her kitchen when I was about 8 came to me – down to the crazy amount of magnets she had on her fridge (and a green parrot one I remember particularly liking), her black lab wagging her tail thinking she was going to get one, and the disappointment at having to keep the majority of them for whatever function we were making them for. Oddly enough I think it may have been for model UN day, but I could be blending memories here….

All hail the crispy!

The crispies stay crispy….the marshmallows for some reason taste more marshmallowy and vanillay….your kitchen smells homey….score!

While I didn’t add peanut butter to mine like Roxanne did at the time, these are still to die for. And definitely something I’m going to make more often. I am completely not ashamed to admit I ate half the batch as soon as it was solid enough to hold together from the pan to my mouth. And I don’t even like sweets….

A Touch of Pimm’s

Lately I’ve been completely obsessed with Dark and Stormy’s. If I could find a bottle of rum with the recipe on the back, I would post it on here. *sigh*

Homebrewed ginger beer. The Pimm's can't stay away...

A fabulous side effect of this obsession with a drink that tastes like a tropical sailing cruise in a glass is that I always have some homebrewed ginger beer on hand.

It's just so regal looking

I had a bottle of Pimm’s and I used the homebrewed ginger beer as the recipe called for ‘ginger ale or lemon-lime soda’. I figured that was enough wiggle room to slip in my ginger beer <3

Cricket, anyone?

If you’ve never had one, a Pimm’s Cup is a lovely British summer day in a glass. It makes you want to don your whites and eat dainty finger sandwiches while watching crazy rich people stomp divots. Yup. Sometimes you just need to enter that particular realm and run with it.

Ain’t No Thing But A Chicken Wing

Yes. I reserve the right to blog in my PJ’s at any time of the day. I also reserve the right to use whatever corny post names I want to – as long as they amuse me for a split second upon conception, they make the grade. I’m good like that in a non-editing sort of way.

OK. So I’ve always loved the challenge of being able to make food out of whatever sort of odds and ends I have lying around. Some days the process is more MacGuyver-esque than others, but it’s always been something I’ve taken pride in and thought I was pretty good at. (“Avocado, chicken stock, and a paperclip – I’ve made meals with less!” no? no? ok.) This blog is definitely stretching the boundaries of that as now I am becoming OBSESSED with scanning the packaging of things for recipes and seeing which ones I can put together with the least amount of items purchased for the project (as we are getting to the bottom of the pantry barrel here people!).

This recipe definitely got me out of a pickle.

You see – I buy whole chickens. In an effort to eat more responsibly, eco-friendly, cost-efficiently, blah blah blah….the problem is I don’t always EAT the whole chicken, and have a tendency to stash the parts I don’t like into my freezer. So when I came across this recipe for Thai Hot Wings (recipe below), I knew I had a chance to get rid of the bag of wings that had been accumulating. (yay!)

Shiny. Spicy. Yummy.

Super easy, super tasty (although I would have added some scallions into the marinade as well. For flavor and color….and yes. I have a ziploc bag of cut scallions in my freezer as I never use the whole bunch living alone AND I love them!). If I had known about this in college, Wallace basement would have smelled like these things all the time I was slightly afraid that they would come out sickly sweet as sometimes these prepared Asian sauces can be, but the lemon juice and vinegar totally added enough tang. I was a happy camper!

Thai Kitchen Thai Hot Wings
Marinate 1 lb of chicken wings with 1/4 cup Thai Kitchen Spicy Chili Sauce, 1 TB lemon juice, 1 TB vinegar, and 2 TB vegetable oil. Place on a cookie sheet and bake in a 400 degree oven for 20-30 minutes. Serves 2 (umm. Was I not supposed to eat ALL of them?)