cooking on campus

trying not to die.

[whatsinthefridge]

"When You Are Seriously Broke” Yorkshire Pudding

My mom used to make this one a lot for us when we were kids, actually. I’m not sure if it was a weird hold over from her one weird year in England or if it’s just that it is really easy, really tasty, and really cheap to make. You can add sausages to make it toad-in-the-hole or apple filling to make it german apple pancake. You can also pour the batter into muffin tins instead or a baking tin to make individual ones. 

Time: idk like 45 minutes

Serves: 1 yorkshire pudding

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

3 eggs

3/4 cups milk

1 stick of butter

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

about 1 cup flour

big ass pinch of salt

vegetable oil to grease the pan. 

Throw It Together

Melt your butter and set it aside to cool. Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t re-solidify. This recipe uses butter, but traditionally it’s drippings from cooking meat. If you are making some big roast or something, feel free to substitute that in, but since this is college cooking, butter is more readily available. 

Pre-heat the oven to 450. Lightly grease pan with vegetable oil (I used a 9x9 baking tin, but it’s pretty forgiving if you want to use something else) and stick it in the oven to heat up. Again, if this was using drippings, the drippings would be used instead of vegetable oil, but since we are using butter, it would suck if the butter burned before you even got the batter in the oven.  

Combine eggs and milk in a bowl, then slowly add the flour and salt, stirring frequently until it forms a smooth batter, a little smoother than pancake batter but not as smooth as crepe batter. 

Add your slightly cooled, melted butter to the batter. If it’s too hot it will cook the eggs in the batter and make a mess out of everything. 

Quickly pull your pan out of the oven and carefully pour the batter into it. If you are using a muffin tin the cups should only be about half full. Stick the pan back in the oven. 

Cook about 20 minutes or until top is nicely browned. It doesn’t really make much of a meal on its own, but it’s a good way to beef up something else. 

[whatsinthefridge]

MY SWEET POTATO KNISH PROGENY

This is my favorite fucking thing ever. They make your life complete cure your Depressiona nd give you the wings of an angel. Also apparently, as I have been informed, there is a song about potato knishes, so I dunno listen to that, get inspired, and spend the rest of your life folding neat little potato knishes.They are perhaps what you would call, a labor of love.

Knishes

Having some equipment makes this one a lot easier, but if you don’t have any of it, don’t worry.  A potato masher, a pastry brush, a rolling pin, and some extra bowls come in handy. 

Time: So long. So long.

Serves: like 30 knishes

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

2 eggs 

salt and pepper, like a hefty pinch or two 

I’m putting a cup of water here, but it’s free if you get it from the tap

additional egg for egg-wash (its technically optional but it will be prettier if you do it)

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

potatoes - like 7? idk depends on how ambitious you are

onion - 2-ish? 1 1/2 big ones or 3 little ones, I love onion I ususally air on the side of more is more

garlic - 2-ish cloves (its a slippery slope)

4 cups flour

 a few big pinches of sugar

1/2 cup oil

Throw It Together

Peel your potatoes and onions and garlic. Chop the potatoes into slightly bigger than bite sized pieces and dice the onions and garlic.

Boil a big ass pot of water, add potatoes once at a roiling boil and cook about 15-20 minutes or until you can put a fork through one easily. Drain and set aside.

I like to do this while the potatoes are boiling, but in a separate pan, heat a little oil on like medium high heat and add onions. Cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent. Add the garlic like 1 minute before they are completely done. Garlic burns super easy, so don’t add it at the beginning. 

In a giant bowl combine potatoes, onions, and garlic. If you have a potato masher, now is the time but determination and a utensil of your choice will get the job done. Using your hands is effective but since its all really hot, I’ve learned they not the best tool to use. Add salt, pepper, and sugar and continue mixing until the mixture is a little firmer than mashed potatoes. Taste it. If you don’t like the filling you won’t like the knish, so mess with the seasoning if you have to. Set mixture aside to cool.

In a different giant ass bowl combine 1 cup warm water, oil, eggs, and a big pinch of salt. Slowly, like 1/2 a cup at a time, add the flour, mixing until the dough has pulled together. Knead until the dough holds its shape independently and springs back a little when you poke it. You can add more flour if its not holding itself up or more water if it gets too firm. 

This part, I find easier to do in chunks. Divide the dough into thirds. On a floured surface, roll out the dough into a vague rectangle like, 1/4 inch thick. I usually just eyeball it, honestly. Don’t worry about getting it TOO thin - it won’t hold the filling if its paper thin - but do give it a good roll because if it’s too thick the dough won’t cook all the way. 

Follow below instructions to shape Knishes. Placed finished knishes onto a greased baking sheet. 

Preheat the oven to 375

In a separate bowl mix together remaining egg with a little water. Carefully with a fork or using a pastry brush, coat the top of each knish with the egg wash. For a more even/browner finish, only use egg yolks. For a shinier but more uneven finish, include the egg white. 

Bake knishes for about 40 minutes, until dough is cooked and the tops are golden to golden brown. 

REVEL IN YOUR KNISH PROWESS

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[whatsinthefridge]

ITS TOO HOT IN THE KITCHEN BUT IM SITTING RIGHT HERE

Because I’m back in the dorm. More recipes to follow. 

[whatsinthefridge]

Summer Update

Summer is here and college is out for the year! 

I’m still going to try to post recipes here, but they will be of things I’m making in my parents kitchen, not in the dorms.

I’ll go back to posting dorm recipes when school starts up again. 

[whatsinthefridge]

Team Bonding Nikumaki Onigiri

It’s really weird posting about this recipe right now. It’s been backlogged for a while, so I’m getting really jealous of my past self for eating this when we’re still running out of meal points right now. 

This is possibly the most indulgent thing we make. All the ingredients have to be from off-campus and it’s MEAT!!! My roommate saw a video about it and sent it to me, but I was a little hesitant because I don’t really like doing things with hot oil. Usually they are the one who fries the nikumaki for me, so the way we justify cooking it is by labeling it “team bonding” for the dorm suite. 

Team Bonding Nikumaki Onigiri

Time: Like and hour-ish

Serves: 1. Ok, maybe like 3. If you are feeling generous

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

2 cups rice

4 umeboshi

pork sliced very very thinly (use the one labeled good for shabu shabu)

2 tblspoon soy sauce

2 tablspoon mirin

1 tablespoon sake

1 tablespoon sugar

Throw It Together

Cook your rice. I have a rice cooker, which makes everything infinitely easier, but if you don’t it’s very easy. Boil 4 cups of water then add 2 cups of washed rice. Cover tightly and simmer on very low heat for 20 minutes. 

Remove the pits from the umeboshi and chop finely. As soon as the rice is done, add chopped umeboshi and mix well. 

Take a slice of pork in your hand and put a little rice in the center. Gently wrap the pork around the rice and pinch the edges closed. Start with less rice until you get a sense for how much you can put in without overfilling it. If you overfill it, it will burst during cooking. To be fair, it will still taste good, it will just be kind of ugly. We tried this with beef too, and it tasted great but the beef would not stick closed the way pork did. 

Heat a little oil in a pan over medium-ish heat. Place pork rice on the pan, pinched side down. Cook until the edges of the meat are no-longer pink and then flip. 

Mix together soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar. When the pork is cooked through, add remaining ingredients. and simmer another 5-7 minutes, spooning sauce over the nikumaki.

Serve immediately with remaining sauce. 

[whatsinthefridge]

“Cabbage is a Useful Vegetable” Okonomiyaki

Cabbage is a useful vegetable. No, I’m serious. Sure, it makes you fart, but it has a fucking fantastic shelf-life compared to basically any other leafy vegetable. This is the real reason why I don’t get the chance to cook with too many vegetables. It just doesn’t make sense to spend extra money on an ingredient that it going to go bad faster than any of my other ingredients that I can’t get nearly as many meals out of. In this sense, cabbage is a fucking champ. It keeps for like 2 weeks if you store it properly, it’s hearty, and I can usually squeeze at least two 4-person meals out of it. 

There’s also the matter of ‘yeah, but cabbage is fucking weird,’ but hold on to your panties because okonomiyaki is the best thing you’ve ever had with cabbage. The first time I made it for my family at home, I could tell they were kinda pissed because why was I making the kitchen smell like cabbage exactly? But, since then, my mum and my little sister get jealous whenever I say I’ve made it for my roommates. 

To be fair, I have no idea how it goes over with my roommates. They’ve never given me a straight answer about it, so maybe It’s just a weird thing that only the girls in my family like? Or maybe they just don’t like how much it makes them fart. 

“Cabbage is a Useful Vegetable” Okonomiyaki

Time: Like and hour-ish?

Serves: about 4

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

½ packet of bacon, chopped about 2 inches long

2 eggs

vegetable oil (to fry in)

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

1/2 cabbage

1 cup-ish okonomiyaki flour (can substitute for regular flour)

1 spring onion

1/2 cup water? I don’t know, I didn’t buy water

Toppings, optional, from the Outside World

okonomi sauce

kewpie mayo

bonito flakes

pickled ginger

Throw It Together

Shred your cabbage and spring onion. If you have a food processor or a blender, now is the time to use it. I do not have either, so I just grate it by hand and pick out the big pieces. You can use almost the whole cabbage, but don’t use too much of the stem because it’s so thick it won’t really cook. 

Mix together your flour with your water and egg. Add cabbage. You can totally fuss with the ratio of flour to water, i can’t seem to get a really consistent measurement any time I make it. You basically want it to be a little thicker than a crepe batter, but thinner than a pancake batter. If you scoop some up with a spoon, it should not be domed in the spoon. 

Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Only use enough to coat the bottom of the pan. My dad tried to use like 1/4 inch of oil the one time he tried to make it, and the okonomiyaki ended up really greasy and soggy. You can tell it’s hot enough when the oil sort of relaxes and swirls around the pan really easily.

When I actually had the opportunity to try okonomiyaki in Japan we made large pancakes that had about three pieces of pork belly on the bottom each. For me, cooking at home, this is a little too difficult (and pork belly is too expensive) so I tend to make three small pancakes at a time, each with one piece of bacon. To cook, place a piece of bacon in the pan and lightly cover with cabbage batter. Ignore about 3 minutes (until center is bubbling and the edges have cooked) then flip and cook another 2 minutes. Don’t be afraid to mess with the cook time/heat. Do what works for you. Don’t worry if the first ones come out ugly. They always do.

Serve hot off the pan. Layer bonito, ginger, okonomi sauce, and mayo. If the okonomiyaki are hot enough, the bonito flakes will dance, which one of my roommates particularly liked. If you do not have okonomi sauce or tonkatsu sauce, you can make your own by mixing Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, soy sauce, and sugar together in a ratio of 3:2:2:1 . If they are not topped, okonomiyaki can be save in the fridge for about two days or the freezer basically forever. 

[whatsinthefridge]

Wake-Me-Up-Inside Matzo Brei

It is a weird time of year to be in college. Everyone’s meal points are dwindling and I can see them all wandering around looking hungrier and hungrier. I’m actually super lucky because I cook enough that I actually still have quite a few meal points. 

In honor of trying to feed the meal-point-less college students and Passover, I present you Wake-Me-Up-Inside Matzo Brei. Spoilers: you can’t wake up. 

If you have never had Matzo Brei it’s kind of hard to describe. It’s like if french toast and scrambled eggs had a baby that was kosher for passover. BUT it’s super super easy and full of protein so don’t be alarmed. 

Wake-Me-Up-Inside Matzo Brei

Time: Like 10 minutes

Serves: about 3

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

2 eggs

oil for cooking

opt. honey

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

2 pieces of matzah 

salt/peper

opt. berries

Throw it all Together

Break your matzah up into chunks. I go for about bite-sized pieces, but live your dreams. Experiment. Put your matzah pieces in a bowl.

Boil some water. When the water has boiled, pour it into the bowl over the matzah. Carefully drain the water after about 30 seconds. This is to soften the matzah a little before you cook it. Don’t over do it, or it will just turn to mush.

Crack your eggs over the matzah and mix thoroughly. Salt it for good measure. 

Heat a little bit of oil in a pan over medium-ish heat. When the oil is hot, drop some of your matzah mix into the pan. I’ve seen it done like scrambled eggs and just mix it around until the egg is cooked through, but I like to form it into little pancake things. Cooks about 2 minutes on each side. Basically do whatever you want until the egg is cooked. Continue until you’ve used up all your mix.

Serve immediately with whatever you want. My mum had bought me some fresh berries (I love her so much), so I ate them with berries and honey, but honestly you can do whatever.

Chag Sameach!

[whatsinthefridge]

Baked Leftover-Curry Buns

I have a problem and my problem is that I really really love curry buns. This is only a problem because a) there is only one place I know of near me that sells them and b) I cannot fry things and therefore have trouble making my own. 

I’m still trying to organize a day when I can bully my roommates into deep frying things for me, but here is a recipe for baked ones that I used to tide myself over until the day when deep fried can reign supreme again. 

Left-Over-Curry Buns

Time: About 2 hours, but half of that is just letting the dough rise

Serves: like 12-ish buns

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

2 eggs

salt, like a hefty pinch

1/2 stick of butter, melted and cooled so it’s not scalding

I’m putting a cup of water here, but it’s free if you get it from the tap

additional egg for egg-wash

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

Curry - recipe for the curry I used here, but I bet you could do it with leftover take out too

aprx 4 cups flour

1 packet yeast

big old pinch of sugar

(opt) black sesame seeds

Throw It Together

Put your sugar in a big mixing bowl. In very quick succession pour 1 cup VERY warm (NOT SCALDING) water into the bowl and then pour your yeast out on top of that. You are proofing your yeast to make sure it’s alive and kicking. Ignore it for like 7 minutes. Go do your dishes or something. If it’s good, it will poof up and get real big and foamy. If it’s dead then it won’t. You can’t really do this if your yeast isn’t good, I’m sorry. There are yeast-free dough recipes though, if you are desperate. I use one to make knishes.

Add your eggs and butter to the yeast. PLEASE make sure your butter is cooled down a little. Not so much that it’s re-solidifying, but if it’s too hot it will cook the egg. Mix.

Slowly add the flour like 1/2-1 cup at a time, mixing well between additions. The dough should pull together pretty quickly. It’s easier to if you a) have a dough hook on an electric mixer or b) do not have tendonitis like nobody’s business, BUT I don’t and I do and it worked out ok, so don’t worry. Relax and knead the shit out of some dough. The dough should have a smooth kind of elastic-y feel to it when the flour has all been added. It might be a little tacky but it shouldn’t cling to the sides of the bowl. If it’s still doing that, add more flour, or if it’s like a rock, add more water. 

Knead for a few minutes and pray your wrists don’t finally decide to quit for good. You can either flour a surface and knead it on that, or be incredibly lazy and just do it in the bowl (which is what I did because I was sick of trying to get dried dough off my table).

Put it back in the bowl, cover lightly, and let it rise for like an hour, an hour and a half. It’s supposed to “double in size” but I don’t know, if it only “thirds in size” it’s fine. 

Pre-heat oven to 375 and take out your curry. 

Break off a little piece of dough. I used about a small handful, but I have really fucking tiny hands. It should be a little smaller than a golf ball. Roll the dough into a ball and then flatten it so you’ve got a flat circular shape. I used a regular kitchen spoon to put a generous spoonful of curry in the center, but if I had to guess I’d say it was about 1 or 1 1/2 tablespoons of filling.Gather the edges and sort of pinch/twist them together to seal off the bun, making sure no curry is leaking out. If it does, trying using less filing. Less is more. Place the buns sealed-side down on a baking sheet. Repeat until you are out of dough or curry. 

Take an egg yolk and a little water and mix it together in a separate container. This is your egg-wash. To separate a yolk, start to crack an egg like you normally would, but instead of letting the egg fall, turn the shell upright, so the egg is still being held inside the shell. Use the two halves of the shell to carefully pass the yolk back and forth so only the egg-white is falling out until only the yolk is left. If you have a brush, brush the egg-wash over the buns. I don’t have a brush so I kind of just pitifully spoon it over. Optional: sprinkle with black sesame seeds. 

Bake for about 17 minutes, until they begin to turn golden brown. Futz with the cooking time if you need, I don’t know how your oven works.

Cool at least 8 minutes. I served them with peas and some bootleg spinach gomaae so it was almost like a real dinner, but they are really snack food. They are best fresh, but are good for about 3 days. Refrigerate and toast well to reheat. 

[whatsinthefridge]

Super College-Level Carbonara

One of my roommates and I started watching these 1940′s and 50′s “home-making” videos for shits and giggles. A lot of it was sexist drivel or blatant dairy advertisements, but they did point out that people who cook all the time seem to fall back on 8-10 recipes that they just sort of cook in rotation. Not sure if that’s a bad thing or not, but this one is one of my mother’s rotation so it ended up in mine. Of course, I hate cooking bacon on the stove top, so it doesn’t taste quite like my mum’s but there you go. 

To sound super high brow for a minute, I was super lucky and actually got to eat carbonara while I was in Italy this winter, so I can assure you, this is NOT what I would call authentic carbonara. But, it is tasty and feeds a lot of people with not a lot of food, so it passes the college litmus test.

Super College-Level Carbonara

Time: Like and hour-ish? I started at 6:30 after class and we ate a little before 8

Serves: about 6

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

½ packet of bacon

4 eggs

1 cup parmesan

A big shake of pepper

1 box spaghetti

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

2 cloves garlic

Throw It Together

Preheat the oven to like 425

Chop up your bacon into bite sized bits and and arrange it in a single layer on a baking thing of your choice. You can also skip this and just cook your bacon on the stove, but I don’t like cooking bacon on the stove so here we are. Bake for about 12 minutes.

While the bacon is cooking, chop up your garlic super fine. Add it to the bacon after 12 minutes and cook another 7. I fucked this up the last time I made it and burnt all my garlic, it was very tragic. Set garlic-bacon to the side when bacon is crispy (like with the spaghetti sauce, the bacon needs to be crispy so it doesn’t get soggy from sitting on the pasta).

In a big bowl mix up your eggs, parmesan, and pepper. 

Boil spaghetti (I know it’s sort of snobbish but it really is nicer if you do it al dente and only cook it for 9 minutes).

OK THIS PART IS SUPER IMPORTANT. Drain your pasta as quickly as you can without burning yourself and then put it straight into your egg-parmesan mix and start mixing that shit up. If you don’t do it while the pasta is hot, the egg won’t cook and you’ll have raw-egg spaghetti soup. If you don’t mix it, the egg won’t coat the pasta evenly and it will have a weird texture. Once that’s all mixed up, add your garlic-bacon. Debate on the pros and cons of carbonara (pro - you have carbonara, con - you have garlic breath forever).

[whatsinthefridge]

Crowd-Feeding Japanese Curry

I love curry. Kind of a broad thing to say, but there are only two types of curry I’ve ever tried that I don’t like, so I think I am allowed.  Japanese style curry has a special place in my heart. For a long time I didn’t realize if was possible to make at home so it always so it was a super special treat to get to go out and eat it. 

Turns out it’s actually not that difficult? It feeds a bajillion people and it’s super tasty. Like, it takes fucking forever to make, so it’s kind of a pain in the ass, but it feeds so many people and is pretty forgiving if you need to make substitutions, which I basically always do. The main thing I regret about this is that I never have meat in the house, so it doesn’t really have meat in it. You could make it properly vegetarian by subbing out the chicken broth. It’s also not spicy (because my roommates need to be able to eat it) but that’s also an easy fix, either by buying a spicier curry roux, or by adding in some chili pepper when you add in the roux. 

Crowd-Feeding Japanese Curry

Time: like 2 1/2 hours

Serves: about 8 (or more)

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

1 apple (or 1 applesauce cup)

1 tblspn ketchup

salt & pepper

oil

(optional: egg, boiled to taste)

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

3 Potatoes (OR 2 potatoes + 1 carrot)

2 onions

4 cups (1 box) Chicken broth

½ tblspn ginger

2 cloves garlic

1-2 blocks Japanese curry roux (I like Golden brand, but you do you)

1 ½ tblspn soy sauce

(optional, flour)

Throw It Together

Peel all your potatoes (and carrots if you’ve got those ) and chop into bite-sized chunks. Set them aside somewhere safe. You can put the potatoes in water if you’ve worried about them being too starchy (though this one confuses me - they are potatoes, of course they are starchy). 

Slice your onions pretty thin and then toss them in the biggest fuckin pot you have with enough oil to thinly cover the bottom of the pot. Turn it up to medium heat and alternate between ignoring it and making sure it doesn’t burn while you wait for the onions to get sort of translucent. 

While you are doing that, either crush your garlic or chop the shit out of it and your ginger. Pretend you are young Severus Snape and crush it with the side of your knife. Congrats, you are on your way to becoming a potions master. Add the ginger-garlic to your onions once they are ready. If you are doing carrots, put them in now too. 

Pour in your chicken broth (I guess you could use water, but I don’t like the flavor as much. Bullion would work fine too) and bring to a boil. 

Either grate your apple into the broth (chunky is fine, so long as its grated) or add your applesauce. Add the honey and a big honking pinch of salt too. 

Bring it down to a simmer and ignore for 20 minutes, uncovered.

Add potatoes and let cook another 15 minutes.

Add your curry roux in. Either balance it on a spoon or hold it with chop sticks and let it dissolve OR say fuck it, toss it in and just stir it around until it’s dissolved. 

Ketchup. Soy sauce. It goes in the pot. Not next to the pot. NOT under the pot. In it.

Let it simmer uncovered until it thickens up. Mine was NOT cooperating the last time I made it, so I thickened it with flour. If yours thickens within 20 minutes, do not bother with this step. DO NOT ADD THE FLOUR DIRECTLY INTO THE CURRY. Take a little flour in a separate cup or bowl and put a bit of water in with it and mix the shit out of it. Add more water until it’s vaguely liquid-y and THEN add it to the curry. Go easy on it. If you add the flour directly it will just clump up and not mix in and be awful. 

Serve over rice (I like short grain, Nishiki is a favorite) and if you have some tsukemono definitely go for it (I never do, it’s so sad). I also like mine with egg, because I never fucking have meat so it’s not like I can make katsu, but idk you can also just eat it. It keeps a few days in the fridge or you can freeze it if you take the potatoes out. Somehow they don’t like being frozen and come out with this gross mealy texture when you un-freeze them again. 

I used the leftover curry to make curry buns, which you can find here!

[whatsinthefridge]

Dorm-Style Hamentashen

It's almost Purim, and you know what that means? Hamentashen. I don’t actually care for hamentashen very much, but I was feeling festive. I was reading about them online, trying to figure out why most of the hamentashen of my childhood had been so disappointing. Someone brought up the fact that a lot of recipes try to keep them pareve for convenience. Of course the cookies tasted like cardboard! They had no butter!

So here I am, shamelessly making milchig hamentashen and sharing it around on my tiny blog.

For anyone who might not know what hamentashen are, they are little triangular cookies we make for Purim. I have no idea why we make them in the shape of our antagonist’s (Haman’s) hat, or why the name is more like “Haman-Bags” than “Haman-Hats” when you translate it, but they’ve got little fillings and its actually really nice when you eat them while they are still warm out of the oven. 

Dorm-Style Hamentashen

Time: it took me nearly 4 hours, but 2 of those were just chilling the dough

Serves: Made about 25 cookies? Maybe more? Depends on how big you cut the cookies out 

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

2 eggs

SMALL pinch salt

Nutella (for filling)

Raspberry jam (for filling)

1 1/2 sticks butter

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

3/4 cups sugar

tiny splash vanilla

so much flour, i don’t even know, maybe like 4 cups?

Throw It Together

I was reading a bunch of different ways to go about this, but in the end I sort of approached it like I was making chocolate chip cookies (I'm from MA, it's our state cookie, I love it). First things first, chop up your butter, especially if you are taking it straight out of the fridge. You could even nuke it in the microwave for like 20-30 seconds but you do NOT want to melt it. You just want it to be soft and workable.

Cream your butter and sugar together slowly. I really really missed having an electric mixer during this, and if you have one, please, for the love of fuck PLEASE use your electric mixer. If you are a sorry soul like myself, use a fork to mix the sugar into the butter 1/4 cup at a time. Make sure its thoroughly mixed before you add more. I couldn’t get it light and fluffy the way I could with a mixer, but it turned out fine anyway, so don’t sweat it.

Crack in your eggs, salt, and vanilla and mix that in too. 

Ok, this is the part where you just got to eyeball it. Start adding 1/4-1/3 cups of flour at a time, mixing between each addition. Really, what you are looking for here is not a number, you need to pay attention to the consistency of your dough. You want to get it a little firmer than play dough. if you roll a pinch between your fingers it should hold its shape and make your fingers a little sticky without leaving anything behind. If you were to form it into a single mound, the surface should be smooth and only stick to the bowl a little. If you add too much flour, don’t panic, just start adding a little water back in until it loosens up. 

When you’ve got the consistency right, wrap that shit up with cling wrap and refrigerate for two hours. I always wondered why recipes made me do this (because I hate waiting) and I think its because of all the butter. You’ve been handling the dough, so the butter is getting all melty, but the whole thing about hamentashens is that you need to be able to fold the dough around a filling and have it keep its shape. It is not going to do that if it is too warm, it will just get floppy and sad. Just be patient. Put on a timer and go binge watch something. It doesn’t count as vegging, you are baking, really.

After two hours, unwrap your dough and stick it on a lightly floured surface. In my case, the poor kitchen table. Roll it out about 1/4-1/8th inch thick. I never knew what the heck this meant, but for me it’s a little less than half the length of my fingernail. I’ve got tiny hands, so that may be even less on you. REMEMBER TO FLIP YOUR DOUGH. I started only rolling it on one side and then I realized it was sticking to my table, so flip it over every so often. You can re-dust your flour if you need to. 

Preheat your oven to 350

Ok, so I don’t actually own a rolling pin. It’s really sad. I was using the side of a cleaned out glass spaghetti sauce can, which made the next step easier, because I just flipped the can over and used the open mouth as a cookie cutter. If you have a real cookie cutter, a circular one about 2inches diameter is good, but you can eyeball it. Don’t make them too big, or it will just be a doughy mess. I actually re-rolled the scraps about 3 times to get as many circles out of it as I could. 

Get out your fillings. I used nutella and raspberry jam because they were what was available, but you can look up fancier fillings online if you want. Take a spoon and put a little dollop in the center of each circle. Do not overfill your hamentashens! It will be a mess and so sad. So sad. I used about a teaspoon of each. Here’s what they looked like unfolded.

Fold up your hamentashens. I have written and re-written ha description of how to do this, and I've found that it is much easier to show than to try to explain, so here is a little diagram of how I did it.

This is how it looked with some real ones.

 Get them all set up on some baking trays and stick them in the oven. I found that the jam ones took a lot longer to cook. The nutella ones only needed like 18-19 minutes and the jam ones needed like 23-24, but it depends how crunchy you like your cookies. When the edges start to turn golden brown, thats a good time to take them out. 

DO NOT EAT THE JAM ONES RIGHT AWAY. REPEAT. DONT DO IT. SERIOUSLY. That shit is molten fucking sugar, you WILL burn your mouth, fingers, and anything else that touches it. CHILL. Let them cool down. Have a nutella one while you wait.

[whatsinthefridge]

“Win Over Your Roommates” Oyakodon

Here is the part where you find out that I’m a giant weeb. Not necessarily that I watch so much anime (there was a time in my life but, you know), but that I really love eating Japanese food. I was lucky enough to get to go eat Japanese food in Japan (who would have though), but I also really like cooking it. Just One Cookbook is a goddess, and a total inspiration.

I was a little hesitant to put this one up, not because I think my version is so terrible (actually, it’s one of my roommates’ favorites), but because I’m a little bit ashamed that anything as wonky as this version could have been inspired by Just One Cookbook. Then I realized I literally have no following, so who would notice!

I used this recipe to attempt to befriend my roommates at the beginning of the year and it worked out pretty well, I think, though I’m still tweaking it. I also make it with extra onions because my roommates like it that way. 

“Win Over Your Roommates” Oyakodon

Time: About an hour and a bit

Serves: 3-ish (you could probably make it more pretty easily)

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

3 frozen breaded chicken patties (HORRORS)

3 eggs

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

about 2 teaspoon dashi stock (I use Ajinomoto Hon-Dashi, but I’ve made my own before and it’s not hard to make if you have the time. If you are using broth, it’s about 1 cup)

1 tblspoon soy sauce

1 tblspoon cooking sake (you can substitute white vinegar if you want)

1 tblspoon sugar

3 tblspoon mirin

1 1/2 onion

abt 1 1/2 cups uncooked rice

(Optional toppings: green onion, sriracha)

Throw It Together

Put up your rice. My grandparents bought me a rice cooker for college and it is the best thing ever.  It’s a Zojirushi NHS-10 Rice Cooker - 1.3 qt - White, and I usually use two of the measuring cups full of uncooked rice when I make this. If you do not have a rice cooker, you can make the rice by boiling 3 cups of water and then adding 1 1/2 cups of washed rice (I like the short grain). Cover tightly and simmer on very low heat for 20 minutes. 

Defrost your chicken patties and cook (the ones I can get at the school store just need to be microwaved for a few minutes). 

While your rice is cooking, thinly slice your onions. I think that slicing has a nicer texture than chopping and if you can get them thin they cook down better.  

This is just my work flow, but I like to pre-mix my dashi stock, soy sauce, and sugar in a measuring cup with 1 cup of water.

In a big pan bring the sake and mirin to a boil, then add your dashi mix.

Once that has boiled again, add your onions to the pan. Try to get them as evenly in the pan as you can and let them hang out at medium heat for 10 minutes. After about 6 minutes, put the cooked chicken patties in with the onions, evenly spaced. I don’t add the chicken patties at the beginning because they are so cheap and the breading is so flimsy that it just gets soggy or comes right off if you have them boiling for 10 minutes.

While that’s cooking, crack your eggs into a cup (not gonna lie, I often use the same measuring cup as the dashi mix to save dishes and get any remaining stock back in the dish). Mix the heck out of those, as if you were going to make scrambled eggs.

Pour egg over onions, trying not to get it on the patties. Again, I’ve found the patties are so cheap that the egg will just soak into the breading and make it soggy and not cook if its just sitting on top. Cook over medium heat until egg has set. You can poke it around and shake the pan to help it, if it needs. 

Enjoy with chopped green onion, sriracha or whatever floats your boat. Sy did theirs up with a sriracha pirate, so you know, you do you. 

[whatsinthefridge]

Pilfered From My Parents’ Kitchen Avgolemeno

(feat. bringing Sy dinner at work)

It’s going to be a bit repetitive, but I really like going to school near home. I had a dentist appointment earlier this week and my parents’ house is only about five blocks away so I dropped in to say hi to my siblings and steal some food. This week I made off with some apples, some coffee filters, a lemon and a box of chicken stock. 

I am really in love with the place I grew up, and there is a really fabulous Greek restaurant near my house that serves amazing avgolemeno. I’ve tried it at other places but nothing ever comes close. But, walking by it on my way home with a lemon and some more chicken broth, I knew exactly what was going to be attempted when I got back to the dorms. 

Now, I am not going to say that this soup will taste like the avgolemeno of my dreams - for one thing it’s college budget, so I don’t even have any real chicken for it - but if you need a hot dinner in a pretty short amount of time, it’s pretty nice.

Pilfered From My Parents’ Kitchen Avgolemeno

Time: Like and hour-ish? a little less

Serves: about 5

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

2 eggs (actually I totally borrowed from a friend on the floor that time because we were out)

salt and pepper

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money/borrow from family)

1 box chicken broth (about 4 cups)

1 lemon

1 box rice pilaf 

Throw It Together

Put your chicken broth up to boil on a pretty high heat with the salt and pepper.

While you are waiting for it to boil, juice the fuck out of your lemon. Get your damn money’s worth, you deserve it. I was looking it up on the internet and apparently the thing to do is microwave if for like 20 seconds if you are using it straight out of the fridge and then roll it on the counter before you cut it. I think it worked because I got like 1/4 cup of juice out of that lemon and my hands are stinging from the citrus. 

Crack your eggs into your lemon juice and whisk it up. 

When your broth boils, add the pilaf (or whatever grain you are using). The pilaf needed to simmer, covered, for twenty minutes, but I guess if you are using orzo or something it takes less time. 

Once your grain is cooked, temper your lemon-egg. So what you do is you take a little bit of your hot broth and slowly add it in to your egg while you are whisking it to heat up the egg without cooking it. It should NOT look like you are making egg drop soup. When you’ve added about a cup of broth, you should be able to add your lemon-egg to the soup without it insta-cooking. 

Cook another few minutes until it thickens up and turns opaque and tada you’ve made some weird college-level avgolemeno.

[whatsinthefridge]

Easy-ass Potato Kugel

 I really love potatoes. I think they are one of the most perfect things on this green earth (rivaled only by onions and rice). I even started growing my own potatoes in the summer because I love them so much (no joke). So, obviously, potato kugel is the queen of all kugels and I am her humble potato-loving servant. Usually I only get the chance to eat kugel on Passover, so it always sort of reminds me of it to make it, but it’s actually a nice way to make a fuck ton of food from not that much. This recipe is nice because it’s only like 4 ingredients and none of them go bad that quickly.

Easy-ass Potato Kugel

Time: idk technically like 1 hour, but it takes me so long to grate everything, more like 2 1/2

Serves: abt 12 servings (so like 3 or 4 in real life)

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

5 eggs

salt and pepper

like 1/4 cup oil

Ingredients from The Outside World (bought with real money)

6-ish potatoes

2 onions

Throw It Together

Wash and peel your potatoes. My roommate is great because they remind me that leaving the weird bits on potatoes is PROBABLY NOT THE BEST IDEA I’VE EVER HAD, so remember to cut out anything that looks iffy. Grate all your potatoes into a bowl.

Peel and grate your onions into the bowl. This part always makes my eyes tear up so badly, so either chew some gum while you are doing this or just suck it up and chop the onions up as finely as you can. 

Pre-heat the oven to 425.

Crack your eggs over your potatoes and mix the shit out of that. Honestly, I just used my hands, but if raw egg squicks you out then it’s fine to use a fork, just make sure it’s seriously mixed. Add salt and pepper and mix again. 

Pour oil into your baking pan. Make sure that hecker is oiled up like it’s ready to get indecent with the potatoes before adding your potato mix.

Bake for 45-60 minutes, until golden brown on top. I like to eat it with apple sauce because then it feels sort of like a spring-time version of latkes but whatever floats your boat. One of my roommates just salts theirs and the other one does salsa or ketchup so live your dreams kids.

[whatsinthefridge]

Perfect Fucking Spaghetti Sauce (+Shakshuka)

This is literally my favorite recipe. 

Not my favorite thing to eat, but easily, this is my favorite thing to eat that I cook. And here’s the thing, if I am eating literally any other kind of spaghetti+sauce I tend to just say “I don’t like spaghetti” because I’m that picky about it. I know, I’m bragging, but it’s easy it’s great, I’m bragging. The entire thing is made on the basis that I really don’t like cooking bacon on the stove and it’s so worth it.

This is my adaption of my mother’s adaption of my grandmother’s tomato sauce, which I think is hilarious because literally none of us are Italian. And it’s a good thing too, because I think the inauthenticity would probably make real Italian food fans weep. It will also, however, make your tastebuds SING (unless you cannot eat pork, in which case I am so sorry this recipe will not make your tastebuds sing). 

I’m totally spoiled because one of my roommates lets me use their wok and now I can’t help but want to cook everything in it now. 

Perfect Fucking Spaghetti Sauce

Time: Probably like 2-3 hours? Maybe I’m just slow

Serves: About 6-8 bowls of spaghetti + sauce

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

An Entire Packet of Bacon  (Now you know why it’s good. I know. I’m a sinner)

Spaghetti (Entire Box usually, but your call)

Oil 

Salt and Pepper

Ingredients from The Outside World

1-2-ish Onions

1 can UNSEASONED crushed tomato

Throw It Together

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Thinly slice onions. Somehow it ends up better than when you just chop it, but you know, live your dreams if you want to chop it.

Chop bacon into bite sized bits. Use your best judgement.

Oil a baking pan for the onion and toss them in - don’t oil a baking pan for the bacon and toss that into another pan (though honestly it takes me like 3 pans usually). Actually though, try to make sure the bacon is in a single layer as much as you can. Bake for like 12 minutes, check on it, and then bake for like 7ish more. Be careful. Ovens are funky things and your bake time might be different. Don’t let things go raw or charred listening to my numbers. Be observant!! Do not discard the bacon drippings once your bacon is crispy!  Put that shit right in the pot/pan you are going to use for the sauce. If you are not a dumb ass who is afraid of making these on the stove, you can do the onions first (until translucent) and then the bacon in the same pan (until crispy) on the stove top. 

Once bacon is crispy (important to have crispy bacon because it will get rehydrated in the sauce and if it’s not crispy it will be soggy as heck) open up your can of tomato and just pour it into the pot/pan with the bacon and onions. Salt and pepper (go light on the salt because the bacon is pretty salty already). It’s supposed to be a pretty thick sauce, but you can stretch this recipe/thin it with either water or chicken stock if you want.

Bring to a gentle boil on medium heat and then turn it way down to a simmer. If you have time to simmer it for like 40 minutes-1 hour, it is sooo tasty, but if you don’t have time then it’s perfectly fine to just eat it at that point. I usually put a HUGE pot of water to boil for the spaghetti on as soon as I add the tomato because it takes so damn long to boil that it forces me to wait. Feel free to shamelessly taste your master piece while you wait for your spaghetti. If you are going to simmer it for a long time, keep on eye on it as it reduces so you can add more water/stock if you want to. 

Serve over spaghetti or just eat it straight out of the pan. I’m not going to judge.

Bonus: Shakshuka Leftovers

If you just HAPPEN to have leftover sauce (unlikely) I like to use it to make bootleg (which is to say, delicious but hardly authentic) shakshuka for breakfast. All you do for that is take your sauce, add in some paprika and cumin (go easy on it). Set that up on the stove to boil at like medium heat. When it’s got those nice gentle bubbles crack some eggs into it (I like to do like 1 egg per person, but if it’s just you, maybe like 3??). Turn down to a simmer and wait for the egg whites to set (or the yolks if that’s how you roll). This literally always takes longer than I think it does because I want it to take 8 minutes but it actually takes like 25.

Profit from bacon.

[whatsinthefridge]

Galumpkis (+ Meatloaf)

I know a lot of people are really excited to move away from their parents during college, but I actually love living close to my family. While it’s nice to be one of those bizarre people who gets along really well with their parents, what’s ALSO really nice is that they also sometimes buy me groceries. 

Last week my father bought me, like, three pounds of ground beef and some spring onions, bless him. It was a total treat because the grocery budget usually goes to things like flour and rice and potatoes (or, you know, blowing all my cash on Japanese stuff because I’m weeb trash) so we don’t usually have a lot of meat. So, thank you, Dad!

The problem is that I don’t normally cook with meat so I didn’t really know what to do with it? I was trying to think of ways to use up some leftovers (a few heads of napa cabbage and a can of crushed tomato I was angry at because I didn’t realize it came pre-seasoned). Ground meat + cabbage + tomato? Sounds like Galumpkis!

I’d never made Galumpkis before so it was a bit of an adventure and since this is college cooking the substitutes made it an epic adventure.  

Galumpkis ala College BS-ery

Time: So long. Don’t expect to eat the same day as you make.

Serves: Depends on how much cabbage you have,

Ingredients from the College Store (bought on meal points)

1/2 packet of bacon 

5 breakfast sausage links

3 pieces of toast

1 egg

Salt and Pepper, like a hefty careless shake of each

Ingredients from The Outside World

aprx 2lbs ground beef

1 cup rice (they technically sell minute rice at school, but I despise it)

1 onion

1 spring/green onion (or 1 clove garlic if you have it)

as much cabbage as you can find (I had like 3 heads of napa but it works better if you use green cabbage)

most of 1 can crushed tomato

a big shake of white vinegar

like 1 tablespoon of sugar

Throw It Together

Wash the fuck out of your cabbage. Take that sucker apart (carefully, please, keep those leaves in tact) and wash all of that dirt off. You can pull out any leaves too mangled to use at this point. You can’t actually use the entire head because the leaves get too small, but save the rest of that cabbage for later (I like it in soup or cooked up with onion and apple). 

Boil yourself a big ass pot of water. If you are using napa, take the water off the heat once it’s boiled and let the leaves soak for like a minute, of if you are using green cabbage boil them in the pot for like two or three minutes. The reason you have to do this stupid step is so your cabbage is soft enough to actually stay wrapped when you wrap it around the filling.

Take your cabbage out of the water and chop off the thickest part at the bottom. It’s too tough and doesn’t play nice with the rest of the cabbage and will not stay wrapped around your filling. It’s gotta go. Set your nice cabbage aside.

Cook up your bacon and sausage. If you can get real sausage that’s great, but this shitty breakfast sausage was fine to just toss in the microwave for two minutes. The bacon you can do in the microwave (3 minutes on each side aprx), or in the oven (380 degrees, 9 minutes on each side aprx), or on the stove top like a regular human. I’m scared of the spitting oil, so I make my roommates do this for me. KEEP YOUR BACON DRIPPINGS IF YOU CAN. Put that shit right in the mix. Delicious.

Cook your rice. I have a rice cooker (thank you grandma) but if you need to make it on the stove top it’s a ratio of 1 rice: 2 water, you boil that and then cover it up and turn the heat way down for twenty minutes. Please don’t microwave your rice. I know you can, but it breaks my heart.

Chop the shit out of your onion, spring onion, bacon, sausage and toast. Mix together in a bowl with the ground beef, rice, salt, pepper, and egg. Don’t be a dumb ass like me and burn your hands on the rice that just came out of the boiling hot pot. 

Roll yourself a little meat ball out of this (your hands are gonna be nasty) and wrap it up in a cabbage leaf. Air on the side of too little meat because it’s so sad to see these leaves trying their best but being too small to make little Galumpkis. Place them pretty side up in a baking dish. 

Preheat the oven to 350

Mix up your tomato, vinegar, and sugar. If you wanna get really fancy you can put in a tablespoon of Worcestershire (or a spoonful of ketchup+balsamic vinegar+sugar - ratio 2:1:1 - if you don’t have any) but I didn’t so it’s your call. 

Pour tomato sauce over your galumpkis and bake uncover for an hour. Check them when the hour is up because they might not be done if you’ve got massive fuckin galumpkis. 

I served them with frozen perogies from the school store. Over all, I was into these, but they are a pain in the butt to make and if you aren’t super into them they might not be worth the time. The roommates didn’t seem to care for them too much.

(feat. brought Oscar’s dinner to work )

Bonus: Meatloaf Leftovers

If you have left over meat you can make them into meatballs or meatloaf (which is what I did). All you do for the meatloaf is grease up a baking pan, put in the left over meat and cook it for 40 minutes at 350. Mix up like 1/4 cup ketchup with some vinegar, sugar and Worcestershire (ok, I used okonomi sauce because I’m a weeb, but it tasted good). Pull the loaf out after 40 minutes, cover with the sauce, and bake for another 20. 

Use your left overs, kids.