Category Archives: DIY

Sweet and Spicy Tomato Jam

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are June, July, and August).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, add the RSS feed to your own reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Are you a condiment person?  Here’s an easy test: is there a shelf of your fridge (or three or four) jammed with little bottles and jars of sauces and oils and pickles and mustards and relishes and jams and chutneys and maybe, way at the back, an unopened jar of truffle butter that came from Italy, ahem, years ago?

Or is that just me?

I love all those delicacies in little jars, so it’s no surprise that I’m a fan of Marisa McClellan’s Food in Jars website.  I bought the Food in Jars cookbook as soon as I saw it appear at Book Larder, and it has been a big part of my summer.  First off, there was that Maple-Roasted Almond Butter we all loved, and then I consulted with Marisa (I mean her book) about jams all summer long–for the record, we see eye to eye.  Marisa (I mean her book) even deserves the thanks for those candied cherries that I couldn’t bear to puree into cherry butter.  See why I like her (I mean her book) so much?And that was before I made this tomato jam.  Continue reading →

How to Caramelize Onions

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Or maybe I should have titled this post, “How to Caramelize Onions and Why You Don’t Usually Have To.”  Because nine times out of ten, when you want your onions soft and sweet, you can just cook ’em like crazy over high heat and end up with a sweet, jammy mess that will do the trick nicely.  There, I just saved you hours of standing over a hot stove.  Now you have time to read a good book.  You’re welcome.

But, ok, sometimes you want the real thing.  You want a more refined result, a whisper-soft bowl of yielding allium nectar.  Caramelizing onions is transformative, like grilling broccoli or roasting cauliflower or shaving raw brussels sprouts for a salad.  And once you make your first batch and see how little hands-on time it takes, there will be nothing to stop you from making the occasional batch to add to eggs and soups and fancy little toasts and all manner of things.

Make a big batch while you’re at it, of course, and freeze leftover caramelized onions for an easy flavor boost another day. Continue reading →

Basil Pesto with Whole Wheat Pasta and Tomatoes

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I found this picture on the camera the other day:I asked J, “Why did you take this picture?”

J asked me, “Why did you put a glass of basil in the cupboard?”

Well, for about a million reasons, of course!  First, you all convinced me that I should keep my basil on the counter in a vase of water–and hey!  That really works!  Second, the counter was messy and I needed a little more space.  Third…well, ok, two reasons.

When there’s more basil than I have room for, it’s pesto time.  At this time of year, if you have a glut of basil yourself, consider making a big batch of pesto and freezing it in ice cube trays.  (Not because you’d limit yourself to one cube of pesto, of course–just because it defrosts more quickly than if you freeze it in a bigger block.)  And if you’re making pesto to freeze, it might as well double as dinner, right?This is, to me, the perfect pesto.  It’s saucy and flavorful with no one component overwhelming the others.  It tastes like summer, which we’ll appreciate with nostalgia soon.  But for the moment, why not enjoy it with whole wheat pasta and summer’s perfect Sungold tomatoes? Continue reading →

Spicy Pickled Peppers

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While we’re enjoying September’s fine harvest of assorted spicy peppers, why not preserve a few to enjoy when the season is over?

Honestly, my standard method for preserving peppers (of any kind) is to slice or chop them, pile them into a freezer bag, and put them in the freezer.  But you don’t need a recipe for that, do you?

You don’t need much of a recipe for this, either, but I always like to pickle a jar or two of mildly spicy peppers to enjoy in the fall.  This a a quick refrigerator pickle, which takes little time beyond slicing the peppers and simmering a simple brine for five minutes.  The investment will pay off many times over, since it only takes a few of these pickled pepper rings to spice up any meal. Continue reading →

Watermelon Sorbet

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Avert your eyes from the pumpkin spice recipes.  Don’t speak of apple cider or fall sweaters.  It’s still the height of the summer fruit season, peaches tapering into plums.  And melons.  The melons have hardly begun, here in the Northwest.

Let’s not hurry things along.  Let’s enjoy this final week of summer.

And by “enjoy summer,” I mean “make more ice cream.”  Sorbet.  Clean, summery, refreshing.  Just the thing to cap off the feast that this season has been. Continue reading →

How to Cook Chickpeas

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Last night it rained, an honest, garden-soaking, puddle-making rain.  It hadn’t rained in 48 days.  (Seattle’s record dry spell, set in 1951, was 51 days.)  On the way out the door this morning, wrapped in coats against the newly-brisk air, my four-year-old cheerfully sang out our family’s frequent admonishment to her toddling little sister: “No boots, no puddles!”  It suddenly felt like fall.

It’s as good a day as any to put on a pot of beans. Continue reading →

Healthy Cookies

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks! You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are June, July, and August). If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Yes, I like vegetables, but I also like cookies.  And let me tell you, having three little girls is a good excuse to make cookies.  Lots of cookies. Chocolate Chocolate Cookies.  Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Bittersweet Chocolate Dried Apricot Cookies.  Hazelnut Tea Cookies.  Savory Oatmeal Cookies with Rosemary and Black Pepper.  Butterscotch cookies (go ahead, sandwich them with Nutella).

Those cookies above, as you may notice, do not fall into the health food category.  And that’s ok.  But these cookies below?  They come awfully close.  And they’re lovely.  And I will be making them often.  And I will let my kids eat them for breakfast.

The original recipe comes from Hannah, a fellow Seattleite, chef, and writer of Blue Kale Road.  You should go read her post, a sweet reflection on enjoying the ordinary moments in life, and then you should go to the kitchen and make these cookies.

It’s almost a granola recipe, maple-sweetened with oats and salt and cinnamon.  And since I love my olive-oil granola so much, I figured that olive oil would work perfectly here as well.  And it does.  Did I mention that these cookies are vegan?This batch was filled with fig jam, since I had two open jars in the fridge.  (How does that happen?)  Tomorrow maybe I’ll try raspberry.  Hannah says the cookies freeze nicely, assuming you have any left over for long enough to freeze.  We didn’t. Continue reading →

Five-Minute Fresh Tomatillo Salsa

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Oh, school.  Its arrival is so bittersweet.  Even though I liked school as a kid, I was never quite ready for summer to end–who is?  And now that it’s my own kids heading happily back to class, a part of me is sorry to see them go.  (Another part of me is looking forward to a few mornings a week alone with my baby, of course, and to the single hour of silence in my day at her naptime.)

So yesterday we celebrated the Last Day of Summer Vacation with swimming, ice cream cones dripping onto the sidewalk, and an afternoon in the park.  Today dawned all business instead: breakfast, brushed hair, a stocked backpack, and then a bike ride to school to deliver our oldest to the rigors of first grade.  (It looked pretty fun, actually.)

And by the end of the day we were all exhausted.  Quesadillas, rice, beans from a can.  And this salsa.  This salsa!  It brightened everything right up.  Bring home a pound of tomatillos and a lime next time you’re out, and in five minutes you’ll be cheered right up.  Have the energy to go beyond quesadillas?  I love tomatillo salsa on black bean tacos, taco salads, huevos rancheros, and chilaquiles.  Especially chilaquiles.  Maybe it’s a good thing that the seasons are changing after all. Continue reading →

Roasted Tomato and Eggplant Tart

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Still wondering what to bring to that Labor Day picnic?  Not only is this tart flavorful and attractive, it also hides a pound of eggplant.  And who doesn’t have a pound of eggplant to hide at this time of year?I mean, I’ll just go ahead and admit it: sometimes the most popular way to serve eggplant is hidden.  Eggplant?  What eggplant?  My oldest daughter gave this dish an enthusiastic review and said it tasted like pizza.  Continue reading →

Red Chile Sauce, or, Easy Homemade Enchilada Sauce

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Roundabout late afternoon, while I’m (doing a million other things and) waiting for inspiration to strike in the kitchen, it’s usually safe to start with a sauce.  A pesto, a garlicky yogurt sauce, a lemony harissa number? It’s easy to take it from there: a pesto might lead to pasta, a yogurt sauce will inspire something to dunk in it, and that lemony harissa is a treat with eggs.Today, unable to stare down the mountain of gorgeous produce in my fridge, I retreated instead to a pantry shelf for a jar of dried guajillo chiles from our Tonnemaker’s CSA.  A spicy paste of red chiles is the answer to a number of questions at our house, such as: “What should I pour over rice and black beans and vegetables?” and “What would be good on this taco salad?” and “How should I sauce my enchiladas?”  And if there’s any of this sauce left over after dinner, the question immediately becomes, “How soon is morning so I can make huevos rancheros?”  Continue reading →