Groats of Oats and Savory Oatmeal

There's something magical about how one raw steel cut oat can absorb four times its volume in water.

My roommates and I have recently really gotten back into oatmeal. In retrospect, I can come up with many reasons - it's cheap, nutritious, fast and simple to make. The El Niño Winter rains have given us even more excuses to eat something warm and comforting.

Given my recent investment in oatmeal, I've uncovered a few gems and factoids that I would like to share with you, which can be summed up in the sentence: Oatmeal is whole grain hulled groats of oats, traditionally cooked with a spurtle.

What are oats? | Lets start where I started - at the basics. Oats (Avena sativa) come from a cereal grain, which is just a fancy way of saying that they are grown for their seed. Oats are grown all over the world - almost 25 million metric tons a year according to the UN FAO. Like most of our grains, the majority of oats grown goes directly to livestock.

How is oatmeal made from oats? | All oatmeal is made from groats of oats, the shelled, or hulled, grain that comes from the oat crop. Steel-cut means what it says - the grains are then cut into smaller pieces. Rolled oats are first flattened then steamed to decrease cooking time. I'm not going to comment about the nutritional value of one over the other. Both are awesome nutritionally - to find out more, check out what alpha has to say.

Gem #1: The art of oatmeal requires a spurtle! No - it's not a pokemon! It's a cooking utensil that deserves its own drawer. It's definitely going on my wishlist. You can buy them hand-made online, or find out what food bloggers have to say. With a little marketing, Crate and Barrel could bring these back!

Gem #2: This will get its own post in the near future, but you can make savory oatmeal! For too long, oatmeal has been banned to the constrictive, sweetened world of breakfast. But, like any cereal grain, it's fine for any meal. I tried cooking dinner with oatmeal for the first time a week ago - it was fantastic! The cooking experience was surreal - I cringed as I added garlic and broccoli to the boiling oatmeal. I felt a strange, internal conflict as I grated Parmesan on top of my plate of oatmeal before digging in.

For recipes, search Google for "savory oatmeal recipes" or check out a recipe from Mark Bittman on savory oatmeal that he shared with NPR. Alternatively - I would encourage readers to just go for it - make something from your imagination. Free oatmeal from part of this complete breakfast.

Real Food Pot Luck

Last week I organized a potluck and invited friends from two social circles. I wanted to share a time-lapse of the potluck.

Butternut Squash Overload.

Hello again, world wide web.

So three weeks ago, I made the mistake of buying a rather phallic, six pound butternut squash from the Farmer's Market. I planned on only getting a sweet pumpkin, but my favorite squash seller only had butternut. Of course, I was suspicious when he said that butternut was often used instead of butternut squash. I didn't commit to buying the squash until another consumer at the farmer's market asked if I would use the squash to make pie. Maybe they were working as a team. In any case, I ended up with two feet of awesome butternut squash.

It made a nice mantle piece for about a week, until I cut it in half, gutted the entrails, and baked it face down in the oven for about an hour. Then I scooped each half out with a spoon and stuffed it into two rather large tupperware. It took almost two weeks of cooking with butternut squash every other day to get rid of it.

Still, I'm not sick of it. Butternut squash is versatile and lean and delicious in dessert or main dish, and not that painful to prepare. I was able to use it in soup, muffins, pie, and risotto. I wish I had made some butternut squash bread.

I stopped writing over summer, but I haven't stopped cooking. I'll try to post more regularly.

Poor Herbivore

Scurvy, crabs (not for eating), and scoliosis are just some of the many risks associated with being an undergrad. But a more serious condition is afflicting a gross chunk of the student population: covert vegetarianism.

Yes, its true, many avoid meat by choice, claiming to be demonstrating against animal cruelty, methane emission, hormone abuse, or avoiding cholesterol, cancer, bad karma. It's crazy what sick rationalizations people come up with to avoid embarrassment of the true cause of vegetarianism: fiscal restriction.

Perhaps more disturbing, many students do not even realize they are affected. Indeed, I didn't even know I was a college vegetarian until , upon coming home and having dinner with the family, I realized I had forgotten what meat tasted like. The spectrum of taste cannot be filled by only meat or only vegetables.

Can I liken self-proclaimed vegetarians to supporters of abstinence-only sex-ed? Maybe that's going too far, but at least I will admit to being fiscally strained, instead of hiding behind a thinly veiled masquerade of so-called ethics.

Food and Finals

Since I only started cooking this quarter, I did not really know how crunch time would affect my eating habits. I figured that cooking would be a great way to procrastinate. Unfortunately, studying got the better of me, and my kitchen has been neglected. I've been surviving on left overs stretched with free food from clubs and parties... (If you have facebook, here's ridiculous proof.)

This morning's farmer's market was a reminder that I've been neglecting my diet. I'm making up for it by cooking two servings of swordfish smothered in a home made onion-tomato spread. One for dinner, one for later on this week.

I feel like left-overs have a negative stigma - and when you're not cooking for yourself, its obvious why: its redundant, not as fresh, and non-uniformly heated by a microwave that infuses the smell of whatever was reheated previously. If we keep in mind the satisfaction equilibrium, though, the time saved makes left-overs invaluable. So when finals are around the corner, double the recipe, and refer to parents for expiration dates.

Crème Brûlée

One of my favorite desserts is crème brûlée, literally "burnt cream" in French. This 500 year old dessert is definitely not an ideal healthy quick dish for college students, but its a great way to impress friends with a expensive sounding dish.
My dad usually buys prepared crème brûlée from the supermarket. Over the last couple of years, he's accumulated over 3 dozen ramekins - the dishes crème brûlée is baked in. Since he's running out of space for dishes, I thought I would try making the dessert from scratch, and reusing the ramekins. If you do not have ramekins, there are often some hanging out in thrift stores. Any oven-safe shallow bowl will do.

This recipe is from cross referencing different sources online.

Crème Brûlée  (three ramekins)

Ingredients
+ 2 cups heavy cream (or 1 cup milk, 1 cup heavy cream for less richness)
+ 1 ts vanilla extract (optional)
+ 3 egg yolks
+ 1/2 cup granulated sugar
+ 3 ramekins
+ deep baking dish

Preperation
Start heating the cream in a pot over the stove. *Turn off the stove when the cream starts boiling, and let it hang out for 10 minutes.* While it begins heating, mix the three egg yolks and the sugar in a bowl, mixing long enough to incorporate a little air. The mixture should lighten in color a little bit. (In the photo, notice the different in color between the beaten mixture and the yolk on the side of the bowl). If you have vanilla, add it into the egg mixture. 

While the cream cools, preheat the oven to 325 degrees, slowly add it to the egg mixture while stirring continuously. Now, split this mixture between three ramekins (I was able to make 3.5, but it depends on the size of your ramekins). Here's the tricky part- put the ramekins in the deep baking dish, then add water to the dish until the water level lies a little under the tops of the ramekins. (I used bigger ramekins for each ramekin, but the principle is the same.) Now shove them in the oven around forty minutes so that they set. Check on them often. They're ready when a fork comes out clean when you stick it an inch from the edge of the ramekin. They will still be jiggly. Mine had a few brown spots, but were mostly uniform. Let them cool off outside the oven, then refrigerate them. They take 20 minutes to prepare before serving. They last about 2 days in the fridge. Freezing them will let them last longer.

Serving
I'll assume you dont have a torch to caramelize the sugar. Sprinkle less than a tablespoon of sugar over the top of each ramekin. Broil them on the oven. Within a few minutes, the sugar will melt and caramalize. Check often, and pull them out when the sugar has been boiling for 3-4 minutes, or when the top is browning. Pull them out, let them cool off for five minutes before serving. 

The Satisfaction Equillibrium

Home Made French Fruit Tart 2008

The idea of making desserts sounds both fiscally and academically straining. Many recipes are - especially those involving cheese or fruit, such as cheese cake or fruit tarts or tiramisu. Still, homemade desserts are a clearly superior to processed ones when we compare them using what I call the satisfaction equillibrium.

The satisfaction one can attain from a dish can be calculated by a simple formula:

Satisfaction = Taste ÷ Price²

The formula is derived from the well known formula:

Satisfaction = Reality ÷ Expectations

Notice: As expectations rise, satisfaction lowers. The better the reality, the higher the satisfaction. Now, from a college-food context, we can assume that the criterea for reality is mostly taste, allowing for substitution:

Satisfaction = Taste ÷ Expectations

Recall from experience that both the time and the money spent on a dish is a good judgement of what to expect. Also recall that 'Time is Money':

Satisfaction = Taste ÷ (Time*Money)

Time = Money

Satisfaction = Taste ÷ Money² = Taste ÷ Price²

 

This law can be generalized to all food. Now, application of this equation has some interesting implications. Notice, for example, that as we take the limit of Price to zero, Satisfaction grows to infinite. Indeed, no one ever complains about free food. Also, notice that taste has to be four times as good to account in only a 2 times increase in price.

Even as a beginner cook, I have to insist that half the fun of eating is sharing food I've personally made. Perhaps theorists should concentrate on adding a "bragging rights" weight to the equation.