Scallion Waffles and Kohlrabi Fries

OK, as promised, a new update from one of the main authors here at Entropic Kitchen. Dinner tonight was scallion waffles, kohlrabi fries, and (leftover) greensy salad with strawberry vinaigrette. Now, I have to admit that I got the waffle recipe online and actually followed it; it's easy to mess up on anything remotely bread-like, so I tend not to be too experimental when it comes to baking, etc. But in my defense, I came up with the concept of scallion waffles on my own before looking up a recipe, and had I not found one, I would have gone ahead with a regular waffle recipe with added scallions. But without further ado:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp yellow cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs
1 cup finely chopped scallion
coarsely ground black pepper (optional, Derek's addendum)

Mix all the dry ingredients except scallions. Seperately, whisk all the wet ingredients until uniform. Then stir wet and dry mixes together just until blended (clumps are OK) and finally stir in the scallions. Waffleize as you would any other waffle.

They were very good plain, but I topped a couple of them with a bit of freshly made strawberry jam for variety. (Sidenote: Chris and his girlfriend were over yesterday and we made jam and it is fabulous!)
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The kohlrabi fries were born out of a comment my wife's coworker made, suggesting that kohlrabi might make a good french-fry vegetable. So on a whim I decided to see if this was true. I peeled and sliced a kohlrabi into fry-sized rectangular prisms and let them cook on medium high in about 1/4 inch of canola oil. After 10 or 15 minutes, they were quite brown, but soft, not crispy. At this point I began to suspect there was more to french fries that just a simple deep fry -- after all, the stuff you get at Mickey D's has been cooked already, then fried again in the restaurant. Taking a quick peek on the internet, it seems like double-frying is the way to go, so perhaps that will be a project later on. I also suspect I may have had the temperature too high, as a couple of pieces were still slightly uncooked in the middle, despite the dark brown on the outside.

Anyway, a quick salting and pat-down to remove excess oil and there they were. Kohlrabi, dark-brown and shrively, but similar enough to potato fries that I was encouraged. The flavor was a little strong, slightly turnipy, and not unpleasant, but in combination with the squishy texture just didn't seem worth the work when fresh, raw kohlrabi is so tasty and potato fries can be had at nearly any restaurant.
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Finally, this was a leftover from yesterday's dinner with Chris and his +1, but we had a salad consisting of greens, chopped veggies (broccoli, cucumbers, turnips and scallions), craisins and feta cheese. For the dressing I mixed together

(approximately)
4 Tbsp salad oil (something nutty is good; I used walnut and grapeseed oils)
6-8 Tbsp vinegar (I used honey-champagne vinegar)
strawberry jam to taste (I used probably 2 Tbsp or so)
dash of salt and pepper

The jam was still in the process of being made (I yoinked a couple of spoonfuls from the big pot on the stove) so it was nice and fresh! Obviously, the more of it you add, the sweeter and more strongly flavored your dressing will be.

Well that's it for tonight. What about you? Do you find yourself cooking more now that fresh summer produce is readily available?

Guest Post: Prenatal Chicken Parm

Note: today's post was written by Steve, whose other excellent musings may be found here. Look for more regular updates from your usual suspects soon, now that summer produce season is in full swing.

As far as cooking goes, I’ve never been huge on experimenting. I always find myself following recipes rigidly, panicking if I’m even five seconds late to pull something from the oven. I haven’t the know-how to throw in a mixture of spices to create a new flavor. Probably one of the most dangerous experiments I’ve tried in the kitchen so far was leaving a cup of mushrooms out of a recipe (solely for the fact that I don’t like mushrooms). I love cooking, but I’ve never been comfortable deviating from written recipes.

This morning, I woke up and went to the kitchen to find that it had been quite some time before someone had restocked it. No cereals, an excessive amount of oatmeal, and just one egg (two if you count the one that was cracked inside the carton). Deciding I wasn’t in the mood for oatmeal, I thought I’d give the egg a shot. But I had eggs yesterday and the day before that, why should I do simple eggs again?

While searching through the nearly-empty fridge for something to do with this egg, I came across a nearly-empty bag of mozzarella cheese. I’ve thrown cheese on eggs before, usually cheddar or American, but mozzarella doesn’t taste good on an egg by itself. Then, my eyes came across a nearly-empty jar of spaghetti sauce.

Prenatal chicken parm, I thought to myself. Or would it be pre-natal? Let me tell you, it’s weird to find yourself going to Wikipedia to look up what a common egg is.

So, I threw some bread in the toaster and started to fry my egg as I usually do (over-hard). After I flipped the egg, I threw a small handful of mozzarella cheese on top and tried to spread it around as much as I could without burning myself. Then, I spooned some of the spaghetti sauce on top of that. I’m wondering if I should have done the cheese and the sauce in reverse order, since I had no way of telling when the cheese was melted underneath the sauce.

After a minute or two, I took the egg out of the pan and sandwiched it between two slices of toast (nice and brown for that crisp breading taste). I would have loved to have paired this meal with a glass of grape juice (because hey, it’s Italian), but all I had in the fridge was a nearly-empty carton of orange juice, so that had to do.

I took a bite into the sandwich, and immediately realized I had put too much sauce on the egg. Excessive sauce aside, it tasted quite good. I couldn’t taste the egg as much as the sauce and cheese (in retrospect, I essentially made a small pizza with a fried egg in it), but the overall flavor was still pretty good. Just as I expected, the cheese in the middle of the egg wasn’t quite melted, but that cold portion only lasted one bite. Maybe this dish deserves a little less disgusting name than “prenatal”, I thought.

Granted, I know this isn’t exactly Entropic Kitchen material. I’m nowhere near as dangerous with my food experimentations as Andrew, Chris, and Derek are. I guess if there’s one thing I learned from my experience, it’s that you don’t have to be Emeril Lagasse to have fun with your food. Experimenting is good every once in a while, no matter what degree you go to.

Side note from Derek: I was quite relieved to find that Prenatal Chicken Parm was not in this family of recipes.