Month 3 day 23: Gumbo and Grits

Today I made:
Shrimp and Okra Gumbo with Creamy Yogurt Grits, Cooking Light April 2010

When I told G that we were making gumbo tonight, he figured we wouldn't be eating for a long time. But this was one of Cooking Light's quick recipes, where it has "the game plan" for how to multitask and make a main and a side all at once in just 40 minutes. This was a nice one-pot gumbo that had tons of vegetables, so we didn't need to make anything else. Unfortunately G's not so big on grits but now we have a huge container in our pantry-- we only used 3/4 cup. He did like the gumbo quite a bit though.

While I was peeling the shrimp my hands got itchy, and I feel like that's happened before. But this time it occurred to me that maybe just maybe I was getting allergic. Not enough of a feeling to make me not eat this, but the feeling was at the back of my mind as I was eating the shrimp, and I just kept getting more and more worried about this. What if you did have an allergic reaction and your throat closed up? There's no way an ambulance could come fast enough, right? Well, I am a master of the placebo affect/hypochondria, so just by thinking about it my throat started feeling all funny and I felt off. Even if I am 99% sure that it's just my mind, that lingering 1% is enough to make me persistently worried. G convinced me to watch some "Daily Show," and though I got uncontrollable shivers (interestingly, the last time I placeboed my way into feeling really sick, I also started shaking uncontrollably), eventually I felt better. But maybe I will see if I can get an allergy test, and I think I'll pass on the gumbo leftovers :-P But G will be happy; more for him! I dunno, is there something in the shells specifically that can make people itchy? I use frozen shrimp, and so they were defrosting in some water, and the water is oh so cloudy, so it would not be surprising at all if there was something released from the shells.

Speaking of which, this recipe was kind of cool in that the ham, okra, and shrimp were all from the freezer and most other things you would just normally have in the pantry (except for grits, except that now we do). We used fresh bell pepper, but we do have chopped bell pepper in the freezer too. Meaning that any time you had celery and a normal pantry/freezer, you could whip this up. Can you imagine one of those days when you're thinking there's no food in the house, and then your partner whips up some gumbo?!? That would be the most impressive thing ever. And it could totally be done. In less than an hour.

Month 3 day 22: Ropa Vieja and Tres Leches Cake

Today I made:
More of yesterday's French toast
Cuban-Style Ropa Vieja, Saveur April 2012
Tres Quatro Leches Cake with Strawberries, Food and Wine 2011
with steamed zucchini

Saveur had an article about Ropa Vieja and gave two versions, Cuban- and Canaries-style. We went with this one-- the simpler of the two-- and it was very good. It took a while to cook, and our electric stove is so finicky that it ping-ponged between boiling and not simmering at all for the 2 hours that it cooked. But the meat shredded easily enough, and it was quite tasty. We will keep this recipe.

Unfortunately there is no picture for the cake, but it was good too. We made it fully on Saturday actually-- first the cake, then a mixture of cream, condensed milk, and evaporated milk with spices that gets poured over the cake-- and let it soak up until today. We did have a couple tastes along the way, both last night and earlier today. Earlier today it was so moist and nice. Then this evening we invited over some people from the dorm to share it with us so that we didn't feel pressure to eat the whole 9x13" cake ourselves, and luckily a few came and did good work on the cake. But the slice I had this evening was much drier. I don't know if that's just because it had been in the fridge for 24 hours, or if the slight tilt of the pan made a drought on one side and a flood on the other. Anyway, it still tasted fine, with just a hint of cinnamon, and more whipped cream on top along with strawberries and mango. So that was a success. And it wasn't all that complicated either-- somehow I had the idea that it was. Interestingly, the cake has no butter. I assume this is because the lack of butter is more than made up for later by all the other forms of dairy. But I always thought that butter was a key chemical component of the cake.

Month 3 day 21: Sausage sandwiches and bulgur salad

Today I made:
Spiced French Toast, Every Day with Rachael Ray 2012
Italian Sausage-and-Fontina Mozzarella Biscuit Sandwiches, Food and Wine 2011
Tart and Tangy Bulgur Salad, Cooking Light 2012
in progress: Tres Leches cake for tomorrow

Today we started off with some French toast-- a different recipe than last time. This one had pumpkin pie-type spices, and I thought it was pretty good, maybe in part just because I let it soak in this time. We used some nice-looking rolls.

For lunch we just had some sandwiches, because we went to the Museum of Fine Arts' special floral weekend exhibit. Every year there is one weekend where a variety of flower arrangers pick specific pieces to interpret as a floral arrangement. They are usually a little far-fetched, but draw from the colors and lines and overall feel. Here is one of the more literal ones:

G said, "We're not here for the pieces of art, we're here for the pieces of work." People seemed to be on their worst behavior. One girl walked up to a piece with a camera, but right then a guy leaned in to look at it. She sarcastically said "thank you" (he didn't hear) and then waited glaring at him for 30 more seconds until he left. She snapped a picture and left, saying "...f-ing rude!" under her breath. Did she even look at the flowers? I guess if your mission was to take pictures of each arrangement you would be in a bad mood, because the place is huge. We saw about 1/4 after 3 hours. Then, in one of the gift shops, a worker started yelling at a woman who had opened up one of the drawers underneath a display (there was a lock on the drawer, but it was unlocked). Mind you she never once came out from behind the counter, even though she actually wasn't ringing people up (or doing anything?) but chose to be classy and just yell across the store so that everyone was staring at the poor girl who made the terrible decision to open a drawer :-P So people-watching was interesting today.

When we got home we took a long nap, so we went with a quick option. These sausage sandwiches were very good. It's basically just slices of Italian sausage with tomatoes, roasted bell pepper, and cheeses (we ran out of Fontina so we used mozzarella) inside of buttermilk biscuits. We skipped the olives and the pecorino cheese, which we now know is way too pungent for our tastes.

The bulgur salad was nice and fresh. We ran out of lime yesterday so used lemon juice instead, and I skipped the olives as always. I think the bulgur was a bit undercooked. The recipe called for 1 c bulgur +  1 c boiling water, but actually on the packaging it recommends 2 c water. I kind of tried to meet them in the middle, but it was still pretty al dente. Maybe that's how it's supposed to go? Anyway, I like bulgur-- it's nice and nutty. We have a bunch leftover from the vegetarian moussaka I made last month.

Month 3 day 20: Avocado-mango salad

Today I made:
Saladu Awooka ak Mango, Saveur May 2012

Today we went to a potluck, so I made this avocado-mango-citrus salad. I didn't get a picture, but here's the one from Saveur:

Ours looked approximately the same. It was tasty! I love all the components. It is Senegalese and supposed to complement the rich stews of Senegal nicely. It also complemented lasagne, kebabs, and pie nicely ;)

Month 3 day 19: Thai Chicken with Carrot-Ginger Salad

Today I made:
Thai Chicken with Carrot-Ginger Salad, Food Network Magazine April 2010

This chicken comes out really moist. It's roasted in a pan with a layer of water, so I think it basically gets steamed. Or maybe it was because I was running out of time before tutoring so it didn't get a chance to overcook.

(Speaking of tutoring, I saw the normal group of students tonight, who come every time a homework is due. I had been curious about them last week, because I basically left just before the shooting and subsequent lock-down. Indeed, they said that they went on lock-down and sat in the dark for four hours. RIP Sean Collier. I am lucky in so many ways.)

Basically the chicken is coated in a store-bought green curry paste, but it's supplemented by some ginger, garlic, and lime-- so it's easy, but still very flavorful. While it is in the oven, you begin the laborious task of peeling carrots into strips. I guess this helps them get coated in dressing and looks cool, but I think it might be easier just to grate them next time. We'll be keeping this recipe, because it's very easy, pretty fast, and tastes good too.

Each month (on average) I've also read a food-related book. In February I read Julie and Julia, last month I read Fast Food Nation, and today I finished In Defense of Food. Someone had left a highlighted copy in the tutorial services room, so I read it the past couple weeks when there were no students. I do agree that it feels best to cook from whole ingredients. Between FFN and DoF, I feel sort of disgusted with the meat industry, but I just am not sure that buying organic or grass-fed is necessarily going to be any better-- I think a lot of companies will just do the bare minimum to meet whatever threshold for the label, but still cut corners where they can. I think it would be interesting to do a CSA for meat like someone in my lab does, but then again she gets lots of weird things sometimes. It probably would just be better to eat less meat, but there aren't that many meatless recipes in my magazines. Maybe next year :-P

Month 3 day 18: Fried shrimp and potato cake

Today I made:
Almost-famous Spicy Fried Shrimp, Food Network Magazine April 2010
Crispy Potato Cake, Every Day with Rachael Ray April 2012
Served with steamed napa cabbage (mixed with leftover tofu shumai filling)

The shrimp recipe is a copy-cat recipe for "Bang Bang Shrimp" at a restaurant called Bonefish, which is supposedly very popular. When I read it, it reminded me of the honey-walnut shrimp we used to get at China Star restaurant near college. Looking at recipes for honey-walnut shrimp online, it seems to be mostly the same but with some condensed milk in the sauce and candied walnuts on top. Yum.
This was a fast recipe. The batter fried up really crispy, but once the sauce went on it was all totally limp, so that seemed like a waste. Might as well just grill them or something and save the fat. We pan fried in EVOO because we don't have vegetable oil... we probably should get some.

Meanwhile, the potato cake was a disaster. The whole time I thought about Bang Bang Shrimp I kept thinking about "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" so I guess it was inevitable that something had to be shitty shitty to go with the bang bang :-/ My cast-iron skillet hates me. I hit my head on its handle after bending over to get something. Everything sticks and burns, and it's just so heavy that the attempt to invert the potato cake onto a plate and then slide it back on to crisp up the other side failed miserably. Yes, eventually I was able to invert the pan onto a plate, but no, it didn't all come out as a nice cohesive unit. A thick layer of black potato was burned onto the pan. And this happened again with the other side when it was time to serve it. Oh well. It tasted fine, but was just soft, because the crispy parts were in the trash. I used one sweet potato and two normal potatoes to mix it up a little.

G liked the shrimp recipe, and I did too, although I think next time I would try to add a little condensed milk. And, I think I would just serve the crispy shrimp with the sauce on the side so it doesn't get soggy. I don't know if we will keep the potato cake recipe... we will need a better skillet first :-P How is the cast-iron skillet ever supposed to get seasoned if it just gets completely stuck to everything every time we use it, requiring us to wash it? Bah. We always rub some oil into it, but it's just pointless.

Month 3 day 17: Catfish and lemon-fennel salad

Today I made:
Halibut Catfish with Lemon-Fennel Salad

This was a very quick meal, but it wasn't very filling. It needs to be served with some sort of grain or starch or something. We used catfish because the store was out of halibut, and it tasted quite good. Not too much else to say... we will keep the recipe but will serve it with more sides next time.

Month 3 day 16: Dumplings of the World, French Toast, and Ribs

Today I made:

• Perfect French Toast (Lemon-Berry), Food Network Magazine April 2010
• Curried Vegetable Samosas with Cilantro-Mint Chutney, Cooking Light April 2010
• Gyoza with Soy-Citrus Sauce, Cooking Light April 2010
• Steamed Vegetable Sui-Mai Dumplings with Chili-Sesame Oil, Cooking Light April 2010
• Morgan's Sweet-Tea Ribs with Lemony Potato Salad, Food Network Magazine April 2010
• Lavender-Scented Strawberries with Honey Cream, Cooking Light April 2010

Whew! Today was a little packed because yesterday we didn't get a chance to cook, but we had the ingredients already so some things needed to get made.

The day started off with French toast. I have never made French toast before, as far as I can remember. I don't think I let the bread soak in the eggy-milk long enough, because it didn't really end up looking like it is supposed to, but it still tasted fine. We made the lemon-berry variation, which reminded me of the lemon-berry pancakes I've had at our very favorite brunch place, Cafe Luna. Plus, I have had some lemon curd in the freezer ever since I made this cake a while ago, and we're pinched for freezer space these days. We had a (now very stale) demi-baguette and some fresh Challah that our friend gave us, so we used both of those for the toast. I thought it was really good; G thought there was a little too much lemon tart. I love lemon and berries. I still have a bunch of the eggy-milk left, so I'd like to get some more bread and retry with longer soaking later this week. The recipe certainly could've been scaled down, because the amount did not appreciably diminish from getting soaked up.

Shortly after eating, we started preparing for our Dumplings of the World. This was a little mini-feature in Cooking Light, including a gnocchi recipe that we decided not to make. We had been planning to have a little dumpling party, but kept putting it off week after week because we never got around to inviting people. Finally we just went ahead and bought the ingredients so that we would do it this weekend, but then still didn't end up inviting people until the day before. Whoops. But a few people came and we had a good time.

We made all the fillings last night, so all we had to do today was wrap and cook. It was very fast and easy-- so great for having company over but not having to stress about the prep. G made the filling and wrapped the samosas. Everything used wonton-type wrappers, so the samosas weren't too authentic, but everything tasted fine. We were happy to use our steamer for the first time since getting it over a year ago, but less enthused to see that the steamed wonton wrappers just stuck to everything :-/ G refused to try them because he is prejudiced against anything with tofu. The gyoza just tasted like mushroom-- not too special.

So then a little later it was on to dinner prep. It was good that lunch was all veggie because dinner was an all-American, meat-and-potatoes affair. It felt like we were at a church potluck. The ribs roast at a low temperature for a couple of hours, so there was ample time to run to the grocery store, make the lemony potato salad, and whip up the honey cream and lavender syrup. Dried lavender isn't available at our two normal grocery stores, although I know I've seen it somewhere.... Luckily, G and I went to a Chinese tea "class" yesterday, and they just happened to have dried lavender at their herbal tea station (kind of a cool idea-- they just had several kinds of dried flowers, and you could mix and match to make your own blend). So we mooched a little bit to take home for today's dessert.

These recipes were good. The potato salad tasted non-traditional and refreshing (despite the mayo). The combination of the leafy taste of the tea plus the sourness of the citrus (I'm guessing) in the rib's rub tasted a little bit like poi?? to me, but not to G, which is good because he says he hates poi. So I dunno. Hopefully eating black tea leaves at 8 pm won't keep us awake all night. The dessert was nice too-- just very smooth, with none of the flavors overwhelming the others. The lavender syrup, the honey in the cream, and the strawberries all took turns.

Of today's recipes, we're keeping the French toast, samosas, ribs and potatoes, and honey cream.

Month 3 day 15: Spring Shells and Cheese

Today I made:
Spring Shells and Cheese, Food Network Magazine April 2010

This dish is from a feature on grown-up versions of mac-n-cheese. So, it has vegetables and nutmeg? I guess those are mature flavors. And the cheese is gruyere and parmesan (well, we ran out of parmesan so topped up with fontina) instead of velveeta or cheddar.
It's good, and we will keep the recipe. It takes a little bit of time, which was fine today because no one in Cambridge was supposed to go outside, but might not be so great on other occasions. We made a half-batch which was good for about three people-- a friend came over to help us eat it. And he brought delicious challah too!

Month 3 day 14: Jerk Turkey Burgers

Sooo there is a gunman on campus?? For real this time-- there is a picture of a policeman's blood on the ground. It's just incomprehensible, so I'm going to just pretend like nothing is happening and write this post.

Today I made:
Jerk Turkey Burgers with Mango Slaw, Food Network Magazine April 2010
using this recipe for jerk seasoning, minus the oil
Served with baked sweet potato fries (drizzled with EVOO and sprinkled with paprika and salt, roasted at 400 F)

I thought we had jerk seasoning, but we didn't so I made some. It wasn't really spicy though, so after reading the reviews I think it might not have been right. We also couldn't find mango chutney (not even sure where to look exactly... not with the jams, not with the jars of pickles.... where else to look?), but the recipe said instead you could use lime juice, honey, and curry powder. We used that, but I do think mango would've been really nice. As it was, G still said to keep this recipe. It would be pretty quick, other than making the seasoning from in the middle, and then our burgers were a little fat, so they took a long time to cook (and basically the outsides just charred :-( Not in a bad-tasting way, though).
We love baked sweet potato fries. Haven't had them in a while, but they are always great and so easy.
Making slaw from a bagged mix is so easy too. G doesn't normally like cole slaw, but I suppose if we made our own we could find a type he liked.

Month 3 day 13: Mushroom-stuffed chicken

Today I made:
Mushroom-stuffed chicken, Cooking Light April 2010
As suggested, served with pasta tossed with buter and green onions
And some sautéed kale, leeks, and spinach.

The reviews for this recipe are amazing. It' 5 stars, with 27 reviews and many "OMGs" among them. So did I do something wrong?? To me, this was a fine recipe, but nothing too amazing. Our chicken breasts were absurdly big... about 10 oz each, and I could only eat half of the dinner I plated. But anyway, maybe that made the ratio of stuffing to chicken suboptimal. It also made it take a little longer to cook. The reviews also are funny in that they (as always) make tons of substitutions and review it based on that, and also that they think the recipe is complicated because you dip in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. Is that not normal? That is pretty standard in Japan where I learned to cook. The crust on the chicken was pretty nice and crispy. So, there's nothing particularly bad about this meal, it's just also nothing to give five stars. If you're going to make stuffed chicken, I think the very first recipe of this cooking challenge (cous-cous stuffed chicken) was better.

Month 3 day 12: Greek cooking class

Today was a little bit different, because the Hellenic group on campus was hosting a Greek cooking event. Together, we made:

• Greek salad
• Spanakopita
• Lemon potatoes
• Chicken souvlakia
• Tzatziki
• Baklava

All of the recipes were from the organizer's mom, which I thought was pretty cute. She must have been so happy when her daughter asked for them! Also kind of cute was that the Greek people running the event kept explaining all of the exact ways to do things-- exactly how to cut the tomatoes for the salad, how to cut garlic, etc. There was a little bit of chaos because there were 20 people in the end, and we were just in a medium-sized kitchen with one oven... but some of the dishes were baked in the organizer's room down the hall and not everyone came for the cooking part (...) so it wasn't too too crowded. We started cooking at 5 and ate around 8! We went around the table and said where we are from and some cultural thing that we enjoy -- all of the Greek students went off on how amaaaazing Greek Easter is and how excited they are for the big event they throw every year at MIT. They roast 5 whole lambs + more racks of meat! It will take place on May 5th. Everyone talked about food for the rest of dinner-- there were lots of foodies there.

Everything tasted great. I guess if you were cooking for your family you wouldn't make all of these at once, and then it wouldn't take 3 hours.

When I came home G hadn't eaten-- we thought there was leftover mole in the freezer, but actually it was just the sauce with no chicken in it! He still ate a little but gave up. So I quickly made some pasta with garlic shrimp in olive oil with a little parsley on top. I think he is getting spoiled ;)

Month 3 day 11: Cookies and cupcakes

We didn't make dinner tonight-- I had planned to make scallops with fennel but G came back from the grocery store saying that he "couldn't find everything." What he could find: a container of yogurt and a shallot. What he couldn't find: fennel and scallops. Couldn't find everything? Shaw's has stopped carrying a large amount of what it used to, and has rearranged everything else. Apparently fennel and not-pre-seasoned scallops weren't selling sufficiently. Luckily, we always have more leftovers than we can handle.

Last night there was a fire alarm at 2 am due to a water leak over the circuits, and today was a state holiday (Patriot's Day), so we slept in a bit. Normally G and I like to go watch the marathon somewhere in Allston, but today we got a late start and I needed to do some baking to bring in to lab. So I stayed home all day, and that ended up being a good thing. We just watched the marathon on TV. We never go to the finish line anyway, because it's always so crowded, but that doesn't make us feel any less unsettled. Everyone is posting on facebook that they are fine, but I guess you have to use process of elimination, because if someone was hurt they wouldn't be posting about that... but I've decided to think that everyone I know will be ok. Walking to lab in the afternoon, the streets were packed with people walking away from Boston. No one was smiling. The sirens kept going all afternoon as the ambulances moved in and out.

I wonder if last night's fire alarm disrupted everyone's sleep enough to stop some people from watching the marathon. But probably not, because the explosions happened a full twelve-ish hours later. Our housemasters were on their way to go watch, but they got a late enough start that they didn't make it there before it happened.

Anyway, we were at home baking. Today I made:

• Tea Cakes with Earl Grey Icing, Food Network Magazine April 2010
• Linzer Cookies, Every Day with Rachael Ray April 2012

The tea cakes recipe as it is published calls for a merengue icing with earl grey tea. Since I was serving this to other people though, I didn't want to make it with dubiously-cooked egg whites, so I set out in search of a different icing recipe. I found a butter cream (linked above). It was pretty subtle, but there is a bit of earl grey flavor there. While searching for it, I found this recipe for lavender cupcakes with earl grey frosting (the same, actually) and I think that would be nice to try sometime, without the food coloring.
The chocolate cupcakes were interesting, except I didn't hear the timer go off, and the timer was set for mini-cupcake time anyway... so I think they got a bit more time than they needed, but I honestly have no idea how long they were baking for. The outside of the base got really hard though, even though the inside was soft. They looked very interesting, with a cracked top as you can see in the picture on the Food Network website. The batter is different from most cake batters, in that its ase is really the melted chocolate and butter, and there is no baking powder or other leavening agent in it. I think they were good, but I only ate one and I was distracted. I would like to make them again without over-baking them.

The cookies on the bottom shelf (which was still quite high up in the oven) also got a little overly baked. I think our oven is a little crazy. I also think I was rolling the dough a little too thin-- how much is 1/8 inch anyway? And so that could've also contributed. The dough is like a shortbread and barely sticks together-- there are no eggs. So the thin, overly-baked cookies had a tendency to break. But the taste was nice, very subtle and not too sugary, with just a hint of cinnamon. Oh, and now that I think about it I probably put ginger instead of nutmeg. Whoops. There's so little anyway you couldn't taste it. It was a fine recipe, though. I used heart-shaped cookie cutters, and I think these were bigger than the ones it called for so I only could make 1-2 dozen instad of the 3 dozen it suggests. We filled them with peach, raspberry, or orange jam.

Month 3 day 10: Roast pork loin and no-knead rolls

Today I made: 

Hash brown cakes with ham and green onions, Cooking Light April 2010

Mustard-and-Lemon-Glazed Pork with Roasted Vegetables, Food and Wine April 2011

No-Knead Overnight Parmesan and Thyme Rolls, Cooking Light April 2010

This recipe for hash browns followed Cooking Light's Easter supper section, which had suggestions of what to do with all the leftover ham. Perfect for us! We've put a lot in our freezer, but it was good to use some up. The recipe called for refrigerated shredded hash browns, but I just assumed I could grate a potato-- hopefully there aren't some extra unlisted ingredients in that, but it seemed to work out fine. It was just two potatoes, 1.5 c ham, 0.5 c green onions, 2.5 Tbs flour, 2 eggs, and a bit of salt. We liked them. It's a nice and easy breakfast.

The pork roast was really good. We've made a pork roast once before, for Christmas Eve. That recipe was stuffed with something, which was nice, but it was a little dry. This recipe was still juicy. It might have been a different cut. The cut we got had instructions on the package for how you could cut it into a few different cuts (I don't remember which), and indeed the type of meat was different from one end to the other-- one was much darker than the other, and the cuts in the middle had a bit of each, as you can see in this picture. The whiter meat was a little dry, but the dark part was nice and moist. The lemon was pretty subtle-- could've been more-- and the mustard wasn't overwhelming (then again, I only put about half of the mustard as the recipe called for, because neither G nor I are big fans). The roasted vegetables were nice and soft.

The drippings turn into a sauce, with such beautiful golden rings:

The rolls were okay. I'm not really sure what the big draw of "no-knead" breads are. This recipe was more annoying, because it needed to be set up the day before (although I just did it the morning of). Because it wasn't kneaded, the dough was unruly and ended up with a crumb more like a biscuit than a roll. When I lived in Japan I took an ABC bread class where we made 26 different recipes (with A-Z names). Because each class was 2 hours long, it emphasized that bread could be made pretty quickly. So I'm not sure what the point of this recipe is, since it takes like 12 hours instead of 2. The combination of thyme and parmesan is good, though. 

Month 3 day 9: Mushroom-stuffed eggplant

Today I made:
Mushroom-stuffed eggplant, Food and Wine April 2011

Bleach. I did not care much for this recipe. The eggplant shells didn't retain their shape and were just droopy, the stuffing made way too much for the shells, the pecorino is really pungent, and there basically weren't any spices in this other than a little cumin (and onion and garlic, which we consume at such a rate that I don't know if we taste them anymore). And the bread was soaked in wine, which I don't care for (although there wasn't really a strong winey flavor). In general it was not a very compelling flavor and the texture was a gross soft/soggy. G said it was pretty good, but I think he was just trying to be polite, because he said not to keep the recipe. And it takes >1 hour to make, too :-P

Month 3 day 8: Chicken Vesuvio and Stewed Escarole with Feta

Today I made:
Quick Chicken Vesuvio, Every Day with Rachael Ray April 2012
Stewed Escarole with Feta, Food Network Magazine April 2010

Tonight was a two-skillet dinner:

It was a little bit hectic to make these recipes. The pan for the potatoes wasn't big enough, so some were burning while the others were raw, and meanwhile the chicken needed to be dredged in flour, but the pan was already heated and the oil was starting to smoke, etc.

Everything turned out in the end though. They are both very pretty dishes. The chicken vesuvio is a little monotone but the toasted potatoes are just so attractive, and the escarole is nice and colorful.

G didn't like the escarole that much because it's fibrous. He said he'd rather just eat more kale with ham. It is a little stringy, but I like the combination of feta and tomatoes, so I think it's a keeper. You probably could sub in kale or anything else for the escarole I guess.
The chicken is pretty poorly rated online, but no one wrote a review/comment so I'm not sure why. I thought it was good. The potatoes are soft but crispy on the outside, and the chicken has a nice soft flour coating. For the broth I used the poaching liquid from the cream of leeks and chicken from two nights ago.

Month 3 day 7: Creamy Mac & Cheese

Today I made:
Stovetop Mac and Cheese with Cheese Crisps, Food and Wine April 2011
Salad with this dressing, Cooking Light April 2010
Steamed kale with ham

This mac and cheese recipe was really nice-- very creamy. It's just a white sauce with Fontina, mascarpone, and cheddar. It's an upscale version of the cheese sauce my mom used to make for cauliflower (as a side note, once she tried to make it with soy milk, and it totally did not work. Soy milk is not chemically the same as real milk). I wasn't familiar with Fontina-- it's nice and sharp. But the mascarpone is so creamy and smooth that it's overall quite mellow. It would be good with a little broccoli or something else inside inside. Or, just making the sauce for broccoli without the macaroni :) There is paprika inside, but I couldn't really taste it.
The things sticking out of the bowl are just melted cheddar piles. Mine didn't end up quite like the picture in the magazine-- I think I made my piles too tall instead of flattened out.

The dressing for salad (not pictured) is just a mix of lemon juice, dijon, sugar, salt and pepper, and oil. Mostly it just tasted salty... meh.

I normally saute kale (or kail, as I saw on a shopping list left at the checkout area) with some garlic, maybe some bacon, and red pepper flakes. But today I just steamed it for a while and then threw in some ham to brown. Because if you have an extra ~5 lbs of leftover ham, why not? Ham is pretty awesome-- I'm glad we'll have a bunch in our freezer for a while.

Interestingly, this was the first night in a long time where I cooked but didn't really need to chop anything. I only used a knife to open the cheese and cut the butter. There weren't that many dishes tonight, so I think G will be happy with this recipe even though he didn't have any. This is weird because the only review on the mac n cheese recipe said that it took too many dishes :-P

Month 3 day 6: Cream of Chicken and Leeks

Today I made:
Cream of Chicken and Leeks on buttered toast, Every Day with Rachael Ray April 2012

This seems like something you would get at a diner (G says "fancy diner"). It was supposed to be a 30-minute recipe but took a little longer-- maybe just because of the time it took to defrost the chicken.The chicken is poached in a  pan with a lemon, carrot, celery, and parsley and thyme. It smells and looks really good, but the flavors are subtle in the end. The leeks are sautéed in butter and then cooked with cream, wine, and broth from the poaching. A little bit of dijon goes in at the end and the flavor comes through strongly. G points out that the flavor of the sauce is pretty strong, and that's most of the flavor that comes through. In my case the toast immediately got soaked, but G's stayed crunchy and he liked the contrast of textures. You can't see it, but the toast has a Hello Kitty face burned in.

The toasters are advertised like this:

But really are a bit more like this:

Although if you turn it up high enough, it gives you a nice face on a backdrop of black char.

Month 3 day 5: Peach-ginger ham and biscuits

Today I made:
Ginger-Peach Glazed Ham, Food Network Magazine April 2010
Dill Chive Biscuits with Honey Butter, Food Network Magazine April 2010
Served with leftover cabbage/apples and steamed green beans

I have never prepared ham before, so I was kind of confused. Was this supposed to be for pre-cooked ham? It seems like everything in the store is already fully-cooked. Somehow it seemed like it was supposed to be for raw ham, but we bought a cooked one, so I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't do the brining part; I don't think I would've had a big enough container anyway. Instead, I just followed the instructions on the ham on how to heat it. The ham actually came with its own glaze, so I put that on half and the ginger-peach on the other half. G said he couldn't tell the difference, but my glaze was really mustardy (more than peachy or gingery), and their glaze was really sweet (and smelled cinnamony when I was putting it on, but not as much in the final product). I guess both glazes were fine... it's mostly on the outer side anyway, so you can't taste it that much on the inside parts.

The magazine recipe was for dill biscuits, but we didn't have dill. We did have some chives, so I put those in along with some cheddar. The honey butter is kind of nice.

Yup, not much else to say about that. We have a lot of leftover ham now.

Month 3 day 4: Mac & Cheese Pancakes and a really delicious dessert

Today I made:
Macaroni 'n' Cheese Pancakes, Rachael Ray April 2012
Mango-Basil Vacherin, Food and Wine April 2011

Have you ever lamented the fact that when you go to brunch, it's almost always just breakfast foods? Neither have I. But that is the problem that Rachael Ray set out to solve with this collection of recipes-- Brunch with Punch-- three recipes that are either a breakfast food with a lunchy taste or vice versa. The doughnut-sausage "corn dogs" looked interesting but labor intensive, and I feel like deep frying is a waste of oil. The bacon and egg salad with waffle croutons seemed blah. So we went with the mac & cheese pancakes. They actually don't start with leftover mac & chese, because that apparently makes it too wet. So it's really just a buttermilk pancake batter with some cooked pasta and grated cheddar inside.

These weren't as weird as you might expect. The macaroni (although G accidentally picked up the even curlier cavatappi) contributed an interesting texture, and the cheese was actually quite good inside of a buttermilk pancake. It would be great to just make buttermilk pancakes with some cheese and a bit more salt than is normally called for, to convert sweet into savory (although the recipe still suggested serving with maple syrup). I think if you made these pancakes for your kid's birthday slumber parties, you would be voted the coolest parent ever. Spaghetti tacos for dinner and mac & cheese pancakes for breakfast.

We will, actually, be making real mac & cheese next week, and some variations later on in the month. For some reason, April seems to be enriched for mac & cheese or other pasta recipes. I wonder why.

Tonight we ran out of time to cook dinner, because Turbo Tax is a disaster. It asked something like how much do I spend on room and board, and then it added that amount in as an extra taxable form of income. Whut. So I had to fill out a new form and an amendment form explaining why the previous one was wrong. Not worth it. I have never spent so much time on taxes. We ate leftovers from last night's braised chicken.

But we still made dessert, as the meringue prep started much earlier in the day.

The mango ice cream is just store-bought, although it was really good. The basil ice cream was normal vanilla with the addition of basil, blanched in simple-syrup and blended up, and then refrozen. The meringue kisses have just three ingredients: lime zest, 4 egg whites, and 1.5 c powdered sugar. I think they taste a little like soap, but other people say they are good. The whipped cream is just cream, sugar, and lime zest.
This is a great dessert. To me the meringues don't add that much, but I would love to eat this basil ice cream, mango sorbet, or lime whipped-cream again, alone or together. The whipped cream could have used a bit more lime. I think it would be interesting to try this with different flavors, like swapping out lime for ginger or something. Everything is make-ahead, up to four days in advance, and looks impressive, so I think this would be good for a dinner party or something. In fact, we brought it with us to a get together, although people didn't really assemble the pieces because everything was in the fridge. People just ate the meringues alone instead. There were about 120 of them! (they're small).

Month 3 day 3: Braised chicken and apples with cabbage, with tapioca disaster to follow

Today I made:
Spice-Braised Chicken Legs with Red Wine and Tomato, Food and Wine April 2011
Cabbage with Apples, Onions and Caraway, New York Times (November 15, 2011)
Coconut Tapioca, Food Network Magazine April 2010

This dinner was a long haul, and G notices that his work is cut out for him with the cleanup too. We were both tired after work, so we took a nap, so cooking didn't even start until 8:30 or so, and the braised chicken is an hour-long recipe. Turns out though, brown rice takes even longer in G's super-intelligent Japanese rice cooker, which can't display the expected end time because it doesn't know the expected end time, which it calculates using a fuzzy logic neural network along the way. So, dinner was finally ready around 10:30. Which was fine for me, because I went to a post-lecture happy hour at 5 that served enchiladas and quesadillas.

It's a little monotone, but the flavors and ingredients were certainly varied.

The chicken recipe was straightforward, though dirtied up a lot of dishes. We bought 6 chicken quarters, which were kind of a pain to de-skin and cut into their components. But I think it's good for meat eaters to be confronted with cutting through joints every once in a while. G liked this dish a lot. It wasn't super flavorful, but you could definitely pick up the cinnamon and spicy flavors. The chicken was moist and the tomatoes and onions were nice and soft.

The cabbage recipe is not from any of my magazines and is also not from April. But, last weekend I was organizing a new recipe filing folder and putting all the recipes in (now separated into recipe type instead of in a big jumble), and I spotted this one. G had just chosen a cabbage for a side dish, so I kept it out. I don't like caraway though, so I replaced it with powdered coriander, which I do like. I would say that this recipe takes longer than 25 minutes, but it's a little longer. It also dirtied up a lot of dishes (there is a trend tonight). This was a good dish too. The caramelized apples were nice and sweet.

So, the tapioca was a little difficult. We couldn't find big tapioca pearls. We figured we could maybe just use normal tapioca. But, the only kind at the supermarket near us was "Minute Tapioca," which seems even smaller than normal tapioca and is parboiled. This made the recipe tricky: obviously we weren't going to boil the minute tapioca for 40 minutes, but what about the ratio of water to tapioca? Would that be fine? So we kind of made it up as we went along. Some of the tapioca made huge clumps that were impossible to break up. And it kind of didn't have that much flavor-- it could've used more coconut milk and less water. But anyway, it had a lot of  mango, which was good. We didn't have mango nectar, so we melted a little mango sorbet to put on top, and that was good.

We're keeping the chicken and cabbage recipes, but not the tapioca. Although that might be worth trying again sometime if we can actually find the pearls.

Month 3 day 2: Chicken Shawarma and roasted carrots

Today I made:
Spicy Chicken Shawarma, Cooking Light April 2010
Roasted Carrots with Za'atar, Food Network Magazine April 2010

I was a little bit worried about cooking dinner tonight, because we got an enigmatic email from our house manager this afternoon: "The drill may be any early evening now."
We had already gotten emails saying that a fire drill would take place sometime in the next week or so, so most of us interpreted this email to mean that he knew it would be tonight. Especially ominous were the flashing lights at one of the nearby dorms I passed on my walk home. So I figured I had to be super fast cooking to get everything done before the alarm started.
I didn't make it. G came home when I was mostly done and said that the housing crew were already outside and had told him it wasn't even worth going to his room because it was going to start. I was one chopped onion away from finishing when the alarm started! If only we had been able to eat as we waited outside. Luckily, since it was just a drill, they could let us in pretty quickly once they decided that everyone had made it out in the allotted 5 minutes. The woes of living in a dorm!

I liked this dinner. It was very quick to do. The carrots just got rubbed with salt, pepper, and oil and then roasted. The chicken was briefly mixed with a yogurt and spice sauce and then put on the stove, and in the time it took to saute I was able to mix up the yogurt-tahini sauce and cut up most of the vegetables (and evacuate the building).

Recently a labmate brought in cucumbers and quark, a German yogurt/sour cream like product, as a snack, and we've been thinking about it a lot. It's simple but so good! So today's dip, just some yogurt, tahini, and lemon juice, and garlic, reminded me of that. I should mix up a little more to dip the extra cucumber in.

The carrots were just simply roasted, then spritzed with some lemon, parsley, and za'atar. What is za'atar, you might ask? A month or so ago I would have been in your same naive position, but it was in a gift package by my cousin and his wife! So when I saw that recipe I was very excited to put it to use. It's a Middle Eastern kind of spice, with sesame seeds, thyme, sumac, marjoram, savory, and salt. It had a really interesting flavor that I can't describe, but it must have been the sumac, because I think that's the only one of those ingredients that I haven't had by itself. Sort of a smokey or earthy flavor? But those words aren't really right.

I liked these recipes and will keep both. G says he just wanted a burger. He's sad because at lunch he wanted to go to the Whitehead Cafeteria for a Chang burger (with onion rings, BBQ sauce, and bacon) and I suggested that we have some of the leftovers in the freezer instead. What a terrible burden, to have home-cooked food all the time!

Month 3 day 1: Asian Salmon and Noodle Salad

Month 3!

This month there are five issues:

• Saveur, April 2012
• Every Day with Rachael Ray, April 2012
• Food & Wine, April 2011
• Food Network Magazine, April 2010
• Cooking Light, April 2010

And last night, I uncovered about 5 more magazines, including one for April (>_<) I think it might have to be kept for another month though, because 6 is too many to do in one month. I'll be working through 5 issues for the next couple months, with 4 for a bit in the summer, and then back to 5... there are 44 for 9 months.

I think I am getting better at being selective about recipes, because I was able to select just the right amount of dinners and brunches for this month. I maybe was a little over-ambitious for desserts though. Oh, and I think we will have a dumpling party, because Cooking Light has a little feature of four country's takes on dumplings. 

Today we made:

Yakitori Salmon and Bok Choy Skewers, Rachael Ray April 2010

Spicy Asian Noodles, Food Network Magazine, April 2010

Today was a hurried dinner before ceramics, so I enlisted G's help on the noodle salad. He chopped up the veggies while I mixed up the dressing and boiled the sauce for the yakitori salmon. The salad is quick, and the salmon grills up quickly too. The bok choy wasn't cooking fast enough (maybe because it was on the perimeter of the grill pan), so once the salmon was done I removed it from the pan,  poured some water over the bok choy and covered the pan to steam them until they were soft. 

Yakitori (焼き鳥) literally means grilled bird/chicken, so it's funny to have yakitori salmon.

G says to keep the salmon recipe but not the salad. We just used the whole package instead of 2/3rds like the recipe called for, plus I think a lot of the dressing just sank to the bottom of the bowl, so it wasn't that flavorful. Maybe tomorrow after there's been some time for the flavors to marinate it will be nicer.