Month 4 day 18: Pea-and-Bacon Risotto

Today I made:
Pea-and-Bacon Risotto, Food & Wine May 2011

That's not really how the pea shoots are supposed to be garnishing, I think.

I didn't follow this recipe exactly. I didn't measure out the bacon, I just used what seemed like a decent amount for me to eat over the next couple of days. My blender is in lab (we're having a smoothie day tomorrow), so I wasn't able to puree half of the peas. And I only had about half of the peas it called for anyway, so I just put them all in whole. I made the stock by finally using the two chicken carcases that have been in our freezer-- it is good to clear out that space. One of them was from the chicken I roasted earlier this week, and I kept the lemon and garlic and some of the skin in the freezer too, so that added some flavor, or at least some nice smell.
Risotto is always yummy, and this was no exception. It became hard to stir in the end because the pot was just barely big enough. What this meant is that the Parmigiano-Reggiano wasn't completely mixed in, so there were pockets of salty deliciousness. The other bites weren't as good. Probably this means I just should have put in extra Parmigiano-Reggiano :)
While I was cooking I watched the first episode of the Bachelorette. It was pretty funny. Some of the people on that show are pretty ridiculous....

This is a nice recipe. It made 6 servings, and I believe that's probably a correct estimate, because it's so filling. You can't possibly eat more than one bowl, even if you wanted to. And I still have leftover polenta and tabbouleh. That means this is the last recipe for May! I won't be needing to cook for a few more days probably :-P

May's best recipes:
My choice: Chickpea Stew and Tabbouleh
My guess for G's choice: Korean BBQ

Month 4 day 17: Polenta with roasted tomatoes

First off, the pickles from the other day were awful. If you like sweet pickles, you will like that recipe. But if you were hoping for zesty dill, you will be sorely disappointed. I probably should've known better with the 1/3 c sugar, but I was just hoping maybe that was how much was required to offset the vinegar. Anyway, they were very sweet, and also the fennel flavor was pretty strong too. So sad.

Today I made:
Polenta with roasted tomatoes, Food Network May 2010

This recipe was straightforward and tasted pretty good. You're supposed to roast the tomatoes for a long time, but I cut it a little short because the fire alarm kept going off. I vaguely remember that something spilled over the last time I baked something, and I am paying for it now... the tomatoes are supposed to get a bit charred on the sides, but mine were just barely starting to blacken. The recipe specifically calls for canned San Marzano tomatoes. According to wikipedia, it's just a specific variety of tomato. It's much more expensive than normal canned tomatoes, and I'm not sure if I could taste the difference. I used kale instead of chard, and I reused the water for boiling the kale to make the polenta-- I figure it saves some energy and recycles some of the nutrients that probably leeched out too. This did mean that I had some random kale flotsam that ended up embedded in the polenta, but whatever. In the end I topped it with cotija cheese since I am just going to guess that they don't sell farmer's cheese at Shaw's.
I will save this recipe. It is simple but satisfying.

Month 4 day 16: Pickles

Today I am making:
Pickled Garlic Vegetables, Food Network May 2010

Today I decided to try making pickled vegetables. Unfortunately, I forgot the garlic, which is probably the most important part-- I've always loved zesty garlic dill pickles. So hopefully these will taste ok, but I won't know until tomorrow. Unfortunately the liquid doesn't reach the top of the vegetables, so some of them won't get too flavored. I've always been a little worried about the idea of pickling, canning, fermenting, etc. at home, but these are not for long-term storage, and anyway there is so much vinegar, alcohol, and salt I feel like nothing will be able to grow. I'm excited to see how these taste tomorrow. This was super-fast-- just five minutes of boiling the liquid and about five minutes of chopping things, so if it works out well this will be a great recipe. Actually, I didn't add the spices in the recipe, but instead just used 2 Tbs. of McCormick pickling spice. But the recipe on the side of the bottle is for corned beef, which is sort of a different type of pickle, so I scooped out the allspice hoping that it would taste less like corned beef and more like normal pickles. I supplemented with a bit of red pepper flakes. G hates pickles, but he loves corned beef-- I wonder what he would think of this hybrid.

Month 4 day 15: Roast Chicken and Cauliflower, featuring soy sauce and lemon juice

Today I made:
Honey-and-Lemon-Glazed Roast Chicken, Food & Wine May 2012
Cauliflower Tabouli, Food Network May 2010

I'm curious about the glazes for roast chicken. Unless you removed the skin or something, aren't they always going to be just superficial? This lemon, honey, and soy sauce made the skin a really nice golden-brown and gave it some good flavor, but I don't normally eat the skin. The flavor didn't really permeate into the meat. Something strange is that it started at a high temp and then got cooler. I thought normally you would go the other direction to make the skin crispy at the end. Instead, 30 minutes into cooking the skin was really crisp, but by the time it finished and spent 15 minutes resting, the skin was pretty soft. Oh well. It's a roast chicken, and those are always good.
The cauliflower tabouli is supposed to be made with grated raw cauliflower. I decided that since the oven was on anyway, I would just roast the florets a little bit first. Then, they were too hot to grate so I just chopped them roughly. So this wasn't much of a tabouli-like dish, but was just a salad. It tasted fine, but was nothing too special. Strangely, it also has soy sauce in it, which is not something I associate with tabouli.

Month 4 day 14: Variations on chickpeas

Today I made:
Caraway Fennel-Spiced Chickpea Stew with Mint Yogurt, Food&Wine May 2011
Preserved Lime Tabbouleh Salad, Cooking Light May 2010
Quick Preserved Limes, Cooking Light May 2010

Both of these recipes had these steps of soaking or simmering for 1-2 hours, so it made sense to make them together. I intended to cook this menu earlier this week, but I kept forgetting to soak the chickpeas for the stew. In retrospect, I think you could just use canned chickpeas, because they're soaked and cooked plain-- you're not adding any flavor during the simmering process. I also kept meaning to make the limes the night ahead and never did.  So it all waited until today, after I finally finished eating the Corsican stuffed pasta.

The theme of today was bowls:

A rustic chickpea and chard stew

Mint yogurt (it looks much more beautiful in real life)

Preserved Lime Tabbouleh Salad

I always thought that "stew" implied that there would be some sort of broth, so this was an odd dish to call a stew. The main ingredients are cooked in different ways: the carrots are roasted, the onion is sautéed  the chickpeas are simmered, and the chard is sautéed (but really, it's more like it's steaming). The chickpeas and the carrots take a bit of time, making this a 2-hour-plus-overnight recipe, but really after that hurdle everything is very fast. I don't care for caraway, so I used fennel seed instead. I thought this dish was really nice. Things tasted sort of caramelized, and each ingredient held its own flavor intact, so each bite had a different combination of flavors. Sometimes the fennel would be strong, sometimes the mint, sometimes the roasted carrots. Although the colors are all muted, I thought it was a really attractive dish.

This tabbouleh was the last of the bulgur! I didn't have the full amount, so I halved the bulgur but kept the rest of the ingredients the same, and I think that was a good choice. It ended up being the ratio that I like the best, unlike the last salad, of which about 10 cups is still lingering because it's just so difficult to get through. I left out the olives because I don't care for them. The preserved limes... I don't really understand. The rind was completely hard. I'm not sure if this was because of the cooking, or if maybe it was a little tough already (they've been on the shelf for about a week). But it was impossible to cut them up to put into the tabbouleh. I ended up just scraping out the (very soft) flesh and leaving the rind behind. I expected it to be a really strong salty flavor, but I can't find it. I do taste lime, but since there is also just normal lime juice added, I'm not sure what the preserved lime's contribution is. I have two more quarters of preserved lime, and I'm not sure what to do with them.

Month 4 day 13: Corsican baked pasta

Today I made:
Pasta Incu Bietulle, Saveur May 2012

Pasta Incu Bietulle is translated as Swiss chard cannelloni, although Shaw's doesn't have cannelloni, so I made stuffed shells instead. First you make a tomato sauce with lots of garlic, fresh basil and thyme, and red pepper flakes. I halved the recipe but accidentally used the full amount of pepper, so it was nice and zesty. While that's simmering, you briefly boil some chard (and then the shells), which gets mixed with ricotta cheese and mint. So there is an interesting interplay between the cool mint and the hot pepper. It took about 1.5 hours start to finish, but it was a nice (vegetarian) meal. A lot of the other recipes in Saveur's Corsica section also feature ricotta and mint, so I might try another later.

I was frustrated, though, going to Shaw's. I haven't been for a while since we started renting a car to go to Market Basket (and probably still saving money even after the rental fees). But since I'm such low-throughput now, I just went to Shaw's on the way home. Unfortunately they are even farther along with their "renovation" of their produce section. Somehow they rearranged it in such a way that they no longer sell a lot of the things I used to buy, although I really can't identify anything new that they have. It's a bit of a mystery. Today, it seemed that they no longer carry non-organic chard. Instead, they sell small, wilted bunches. The price wasn't posted, but I figured it would be by weight anyway so if it's small whatever. But actually, no. This was $2.99 per bunch, with a total of 8 stalks.

And of course they don't sell 1 Tbs. portions of mint; the smallest package was $4. What the hell. I can't wait to move back to California.

Month 4 day 12: Tandoori chicken and bulgur salad

Today I made:
Chicken Tandoori, Food Network Magazine May 2010
Black Bean, Edamame and Wheat Berry Bulgur Salad, Food Network Magazine May 2010 (Recipe from an ad! For Pompeian red wine vinegar)

Today I destroyed:

One pyrex "no-leak lids" tupperware

One wine glass

What am I to do without G here? When I went to grab a container to put the leftovers in, a pyrex container went flying across the room, exploding into an extraordinary number of shards, which flew into the air, landing on such high-up objects as a sofa (~2') and the top of the microwave (~3'). Within minutes of cleaning that mess up, I reached for a new tupperware, plastic this time-- and in the process knocked over a wine glass, which broke in such a way that half of the shards ended up in the yogurt sauce. Normally G is in charge of handling tupperware, which are housed on a shelf that I usually can reach, but apparently not well enough (>_<)

Anyway, so the food. I used less chicken than called for, because I didn't like the idea of myself eating 2.5 lbs of chicken over the next two days by myself. I made the full amount of sauce, though. I think the sauce was a little too liquidy, or the chicken was after being soaked with lemon juice, because the sauce didn't particularly stick to the chicken. It tasted pretty good though. We made tandoori-spiced chicken a long time ago, but I don't remember which was better. I suppose the recipes are kind of similar, except for the tomato sauce and coriander in this one. I'm going to guess this one was better and keep this recipe too.

A couple of days ago I had intended to make this salad, but we didn't have time to fully make it. We cooked the bulgur but didn't do anything else, and a massive amount of bulgur has just been waiting in our fridge. It has beans and tomatoes. It's nothing too special, but it's not bad either. I feel like it is probably high in protein. Unfortunately there's 12 cups of it left. Either bulgur really expands to an absurd degree or G didn't measure correctly. I don't think I'll keep this recipe.

Month 4 day 11: Fried chicken and orzo

Today I made:
Chicken Milanese with Spring Greens ^Beans, Cooking Light May 2010
Parmesan-Browned Butter Orzo, Cooking Light May 2010

This is G's last home-cooked meal for a while, because he left today for a family vacation to Europe! So now I'm back to my camera, which can be really nice, but sometimes has a broken macro function. Here's hoping it keeps working so I can take some nice food shots. This also means that I won't be able to cook as often without G helping me eat the food! I'll probably just cook every other day for the summer.

I don't fry things too much, so I don't have a lot of experience. This chicken was pretty thin, but still got charred before getting cooked through. And the oil just splattered everywhere, such that when I removed the pan some splattered back onto the hot burner (I guess) and flared up a little. It's not great when a non-gas stove has flames :-P Maybe the oil was too hot or something. I wonder if it would alternatively work to fry it for a while and then finish it off in the oven or something.

Meanwhile, the orzo was really flavorful. The flavors got nice and concentrated, but I didn't add any chives. 

The chicken was supposed to be served with salad, but we didn't have any. I didn't realize it until after I had started making the dressing, so we just decided to put the dressing on steamed green beans. They were a little overcooked as I was distracted by the chicken :-P

I think I will keep the orzo recipe, but that's all.

Month 4 day 10: Korean BBQ

Today I made:
Korean-style beef skewers with rice noodles, Cooking Light May 2010
with steamed green beans

Tonight I had planned to also make a bulgur salad, but there was no time. We only had about an hour to cook and eat before running out to watch "The Great Gatsby." This dish is very easy and quick, other than the marinating step. We used all of the burners: our biggest pot for the noodles, the next biggest for steaming the beans, a grill pan for the beef, and a small saucepan to boil the remaining marinade into a sauce. While all these other components were happening, the marinade on the beef got caramelized and a bit too dark, but I think this ended up making it extra flavorful too. The reserved and boiled marinade gets tossed with the noodles. Interestingly though, it doesn't all end up being the same flavor. The beef was spicy, but the noodles were very sweet. I wondered if the rice noodles have some inherent sweetness, or if I just didn't mix the sugar in well enough so it all stayed to the bottom after I removed the meat. Anyway, maybe it was a good move to distinguish the flavors a little.
G was a fan. He loves Korean BBQ. We will save this recipe.

Month 4 day 9: Sloppy Joes

Today I made:
Almost Meatless Sloppy Joes, Cooking Light May 2010

It's beginning to stay light late enough that we can get some nice, natural lighting for our dinners!

The point of this recipe is that meat is not very good for you, but it does taste very good, so use it more like a seasoning than as the main act. In this recipe, the filling for four sloppy joes is made from just one burger patty. It's boosted with onion, tomato, grated carrot, and beans. I felt like some mushroom would've been great too. An alternative point of this recipe could've been to trick picky children into eating vegetables by masking them in an unintelligible mass of goo, which seems to be a dish that children like.
So, we did eat two servings each though. Which I guess is still less meat than a sloppy joe would've had. And the ingredients all seem healthy, so whatever. We forgot to pick out a side dish, so just one sandwich by itself was insufficient.
The great things about this recipe are that it is very easy and fast to make, it doesn't dirty many dishes, and it tastes good too. So everyone is happy. We will keep this recipe.

Month 4 day 8: Banh Mi and slaw

Today I made:
Banh Mi-Style Roast Beef Sandwiches, Cooking Light May 2010
Bell Pepper Slaw, Food Network Magazine May 2010

I'm not sure why the recipe is for "Banh Mi-Style" sandwiches instead of just being for "Banh Mi." I guess it's probably not very authentic, and they're being humble about it. But then, how can you say "roast beef" when it's a steak cooked in a skillet? Anyway, this was a nice sandwich. We love the banh mi at the Momogoose food truck, but they've been slipping recently in my opinion, so I haven't been going (plus, now we have homemade leftovers everyday for lunch). This had a lot of the same flavors. G's was spicy, but mine wasn't so much, so I wonder if his got all the jalapeño slices. This recipe was very quick and easy to make. I ran out of rice vinegar, so I topped up with red wine vinegar. We haven't had radishes in a while, but I like them. The recipe called for flank steak, but I wasn't sure what pseudonyms it goes by, so I grabbed randomly: chuck steak. It was a little grisley, so I don't think it was right. Now that I look at it, I think our grocery store calls it London Broil. I should probably get an app that decodes the names of meat cuts, because this comes up most weeks.
I felt like the slaw could've been good as a sandwich topping. In fact, I sopped up some of the juice with the last bite of bread and it was nice. The slaw tasted, and felt, nice and fresh because of the crispy bell peppers. It's a little miraculous how something with mayonnaise can taste so light, but compared to normal cole slaw I think this was more vinegar-centric than mayo-centric. It was nice and tart. When I went grocery shopping, I thought the mustard seed and celery seed on my list was for pickles later this week and opted for a more complete "pickling spice" instead of getting the two separate. Only now did I realize that I wanted those without the allspice and juniper berries... so we just did without the spices, but it was still flavorful enough. G wasn't a huge fan-- he said there was too much mustard (!? I ran out and it was so much more subtle than we've had in other dishes he didn't complain about...). But he did like the sandwiches. I think I'll keep both recipes.

A non-recipe day: sausage and peppers

Today we didn't plan to cook dinner, because we went to G's advisor's (huge, historical) house for a party. We had delicious BBQ for "linner," but by 8 or so G was feeling a little hungry and wanted something light. We looked in the freezer for inspiration and found Italian sausage, leftover tomato sauce, and bell peppers. We had bought some buns for Sloppy Joes later this week and had a couple of extra, so I decided to go with sausage with onions and bell pepper sandwiches, like they sell from carts all around Boston. Now that I google it, I guess they don't usually have tomato sauce too... but why not?? Just throw it all together, with some cheese too. Since we usually have bell peppers and sausage in the freezer and an onion in the pantry, it's a somewhat common nothing-around-the-house dinner for us (sans sauce), usually on top of pasta.

To make it, I just sautéed some sliced onions (which were prechopped leftovers in the fridge, incidentally) over medium heat until they started getting soft, then added some frozen bell pepper strips and ~1" chunks of defrosted Italian sausage. After browning the sausage I drenched it all in the tomato sauce and let it simmer, covered, until the sausage was cooked through. Then we toasted the buns and put on some Italian-blend shredded cheese (also from the freezer!) to melt and put it all together.

It doesn't look very neat and tidy, but it was good. The buns were a little small, so we just spilled it all over our plate. I also spilled salad dressing alllll over the table. :-P

Month 4 day 7: General Tso's Chicken

Today I made:
General Tso's Chicken, Food & Wine May 2011
served with Trader Joe's frozen cauliflower romanesco basilic, which totally didn't match but we're out of frozen broccoli.

Yep, the only thing I've cooked this week was General Tso's Chicken.

Also bizarre is that I somehow sliced my thumb on the cap of the soy sauce bottle. How is that even possible?? Why would a plastic bottle cap have an edge sharp enough to cut human flesh? It happened  early on in the cooking process so it made things a bit challenging. Our opposable thumbs are pretty good.

We didn't get a chance to go grocery shopping this week, and it's just been pretty busy so we've been eating at dorm events or Chipotle. Tonight we got home around 8 and there wasn't much to work with, but we always have some chicken and vegetables in the freezer and rice in the pantry, so I decided to go for round two of the dueling General Tsos. G says it's better than the "healthy" one, but still the crispiness of the fried chicken went away completely after being drenched in sauce. What was the point of frying it? We're not sure how it's physically possible for something to be both covered in sauce and crispy, although we think maybe it has to do with weird chemicals. Or maybe double frying, a la Bon Chon. Anyway, this recipe was a bit more involved and therefore had more flavor to it, although I'm not entirely sure I liked the extra flavors. I think G did though. We probably won't keep either of these recipes, although again, it's a cool concept that you can have "nothing" around the house to cook with and then whip up General Tso's Chicken in the time it would take to get it delivered. Although maybe you'd rather whip up the gumbo.

Edit: G says to keep this recipe. Too bad it's covered in raw chicken-cornstarch juices.

Month 4 day 6: General Tso's Chicken

>1000 page views!
Although, the vast majority of those are by weird robots that visit blogs hoping that the blogger will click the redirect link :-P I should add ads and get paid for the robots visiting.

Today I made:
General Tso's Chicken, Every Day with Rachael Ray, May 2012
with steamed snow peas

I don't know what General Tso's chicken is supposed to be like, but this is supposed to be a healthier remake of it. Actually, it has the nutrition information comparing it to takeout General Tso's, and it's basically the same calorie count. But it's supposedly better "quality" of calories, whatever that means. This dish cooks very quickly, but it wasn't crispy (is it supposed to be?). The coating has a ton of corn starch in it, so when I was stirring it I thought it was too dry and wouldn't possibly cover the chicken. But when I stopped stirring, it got all wet and loose. Non-Newtonian fluids for ya. It ended up covering the chicken quite fine, but the sauce (which also had cornstarch in it) became pretty solid as soon as it hit the frying pan and only kind of covered the chicken.
G liked this dish, although he said it's nothing like General Tso's chicken is normally. But he was a fan of the tenderness of the chicken. We used chicken tenderloin, so that's probably why it was so tender :)

Month 4 day 5: Skillet Rosemary Chicken

Today I made:
Skillet Rosemary Chicken, Food Network Magazine May 2010

 Today we ate the Charlotte Russe cake! We meant to have it with G's lab, but no one was there, so we celebrated his birthday with my lab instead. They seemed to appreciate it. The chocolate flavor was a little subtle. People seemed to like the graham cracker crust. The cake definitely did set up, contrary to most of the reviews! So that was nice. I feel successful.

For dinner we had this skillet chicken. The chicken is cooked on the stove for a bit and also in the oven.  The potatoes are boiled for a bit and also cooked in the oven. When I poured lemon juice over the top shortly before moving it into the oven, it set the fire alarm off :-P

G liked this. To me it tasted and smelled like pot roast, even though it's chicken instead of pork or beef or whatever pot roasts normally are. It was pretty good, although our skillet is too small. We used only two chicken breasts (because magazines always say things like "four chicken breasts, 1 lb" or something and then 1 lb is like 2 chicken breasts at the store. Maybe they weigh them incorrectly), which was already erring on the side of too much for our skillet, but wasn't that much food (since we save half for lunch). We probably could've just eaten it all for dinner-- it would just be one chicken breast and one potato each, and some salty, salty mushrooms. It has crazy good reviews (172 of them), but to me it was just ok.

Month 4 day 4: Charlotte Russe, kind of

Today we didn't really cook. For brunch I went with the dorm to our officer transition brunch, where we're meant to impart all of our wisdom to the next group of officers. As I am no longer going to be an officer, this is my last transition brunch! End of an era...

In the afternoon, I made G's birthday cake!!
Charlotte Russe with Raspberries, Food Network May 2010

In progress

It doesn't look at all like the picture on their website. We couldn't find ladyfingers anywhere, and though I've made them before I don't think they're all that great, so we decided to go with a graham cracker crust instead. Hopefully this doesn't make it impossible to remove it from the springform or something :-P And we bought strawberries instead of raspberries.

But I am happy to say that despite SO MANY BAD REVIEWS about it not setting up, I think mine is pretty well set up. In fact, it set up too fast, so it might be lumpy; we went to Harvard Square for a quick iced hot chocolate for G's birthday treat, but were waylaid by the "May Fair" festival that we stumbled upon. Then G wanted to go to the bookstore. So by the time we got home, it wasn't "just begin[ning] to set" but instead was fairly set. Without the whipped cream mixed in or having been transferred to the springform pan. So I remixed it as well as I could, but it had lumpy bits. So take that, other reviews! Hopefully it tastes good too. The part I licked off of the spoon was good :)

For dinner we didn't cook either, because we went to Chef's Whim at Craigie on Main. I was a little scared because sometimes fancy restaurants serve really weird cuts of meat and things. But we lucked out. Neither of us are big on oysters, but our amuse bouche was an oyster-- that just tasted like lemon and green onions. First course was a cerviche with mustard, kim chi, and ramp on sweet pea coulis. Second course was tautog fish over split pea puree with curried (?) spinach topped with crab (and flowers). Third course was grass-fed sirloin over mashed potatoes and (really salty) kale with an onion puree and oxtail pastrami. Dessert was carrot cake with candied walnuts and cream cheese sorbet and flourless chocolate torte with popcorn and banana-muscovado sorbet. We were very full by then end.

The funny thing is that for a class, we were supposed to write down everything we ate today and estimate the calories. Today is probably the worst possible day of the year for that assignment for me :-P I'm going to go with yesterday's food, for which I have the exact calorie counts, because everything was straight out of Cooking Light. An unexpected benefit of the cooking challenge!

Month 4 day 3: Smoothies and "grilled" pizza

Today I made:
Strawberry-Guava Smoothies, Cooking Light May 2010
Veggie Grilled Pizza, Cooking Light May 2010

For brunch (well, lunch really) we had these strawberry-guava smoothies. They were pretty sweet-- I don't think you can buy guava juice that isn't only 16% juice and 84% high-fructose corn syrup :-P G was a fan. We also made the second set of turkey panini with the leftover ingredients from Wednesday.

Then we watched Iron Man 3 in Jordan's Furniture Tempur-Pedic Verizon IMAX Experience Theater (could you get anymore sponsors?) This place is ridiculous. It's more like Disneyland than a furniture store, complete with little sub-stores inside of an indoor Louisiana-themed walkway area:

Image from jordans.com

The website says that there are occasional Mardi Gras FX shows with lights, smoke, and animatronics, but we weren't there when one happened. The seats are all Tempur-Pedic, so you don't get sore even if you're near the front, and there are subwoofers under every seat so you rumble with every explosion.

When we came home we made pizza, and I had a headache (maybe from all the rumbling, or the 3D glasses?) It's supposed to be grilled, but it's still not that warm out. We grilled the vegetables on our grill pan, and pre-cooked the dough on the grill pan too, but then baked it for a bit in the oven until it was all nice and crispy:

I cheated and used store-bought dough. We bought it on Wednesday, so by today it was really puffed up. Still worked fine, though. G said the pizza was "meh." We've made better pizzas before.

Month 4 day 2: Grilled Chicken with Herb and Nut Gremolata

Today I made:
Grilled Chicken with Mint (and Basil) and Pine Nut Pumpkin Seed Gremolata with Sugar Snap and Feta Cotija Salad, Cooking Light April 2010

What even is gremolata? Apparently it just has to have lemon zest and some random assortment of chopped herbs. I did a few substitutions tonight. I know I have pine nuts somewhere, but our freezer is packed and I couldn't find them. I substituted roasted pumpkin seeds instead, and they have a distinctive, nice flavor of their own that wasn't too far off. The gremolata recipe called for 1 cup of mint, but we didn't have that much. The column next to the recipe suggested that you could substitute basically any green herb, like cilantro or basil. We happened to have a huge bunch of basil about to go bad in the fridge, so I thought I could put it to use as a supplement to the mint. I think you could make out both flavors. They're not exactly complementary, but it gave an interesting mix. We didn't have feta, but we have a lot of leftover cotija, which is basically the Mexican version of feta, so I used that instead. We have been spending so much money on cheese in the past couple of weeks :-P It seems like each week we buy a new brick or two!

The recipes were straightforward and quick. It was pretty good too, although nothing too special. To be honest, I'd rather just eat snap peas raw as a snack than blanching them. We decided not to keep the recipe. It's more like an idea anyway.

Month 4 day 1: Sandwiches

Welcome to Month 4! I can't believe I'm now 1/4 of the way through the magazines. It doesn't look like that-- my shelf is still full. But I guess I have a nice little pile of cut up magazines waiting to be recycled too.
This week, I have five issues:

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

I bookmarked a few too many recipes, so I won't get to all of them. Strangely, there are only a couple each from Rachael Ray and Saveur. Rachael just had a huge list of sandwich recipes, which aren't that exciting of a supper (I say although I made panini tonight :-P ). I flagged a ton of recipes from each of Food Network, Cooking Light, and Food & Wine, though. G will be gone for a good part of this month, so I probably won't be able to eat my way through too many recipes. Same for the entirety of June and July too!

Today we kept it simple and made:
Turkey Panini with Watercress and Citrus Aioli, Cooking Light May 2010
with baked yam fries

These sandwiches tasted good, but they weren't all that special. The citrus aioli is just mayo mixed with small amounts of lemon and lime zest and a bit of lemon juice, but it's so subtle (or just such small amounts) that you really can't taste any citrus in the sandwich. Mostly you could taste the peppery watercress and the actual pepper from the pepper-crusted turkey G picked out. So I don't think we'll save this recipe. Maybe if we used more zest it would be better. G got to break out his old George Foreman grill, which hasn't seen much use since he left his bachelor pad and moved in with me ;) He mostly used it for grilling sandwiches back then, not really for meat. So even before he knew we were making panini he pulled it out at the word "sandwich."

G got a big kick out of this needy sign at Market Basket today:

It probably reminds him of me, haha.

Month 3 day 24: Chicken Carne Asada Tacos

Today I made:
Chicken Carne Asada Tacos with Pickled Onions with Spicy Black Beans, Cooking Light April 2010

This was easy enough-- another one of Cooking Light's timed recipes, this one taking just 30 minutes. I guess the beans were supposed to go on the side but we put them in the tacos. The onions were subdued by being boiled, and mostly just tasted nicely of citrus. A bit of a light meal for G, he went in search of dessert or snack immediately after eating. Maybe some rice on the side would've been good? And the serving size is only two tacos... so I think the four servings claim is a little over-ambitious.

That's it for month 3! 

April's best recipes:

My choice: Mango-Basil Vacherin

G's choice: Thai Chicken (this took me by surprise, but it's "the juiciest chicken [he's] ever tasted!"